Kundō Koyama

The fact I cannot stop turning over about Kundō Koyama is that the same writer produced Iron Chef and Departures. One is loud, theatrical, gleefully absurd television; the other is a quiet film about a man who prepares the dead for burial, and it won the 2009 Japan Academy Prize for Screenplay along with the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Most writers pick a register and stay there. Koyama apparently treats register as a tool rather than an identity. Born in Amakusa, Kumamoto in 1964 and educated at Nihon University, he came up as a broadcast writer, and I think that origin explains more than the film credit does. Broadcast writing teaches you to build a frame that other people can perform inside — you are designing an occasion, not just lines. Departures is exactly that: a ceremony given a shape. He has also written under the pen name Udon Kumayakko, an anagram of his own name reversed, which is a small joke that tells you he never stopped playing with material.

Name (English)

Kundō Koyama

Name (Japanese)

小山薫堂

Reading

こやま くんどう

Born

June 23, 1964 (age 62)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Dragon

Origin

Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan

Height

180 cm

Occupation

writer / screenwriter / broadcast writer / songwriter

University

Nihon University

Awards & achievements

• 2009 Japan Academy Prize for Screenplay of the Year

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kund%C5%8D%20Koyama
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8F%E5%B1%B1%E8%96%AB%E5%A0%82
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10958806

Tags

• Kumamoto Prefecture
• writer
• screenwriter
• broadcast writer

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.