2008 was undoubtedly the year of "Yakiniku Dragon" ("Korean Barbecue Dragon"), a realistic, autobiographical work by the Korean-Japanese playwright Wishing Chong that premiered April 17 in the New National Theatre's Pit. When the curtain came down that night on the NNT/Seoul Arts Center collaboration that he codirected with Jung Ung Yang, Japan's theater world was abuzz; the play went on to monopolize last year's drama awards.
Chong, now 52, dropped out of Doshisha University in Kyoto to work in the movie business after watching around 700 films over two years. Later, in 1987, he cofounded the Shinjuku Ryozanpaku Company with his Korean-Japanese colleagues. He has written that when he first visited South Korea as an adult, he realized he is not Korean, and now feels ambivalent about the country.
Chong is striking out in a new direction with his latest play, "Kamogawa Horumo," a fantasy-comedy set among a group of young students. Based on a novel of the same name by Manabu Makime, the story tells of a young man who joins a mysterious extracurricular group at Kyoto University that is doing battle with groups in three other universities using demons. "Kamogawa Horumo" opens next month in Kichijoji, where The Japan Times visited Chong last week. Tell me about being Korean-Japanese in Japan. After the war, many poor people — both Korean-Japanese and Japanese — built shacks around the walls of Himeji Castle, and my family was one of them. My father had moved here from (present- day) South Korea when he was young.