Since the sakusha was obliged to read the play before the actors delivering the lines, according to the distinction between old and young, hero and villain, men and women, it is easy to imagine that when he faced the shrine and declared the title of the new play it must have been given with a sonorousness and a flavour of the theatre that impressed itself upon those who were to take part in it, and shows a reverence for the ideas that emanated from the sakusha’s brain, even if these worthies of the theatre were never placed on an equality with the actors.
After the title of the play had been announced with all due ceremony, a repast followed. At the Nakamura-za, the front of the theatre was adorned with an arrangement of artificial pink and white plum blossoms, and various refreshments were served, while at the Ichimura-za Japan’s diminutive oranges were thrown about from one person to another to increase the merriment.
CHAPTER XXIV
REPRESENTATIVE SAKUSHA
The actors were their own playwrights in the early period of Kabuki, for the pieces they produced were the result of collaboration. They planned, altered, or improvised as they felt inclined.
Previous to the Genroku age which produced Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who stands head and shoulders above the dramatists of Japan, both for the quality of his work and for the number of pieces he produced, there were two pioneer writers of plays—Fukui Yagozaemon, in Osaka, and Miyako Dennai, in Yedo.
Yagozaemon was the first Kabuki playwright of importance. He wrote Hinin no Adauchi, or The Beggar’s Revenge, in three acts, in the year 1664. Plays up to this time had been limited to one act. The convention of the Nō stage to give but one-act pieces had been established long before Kabuki was born. Yagozaemon’s departure from all precedent was something of an innovation, and the piece met with great success.
It had for plot the adventures of a samurai who disguised himself as a beggar in order to take revenge upon an enemy, but was himself attacked by the man whom he sought. The piece had qualities of longevity, for it has remained a favourite with actors for the past 250 years, and is at present one of the best plays in the repertoire of Nakamura Ganjiro of Osaka. When he acts the beggar, Ganjiro resurrects the Kabuki of Yagozaemon in a vivid manner.
Middle-aged female characters were Yagozaemon’s specialty, and he was considered an encyclopaedia on theatre matters, for no young actor was supposed to know his art unless he had studied under him. By means of his plays he was largely instrumental in adding lustre to the careers of the actors Fujita Koheiji and Araki Yojibei, as well as Kaneko Rokuyemon, for whom the Beggar’s Revenge was especially written.
In the same year that Yagozaemon produced his continuous play, Miyako Dennai wrote Imagawa Shinobi Guruma in two acts, that was produced at the Ichimura-za, in Yedo. It concerned a loyal vassal by the name of Imagawa Toshihide who, while making an effort to save the life of his lord, was injured and carried home by his wife, the title meaning, Imagawa in Disguise in a Cart.
And it was in this piece that Ichimura Takenojo played. He was the nephew of the first Uzaemon, the proprietor of the Ichimura-za, but shaved his head and became a Buddhist priest.