is a Japanese playwright. She was born in Hiroshima

Hiroshima

is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...

, but was not in the city on the day of the atomic bombings. She lost many friends in the bombing, and her profound sense of guilt led her to devote most of her life to producing plays connected with the Hiroshima bombings.

She felt a strong affinity with the architect Jan Letzel

Jan Letzel

Jan Letzel was a Czech architect.-Biography:Jan Letzel was born in the town of Náchod, Bohemia. The son of a hotel owners Jan Letzel and his wife Walburga Letzel, née Havlicek...

, who had designed the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition building, which — by a stroke of luck — somehow survived the atomic bomb's blast, and thereby became the famous A-bomb dome

Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Hiroshima Peace Memorial, commonly called the Atomic Bomb Dome or , in Hiroshima, Japan, is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The ruin serves as a memorial to the people who were killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6,...

. Letzel was Czech, and Murai decided to study in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

. She translated various works between Czech and Japanese, including the first Japanese renditions of plays by Josef Topol, Václav Havel

Václav Havel

Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...

 and Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...

, and opera by Smetana

Bedrich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music...

 and Janáček

Leoš Janácek

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...

. For this work she won the 1968 Kinokuniya Theatre Award.

Later her own plays were performed and won awards throughout Japan, as well as in Maui

Maui

The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...

 (Hawaii), the Avignon

Avignon

Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...

 Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe

Edinburgh Fringe

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place annually in Scotland's capital, in the month of August...

, starring actresses such as Mahō Shibuki (ex Takarazuka

Takarazuka Revue

The Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female musical theater troupe based in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals, and sometimes stories adapted from shōjo manga and Japanese folktales. The troupe takes its name...

), Takajō Miki (ex SKD=Shochiku

Shochiku

is a Japanese movie studio and production company for kabuki. It also produces and distributes anime films. Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada...

 Kageki Dan) and Kurihara Chieko (JMDB).

She is married to Kuzui Kinshirō (:ja:葛井欣士郎), a film producer and manager of the alternative Art Theatre Shinjuku Bunka during the 1960s and early 1970s.

External links

• Online Japanese biography and press coverage (archive copy)