Minoru Betsuyaku (別役 実, Betsuyaku Minoru, 1937 – March 3, 2020) was one of Japan's most prominent postwar playwrights, novelists, and essayists, associated with the Angura ("underground") theater movement in Japan. He won a name for himself as a writer in the "nonsense" genre and helped lay the foundations of the Japanese "theater of the absurd."[1] His works focused on the aftermath of the war and especially the nuclear holocaust.[2]