Kabuki

I
Yakusha of Meiji

Ichikawa Danjuro, the ninth, was the torch-bearer of Kabuki during the long reign of the Emperor Mutsuhito, known as the Meiji era, which endured for forty-five years (1868–1912).

There were barren years for the theatre previous to the Restoration, and the stagnant condition of the people showed itself in the lack of Kabuki creativeness. When the long-shut gates of Japan were suddenly thrown wide open to the dazzling wonders of the West, men did not have time to spend in shibai, and their thoughts were engrossed by the rapid changes that took place in politics, industry, education, and religion. The whole course of Kabuki could not be changed overnight, and in consequence remained stationary. The theatres almost went out of existence, and women and children formed the audiences. It took some years for Kabuki to pull itself together, for Western influences were inundating the country, and neither the players, the playgoers, nor the playwriters were able to “find themselves”. If it had not been for the greatest member of the Ichikawa family, the actors might have become like lost sheep and strayed from the fold, separating themselves from their past, and worshipping all the new and confusing tendencies of the day.

Danjuro, the ninth, was the bridge that spanned the sudden gulf which yawned between the traditional past and the uncertain and changing modern world. He may be regarded as the saviour of Kabuki during a period when it might have suffered shipwreck, had there not been a man of genius at the helm to guide the craft through the troubled waters.

In the last days of the shogunate and the early years of Meiji, there were a number of yakusha who shone even in these troubled times. The theatres were still grouped together in Saruwaka-cho, Asakusa, when the Emperor, travelling in state from Kyoto, reached his new capital. Commodore Perry, who knocked at the door of Japan at a most opportune moment, could have witnessed a performance at the Ichimura-za or Nakamura-za in this quarter of Yedo, had he been so minded.

For thirty years three men had held the centre of Kabuki in the days of the fast-decaying shogunate. They were Onoe Kikugoro, the third; the seventh Ichikawa Danjuro, and the fourth Nakamura Utayemon.

Danjuro, the seventh, became the chief actor of the Ichimura-za at the age of 23. His extravagances both on and off the stage came to the attention of the authorities, and he was suddenly summoned to appear before the district officials, and there sentenced to exile from Yedo on the ground of unwarranted indulgence in luxury.

“Ebizo, Kabuki actor”, so the sentence read, “we have long warned the above person that he is not allowed to build an extravagant residence and to use fine furniture”, and continued to enumerate his lapses from grace, particularly mentioning the fact that he wore on the stage a suit of real armour which belonged to a military officer.

Although a petition asking for a pardon was presented by his relatives and friends, the hard-hearted officials were unrelenting, and he was obliged to wander about the country for seven years, playing for the most part in Osaka, where he was most popular. In 1849 was allowed to return to Yedo, and gave special performances to express his thankfulness that his years of exile were at an end.

On the way out of his dressing-room to the stage, he complained of illness, and was advised not to appear, but persisted. While acting his speech failed, and he made a sign with his hand, when the curtain was drawn. He was carried off the stage, and died soon after.

His eldest son succeeded as Ichikawa Danjuro, the eighth. He became chief actor of the Ichimura-za at the age of 16, repairing to a temple every day to pray for success. The Government had no opportunity to reprove him,—on the contrary, he was given a reward for filial piety. To his exiled father he sent money, repaid the debts of his family, was kind to his numerous brothers, left the theatre between acts to inquire about his mother, and assisted the family pupils when old age overtook them.

Reports of his high character were spread, and he was worshipped by the Yedo people. In spite of his genius and probity, his father’s marital adventures (for the seventh had three wives and many concubines) must have weighed heavily upon his mind. He went to play in Osaka, but the audiences were studiously cold, there being the old jealousy of the Yedo stage, and the eighth Danjuro was treated slightingly. This was more than the sensitive young actor could endure, and he committed suicide at an inn in Osaka, dying unmarried at the age of 32.

During the first years of Meiji there was one actor who attracted great attention,—Ichikawa Kodanji, a pupil of the seventh Danjuro. He was the son of a man who kept a stall selling fireworks at the Ichimura-za. On one occasion he was detained by illness, and was late in taking his cue. His superior, Arashi Rikaku, chastised him for the offence by striking him with a zori, or straw sandal, which caused him to fall down a stairway behind the scenes. He never forgot this incident, and later, when he had become successful and was playing with Rikaku, he cleverly inserted a reference to the zori incident into his lines.

It is Kodanji’s association with Kawataki Mokuami, the leading playwright of Meiji, that makes him of interest in the history of early Meiji Kabuki. The two formed a close partnership, Mokuami writing the realistic plays of the plain citizens that showed Kodanji’s talents off to the best advantage. His son became the fifth Kodanji, a veteran of the Tokyo stage who continued to act until within the last year of his life, dying in 1922.

After the Kodanji of early Meiji had passed away there was no one to take his place, and Kabuki was almost derelict.

The actors upon whom the responsibility of Kabuki rested were Nakamura Shikan, Bando Hikosaburo, Onoe Kikugoro, the fifth, the eighth Iwai Hanshiro, last of this long onnagata family, and the young actor who was to succeed as head of the Ichikawa line.

By far the most capable actor of the time was Bando Hikosaburo, the fifth. His father was a carpenter attached to the Goddess of Mercy Temple in Asakusa, but as soon as he was born he was adopted by the fourth Hikosaburo as his stage heir. After performing in Osaka for some time, he returned to Tokyo, bringing with him a geisha called Ichiryu (One-Dragon), a young person with whom he had become enamoured. For the sake of his new love he caused his wife O-Yei to be divorced. O-Yei was a sister of the fifth Kikugoro, and one of the latter’s pupils stole into Hikosaburo’s house and attempted to injure the fascinating One-Dragon. Such a sudden lapse from grace on Hikosaburo’s part started all tongues wagging, especially as he had been strict in his behaviour, and most modest and decorous in his demeanour. His popularity was lessened for a time, but as his acting continued to improve, people forgot all about his morals.

