Takuya Yokoyama

Playwrights’ Guide to Their Own Works Vol. 4 ー Takuya Yokoyama on Stitchers

April 10, 2026

Photo: Akihito Abe

Takuya Yokoyama

Born January 21, 1977 in Osaka, Japan. Yokoyama is a playwright, director and leader of the theater company iaku. With a discerning eye for observation and research, he is skilled at creating conversational plays that make entertainment out of other people’s arguments. As an advocate of “plays that are hard to wear out,” he actively tours restaged productions of his works to cities around the country. His company’s inaugural play Hito no Ki mo Shiranai de continues to be performed somewhere in Japan virtually every year, and his iaku company performances alone total have been performed on 70 stages in 13 cities (as of 2018). Yokoyama is a member of the Japan Playwrights Association (Management committee member for the Kansai Branch) and a member of the Quark No Kai. He is a 5th term graduate of the Itami So-ryu Shijuku. Awards include: the New Playwright Drama Award of the 15th Japan Playwrights Association Awards for Edaniku (2009); the 1st Sendai Short Play Award for Hito no Ki mo Shiranai de (2013); the 2017 Suita City Award for Meritorious Cultural Achievement (2017); the 72nd Agency for Cultural Affairs Arts Festival New Artists Award (Kansai) for the script for Haitsuburi ga Tobunowo (Script 2017); the 54th Osaka Cultural Festival Awards Honorable Mention Award for the results of Shuku-shuku to Unshin and Haitsuburi ga Tobunowo (2017). (Updated in April 2026)

iaku

In the fourth series of this installment in which we ask playwrights to describe their plays, we feature Stitchers, one of the renowned works of Takuya Yokoyama—a master of intimate, finely crafted dialogue. In addition to restagings, this simple yet universal work allows for various forms of staging without the supervision of the writer. With its online publication through EPAD and Stage Beyond Borders (SBB), the play is expected to gain international demand as well. Akiko Kaneda—an editor from Yokoyama’s hometown who has known him since the beginning of his theater career—asks him about his playwriting techniques that elicit widespread empathy while still remaining committed to the specificity of Osaka.

Interview and Text by Akiko Kaneda, English Translation: Hibiki Mizuno, Keith Spencer (Art Translators Collective)

iaku, Stitchers (Premiere version）

iaku, Stitchers
Written and directed by: Takuya Yokoyama
Cast: Nobuhisa Ogata, Fuku Kondo, Buntaro Ichihara, Eriko Ito, Sachiko Sato, Iyuri Hashizume
Tokyo: June 2–6, 2017 at Shinjuku Opthamologist Gallery, basement space, Osaka: June 9–11, 2017 at Independent Theatre 1st. During the 2018 revival tour, this play was performed in Tokyo, Chiryu, Sendai, Hakata, Sapporo, and Sagamihara

Synopsis:

When the eldest son, Hajime, and his younger brother, Tsunagu, of the Chikuno family visit their mother in the hospital, she introduces them to an elderly gentleman named Mr. Kanazawa, who appears to have a close relationship with her. Having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, their mother has decided to spend her final days in peace upon consulting with Mr. Kanazawa. Meanwhile, in the Takuma family, we meet a young couple who married on the condition that they would not have children. However, the wife Satoko suspects that she may be pregnant, and finds herself unable to bring it up with her husband, Osuke. Considering their work and daily life, having a child is not an option; something she cannot and does not want to choose. However, time mercilessly continues to pass. A life nearing its end and a life at its very beginnings emerge through the conversations among the two families. Through carefully constructed dialogue, the play portrays the conflicting feelings lying beneath seemingly ordinary lives.

List of Characters:
Hajime Chikuno: Eldest son of the Chikuno family. Single and lives with his mother. 41 years-old.
Tsunagu Chikuno: Hajime’s younger brother. Married and 38 years-old.
Satoko Takuma: Osuke’s wife. 38 years-old.
Osuke Takuma: Satoko’s husband. 38 years-old.
Yui: A stitcher.
Ito: A stitcher.

