Spare No Effort

The playwright and prose writer Yuzō Yamamoto graduated from the Department of German Literature at Tokyo Imperial University. During his university years, together with Kikuchi Kan and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, he published the literary magazine “Shinsitё.” After graduation, he collaborated with the theater troupe Shimba. Then, for seven years, he taught at Waseda University, and starting in 1923 he devoted himself entirely to literary work. His writing includes several translations of Strindberg’s plays. Many of Yamamoto’s own plays are still performed in Japan’s theaters. In 1940, Yamamoto published an article titled “No More Lines,” and remained silent throughout the war years. In 1941, he became a member of the Japan Academy of Arts; in 1965, he received Japan’s Order of Culture. In Russia, he became widely known thanks to the novel “The Life of a Woman.” For a long time, his other works were undeservedly forgotten and unavailable to Russian-speaking readers. With an audio version of the story “Spare Not the Life” we want to correct this injustice and introduce listeners to another side of the creative work of this talented Japanese writer.