author
Shoraku Miyoshi
A playwright from Japan’s golden age of puppet theater, he is best remembered as one of the writers behind Kanadehon Chūshingura, the classic drama inspired by the forty-seven rōnin story. His name is closely tied to the lively commercial theater culture of Osaka in the mid-1700s.
1 Audiobook
Chushingura; Or, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers
by Izumo Takeda, Shoraku Miyoshi, Senryu Namiki
About the author
Shōraku Miyoshi was an 18th-century Japanese jōruri playwright. Reference sources identify him as a playwright and link him to the Genroku-to-An'ei era; one Japanese encyclopedia source gives his birth year as 1696, though his death year is unclear.
He is best known as one of the co-authors of Kanadehon Chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), first staged in Osaka in 1748 for the puppet theater and later celebrated in kabuki as well. The play became one of the most famous works in Japanese dramatic literature, retelling the story associated with the forty-seven rōnin through a historical setting.
Some traditional accounts describe him as having been connected to different walks of life before or alongside his writing, and one source says he was regarded as a disciple of Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Even where details of his life remain uncertain, his place in the history of Japanese theater is secure through the enduring popularity of Chūshingura.