Next to Hikosaburo in ability, and a close rival, was Nakamura Shikan. He was the son of a minor actor, but adopted by Nakamura Utayemon. With such a stage sponsor, Shikan was trained in dancing and greatly excelled in this Kabuki art. Utayemon presided at the kojo, or announcement ceremony, when the young actor took one of the Nakamura family names, that of Fukusuke. But soon after this he was given a sum of money and returned to his own home. The gossips of the day said that he had fainted several times on the stage and was physically unsound; others contended that he had become involved in a love affair displeasing to his adopted father. He had been playing in Osaka with Utayemon, but suddenly returned to Yedo alone. Two years later Utayemon died in Osaka and a wealthy patron provided the funeral expenses in the divorced son’s name, as though nothing had happened to sever their relations. There were two funerals, one in Osaka and one in Yedo, and Shikan gained a great deal of sympathy, having posed as most filial to an unkind parent.

Shikan was, however, a worthy successor to Utayemon, as was evidenced when he acted at the Ichimura-za in company with Nakamura Tomijuro, one of the first onnagata of Osaka. Later on, to announce his increased fame and reputation, he took another name of the Nakamura family, Shikan, but the public regarded this as an unwarranted procedure, for had he lived Utayemon would certainly not have bestowed it upon him.

So nearly matched in ability were Shikan and Hikosaburo, with but two years’ difference in their ages, that they were pitted against each other, and their patrons often indulged in fights over them. During a performance, when these actors were playing together, they came through the audience by way of the two hanamichi, the one to the right of the stage a mere footpath, that to the left a platform that was in reality a continuation of the stage proper. They quarrelled as to who should take the main hanamichi, and the dispute waxed so hot that they finally drew lots to settle the matter. Shikan’s mother was a person of influence in shibai circles, and she was so zealous on her son’s behalf that she caused considerable trouble.

Even in his old age Shikan’s light was not dimmed, and he continued to act until death claimed him. Hikosaburo was also an actor of fine parts—handsome in appearance, possessed of a rich voice, and clever in making-up. He was generous-minded, proud of the position he had gained, but always lacked in good taste and refinement.

An actor of the first ability was Sawamura Tannosuke, the second son of Sawamura Sojuro, the sixth. In the first year of Meiji, he was playing at the three chief theatres in Saruwaka-cho. At the age of 16, he began to act in leading onnagata rôles, and was a genius in the delineation of women’s characters. A tragic fate overtook him, and his loss to the Tokyo stage was very great. Suffering an injury to his feet, gangrene set in. Everything was done to save him, and he was taken to Yokohama, where an American medical missionary was consulted. Both feet, however, were amputated in the third year of Meiji. In spite of this great physical disability, Tannosuke continued to appear on the stage, supported by several black-robed property-men, and so great was his popularity that the people crowded to see him. His wife was unfaithful to him, and was on intimate terms with one of his pupils, and this added to his hopeless condition, filling the remaining days of this unfortunate onnagata star with unhappiness. The young actors who followed afterwards in Tannosuke’s specialty were deprived of the stimulus and high standard he had set, and a lack of good onnagata was characteristic of the greater part of the long Meiji era.

The three stars of the Meiji era were Ichikawa Danjuro, the ninth, known in his early career as Kawarazaki Gonnosuke, the fifth Onoe Kikugoro, and Ichikawa Sadanji. Associated with them was Iwai Hanshiro, the eighth, the last of this talented onnagata line.

Twenty years elapsed after the death of the eighth Danjuro before the succession of the ninth. Onoe Kikugoro, the fifth, was the second son of Ichikawa Uzaemon, the twelfth, and his mother was the daughter of the third Kikugoro. He succeeded to the headship of the Kikugoro family, ranked with the ninth Danjuro, and in some respects surpassed him. It was in drama of everyday life that Kikugoro most excelled, the sentimental and realistic having the greatest appeal for him in contrast to the unreal proclivities of Danjuro, the ninth, who was a faithful exponent of the traditional style of his family.

The fifth Kikugoro left behind him three sons. He adopted his nephew, Onoe Baiko, now the leading actor of the Imperial Theatre; and two sons were born to him in middle age, Kikugoro, the sixth, and Bando Hikosaburo, of the present Tokyo stage.

Ichikawa Sadanji was born in Osaka, studied under several actors, finally becoming a disciple of the Ichikawa family. At first he was a poor actor, and gave no sign of a promising career. Mokuami, the playwright, assisted him greatly by providing him with new plays and furnishing him with advice, and so great was his advancement that he was able to hold his own with Danjuro and Kikugoro, the three stars playing together until death separated them. The eighth Hanshiro who appeared with these actors was the son of the seventh, and was born in Osaka. He was extremely effeminate in manner, a true onnagata of the old school, and was known for his good deeds, always assisting his pupils, and kindly disposed to his servants and the menials of the theatre. An award of merit was given him by the Government, as an example to others of a good citizen and loyal subject.

On his deathbed the characteristics of this actor were not subdued. He exercised his talent for verse-making as a parting gift to life. “Hakitate no waraji”, he wrote, “tsumetaki Haru no Yuki”, the “Waraji I am accustomed to wear are cold in the spring snow.” Thus he made the suggestion that life was like a pair of waraji, or coarse straw sandals worn on a long journey, and that they suddenly felt cold as in a spring snow.

Still another onnagata was Ichikawa Monnosuke, the fifth. Born the son of a Yedo restaurant proprietor, he served his apprenticeship to the stage in Osaka. His son was one of the most popular onnagata in the latter part of Meiji, and a brilliant young grandson, Omezo, is an adornment of the Tokyo stage to-day.

One after another the three stars, Kikugoro, Danjuro, and Sadanji, passed away, and gloom settled down upon the Tokyo stage. It was years before the people took an active interest in shibai, and an equally long time before the actors regained confidence in themselves. The three stars had been the centre of attraction, and a considerable period had to elapse for the new growth and development that was to culminate in the flourishing theatre condition of the present.

II
The Ninth Ichikawa Danjuro

From the point of view both of character and of art Danjuro, the ninth, is considered the greatest actor that Japan has produced.

Kaburagi Kiyokata, one of Tokyo’s leading artists, describing Danjuro, said that he could only be painted with broad lines, for upon the stage he presented such beautiful figures as could only be seen in old sculptures. And such was his ability in portraying historical characters that the people thought of past heroes only in the light of Danjuro’s creations.

Although he upheld the treasured anti-real style of the Ichikawa line, he threw himself with enthusiasm into the portrayal of rôles in a new type of play called katsureki, or living history, in which he painted his characters with accuracy of detail, showing the influence of Western drama, and also his revolt from the inconsistencies of the jidaimono, or historical pieces of the Doll-theatre. An actor of such great parts was never seen before in Japan, and his like may not appear again for generations to come.

