Japan's performing arts world is massively centered on Tokyo, yet one of its leading lights is based in Aomori City in the country's deeply unchic far north — and he's a school teacher.
Each morning during term time, Seigo Hatasawa, a 47-year-old playwright, director and actor, bids an early goodbye to his wife and two teenage daughters as he embarks on another day's jam-packed schedule that starts with his job as an art teacher at Aomori Chuo High School.
After school hours, he leads its drama club — which has won several all-Japan high-school competitions — before heading off to the cozy studio base of Watanabe Genshiro Shoten (Nabegen), the theater company he founded in 2005. Hatasawa also runs popular theater workshops for local young people, and is invariably writing plays and scenarios for other companies — many of which have staged his works to huge acclaim in Tokyo and elsewhere.