author
Shoraku Miyoshi
An 18th-century Japanese playwright linked to the golden age of bunraku, he is best remembered as one of the co-authors of Kanadehon Chūshingura, the classic drama of the forty-seven rōnin. His work helped shape one of Japan’s most enduring theatrical traditions.
1 Audiobook
Chushingura; Or, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers
by Izumo Takeda, Shoraku Miyoshi, Senryu Namiki
About the author
Shōraku Miyoshi was a Japanese playwright of the Edo period and is generally dated to 1696–1777. Reliable modern reference pages identify him as a playwright associated with Japan’s puppet-theater tradition, bunraku.
He is best known today as one of the collaborators on Kanadehon Chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), first staged in Osaka in 1748. That play, written with Takeda Izumo II and Namiki Senryū, became one of the most famous works in Japanese theater and helped carry the story of the forty-seven rōnin across bunraku and kabuki.
Some older scholarship notes uncertainty about parts of his life before playwriting, so biographical details beyond his theatrical career are not always firmly established. Even so, his name remains closely tied to the great collaborative dramas of 18th-century Osaka and to the lasting popularity of bunraku.