Daisan Butai (The Third Stage), launched by Kokami Shoji while he was still at Waseda University, has attracted acclaim for its depictions of youngsters’ daily lives in up-tempo comedy situations. Kokami’s works reveal young people’s solitude in a highly-developed consumer society where everybody is obsessed with keeping up-to-date with new trends.

Playwright and director Kokami Shoji (b 1958), who has written and directed over 20 plays for Daisan Butai, has been an outstanding figure in Japanese theatre since the 1980s. His first overseas production was in 1991, when he brought The Angel with Closed Eyes to London (Mermaid Theatre), Belfast, and Edinburgh as part of the Japan Festival; those performances were in Japanese with English subtitles. In 1997 he studied the British method of actor training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, on a Japanese government grant.

He writes and directs for his production company, 'kokami@network', and for other organisations; in 2004 he directed Romeo and Juliet at the Tokyo Globe Theatre, and on the invitation of Yukio Ninagawa he directed The Merry Wives of Windsor in 2002.

In 1995 Kokami received the prestigious Kishida Drama Prize for Snufkin's Letter. His other awards include the Grand Prix for Tokyo Game in the short film category of the San Diego Film Festival (1994) and the Kinokuniya Drama Award in the Group Category for his best-known work, With a Sunset Like the Morning Sun (1987).

A board member of the Japan Playwrights Association, Japan Directors Association, and Association of Japanese Theatre Companies, Kokami is also the author of a textbook, Lessons for Voice and Body. He regularly hosts radio and TV programmes and contributes to professional publications.