Character relationship chart for Stitchers created by Takuya Yokoyama

Takuya Yokoyama is a playwright based in Osaka who has produced numerous works since his university years. Even after moving his theater unit iaku to Tokyo in 2015, he has intentionally continued working with the Kansai dialect and themes regarding Osaka, writing works with intricate layers of everyday dialogue. The work we delve into here, Stitchers (premiered in 2017), takes on a more fantastical structure, a rare direction for Yokoyama who is known for his realistic straight plays. We explore his feelings behind the work, which draws a parallel between the word in the original Japanese title, unshin—meaning the hand of a clock or a way of stitching—and the passage of life.

First, please tell us about Stitchers in your own words and what led you to write the piece.

Stitchers is a story in which people in proximity to “a life at its end” and “a life to be born” reflect on these ideas during a certain timeframe and in juxtaposition with one another.

Until Stitchers, iaku’s works would depict the ways that people would grapple with one particular issue through interpersonal dialogue during a set period of time; so 90 minutes would pass in the world of the play if it were a 90-minute performance. For example, in the piece Shaso kara: Sekai no (*1) , people who are waiting a long time for a train that doesn’t come end up encountering unexpected things. Some audience members pointed out that the justification for staying somewhere for so long when the characters aren’t necessarily trapped felt weak. I thought that they might stay because the discussion becomes heated, but it’s true that if you need to go somewhere and are short of time, it’s not realistic that you would stay in the same place for 90 minutes.

What kind of challenges were you embarking on?

I first looked into what things I could challenge myself on in terms of place and time while maintaining my distinct writing style, tone, and strengths. That’s when I came up with the idea of two families located in completely different places, having entirely different arguments, suddenly coming together as one. The idea stemmed from a curiosity as to what kind of discussion would develop when these people start talking without any shared context. To emphasize the fact that two pairs of people—completely unrelated and in different places—start intertwining, I made sure that the dialogue between the brothers are in standard Japanese while the exchange between the husband and wife are in the Kansai dialect. In doing so, I combined the conversations about “a life at its end” and “a life to be born” into one story around the theme of life itself.

I knew that the fantastic presence of Ito (thread), which represents life to be born, and Yui (knot), which represents life at its end, would affect the discussions that the two pairs were having. Although the characters do not directly talk to the families, they influence not just me as the writer but especially the audience members. This kind of triangular dynamic, and depicting the sensation of two families intertwining together was a theatrical challenge for me, and I remember trying hard to refine the dialogue when working on the first draft. When I was done, I really felt that I had been able to write something substantial for the first time in a while, and as a result, this became a turning point in my career.

iaku, Stitchers, 2017　Ⓒ Takashi Horikawa

You’ve spoken about how you take your time to conduct interviews before writing your scripts, so how did you go about interviewing people when your decision to put on Stitchers was so sudden?

Given the lack of time, I delved deep into the stories of people around me. I was 40 years-old at the time, and many theater people of the same generation were making important life decisions given their age, so I conducted interviews with those people and listened to their various experiences. For the female characters, I didn’t have a particular person in mind, but when we premiered the work, many people that I did not interview came up to me and asked if they had shared their stories with me. That so many audience members resonated with the piece perhaps speaks to the fact that they saw themselves in the story.

In terms of the male characters, I do think I drew a lot from my own sensibilities. I myself have a wife and a child, and I dramatized a lot of the elements seen in the stories of the brothers Hajime and Tsunagu, drawing from my own experiences with my mother and my younger brother and seeing them from different distances. For example, the part about not saying “good morning” to the mother comes from my own experience. It’s not that we don’t get along, but I perhaps feel a bit shy about saying something like that when we both know that we are awake [laughs]. I’m sure that many people can also empathize with feeling shy about crying in front of their mother or sharing their love life with them, so I wanted to verbalize and depict these kinds of sensibilities, the kind of distance we feel with family members.

You directed the work as iaku, your theater unit, in 2017 and 2018, and since then the piece has taken on various productions, including a 2022 Parco Produce version that was directed by Worry Kinoshita, who was the director of the opening ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Were there any things that you noticed in viewing this version in terms of the power that the work holds or its distinct characteristics?

