Kabuki

by Zoë Kincaid

Towards the end of the Genroku period there were a surprising number of onnagata playing on the Yedo stage, nearly all of whom had come from Osaka. This was due to the fact that Kabuki was rapidly absorbing the ballad dramas of the Doll-theatre, and many an actor who desired to become an onnagata received stimulus to his ambition when watching the doll-handlers as they moved the female characters. The art of these doll-handlers was so remarkable that it was only natural that the future onnagata of Kabuki should learn how to act the doll-drama heroines, and eventually imitate the doll’s every gesture and movement. There was a ningyo-tsukai, or doll-handler, called Oyama, who was a genius in moving female dolls, and his name became so closely associated with his art that the onnagata were often called oyama, a term that is synonymous with onnagata and used quite as frequently by theatre folk to-day.

Among these numerous onnagata was Sawamura Kodenji, brother of Sawamura Chojuro, who occupies a prominent place as a leading onnagata in the history of Kabuki. There is a story told of Kodenji that he visited a temple, Fujidera, in the Province of Kawachi. He travelled thither in a kago, or palanquin, and was so fatigued after his long journey that when he got out he uttered an exclamation that would have come naturally from a woman under like circumstances. Kodenji acted with the first Danjuro.

Nakamura Senya at first was an insignificant onnagata in Yedo, but he went to Osaka, where he scored a great success in a courtesan play and remained there many years, returning to Yedo after an absence of eighteen years. The criticisms of the day complained that he had grown fat, but was still a true onnagata in spirit and gesture. When Nakamura Senya returned from Osaka, he started the custom for a Kyoto or Osaka actor performing in Yedo to give gifts to minor actors and theatre employees. He presented a good many kimono dyed in a certain colour which became all the rage, and was called Senya dye.

Next to Senya was Ogino Yayigiri, whose favourite rôles were those of heroines who have died with their lovers—double suicide, or shinju, a popular theme of the Doll-theatre plays. Just as Sawamura Chojuro was the representative actor of this later period of Genroku, so Ogino Yayigiri was the leading onnagata. His successor was drowned in the Sumida River, and a Kabuki playwright used the accident for the plot of a play.

During Horeki, there was much confusion as to the division of labour among the actors, and they exchanged their specialties whenever they saw fit. There was not the same concentration upon the onnagata, and the art suffered in consequence.

In the modern history of Kabuki during the hundred years previous to the Restoration, a line of onnagata, who went by the name of Iwai Hanshiro, dominated Yedo Kabuki. The first of the name was manager of a theatre in Osaka during Genroku, and had four children. His two sons succeeded him as the second and third Hanshiro respectively, but they were tateyaku. It was the fourth Hanshiro who established the famous onnagata line. He was the son of a doll-handler in Osaka.

The fifth Hanshiro, son of the fourth, was a noted onnagata, and there was seen on the Yedo stage an unprecedented actor family alliance—the fifth Hanshiro with his two sons playing together, all three onnagata. Hanshiro, the fifth, played the rôle of a beautiful princess, even when he had reached old age, and at 63 shaved his head as a sign of retirement from the world and lived at Asakusa in Yedo, not far from the Goddess-of-Mercy Temple that dominated this quarter then even as it does at the present day. He died at 72, but old age was not able to dim his charm or good looks, and it was the current expression among the playgoers of his time that Hanshiro’s eyes were worth 1000 ryo.

The fifth Hanshiro played with the fifth Matsumoto Koshiro and Bando Mitsugoro, and Yedo audiences were enthusiastic about them. This Hanshiro also travelled a good deal, and was popular wherever he went. Once he took ship to Nagasaki, and while boarding the vessel missed his footing and fell into the sea. He was rescued by a sailor. He took his sudden plunge quite calmly, and did not struggle in the waves. This was his customary attitude toward life. On the way back from Nagasaki he travelled by land as he was to act in Nagoya, and his baggage returned by boat to Yedo. When he arrived at Nagoya, he received word that a fire had destroyed the house in which his belongings had been stored. Two days after this his son, the sixth Hanshiro, died. But Hanshiro did not want the members of his company to become depressed at his bad news, and ordered many summer kimono adorned with iris patterns, and distributed these among the actors so that their eyes would be pleased and there would be no sign of mourning.

Nakamura Jakuyemon of Osaka, an onnagata who imitates the acting of the marionettes.