Kunio Shimizu  Shimizu Kunio grew up in the Niigata Prefecture. His father was a policeman. As a student at Waseda University located in Tokyo Shimizu wrote "The Signatory" in 1958 as well as "Tomorrow I’ll Put Flowers There" in 1959. These plays were produced in the year 1960 by Seihai, a professional theatre company. After he finished studying at Waseda University Shimizu worked at Iwanami Film Productions, which is a Tokyo firm. There he wrote scenarios for documentaries as well as public relations films. In 1965 he went on to be an independent playwright and left the company. Somewhere around 1968 Yukio Ninagawa asked Shimizu to write a play for him to direct. At the time, Ninagawa was an actor for Seihai. Shimizu wrote "Such a Serious Frivolity" for Ninagawa to produce, however, even though Ninagawa wanted to produce the play the script got rejected. Due to this incident Ninagawa and some other people who worked with him left Seihai. They made a new company that was called the Modern People’s Theater. Around this time there was a lot of social disruption. Young people across Japan from what was called the New Left started political argumentative meetings. Therefore, Shimizu wrote some plays in order to bring up a sense of the view of the people whose political reform demands were not being met. Shimizu Kunio married Matsumoto Noriko who was an actress. Together they founded a group of entertainers called the Winter Tree Company (Mokutōsha). He also set up the Modern Man’s Theater (Gendaijin gekijō) along with Ninagawa. The plays he has written include "The Dressing Room" ("Gakuya"), "Such a Serious Frivolity" ("Shinjō afururu keihakusa"), "Tango at the End of Winter" ("Tango fugu no owari ni"), "When We Go Down That Great Unfeeling River" ("Bokura ga hijō no taiga o kudaru toki"), and "An Older Sister, Burning Like a Flame" ("Hi no yō ni samishii ane ga ita"). Shimizu Kunio went to Waseda University and started writing plays to be performed in the 1960s. His play "When We Go Down That Great Unfeeling River" ("Bokura ga hijō no taiga o kudaro tiki") received the Kishida Prize for Drama for being the best play in the year 1974.