Matsui Kesako (born 1953) is a Japanese novelist whose experience in kabuki production and direction informs her fiction about performers and the people around them. Born in Kyoto, she worked on kabuki productions at Shochiku before making her literary debut in 1997. In “Yoshiwara Tebikigusa,” a celebrated courtesan disappears from Edo’s Yoshiwara pleasure district. Accounts from people who knew her gradually reveal what happened; the novel won the Naoki Prize in 2007. Set around a kabuki performance staged for the visiting emperor of Manchukuo in 1935, “Gusha no Kaitei” follows a theater historian investigating threats against the company and the death of a staff member, amid mounting political pressure. “Ichijo no Yume to Kie” traces the life of the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, from his years as a young rōnin to his collaboration with leading performers and his transformation of an Osaka lovers’ suicide into a stage work. It won the Shibata Renzaburo Prize in 2025.
