Furukawa Roppa's Shōwa Diary

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Furukawa Roppa, one of Showa Japan's most beloved comic actors, kept this remarkable diary from 1934 until shortly before his death in 1961. Across nearly three decades he recorded backstage life in theater and film, his legendary appetite for fine food, sharp observations on books and current affairs, wartime frustrations, and the financial and physical struggles of his final years. Candid, witty, and unsparing, the diary is at once a personal confession and an intimate chronicle of Showa Japan. It stands as one of the most valuable firsthand records of Japanese popular entertainment and everyday life across war and postwar decades.

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