The ninth Danjuro (born 1838, died 1903) was the son of the seventh Danjuro. His mother was not the legal wife of his father, and was the daughter of a restaurant proprietor. She had in addition to Danjuro, the ninth, three sons and a daughter.

The hereditary owner of the Kawarazaki-za, Kawarazaki Gonnosuke, had made a promise to the seventh Danjuro that he would adopt one of his numerous brood, and the fifth son was selected to become the head of this family. Gonnosuke was an influential shibai proprietor, and the boy was regarded as a young aristocrat of the theatre. At the time of his adoption Gonnosuke was not married, and his mother undertook the task of bringing up the coming Danjuro in the way he should go.

From his fifth year there were but few pleasures in store for the boy. He was carried to the house of his dancing master on the back of his nurse. Once, when the seventh Danjuro visited Gonnosuke, the latter remonstrated, and said the boy would certainly be killed by his severe training. To this the grandmother sarcastically rejoined that Danjuro’s children were all dipped in tubs of sugar, but that there was some pepper mixed with it. Evidently she had no faith in the manner the Ichikawa children were managed, and time has shown the correctness of her view-point, for the boy in the care of Gonnosuke’s mother was the only one of the family to attain success. Certainly Danjuro, the ninth, appreciated the interest shown in his welfare by this old woman, for in his later years he never failed to express his appreciation of the training he received in his youth.

Afterwards Gonnosuke took a wife, and she had a son and a daughter. It was a severe disappointment when the daughter died young, for it was planned that she should marry the adopted son. Thereafter Danjuro did not get on well with his adopted mother.

A whole series of misfortunes overtook Danjuro. First, his father was ordered out of Tokyo, and his own mother accompanied him into exile. At the age of fifteen he took the name of Kawarazaki Gonnosuke. Danjuro, the eighth, committed suicide in Osaka, and this family tragedy was followed by the death of a younger and promising brother. Still another brother was unable to become an actor, as his face was marred by smallpox, and a brother adopted by Matsumoto Koshiro was not a success. Then came the destructive earthquake of 1855, and the Kawarazaki-za was entirely demolished, as was the city. There was trouble in securing a license for the reconstruction of the Kawarazaki-za; it ceased to be, and the young Gonnosuke faced a barren inheritance. In addition to all this, his adopted father was attacked and killed by robbers.

The various vicissitudes through which he passed did not prevent him from becoming an actor, and he made rapid progress in his profession. At 34 he married Masu, whom his adopted mother had chosen for him. Hard times followed, and he was obliged to travel in the provinces, but even when acting in country shibai, his Tokyo creditors followed and attempted to take the receipts. When they returned to Tokyo he and his wife had no home to go to, and took temporary shelter in the abode of one of Danjuro’s patrons.

The construction of a new playhouse, the Shintomi-za, by the energetic theatre manager, Morita Kanya, started Danjuro on a new and prosperous career. Kanya was more than willing to produce novelties that would startle Tokyo, and Danjuro set to work to make improvements in Kabuki. In this he was greatly encouraged by the famous statesman Prince Ito, and Matsuda Michiyuki, a Governor of Tokyo prefecture, who became an enthusiastic supporter of the Shintomi-za.

Morita Kanya’s innovations were often failures in that they went over the heads of the people, and the finances of the Shintomi-za were far from satisfactory. Danjuro played in a minor theatre, but ill-luck followed him, and during one of the performances fire broke out and destroyed this shibai. He escaped wearing his stage wig and costume, to the great astonishment of his family on his return home.

A signal honour was given Danjuro in 1887. He was commanded by Count Inouye to play before the Emperor. His Majesty had consented to visit the Inouye residence, and would witness a Kabuki entertainment for the first time. Not since the days of Saruwaka Kansaburo, who had danced before the Emperor in Kyoto, had there been such recognition of the officially despised play-folk.

In the beautiful Inouye garden a temporary stage was set up, and facing it a throne before which hung a thin bamboo curtain. From this elevated position the late Emperor watched the plays and expressed deep interest. The first piece was Kanjincho. The same piece was selected for presentation when the Mayor of Tokyo entertained the Prince of Wales at the Imperial Theatre in April 1922, and on this occasion the Prince Regent entered the portals of a theatre of his own land for the first time.

The Danjuro performances lasted for three days, the Emperor witnessing the plays on the first day, the Empress on the following day, and the Emperor’s mother on the last day. Takeda Izumo’s Terakoya, or The Village School, was presented before the Empress, and her sympathy and feelings were so stirred that those near Her Majesty saw tears in her eyes, and were perplexed, thinking that the play had better be stopped. The tears of an Empress over the sacrifice of Matsuomaru’s son that the heir to Michizane might live, and the loyalty of Genzo, the village schoolmaster! These were red-letter days, indeed, for the whole yakusha fraternity.

With the building of the Kabuki-za, Danjuro enjoyed his greatest prosperity. Here one success followed the other; and Tokyo showered its approval upon the great actor. Later in life Danjuro was persuaded to go to Osaka. He had refused repeatedly to accept an engagement since the eighth Danjuro had committed suicide there; the treatment meted out to his brother by the audience was an insult to the Ichikawa name that had never been wiped out.

Contrary to his expectations, Osaka received the distinguished Ichikawa like a conquering hero, and he reaped a golden harvest, the largest sum of money ever given an actor in the history of Japan,—something like 50,000 yen for forty days. Throngs of people came to see him upon his arrival, but he carefully avoided the crowds as he did not care to ride through the streets to make a show of himself.

Some delay was caused in the stage arrangements on the opening day, and the audience became impatient, causing a great uproar. This so troubled Danjuro that he told his wife that he was quite prepared to leave Osaka should the audience make disagreeable remarks. He had purposely excluded Ichikawa plays from the programme, for should the audience prove unfriendly the affront to his ancestors could not be endured. With the noise out in front increasing, the dutiful wife was told to make preparations for a hasty departure, and left for the railway station, where she awaited her husband’s messenger. It turned out to be good news that he brought, however, for Osaka had behaved well, and welcomed the Tokyo star with every sign of respect and admiration.

Towards the end of his life he took great pleasure in the building of a beautiful country home on the sea-coast not far from Yokohama, and here he retired when his health began to fail, exhausted with his long stage service. He planned to give a farewell performance, and selected Takeda Izumo’s Chushingura in which all his pupils were to appear. But this plan could not be carried out, for he became steadily weaker. Like other yakusha he had his gods to whom he prayed, and there were two god-shrines placed in his garden where he paid his respects every morning.

