Wakako Yamauchi
Wakako Yamauchi (October 23, 1924 – August 16, 2018) was a Japanese American playwright and short‑story writer who helped shape Asian‑American theater. Born in Westmorland, California, to Issei parents who were farmers, her work often looks at the hardships of Japanese Americans in farming communities and during the World War II internment.
In 1942, at 17, she and her family were sent to the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona. There she helped with the camp newspaper, the Poston Chronicle, and befriended writer Hisaye Yamamoto. After leaving the camp, she lived in Utah and Chicago before returning to Los Angeles to study painting and begin writing.
Her best‑known works include And the Soul Shall Dance and The Music Lessons. The story And the Soul Shall Dance was published in Aiiieeee! and later turned into a play. East West Players staged it in 1974 and it won the 1977 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play. Her stories and plays explore Issei women’s hopes and the limits imposed by traditional roles.
Other collections include Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays and Memoir (1994) and Rosebud and Other Stories (2010). She married Chester Yamauchi in 1948, had one child, and later divorced. Yamauchi died in Gardena, California, in 2018 at age 93.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:02 (CET).