With the building of the Kabuki-za, Danjuro enjoyed his greatest prosperity. Here one success followed the other; and Tokyo showered its approval upon the great actor. Later in life Danjuro was persuaded to go to Osaka. He had refused repeatedly to accept an engagement since the eighth Danjuro had committed suicide there; the treatment meted out to his brother by the audience was an insult to the Ichikawa name that had never been wiped out.
Contrary to his expectations, Osaka received the distinguished Ichikawa like a conquering hero, and he reaped a golden harvest, the largest sum of money ever given an actor in the history of Japan,—something like 50,000 yen for forty days. Throngs of people came to see him upon his arrival, but he carefully avoided the crowds as he did not care to ride through the streets to make a show of himself.
Some delay was caused in the stage arrangements on the opening day, and the audience became impatient, causing a great uproar. This so troubled Danjuro that he told his wife that he was quite prepared to leave Osaka should the audience make disagreeable remarks. He had purposely excluded Ichikawa plays from the programme, for should the audience prove unfriendly the affront to his ancestors could not be endured. With the noise out in front increasing, the dutiful wife was told to make preparations for a hasty departure, and left for the railway station, where she awaited her husband’s messenger. It turned out to be good news that he brought, however, for Osaka had behaved well, and welcomed the Tokyo star with every sign of respect and admiration.
Towards the end of his life he took great pleasure in the building of a beautiful country home on the sea-coast not far from Yokohama, and here he retired when his health began to fail, exhausted with his long stage service. He planned to give a farewell performance, and selected Takeda Izumo’s Chushingura in which all his pupils were to appear. But this plan could not be carried out, for he became steadily weaker. Like other yakusha he had his gods to whom he prayed, and there were two god-shrines placed in his garden where he paid his respects every morning.
When he knew his end was near, he requested that his hands and mouth be washed with water, and turning in the direction of the garden shrines he clasped his hands together in worship, and recited a sutra. After that he never spoke again, the members of his family each in turn taking part in the last Buddhist rite for the dying, wetting his lips with a piece of paper dipped in water, during which he was conscious. He passed away in the early morning. His funeral was more imposing than that for a minister of state, and it seemed that all Tokyo mourned his passing.
Danjuro left behind him no son to assume his mantle. His elder daughter married the son of a banker, and this young man became the head of the private family, and has never been able to succeed to the illustrious name and become Danjuro, the tenth, although he has spent years in the study of acting in Osaka. Ichikawa Sansho, as he is known, will never be able to follow in the footsteps of his father-in-law.
Danjuro’s younger daughter married a minor actor, Ichikawa Shinsaburo, and they have a daughter, who is thus the last representative of the family. Danjuro left behind him a number of talented pupils. The best among them is the present Matsumoto Koshiro, the seventh, of the Imperial Theatre. Because of a youthful escapade, Danjuro declared that Koshiro should not succeed him, which seems a severe penalty, for Koshiro is the one Tokyo actor capable of carrying on the Ichikawa traditions. In consequence, not until Danjuro’s grand daughter grows up and marries and her offspring show traces of the Ichikawa genius, will there be seen again a worthy successor to this illustrious actor line.
No greater proof of the strong affection of the people for Danjuro could have been witnessed than the unveiling of a bronze statue to his memory in June 1919, in the compound of the great temple sacred to the Goddess of Mercy in Asakusa, that crowded district of modern Tokyo where lived the ronin father of the first Ichikawa Danjuro.
The statue is of Danjuro in the character of a warrior of the Kamakura age, Gongoro, in the play Shibaraku, or Wait a Moment, one of the eighteen Ichikawa pieces. Perpetuated in bronze are the grotesque costume, the strange wig, the two great curved swords thrust through the belt, and a fan raised in one hand—a pose that delighted lovers of the aragoto style when Danjuro was seen on the stage in this piece.
All those who had enjoyed any relation to Danjuro during his life were invited to be present, which meant the attendance of the entire theatre fraternity,—actors and managers, playwrights, critics, journalists, artists, as well as representatives of official life. A band of Asakusa firemen in their old-time picturesque Yedo costumes were prominent, and all classes of theatre folk, musicians, property men, ushers, dancing teachers, pupils and servants of the actors, were assembled together. It might have been a scene of a hundred years ago in Yedo, but for an occasional frock-coated dignitary, and the presence of the monotonous straw hat of the West.