When he knew his end was near, he requested that his hands and mouth be washed with water, and turning in the direction of the garden shrines he clasped his hands together in worship, and recited a sutra. After that he never spoke again, the members of his family each in turn taking part in the last Buddhist rite for the dying, wetting his lips with a piece of paper dipped in water, during which he was conscious. He passed away in the early morning. His funeral was more imposing than that for a minister of state, and it seemed that all Tokyo mourned his passing.

Danjuro left behind him no son to assume his mantle. His elder daughter married the son of a banker, and this young man became the head of the private family, and has never been able to succeed to the illustrious name and become Danjuro, the tenth, although he has spent years in the study of acting in Osaka. Ichikawa Sansho, as he is known, will never be able to follow in the footsteps of his father-in-law.

Danjuro’s younger daughter married a minor actor, Ichikawa Shinsaburo, and they have a daughter, who is thus the last representative of the family. Danjuro left behind him a number of talented pupils. The best among them is the present Matsumoto Koshiro, the seventh, of the Imperial Theatre. Because of a youthful escapade, Danjuro declared that Koshiro should not succeed him, which seems a severe penalty, for Koshiro is the one Tokyo actor capable of carrying on the Ichikawa traditions. In consequence, not until Danjuro’s grand daughter grows up and marries and her offspring show traces of the Ichikawa genius, will there be seen again a worthy successor to this illustrious actor line.

No greater proof of the strong affection of the people for Danjuro could have been witnessed than the unveiling of a bronze statue to his memory in June 1919, in the compound of the great temple sacred to the Goddess of Mercy in Asakusa, that crowded district of modern Tokyo where lived the ronin father of the first Ichikawa Danjuro.

The statue is of Danjuro in the character of a warrior of the Kamakura age, Gongoro, in the play Shibaraku, or Wait a Moment, one of the eighteen Ichikawa pieces. Perpetuated in bronze are the grotesque costume, the strange wig, the two great curved swords thrust through the belt, and a fan raised in one hand—a pose that delighted lovers of the aragoto style when Danjuro was seen on the stage in this piece.

All those who had enjoyed any relation to Danjuro during his life were invited to be present, which meant the attendance of the entire theatre fraternity,—actors and managers, playwrights, critics, journalists, artists, as well as representatives of official life. A band of Asakusa firemen in their old-time picturesque Yedo costumes were prominent, and all classes of theatre folk, musicians, property men, ushers, dancing teachers, pupils and servants of the actors, were assembled together. It might have been a scene of a hundred years ago in Yedo, but for an occasional frock-coated dignitary, and the presence of the monotonous straw hat of the West.

Speeches were made by the Mayor of Tokyo, and other men of weight and importance. It was when Danjuro’s best followers stood up to view, four of the most popular actors in Tokyo, that the applause broke forth. They were Matsumoto Koshiro, Ichikawa Chusha, Ichikawa Danshiro, who died in 1922, and Ichikawa Sadanji, son of Sadanji, the star of Meiji.

There was, however, one moving spirit in the proceedings, an informal master of ceremony, and this was Ichikawa Shinjuro, long associated with Danjuro and as loyal a retainer as ever served a feudal lord. Shinjuro was accustomed to assist Danjuro in his preparations to go on the stage, and no one was so eager as he to do honour to his late master on the occasion. Danjuro’s widow and her two daughters, and their husbands, Ichikawa Sansho and Ichikawa Shinsaburo, stood at the base of the stone pedestal. Danjuro’s little grand daughter pulled the string, and the late actor as Kamakura Gongoro, symbol of bravery and courage, was revealed.

The curtain that had hidden the statue had scarcely touched the ground when the faithful Shinjuro scaled the stone base. A black lacquer stand was handed up to him and next a large silver bowl filled with sake. Quickly they were placed at the base of the statue. In the brief space of time in which Shinjuro made the offering before the statue of the ninth Danjuro, it seemed that his spirit was present and animated the lifeless bronze.

The sudden sight of the characteristic aragoto posture of the statue also recalled the peculiar position the Ichikawa family have maintained in the Japanese theatre for the past two hundred and fifty years.

III
A Theatre Manager of Meiji

The foremost and most progressive theatre manager of Meiji was Morita Kanya. He laboured hard to improve shibai and elevate the status of the actors. Unquestionably he was a benefactor, and if he erred in following after false gods, and was under the impression that the superior theatre of the Occident should be his pattern, he was no more astray than hundreds of others who allowed themselves to be swayed by the worship of the West.

At the age of 18, Morita Kanya, the twelfth, started to manage the hereditary theatre of his family, the Morita-za. In the early days of Kabuki the Morita-za was one of the important shibai of Yedo, but later became amalgamated with the Kawarazaki-za. In time the Kawarazaki-za gained the ascendancy, and for a long time the Morita-za was non-existent. When the Kawarazaki-za was destroyed by an earthquake, a suit was brought against its owners for the re-establishment of the Morita-za, and a licence was granted the latter shibai. No sooner was the victory won than the elder Morita Kanya died, and the son was left with large responsibilities.

The first step of Kanya was to obtain permission to move the Morita-za to the centre of Tokyo. The theatres grouped together in Saruwaka-cho were too far removed, and so close together that competition was harmful. If the theatres had been left in this condition, they would have speedily deteriorated. The people were no longer eager patrons of the theatres, and the actors were lukewarm.

Kanya did not sit down and wait for prosperity; he made it. He was quick to understand the trend of the times, and that it was fatal to repine at the decline of Kabuki, and thought it should keep pace with the rapid development of the nation in this remarkable period of transition.

His new theatre was opened in 1872 in Shintomi-cho, not far from the residential quarter of Tokyo set apart for foreigners. He made many changes, doing away with some of the long-established customs, which greatly astonished the good people of that day. His efforts were crowned with success, and he soon secured as supporters some of the most important men in the realm.

It was characteristic of Kanya that he should have cast aside his old friends for new. The fish-market was one of the strongest guilds in the town, and its members were a power when it came to the theatre. For years the fish dealers were among the staunchest supporters of the Morita-za, and Kanya had been in the habit of consulting these independent spirits on important occasions. But now he found they would be a clog on his actions. He knew he would lose their sympathy and support, but decided to sever relations with them.

