Ritsu-ko Mori, who stands as the head of the actresses, was the first woman of good family to take up the stage as a career. She was educated in one of the exclusive young ladies’ schools of Tokyo, and her father was a member of the Imperial Diet. It was an unheard-of thing for a woman so educated to go upon the stage, and she was quite prepared to meet opposition in the domestic circle and from society. After a course of three years’ discipline she made her first appearance with the opening of the Imperial. Miss Mori excels in comedy, but has been seen in many rôles. She has undoubtedly earned for herself a first place among this new class of professional women, both for her hard work and her correct standard of life.
Associated with Miss Mori during the past ten years have been her close rivals, Murata Kaku-ko, Hatsuse Nami-ko, Kawamura Kikuye, and Fujima Fusa-ko—a member of the Fujima family, the leading dancing school of the Tokyo stage. In addition, a large number of actresses and skilled dancers, graduates of the Imperial Theatre, are now available, and there is every reason to believe that the actress is a permanent institution. But as she is such a new acquisition time alone can tell whether she will prove to be an important factor in the Japanese theatre.
VII
Playwrights of Meiji and Taisho
Kawataki Mokuami was not only the representative playwright of Meiji, he was the last of the Kabuki sakusha. After him theatre conditions changed rapidly, the good relations between sakusha and yakusha that had so long endured were destroyed, and peace and harmony between them have not yet been restored.
To such an extent does the modern stage owe allegiance to Mokuami that there is hardly a month that does not see a production of one of his plays in Tokyo, and as he wrote some three hundred plays, there seems no danger that the supply will run out for some time to come.
He was essentially a Yedoko, for he came of five generations of a Yedo family which lived in Nihonbashi, the centre of the metropolis, and the headquarters of the national domestic trade. His plays show wide familiarity with the lower and middle classes of Yedo, and are a mirror of his times. He was a precocious youth, and early started to indulge in dissipation. As he seemed disinclined to stop his irregular life, his father disinherited him—a younger brother succeeding as head of the family. Mokuami had little education, and began to associate early with the people of shibai, becoming an apprentice to drama at the age of 20, and dying in the middle of the Meiji period at 78.
When the seventh Danjuro returned to Yedo after his long exile, Mokuami wrote the piece played by this member of the Ichikawa family as a sign of his thankfulness that he had been able to return to the Yedo stage. For Danjuro, the ninth, Mokuami also wrote some of his best plays. He saw Yedo change to Tokyo; composed realistic Yedo plays for Kodanji, who was active in the early years of Meiji; and in his old age collaborated with Fukuchi in the writing of Botan Doro, or The Peony Lantern, one of Kabuki’s best ghost plays.
So repeatedly did Mokuami choose highwaymen and thieves for the characters of his plays that he was sometimes called the dorobo, or robber, playwright. He was also fond of priests, and the scenes of his plays pass from robbers’ dens, reminiscent of Oliver Twist, to temples and lonely graveyards. Through the whole series runs the contrast between the richly clad priest and the sinister robber. The night side of Tokyo life was often his theme, but frequently he portrayed the lower classes in their struggle against injustice and oppression. His zampatsumono, or cropped-hair plays, are a study of the disordered times when the impact of the West upon Japan caused the two swords as well as the queue to be discarded, and show the comic as well as tragic side of life in this transitional period.
Among his numerous works may be mentioned Kochiyama, a play dealing with an historical personage, the daimyo of Matsue, who was noted in his day for his profligacy. It is interesting to know that the loyal retainer of this feudal lord, who committed harakiri because his master would not listen to his advice and mend his ways, was the grandfather of the widow of Lafcadio Hearn. Some seventy years ago, this dramatic happening was written for the stage, but the daimyo of Matsue stopped its production by paying a large sum of money. Danjuro, Kikugoro, and Sadanji acted together in this play, and it has been revived many times.
Fukuchi Genichiro, known better under his pen name, Ochi Kochi, “Here and There”, was a man of varied talents. He was in the Government service, and might have risen high in official circles but for his predilection for drama. He distinguished himself during the days of the Restoration and travelled abroad in the suite of the late Prince Ito. Few men of his time were better versed in English literature. For a time he entered journalism, but it is as a playwright that he will best be remembered. Fukuchi was one of the promoters of the Kabuki-za, and wrote almost exclusively for Danjuro.