As the leading yakusha passed away one after another, the only one considered capable of filling the place they had left vacant was the fourth Nakamura Utayemon.
His father kept a theatre tea-house in Yedo, and his mother was related to Fujima Kanjiro, the costumer and dancing teacher. It was natural that this Utayemon should take to dancing, and he was trained to become a teacher of dancing. At the age of 10 he was adopted by Fujima. When the famous third Utayemon was about to produce a certain play in Osaka, he did not have the correct costumes and sent for his Yedo costumer. It was a month’s journey from Yedo to Osaka in those days, and it was Fujima’s adopted son who travelled along the Tokaido on the mission. While very youthful he knew all the needful information regarding the costumes, and was helpful in many ways.
He remained in Osaka, where he became a student of the stage and made rapid progress. The famous onnagata, the fourth Iwai Hanshiro, had asked him to fashion a costume, but did not like the manner in which it had been finished, and not only scolded the lad, but boxed his ears into the bargain. The desire to get even for this insult made the fourth Utayemon ambitious to succeed on the stage.
After an absence of sixteen years, he returned to Yedo a finished actor. At the age of 39, the third Utayemon did him a great honour by conferring his name upon him. A deshi, or follower, of the third Utayemon was righteously indignant, since he considered the third Utayemon’s adopted son should have succeeded. There were hot disputes among Utayemon’s followers, and at last he invited them all to his house, and said: “I will not give my name to Hichitaro, but I will give it to his art.” The fourth Utayemon was large of stature, had fine eyes and good features, and excelled his master, the third, in many respects.
His rivals were the fourth Bando Mitsugoro and the fifth Sawamura Sojuro, but he won for himself a higher place on the stage than either of these Yedo actors. His adopted son was a star of the Meiji era, who was succeeded by the present Nakamura Utayemon, the veteran onnagata, who has the position, both from service on the stage and for his art, as head of the Tokyo stage.
Utayemon the fourth’s two rivals were the fourth Bando Mitsugoro and the fifth Sawamura Sojuro. Mitsugoro, the fourth, was the adopted son of the third. He suffered from paralysis and was frequently away from the stage, and yet in spite of his physical disability continued to act supported by a kurombo, or black-robed property man. He was known for his literary talents, wrote poetry, and the chroniclers say he was always poor.
The fifth Sawamura Sojuro was the son of a servant in a chaya of the Ichimura-za, and his mother was the daughter of a farmer living at Kameido, the district of modern Tokyo famous for its wistaria garden. He seems to have been a pet of all the actors, and became a pupil of the fourth Sojuro, who died at the age of 21. The third Onoe Kikugoro said he would make an actor of him. Matsumoto Koshiro also lent him his patronage, and took him to Osaka where he remained to study. Sojuro, the fifth, had four daughters, and two sons, one of whom, the second Tannosuke, became a star of the Meiji period.
These actors did not enjoy the prosperity of their predecessors. The theatres had a hard struggle for existence, the players were always involved in financial difficulties. The stage grew dull, the playwright stale. The Tokugawa Shogunate was toppling to its fall, and the whole country waited for the restoration of the Imperial power, the breaking down of the barriers that had prevented relations with other countries, and the birth of modern Japan with its remarkable changes and developments.
Crest of Matsumoto Koshiro
(Blossom of Icho tree).