Kabuki

by Zoë Kincaid

In time Yedo actors who were removed from the doll atmosphere of Kyoto and Osaka were obliged to journey down to these towns that they might know how to play the characters of the Doll-theatre plays. The jidaimono became all the rage in Yedo, and the actors could no longer remain indifferent to the activity of the doll performers.

But the movements of the dolls were not the only attraction, for stage costumes were purloined as well, and Kabuki appropriated unto itself all the novelties and ideas of the Doll-theatre one after the other.

Something of an influence was exerted upon the Doll-theatre by the legitimate plays and players, but it was small in comparison with the highway robbery of everything of interest from the Doll-theatre carried on for years by the actors and stage managers of Kabuki.

Chikamatsu, who never hesitated to take his ideas, plots, and materials from any source that suited his purpose, borrowed to some extent from Kabuki. One of his plays, Tamba Yosaku, was originally played twenty years before his own composition by the first Arashi Sanyemon. Yuki-Onna-Gomai-Hagoita (lit., the Snow-Woman-Five-Battle-dores), a Chikamatsu masterpiece, was in reality one of Arashi Sanyemon’s favourite plays. The dolls also took for model the gestures and style of living actors, closely following their specialties, young women, heroes, and villains.

Sakata Tojuro’s most popular rôle, that of Izaemon, in the play concerning Yugiri, a heroine of the gay quarters, influenced Chikamatsu, for he took Tojuro’s one-act play and made it over into one of his masterpieces, Yugiri of Awa in Naruto. Moreover, the doll-handlers imitated Tojuro’s manner and gestures as Izaemon. Chikamatsu also modelled his characters on such actors as Yoshizawa Ayame, Midzuki Tatsunosuke, and Kataoka Nizaemon. Sawamura Sojuro played as Yuranosuke, the leader of the Forty-seven Ronin, and this Kabuki piece was the basis of Chushingura, the masterpiece of the Doll-theatre playwright, Takeda Izumo, in which the Yuranosuke doll portrayed the manners and gestures of Sojuro.

Lovers of Kabuki do not like to acknowledge the extent to which the actors borrowed from the stage of the inanimate players, but it was very great.

Sometimes famous actors were sons of the ningyo-tsukai, or puppet performers, and young actors who went to the dolls to study soon discovered that they were able to see themselves as others saw them.

O-Sato, heroine of a ballad-drama of the Doll-theatre. Reproduced from an oil painting by an Osaka artist and shown in a Tokyo art exhibition. The doll-handlers are grouped behind like shadows.

One of the most famous ningyo-tsukai, Bunsaburo, designed many costumes for his puppets. One he embroidered in plum blossoms and young bamboo for the doll representing Michizane, the patron saint of Japanese literature—in history the prime minister who was exiled from Japan by his enemies; and he also dressed the triplets, faithful servants of Michizane, in kimono bearing large yellow horizontal stripes lined with scarlet to emphasise the fact that they were brothers. Thereafter, when these characters were represented by Kabuki actors the exact costumes were worn. Once during a performance Bunsaburo saw a doll on the point of falling and went to the rescue. The doll moved in an awkward manner, not according to the rules and regulations, and the audience laughed. It afterwards became the custom to make this doll do the same thing, and the Kabuki actors imitated even this.