The premiere that I directed was held at a small space called Shinjuku Opthamologist Gallery (*2), while the version directed by Worry Kinoshita was at the Parco Theater (*3). Given that the venue was much larger, I was happy to discover that the piece allowed for so much theatrical play, and that it had such potential for expansive possibilities. As someone who writes the text, I was worried the dialogue alone created a fully complete script that lacked the freedom for interpretation, but I learned that there was enough leeway for directors to add their own touch. Of course, I’m sure that Kinoshita intentionally sought out those margins in order to put on the piece in a large theater.

PARCO PRODUCE, Stitchers, 2022　Ⓒ Yoshinori Mido　Photo courtesy of PARCO Co., Ltd. 　
Yumi Takigawa（Left), Hana Kawamura（right）

Stitchers will be staged for the first time in eight years as an iaku performance from March to April 2026. What was the reason behind having Ikken Ueda, who has been participating in iaku works as a director and dramaturg since its founding, as the director this time?

Given that it’s been nine years since the premiere that I directed, I wanted to revisit the play and discover the universality hidden behind Stitchers. I’m sure I was influenced by getting to see how Worry Kinoshita playfully made the story come to life. So I wanted to ask Ikken Ueda, who has been working with iaku as a director and dramaturg since directing the premiere of Edaniku (2009). Ikken had been directing all of iaku’s performances when we were based in Osaka until 2016, so we actually have made about 90 per cent of our pieces with him.

Ikken is a very reliable collaborator who can point out the things that I unconsciously write. He reviews the script as a piece of writing and really enjoys each of the decisions I make with the words in the dialogue. He picks up the entertaining factors within the script and clearly understands the work’s aim. He is somebody who can help us discover the path to bring the text to life. Ikken is also the leader and director of a comedy troupe called Square (currently on hiatus), so he’s always writing scripts for humor. I think one of my strengths is how I interweave humor into scenes that are depicting people confronting some kind of issue, so I hope we can bring out Ikken’s genuine attitude toward funny things and his knack for philosophical elements like literature and written text to discover the fascinating things in my play, which is written in a kind of casual, nonchalant tone.

Was there anything that stood out to you about returning to this performance with Ueda?

I’ve worked with numerous directors on this piece over the years, so I feel like things have gradually become more streamlined, but having Ikken direct and point out all these potential stumbling blocks made me realize that, even after nine years, there are still things that I’m unaware of.
One major point he made had to do with the fantastical presence of Ito (representing the life to be born). Ikken pointed out that even though the husband and wife in the Takuma household are discussing whether or not to have the baby, that perhaps the wife (Satoko) was being pressured to have the baby. This is something that’s difficult to catch in the script, but when it’s brought to life on stage, the very presence of Ito as a character could make it seem like giving birth is the goal. Ikken wasn’t convinced this was really what the play was trying to achieve, and when I heard that, I realized he was absolutely right. I didn’t write this play to make a judgement on anything, so it wasn’t my intention to orient the story around the assumption that Ito would be born. I want to give the Takuma couple a sense of ambiguity, or a freedom of choice, a wide range of options. Ito is an unusual role among my plays, and I’ve struggled with how to depict this character ever since I directed the premiere. I’ve had countless conversations and revisions, and discussions with actors during rehearsals to try and resolve things further, but creating dialogue for a character with no personal history, a character that doesn’t exist, is hard given that my writing style is grounded in realism.

iaku, Stitchers, 2026 Ⓒ Takashi Horikawa

You’ve written the dialogue for Satoko, Osuke, and Ito in the Kansai dialect, and you seem to make it a point of using it in your other works as well.

Before iaku, when my classmates and I formed the Urikomitai Beam theater company at Osaka University of the Arts, there were a lot of members from outside of Kansai, so we wrote a lot of pieces in so-called standard Japanese, but when I founded iaku, I didn’t want to shy away from the fact that we were working out of Osaka, so I decided to write in the Kansai dialect. At the time we were performing in lots of different regions, including Tokyo, Mie, Fukuoka, but I wanted to make sure that people knew that our plays came from Osaka.

