Tengai Amano (born 1960) is a playwright, director and the leader of the drama group called "Shonen-oja-kan". He was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi prefecture, and graduated from the Department of History in Aichi Gakuin University. In 1982, he founded "Shonen-oja-kan" in Nagoya. The group started performing all over Japan, including Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya since 1984.
Ichinomiya is a historical term referring to the Japanese Shinto shrines with the highest shrine rank (ja:社格) in a province or prefecture.
Aichi Gakuin University is a private university in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. It has campuses at the city of Nisshin, Aichi, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya and Meijō Park in Nagoya. The predecessor of the university, a Soto Zen college, was founded in 1876, and it was chartered as a university in 1953.
Nagoya (名古屋) is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is Japan's fourth-largest incorporated city and the third-most-populous urban area. It is located on the Pacific coast on central Honshu. It is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and is one of Japan's major ports along with those of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Chiba, and Kitakyushu. It is also the center of Japan's third-largest metropolitan region, known as the Chūkyō metropolitan area. As of 2015, 2.28 million people lived in the city, part of Chūkyō Metropolitan Area's 10.11 million people. It is also one of the 50 largest urban areas in the world.
As one of the busiest directors in the country, Amano has been active nationwide and has directed in numerous other drama groups as a guest, as well as writing and directing for his own theatre group for almost 25 years. Besides drama, he has also produced dance, puppet shows, concerts, and fashion shows. He has been involved in various kinds of stage arts for a long time. He directs and writes the play "Yaji and Kita" for Kudan Project Production theatrical company.
Kudan Project Production is a theatrical company for whom Tengai Amano writes and directs. They are only 2 actors, Hideji Oguma and Satoru Jitsunashi.
Another of his life works is illustration; designing of posters, CD covers and book covers, and writing comics, and they are highly appreciated in all fields. The flyer for "Yaji and Kita" was also designed by him.
Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige (東海道中膝栗毛), abbreviated as Hizakurige and known in translation as Shank's Mare, is a comic picaresque novel (kokkeibon) written by Jippensha Ikku about the misadventures of two travelers on the Tōkaidō, the main road between Kyoto and Edo during the Edo period. The book was published in twelve parts between 1802 and 1822.
Amano's creativity has extended in filmmaking. In 1994, his directorial debut short film called "TWILIGHT" won the grand prize of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the Melbourne International Film Festival (Short Film Programme) and with this movie he drew worldwide attention in the filmmaking field. In 2006, he plans to make 2 movies from stories by Japanese writers, "Neji-shiki" by Yohiharu Tsuge and "Nigyo-no-nageki" by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki.
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, founded in 1954, is one of the oldest short film festivals in the world. Held in Oberhausen, it is one of the major international platforms for short form. The festival holds an International Competition, German Competition and International Children’s and Youth Film Competition as well as the MuVi Award for best German music video and, since 2009, the NRW Competition for productions from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is an annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1952 and is one of the oldest film festivals in the world. MIFF is one of Melbourne's four major film festivals, in addition to the Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF), Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) and Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF). As of 2017, the festival's Artistic Director is Michelle Carey.
