Kabuki

by Zoë Kincaid

When Chikamatsu Monzaemon was engaged in producing his plays for the Takemoto-za of Osaka, a playwright who attempted to rival him was Kino Kaion. He had been a priest, and was a man of culture, but his knowledge was not so deep as that of Chikamatsu. Ten years younger than Chikamatsu, he wrote for twenty-five years, producing forty plays. But there are few masterpieces among them.

After Chikamatsu’s death Takeda Izumo, his most brilliant pupil, became the head of the Takemoto-za. Although Takeda was not so prolific a writer as was his master, several of his plays may be said to surpass the best pieces of Chikamatsu, particularly his Chushingura, also Terakoya, or the Village School, that fine scene in the long play concerning the exiled Michizane, a high official of the Imperial Court, victim of an intriguing enemy a thousand years ago. Most of Takeda Izumo’s plays were appropriated by Kabuki, and are still played by the real actors as well as the puppets.

The rival Doll-theatres, the Takemoto-za and the Toyotaki-za, brought about two camps of playwrights, and their keen competition supplied a large number of plays. At the Takemoto-za, which always attracted to itself the greatest number of talented workers, there were after Chikamatsu and Takeda Izumo—Hasegawa Senshi, Miyoshi Shoraku, and Matsuda Wakichi. Chief among those who wrote for the Toyotaki-za were Kino Kaion, Nishizawa Ippu, Tanaka Senryu, Namiki Sosuke, and Yasuda Abun.

Very few details have been handed down regarding these writers, but their plays are eloquent testimony to their genius. When the Ningyo-shibai was on the decline Chikamatsu Hanji wrote a number of plays that helped to stem the tide of misfortune.

Such an array of first-class writers cannot be found in the annals of Kabuki. Indeed the dolls and their plays were the real foundation of the Japanese stage, and even to-day it is these plays, repeated over and over again, that please both actors and audience. The men who wrote that the dolls should become radiant figures in a world created by their imaginations, left behind them a richer legacy of plays than did the sakusha of Kabuki. Succeeding generations of actors have acted in them, for they are plays that never lose their power to please; their vitality remains undimmed by the passage of time.

Among the many talented as well as minor writers who were inspired to compose for the marionettes, Chikamatsu ranks first, Takeda Izumo second, and Chikamatsu Hanji third, judging by the number of their plays that became the property of Kabuki and have withstood the shocks of time.

The Genroku age, which produced Chikamatsu, Sakata Tojuro, and Ichikawa Danjuro the first; which saw the rising tide of talent in all directions and a deepening of the consciousness of the people, also witnessed an increased activity in the production of plays. And one characteristic of these pieces was that theatre managers were often responsible for plays, while many of the actors composed for themselves.

Saruwaka Kansaburo, the founder of Yedo Kabuki, had been a playwright as well as the proprietor of his theatre, the Saruwaka-za, afterwards the Nakamura-za. Sadoshima Saburozaemon owned a theatre in Osaka, and also wrote his own plays. After Miyako Dennai in Yedo, there was Kawarasaki Gonnosuke, who wrote a play about the revenge of the Soga brothers that was a great success. The name Kawarasaki Gonnosuke has been intimately connected with the history of Yedo Kabuki, and was inherited by a modern actor. There was Nakamura Hichisaburo, the rival of the first Ichikawa Danjuro in Yedo, whose play, Keisei Asamagatake, or The-Lady-of-the-Gay-Quarters-Mount-Asama, brought him a wonderful success.

Fukuoka Yagoshiro was an actor specialising in old men’s rôles in Kyoto. He recorded the opinions of the noted onnagata Yoshisawa Ayame, in his Ayame Gusa, or the Sayings of Ayame, concerning the secrets of onnagata acting, for which he is better known than for the plays he left to posterity. And there was Midzushima Shirobei, who was a tatayaku, or chief actor, as well as a sakusha. He was a patron of Yoshizawa Ayame.

Miyasaki Denkichi, who played with Ichikawa Danjuro, the first, and who was implicated in a Yedo nunnery scandal with another leading actor, Yamashita Kozaemon, also wrote his own plays and was often assisted by his son, Sakakuyama Kanpachi, who was a sakusha.