Nakamura Mitsuo was the pen name of Koba Ichiro, literary critic, playwright, and biographer. He attended Tokyo University and there published criticism in the journal Bungakkai (Literary World). The success of his essay on novelist Futabatei Shimei launched his critical career. In 1938, Nakamura studied in France but returned to Japan at the outbreak of World War II. His controversial postwar essay “Fuzoku shosetsu ron” (On the Manner of Novels, 1950) attacked the I-Novel as little more than a thinly disguised autobiography. He also wrote stage plays and novels.
See also MODERN THEATER; THEATER REFORM.
Historical dictionary of modern Japanese literature and theater. J. Scott Miller. 2009.