So wide-ranging are 71-year-old Hisashi Inoue's talents and activities that it is difficult to know which to focus on at the expense of others.
Inoue not only writes plays regularly for numerous theaters in Japan, but his own Komatsu-za company that he founded in 1983, and which only stages his plays, is constantly touring the country. He is also a prolific best-selling novelist and has been president of the prestigious Nihon Pen Club since 2003 -- as well as being director of Nihon Gekisakka Kyokai (Japan Playwrights Association), director of Sendai Literature Museum and the director of a library of his own collection of books in his small hometown of Higashi Okitama-gun in rural Yamagata Prefecture.
Reflecting his irrepressible, often self-deprecating wit, that library's name is Chihitsu-do, which means Slow-writer's Hall, since Inoue is well known for not being the speediest of creators. Indeed, because of his "sense of responsibility to the audience," he is often still rewriting his scripts as the curtain rises.