To Kanya’s credit, he had early recognised the genius of the ninth Danjuro, having known and observed him from his youth, and with good judgement he invited Danjuro to become the head actor of his new theatre. Danjuro owed much to the fish-market people, since they had long been patrons of his family. The actor stood between two fires, and at last was obliged to leave the manager.

Danjuro then acted in a minor theatre with but poor success, for it soon had to close on account of financial losses, and he became a strolling player in the country. When he returned he was in a desperate plight, and was glad to accept an offer from Kanya to play in his theatre, the name of which, on account of debt, he had changed from Morita-za to Shintomi-za, after the name of the cho, or street, in which the theatre was built.

One of Kanya’s innovations was to light the theatre with gas. This created a great sensation at the time, although extraordinary Western innovations of all sorts were now common. He then gave special performances, sending out invitations to ministers of state, army and navy officers, and members of the diplomatic corps. The ushers on this occasion all wore frock coats, and the event was a great success.

As might have been expected, the plays Kanya selected did not please the regular patrons of shibai. Men of letters and returned travellers offered advice, and the Governor of Tokyo prefecture, with well-known scholars of the day, attended rehearsals. The reformers objected to Kabuki conventions. They wished to do away with the onnagata, the revolving stage, the hanamichi, and raise the moral tone of the plays. Kanya even entertained the idea that a theatre would one day be built under the patronage of the Imperial Household. He also tried what he called a night shibai, in imitation of the Western theatre, but this the playgoers did not like, and considered they had been cheated, having been so accustomed to the long, peaceful, all-day regime.

In consequence of Kanya’s strenuous efforts, Kabuki was elevated with a vengeance, and the actors were no longer looked down upon, and referred to as “riverside beggars”. This was largely due to the discovery that the actors of other lands enjoyed a much higher place in society than those of Japan, and the sudden change of front with regard to the theatre was but a phase of westernisation.

Mokuami, the chief playwright of the Meiji era, wrote a play based on a novel by Bulwer Lytton. Thirty-three Dutch residents of Yokohama presented a green curtain to Kanya, who was very much pleased, and later when he extended an invitation to the foreigners in Yokohama to attend a performance, the programmes were printed in English.

The first distinguished visitor from overseas to be invited to Kanya’s theatre was a German prince. Such dignitaries as princes of the blood, ministers of state, and the plenipotentiaries of foreign countries, were among Kanya’s guests. Later on a British official from Hong-Kong was entertained, and the Shintomi-za became, truly, a social centre.

General Grant, former President of the United States, visited the Shintomi-za during his stay in Japan in 1879. It was a proud moment for Kanya when, attired in the new Japanese badge of respectability, a frock coat, and accompanied by Danjuro similarly clad, they stepped out before the curtain and thanked Grant for honouring the theatre with his presence, and for the gift of a red curtain that he had presented to the manager.

But the height of Kanya’s Western intoxication was reached when he invited a Frenchwoman to sing, and English and American actors to play in the Shintomi-za.

In this Kanya showed little insight, for the audience could not understand the Western entertainers, and the venture ended in a serious loss to the theatre. Hence Kanya’s enthusiasm for reform cooled, and he turned to Danjuro, Kikugoro, and Sadanji as his only hope.

Kanya had been at the head of theatre affairs in Tokyo for so long that he received a shock when he heard of a project to launch a new theatre, the Kabuki-za, which was to be the largest and finest ever built in Japan. He started an opposition movement, concluded an alliance of four Tokyo theatres, and bound the chief actors to stay with him.

The greatest theatre in Japan was the plan of Fukuchi, who ranked with Mokuami as a playwright. When the theatre was completed, Fukuchi went to Danjuro and Kikugoro, to invite them to play in the Kabuki-za, but they refused, as they had pledged themselves to Kanya. Fukuchi was surprised at the tactics of the Shintomi-za manager, but pretended not to be disappointed, joked, and said he would have to paint his face and dance in their stead. But the best theatre and the best actors could not long remain apart. The shrewd Kanya, seeing an advantage to himself, at last consented to lend the three stars provided he was given a certain large sum. This was agreed upon, and his actors appeared at the opening performances of the Kabuki-za, which were a pronounced success from the start, while Kanya was enabled to pay off his pressing debts.

Morita Kanya, the twelfth, died in 1897, after a strenuous life spent in trying to improve the theatre, leaving behind him nothing but a legacy of bankruptcy to his three young sons.

He has been described as a man of extremes, proud one minute, humble the next. Sometimes he treated the actors as though they were his own children, and again regarded them as his enemies. Prosperity and failure were his portions. A newspaper writer, commenting upon Kanya, likened him to a long-tailed pheasant pleased with its plumes that stood beside a river looking at its reflection, and at last fell in and was drowned.

His two actor sons, however, have made up for their father’s delinquencies. They suffered poverty while young, Danjuro, Kikugoro, and other friends of Kanya providing a sum for their living and education. Both received their stage discipline under Tamura Nariyoshi, the beloved theatre manager and contemporary of Kanya, who, until his death a few years ago, was the acknowledged Kabuki authority in Tokyo. Bando Mitsugoro, the elder son of Kanya, is one of the best dancers of the Tokyo stage, excelling in the music-drama. His face and voice do not fit him for the rôle of a chief actor, but his remarkable skill as a dancer makes up for this. Morita Kanya, the thirteenth, the younger son of the Meiji manager, is one of the most brilliant young actors in Tokyo, handsome, versatile, eager, as was his father, for new things. He has won a distinct place in the affections of theatre-goers, and is but on the threshold of his career.

In the autumn of 1921 the Kabuki-za was burned down; the actors of this theatre were obliged to play at the Shintomi-za, and Kanya was avenged. Later his two sons, Mitsugoro and Kanya, for the first time played together in special plays in the parental theatre in memory of their father, the progressive manager of Meiji.

IV
Rise and Fall of Shimpa

A by-product of Kabuki in the form of Shimpa, or New School, was one of the most striking developments of Meiji. A second O-Kuni and Nagoya Sansaburo, in the persons of the beautiful geisha, Sada Yakko, and her political-agitator husband, Kawakami Otojiro, started this form of entertainment. But unlike the founders of Kabuki, their efforts were resultless. Shimpa consisted chiefly of crude melodrama, and while it reached a certain standard, it has now outlived its usefulness, and is practically extinct.