Another reason is because I saw Tokyo-based theater companies performing in Osaka at the time, including Guringu (2005, Kaizoku, Osaka City Geijutsusozokan) and Modern Swimmers (2008, Night Glow Hotel -Suite Room Version-, Seika Little Theater) and I was really impressed by how skilled the actors were. When I thought about why that might be, I realized that the play hadn’t been written in standard Japanese, but rather in the Tokyo dialect that the actors used every day. I was familiar with the “contemporary colloquial theater theory” (*4) advocated by Oriza Hirata of Seinendan, but their dialogue felt even more realistic. So I thought, if I write my plays in the colloquial Kansai dialect that we use every day, people outside of Kansai will be impressed by the actors’ skills when they see the play. The plan worked brilliantly. Combining this with Ikken’s direction, who continues to work in Osaka, the actors were able to embody my intentions. I think this approach has also contributed to the work of Susumu Ogata, who has appeared numerous times in iaku performances.

Including Stitchers, your works have not only been performed repeatedly throughout the country as an iaku production, but they’ve also been staged by various other production companies.

I create these works with the idea that a small, three-person play that can be staged in a cafe can be performed all over the country, and that even small performances can attract attention if the play and the actors are interesting. They can be performed anywhere, with minimal operating costs, which might be why I get so many requests to stage them. I think a big reason why plays like Edaniku and Hito no Ki mo Shiranai de are performed so often is because they’re listed in the Playtext Digital Archives (*5). The reason I put them online is because I want my plays to take on lives of their own and reach as many people as possible. I want them to be read by lots of different people in lots of different places.
I don’t really have many conditions I specify for performing the work, but I do ask that they let me see any revisions in advance. For example, if a character’s gender is changed, I carefully consider whether the story itself still works. But I’m fine if people want to change the Kansai dialect to another regional dialect, and I encourage performers to do so.

In recent years Ainiiku no, Ame dakedo (*6) has been performed overseas in South Korea, and Edaniku (*7) in Shanghai, China. What has the reaction been like?

I wasn’t able to see the performance in South Korea, but the performance at the Shanghai Theatre Academy was really interesting. I realized that what resonates with people in Japan also connects with people in Shanghai in the same way. I spoke with Minyuan Lee, the director, who told me that in China there’s a tendency to assume that the audience will get bored if a play doesn’t have a high entertainment value, so they decided to have silver confetti come out of the gun at the slaughterhouse when it’s fired towards the end [laughs]. This surprised me because it was something that had never even occurred to me, but I loved it, and thought it was perfect! It was a really great experience.
I’m not interested in preserving snobby work. I think we should embrace directing approaches that resonate with audiences in the regions where they’re performed. This might sound presumptuous, but works by Shakespeare and Chekhov are being performed now in ways that would have been unimaginable at the time. My thinking now is that it’s a delight for a playwright if their work takes on a life of its own in that way. I hope that Stitchers will also have the opportunity to be performed overseas. I wrote the conversations between the brothers and the husband and wife with a Japanese sensibility, but what they’re talking about is universal, so my guess is that there are similar feelings that exist in any country or region of the world.

Yokoyama (second from left) in conversation with director Minyuan Li (far right) onstage at the Shanghai Theatre Academy production of the Chinese-language version of Edaniku (2024).

In 2022 you had a novel published, Wagamama na Sentaku (Kawade Shobo Shinsha), based on the story from Stitchers.

I studied literature at Osaka University of the Arts, so publishing a novel had always been a dream of mine. Initially I was looking to write an original story, but I ended up basing it on Stitchers and significantly altering the circumstances of the play. I combined the issues between the two families into a single husband and wife, and developed the plot in order to slightly mislead the reader about Ito’s existence. In fact, I believe that, through the novel, I managed to clearly address the issues that Ikken pointed out regarding Ito’s presence that I spoke about earlier. I’m quite pleased with this novel in part because I was able to take on that challenge. The universal nature of the subject matter made it quite easy to depict through a novel, and I’m incredibly grateful for this experience.

