Kabuki : $b The popular stage of JapanKincaid, Zoë
History
Kabuki : $b The popular stage of Japan
Kincaid, Zoë
Japanese drama -- History and criticism; Kabuki; Theater -- Japan
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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