Kabuki

by Zoë Kincaid

Kumehachi had the hands of a dancing-mistress; they were long, narrow, and flexible, and her bright eyes were full of life and intelligence. She passed away in 1913 at the age of 70. A few days before her death she was playing in her small theatre, and so died in harness.

Danjuro once said of her: “If she had been a man her acting would have surpassed mine.” At one time she was called the “Woman Danjuro”, her acting so closely resembled that of her master. But such was the handicap of sex in Meiji that Kumehachi was not given the freedom to develop that would have proved her genius, and although she was undeniably popular with the people, the fact that she was a woman proved a stumbling-block to her advance. In its craze for new things and desire to imitate the Western theatre, Tokyo overlooked Kumehachi, and she died obscure and neglected, the company she had formed disbanding for want of leadership.

Nor did the attractive Sada Yakko ever succeed in reaping but a small measure of success from her barren Shimpa environment. She was a dimming star when towards the end of Meiji she founded a school for actresses that was to form a new departure of the progressive Imperial Theatre.

At the beginning of the craze for imported plays men attempted to portray the rôles of women. Their manner of walking—a sort of hop, skip, and jump—was as true to the habits and customs of Occidentals as the mincing stage gait of Orientals affected by Western players. Men were seen to be an impossibility as the heroines of the intellectual drama of the West, and a demand for young women for such rôles increased the number of stage-struck damsels in all parts of the country. Many a would-be actress strutted her brief hour upon the stage as Juliet or Ophelia, and then was heard of no more.

The career of Matsui Suma-ko clearly represents a certain undesirable phase of westernisation, a sort of frenzy for imported drama that took hold of the theatre reformers. At the time she entered Dr. Tsubouchi’s Bungei Kyokai, or Literary and Art Society, that was to reform stagnant Kabuki by producing Western drama, the novelty of the actresses was at its height, in Osaka as well as Tokyo. Dr. Tsubouchi sought to create intellectual actresses removed from all immoral influences. Matsui Suma-ko was the most promising aspirant for the newly created position, and she became the star of the society. At the age of 18 she had married an innkeeper in a fishing village. Later she was divorced, and came to live with her brother, who kept a cake shop in Tokyo. She waited on customers until she found another husband who was interested in the new drama, and with him she joined Tsubouchi’s company.

It is an unpleasant story how she parted from her second husband, fascinated Shimamura Hogetsu, Dr. Tsubouchi’s chief supporter and stage manager, causing him to resign as professor of Waseda Daigaku and to abandon his wife and children. Together they formed a company called the Art-Theatre. It was as Tolstoy’s heroine in Resurrection that Miss Matsui made her greatest success, and with this and other Western plays she toured the country, the novelty of her venture and the boldness of her character bringing her a fair measure of success.

When Shimamura died in 1919, her position was greatly changed. He had been almost wholly responsible for her success. She did not possess the mental or spiritual capacity to go on alone, without his assistance. He had been conspicuous among Japanese literary men for his study of Western literature, and was the recognised leader of the naturalistic school. She had no reserve of education or experience to draw upon. Furthermore, after his death voices in the audience called out tauntingly, and some of the minor Kabuki actors who had been asked to play with her in an effort to maintain her popularity refused to do so. Things had come to an end, and she could go no further in plays that were not indigenous to Japanese soil. The only way out of the many difficulties she had created for herself was to make a grand exit, and this she did some weeks after the burial of her leader, Shimamura, by hanging herself in the building that had been erected as the headquarters for the new stage naturalism.

Matsui Suma-ko, a daughter of the rice fields, essayed to play the whole repertoire made famous by Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Sarah Bernhardt, Julia Marlow, and Mrs. Leslie Carter. It was an impossibility. There was no natural growth from within, only unhealthy camouflage. She attempted to produce, but always failed, because what she could impersonate never sprang spontaneously from her own soul. All her efforts aimed not to construct, but to dazzle for the moment,—time and strength wasted in a vain endeavour.

By way of contrast there is Nakamura Kasen, a natural successor to Kumehachi, whose influence and popularity were very great. She owned a little theatre in Tokyo, and it was always crowded. She had the temerity to imitate the Kabuki actors, and was never so popular as when in a male rôle. She began her stage work at the age of 13, and was practically self-taught, never having come under the instruction of an actor, but studying Kabuki plays and players from the vantage of the audience. Much of her success was due to the fact that she was true to herself and the traditions of Kabuki. She created her own sphere, and was regarded as a woman-ronin of the Tokyo stage, but has now retired.

With the opening of the Imperial Theatre in 1911 came the introduction of actresses into the sacred fold of Kabuki, following the custom of the mixed players of the Western stage. The new recruits, having no art of their own, were obliged to imitate that of the long-established male stage, and as no copy is ever equal to the original, it has gradually become recognised that they are unable to compete with the actors. During the first years of the new experiment the actresses played freely and frequently with the actors, but now there is a separation, the female company performing at stated periods during the year, supported by several of the young, progressive actors, and occasionally honoured by the assistance of one of the stars of first magnitude. The audiences prefer to see the actors performing in their own masterpieces, and the actresses in new pieces. From this it appears that mixing men and women players is not the success in Japan it was thought it would be.