Stitchers is an example of how you depict the conflicts and frictions in human relationships due to different values within your work. Given today’s rapidly changing social landscape and values, it seems that many viewers are becoming more sensitive to things like gender, lookism, and other social issues.

I’ve also become more sensitive to this when I watch other people’s works. I would consider myself as having contemporary sensibilities, but there are times when I receive harsh feedback from the audience. I can’t completely escape the environment in which I was raised, so there are certainly times when I can’t perceive the sensibilities or emotions that an audience member may have. When that happens, I face it head-on and use it as an opportunity for growth. Also, when my works are performed overseas, there are probably people who see them as a reflection of present day Japan, so I think this is also something I need to be aware of.

What I want to write about hasn’t changed since I first started writing scripts: the complexity of being human, the very essence of being human. How do people in contemporary society behave when confronted with a problem, how can I expose their inability to behave properly? While depicting these unavoidable aspects of our humanity, I also want to explore whether we can live our lives not by blaming each other for these things, but rather by forgiving each other.

Performance Information

iakuStitchers Ⓒ Takashi Horikawa
Written by: Takuya Yokoyama
Directed by: Ikken Ueda
Cast: Yasuko Sasaki, Yoshihiro Nakayama, Yusuke Hanato, Mishiyoshi Suzuka, Cyon Rifa and Hideyo Hayashi
Osaka: March 27-30 at Independent Theatre
Tokyo: April 9-19 at Mitaka City Arts Center, Hoshi no Hall 　
Niigata: April 25 at Ryutopia Theatre

Shaso kara, Sekai no

Premiered in 2014 as an experimental “off-theater” performance organized by the Piccolo Theater Troupe, the first prefectural theater company in Japan established in 1994 by the Hyogo Prefectural Amagasaki Youth Creative Theater Piccolo Theater. In 2016, this play was performed as an iaku production and directed by Ikken Ueda.
Shinjuku Opthamologist Gallery

A contemporary art gallery opened in Shinjuku, Tokyo in December 2004. The first floor is a gallery space for contemporary art, photography, and video work, while the basement floor has a small space with 20 to 40 seats for theatrical performances and other events.
Parco Theater

A theater located in the Shibuya Parco shopping complex in Shibuya, Tokyo. Originally called Seibu Theater, it opened in 1973, closed in the summer of 2016, and reopened in March 2020 with an expanded seating capacity from 458 to 636 seats. The theater has been a leading venue in presenting numerous entertainment productions.
Contemporary Colloquial Theater Theory

In the 1990s, playwright and director Oriza Hirata advocated incorporating daily conversational language (colloquialisms) into plays, which had a significant impact on contemporary Japanese theater.
Playtext Digital Archives

Since 2021, the Japan Playwrights Association has organized, produced, and operated this website to help more people read and enjoy plays—and to encourage their performance in ways that respect the work and its creators. As of March 2026, Yokoyama’s plays listed on the site include Hito no Ki mo Shiranai de and Edaniku, as well as Kamen Fufu no Kagami (first performed in 2011) and Momonba’s Tie Trap (first performed in 2023). https://playtextdigitalarchive.com/public/
Ainiiku no, Ame dakedo

Premiered in 2018 at the Hoshi Theater of the Mitaka City Arts and Culture Center. Since its 2022 reading performance at the National Theater Company’s Baek Sung-hee Changmin-ho Theater in Cheongpa-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul (translated by Hyeri Lee and directed by Young Lee), this play has been performed in various productions.
Edaniku

A representative work by Takuya Yokoyama first performed at Manatsu no Kai in 2009. A Chinese version (translated by Zheng Shifeng) was published as part of the Japan Foundation’s Translation and Publication of Theatrical Plays, and was performed by the Shanghai Theatre Academy in China in 2024, directed by Minyuan Li. In 2025, a Spanish version (translated by Marta E. Gallego) was performed by the Madrid-based theatre company KATSUKO. The directors were Samuel Viyuela Gonzalez and Alba Enriquez.
https://performingarts.jpf.go.jp/article/6382/

Related Tags