The idea of setting up an opposition to Kabuki grew out of the activities of one Sudo in Osaka. He had been a samurai, but fled from home without his father’s consent, earned his living in Tokyo while studying, and went to Osaka where he spent his time in arguments about popular freedom. He began to lecture in public places, airing his views about the rights of the people, and at last wrote a political novel, which he sought to dramatise the better to spread his doctrines. In front of the theatre where the piece was given there was a large arch erected by the Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper that had made its influence felt at this date, 1881.

A spectator of this performance was Kawakami Otojiro. The idea of a students’ theatre, where all the burning questions of the day could be preached to the people, seized hold of him, and he never rested until he had formed a company for this purpose.

Kawakami was one of a large family living in a village, and they had a hard struggle for existence. At the age of 19 he was a policeman, but this did not satisfy the ambitious youth. With his sword for protection, his feet roughly shod with straw sandals, he came to Tokyo seeking his fortune. He had dreams of becoming a minister of state in the future, and when he arrived at the railway station in the capital, we are told he was surprised to find it all so different from the village life he knew.

Kawakami did not have sufficient money in his pocket to take a lodging at an inn, and he slept under the stars. At times he took refuge in the shade of a temple. He found employment by serving a priest of Zojo-ji, the great Shiba temple in Tokyo, and later became a servant to Fukuzawa, the founder of Keio University and great liberal educator of Meiji.

Joining the ranks of the soshi, or turbulent agitators, Kawakami began to make political speeches, and was repeatedly put in prison because of the freedom of his remarks. But the more he was arrested, the more eloquent he became. To earn a living, and at the same time spread the ferment of new ideas, he became a story-teller in a yose, or entertainment hall. This was a temporary expedient, and he soon began to interest himself in the starting of a theatre of his own.

He was regarded as a dangerous character and followed about by detectives, and therefore his theatrical debut was not striking. Both he and his wife were poorly clad, and the members of the company were in a miserable condition. In comparison with the performances of Danjuro, Kikugoro, and Sadanji, this new attempt was indeed very insignificant. Something had to be done to attract attention, and a piece was produced about Count Itagaki, the liberal statesman, who was represented as a radical and attacked by political assailants. Just at the moment when the hero was about to be killed, a number of policemen appeared on the hanamichi. There was great confusion in the audience, for the idea prevailed that the officers of the law had really visited the theatre. Kawakami explained they belonged to the play. The scheme worked well, and the theatre was crowded daily. Danjuro and Kikugoro came to see what it was all about, and the newly established actor felt greatly encouraged.

With ideas of political success still in his mind, he tried to run for parliament, but was unsuccessful, gave up his ambition in this regard, and settled down in earnest to acting.

Then a plan to go to America took possession of him, and he started off to conquer the new world in a small boat, accompanied by Sada Yakko, her little niece, and a dog. They set sail from Omori, a suburb of Tokyo, on the shore of Tokyo Bay. They lost their bearings and drifted into Yokosuka, where the authorities were on the point of arresting the couple for thus entering a naval port.

This bad beginning did not deter them, and having disposed of the supercargo, the niece and the dog, a new start was made, but the wind was high, the boat began to fill, and they regretted their temerity and resigned their fate to providence. Their situation at one time became so dangerous that Kawakami invoked the aid of Buddha. He rowed, and Sada Yakko tried to stop the inrush of water that came into the boat quicker than she could bail it out. Shipwrecked near a fishing village, they were rescued, well treated, and stayed in this place for some time. The gossips of Tokyo said that Kawakami wished to gain notoriety, the better to increase his popularity as an actor, and that this was the reason the modern O-Kuni and Sansaburo had undertaken such a hazardous trip.

Nothing daunted, Kawakami and Sada Yakko again started off for America with a company of players. This time they took passage on an ocean liner, and upon reaching San Francisco were so poor they had no money with which to buy food, and were obliged to ask one of their countrymen to give them some rice which they boiled themselves. However, they appeared in a theatre and obtained the wherewithal to go on to New York, where they had little to eat for days. But Kawakami was a man of resource, and dressing his company in the variegated armour of Old Japan, part of his theatrical equipment, and Sada Yakko attired in a gay kimono, they walked through the streets of New York. All were so hungry that little walking was done, but this unusual Oriental procession attracted attention, people flocked to see them, and within a few days they had made a considerable sum.

Two other trips abroad were taken by the intrepid Kawakami and the attractive Sada Yakko. They played before King Edward and Queen Alexandra, and the President of France. The Tsar of Russia presented Kawakami with a gold watch.

Thus Kawakami did much to delay a true recognition of Kabuki and the fine actors of Japan. He was nothing more than an adventurer in the realm of the theatre; his performances were in no sense characteristic; in fact, he was an outsider and an amateur who ignored all that had gone before, building a structure on the sands that collapsed after his death. His countrymen who saw his hybrid plays in England and France and America hung their heads, ashamed at the bold effrontery of the man thus strutting upon the Western stage as a representative actor of Japan. The poor impression he gave of Japan’s theatre art has not been erased, since no leading Kabuki actor has yet been seen in the West to show what is sincere and true on the Japanese stage.

One of Kawakami’s announcements was as follows: “Our national drama is very vulgar, and only fitted to please ignorant and common people, and is not for great men or sages. Some people wish to improve it, but this is of no use. Therefore, I am going to do away with the old style and have a shibai with men and women players, and abolish Joruri. The chief idea of our improvement lies in the spirit of the actors. We do not lay stress on the outward appearances of the actors.”

When Kawakami returned from Europe he produced Hamlet, but the stage entrance of the Dane was made on a bicycle. Othello and other Western masterpieces were similarly misrepresented.

The Sino-Japanese War was a good opportunity for Kawakami, and he made the best of it. He gave the people plays dealing with current events, filling the stage with soldiers. Long-winded speeches, sensation, lack of concentration were the features of the hastily written pieces of Shimpa. Yet Kawakami and his company soon became popular, and his theatres were packed. Ii Yoho and Kawai Takeo, two members of the company, were soon favourites, Ii had first studied medicine, and later entered a bank, before he joined Kawakami. Kawai missed his calling when he did not become a Kabuki onnagata, for he is the one genius Shimpa has produced,—a clever impersonator of women. Takada, Fujisawa, and Kawamura were also stars of the company.

The themes of the Shimpa plays were politics, the law courts, war, love, and murder,—just the strong theatrical fare the people wanted. When such material was not at hand, serial stories in the newspapers were dramatised, or European novels or plays were adapted.

Kawakami was more of an opportunist than a creator, and his school reached a certain standard and then stood still. The taste of the people demanded something better than his poorly constructed, blood-and-thunder pieces. The Shimpa could not reach the level the public demanded, and interest in it began steadily to decline. Ii and Kawai for a number of years carried on after Kawakami’s death, but at present they have separated, and the Shimpa school is practically non-existent.

When Shimpa was at its height, Kawakami’s company was largely composed of men, but Sada Yakko, who had a prominent rôle in most of the plays, was a brilliant exception. There is no doubt her beauty and attractiveness had much to do with Kawakami’s success. Training in dancing and other female accomplishments she had secured as a geisha, but preparation for stage work she had none, and was just pushed before the footlights at a moment’s notice to do the best she could. She appeared in a transient period, and the proper circumstances for the development of her grace and talent were lacking. She is but another example of the ruthlessness of Japan towards women of talent, there being scant recognition of their right to express themselves.

With a true understanding of her own handicap in the matter of stage education, she founded a school for actresses, and this was taken over by the Imperial Theatre, when it established a department to train young women. In 1919, seven years after the death of her husband, having failed to secure financial support to carry on the theatre Kawakami had founded in Osaka, she retired from active stage life, playing a farewell in a piece founded on the opera Aida as translated by Matsui Shoyo. On the occasion of a banquet given to celebrate the ten years’ activity of the Imperial Theatre actresses, Sada Yakko sat beside the star of this woman’s company, Ritsu-ko Mori, and it was felt that this second O-Kuni, three hundred years after the founding of Kabuki and the monopoly of the theatre by males, had once more given the impetus for a woman’s stage.

V
Reforms of Meiji

Meiji Kabuki is less a record of achievement than a reign of amateurs,—well-meaning outsiders acting under the illusion that Kabuki was flat, stale, and unprofitable, and that its only hope lay in abandoning its old-fashioned conventions for the realism of the Western stage.

At the beginning of the forty-five years of the Meiji period, reform was the idea uppermost in men’s minds, and Kabuki, like some family heirloom that has been relegated to the garret, was dragged out into the full glare of new criticism. Those who were loudest in their denunciation were officials and scholars who had returned from abroad and regarded their own stage as an inferior product. Everything was wrong; the plays were termed immoral, obscene, barbarous. The gentlemen of the aristocratic classes who suddenly turned their attention to Kabuki wished to make the stage refined and elegant. They objected to the artificial stage voice, the imaginative costumes and make-up, the symbolic gestures; the onnagata was an absurdity, and the revolving stage, the inconsistencies of the plots, the vulgarity of language, all came in for censure.

For three centuries the upper classes had held themselves aloof from the people’s theatre, and officialdom had wellnigh regulated it out of existence; now the leaders among intellectual circles wished to “improve” Kabuki, aiming to confine the Oriental temperament within Western stage conventions.

This fever to reform Kabuki was based on the belief that Kabuki’s exploitation of the unrealities was wrong, while the realism of the Western theatre was right.

It was, moreover, a conflict between those who put their trust in the idea that the aim and end of the theatre is to be literary, and those for whom the whole purpose of the theatre is to be theatrical.

A Dramatic Reform Association was established by Viscount Suyematsu, son-in-law of the great Prince Ito, with Marquis Inouye, Baron Kikuchi, Baron Shibusawa, and other men of importance as leaders. This society encouraged Danjuro to act in new historical plays based on accuracy of fact, correct settings, and appropriate costumes. Danjuro called this new form of play Katsureki, or Living History.

But the people soon lost interest in such offerings. Weak in dramatic values, the whole emphasis in these pieces was placed on the dialogue, which, however, had little significance. These imitations of the talking play of the West were quite opposed to the forms of Kabuki, whose whole worth lay in the unity of the theatre arts,—colour, movement, music, and acting. Danjuro was criticised on all sides for his proud attitude and noble bearing, and he was advised to come down to the people and perform something they could understand and appreciate.

In consequence Danjuro returned to the masterpieces of his family, pleasing the audience with aragoto and jidaimono, the very theatrical play-forms the reformers had decried; Kikugoro was popular in sewamono, depicting the life of Yedo as written by Mokuami. All was well with Kabuki again, and the people forgot that the decadence of their stage had set in, and that it had become inert and lifeless, according to the higher criticism of the time.

Literary men discussed the theatre in magazines and the press, and societies were formed to produce imported plays. Scholars and professors were arrayed on one side, the people who liked Kabuki undiluted shouted on the other. It was clear that the new ideas were in direct conflict with the popular taste.

The sudden interest in the actors was due largely to the realisation they had not been fairly treated in the past. This awakened consciousness with regard to the actors had been caused in part by the attitude of Occidentals towards shibai.

In 1887 the Italian Minister to Tokyo, Signor Martino, who was a great admirer of Danjuro, invited him to the Legation to dine with some of the greatest dignitaries in the land, the late Prince Ito, Prince Mori, and others, who must have been not a little surprised to find one of the “riverside beggars” asked to share the same board. On this occasion the Minister, in making a toast to Danjuro, said it was much easier to become a minister of state than the first actor of a land. There was also General Grant’s visit to the Shintomi-za, and his warm appreciation of the entertainment, and later the appearance of Danjuro, Kikugoro, and Sadanji before the Emperor in the garden of Marquis Inouye.

Aid yet, in spite of the fact that the yakusha was coming into his own, he was regarded as far too vulgar, uneducated, and unliterary to understand the imported dramas that were being translated in such great numbers.

Blindly the advocates of reform continued to pour new wine into old bottles. The Shimpa school, yielding to the desire for novelties, produced plays depicting Western manners and customs. But currents of life and thought so much opposed could not flow together, and the attempt to blend them upon the stage produced something that was neither of Occident nor of Orient, something strange and almost repulsive. The vivid colours of carpets, and wallpaper, and the atrocious furniture which represented to the audience Western interiors cannot be recalled without a shudder. Nor can be forgotten the costumes so nearly nightmares,—fashions that have never existed in any part of the world—and the hats worn by male actors of the Shimpa school when impersonating foreign females, headgear which might have adorned the inmates of an insane asylum, and other crude details conveying totally erroneous impressions.

The reformers, quick to see the absurdities of Shimpa, set themselves up as advocates of Western masterpieces which were to be so produced as to elevate the drama in Japan. Associations were formed in quick succession, all with the same aim, to see new actors in the newest European plays and to forget for a time the crying need of Japanese drama. Imported plays were produced one after the other on the Tokyo stage, always with more perfection of detail,—clever imitations.

The most ambitious attempt to reform the drama by means of imported masterpieces was made by Dr. Yuzo Tsubouchi, who formed the Bungei Kyokai, or Literary and Art Association, in 1906. It was a Waseda University movement, with the late Marquis Okuma at the head. Dr. Tsubouchi, one of the founders of Waseda, dean of the department of literature of this University, and known for his translations of Shakespeare, was the guiding spirit.

Dr. Tsubouchi believed that society in Japan did not appreciate the importance of the drama as an art, but regarded the theatre as mere pastime. Even among the educated classes there were many who could not understand a man of Dr. Tsubouchi’s standing wasting his time in such an attempt. One gentleman is reported to have said that he did not see why well-known scholars should devote themselves to the work of improving the drama, for the drama was not a bit superior to a geisha performance. A military officer advised Dr. Tsubouchi to devote his energies to the moral education of the people rather than the improvement of the drama, which was not of urgent necessity.

Notwithstanding these protests, a small theatre was erected in the garden of Dr. Tsubouchi’s residence, and a group of amateurs gathered together to study how to act in Western masterpieces. The leader considered that the Kabuki yakusha were hampered by their conventions, and he could not find among them the education and culture necessary to understand Shakespeare. He then began to train actors for the task he had before him. The first play given was The Merchant of Venice; the following year Hamlet was presented, but both were unsuccessful. Profiting by these failures the society worked patiently for several years without performing in public, and finally a revival of Hamlet was regarded as quite a triumph for the Bungei Kyokai. Matsui Suma-ko, a young woman quite new to the stage, developed into a leading lady, and Mr. Togi and Mr. Doi became the chief actors. Then followed the Doll’s House, Magda, The Man of Destiny, You Never Can Tell, The Merchant of Venice, etc. The last performance the society gave before dissolution was Julius Cæsar.

Born under the happiest of circumstances, the society came to an abrupt end. One of the staunch supporters of the movement was Shimamura Hogetsu. He had been a student under Dr. Tsubouchi, studied literature and the drama in England and France at the expense of Waseda University, and was Dr. Tsubouchi’s right-hand man in the management of the Bungei Kyokai.

But the serenity of the undertaking was greatly disturbed. Professor Shimamura left his wife and children for the fascinating leading lady, Suma-ko, broke off friendly relations with Dr. Tsubouchi, and was asked to resign from Waseda.

Soon afterwards he started a company of his own to star Miss Matsui. Their partnership did not continue long, as death suddenly overtook Professor Shimamura, and soon after Suma-ko killed herself by hanging. Doi Shunsho, who had taken the chief rôles, suffered a nervous breakdown and died, and the remaining members of the company drifted apart, leaving the model theatre deserted. The one member of this society who has remained faithful to its ideals is Togi Tatsuteki, who has taken leading rôles in Dr. Tsubouchi’s new drama.

A rival to the Bungei Kyokai was the Jiyu Gekijo, or Liberal Theatre Society, whose leader was Mr. K. Osanai, a graduate of the department of literature of the Imperial University, and a pupil of the late Lafcadio Hearn. This society gave Ibsen, Gorky, Maeterlinck, and Hauptmann. Likewise, half-a-dozen such societies arose, only to be doomed to early death.

Tamura Nariyoshi, the influential theatre manager of Meiji, a contemporary of Morita Kanya, once said that new actors could not grow up like mushrooms, but they must be thoroughly imbued with the atmosphere of Kabuki and understand all that had taken place in the past before trying to produce new things. Contrary to this view the reformers did not think it necessary to build on institutions already existing, and their efforts were misguided and misdirected. Tamura Nariyoshi for half a century fought for all that was best in Kabuki, carefully preserving the traditions amidst the welter of new movements, managing and producing for Kikugoro, the fifth, and his son, the sixth, at the Ichimura-za.

Towards the close of Meiji, in 1910, the height of the reform was reached in the building of the Imperial, Japan’s premier theatre. Erected according to a French model, it has a beautiful European interior with all modern equipment and comforts. In connection with the Imperial a school for actresses was established. Signor G. V. Rossi, an Italian ballet-master from London theatres, was engaged, and opera was produced for some years, but like all other Western methods of improvement, interest in it died away, in spite of Signor Rossi’s earnest endeavours. The lack of singers was the chief obstacle. It was during this opera vogue that Madame Miura, who has been so well received on the Western stage as Madame Butterfly, made her debut.

The Imperial Theatre, under its capable manager, Mr. K. Yamamoto, continues to be the centre of the conflict of old and new ideas. Here modern playwrights are encouraged, the Kabuki actors create new things, or act in the old plays of which the audience never seems to grow tired, while the actors, musicians, and dancers of England, America, and Europe, and even the stars of the Peking and Moscow stages, are warmly welcomed.

VI
Actresses of Meiji

One of the striking developments of the theatre in Meiji was the appearance of various types of actresses for the first time since the prohibition of the women’s stage in 1629. Returned travellers told tales of the prominent place the actresses held in the Occident. The female player had not been seen with the actor for centuries in Japan. She was a feature of the Western stage, then why not of the stage in Japan?

Danjuro, eager to try new experiments, and believing that women should have an equal chance with men in the theatre, decided to introduce his two daughters on the stage. The uproar and confusion that ensued among the theatre folk because of this petticoat invasion of the male sphere of influence caused them to withdraw. Danjuro also acted with a French actress to show that he was not bound by the conventions of Kabuki.

Among Danjuro’s pupils was a remarkable woman, Ichikawa Kumehachi. She began life as a dancing-mistress, studied under Danjuro, and formed a woman’s company of her own. So successful were these players that in the early days of Meiji they were allowed entrance to the houses of the nobility, when the actors could not be admitted on account of their low position in society.

On Kumehachi’s stage only women appeared, and the manly rôles were so well taken by women that it was difficult to penetrate the outward guise that concealed the feminine personality. All the stage duties, including those of carpenters, were performed by women.

Kumehachi had the hands of a dancing-mistress; they were long, narrow, and flexible, and her bright eyes were full of life and intelligence. She passed away in 1913 at the age of 70. A few days before her death she was playing in her small theatre, and so died in harness.

Danjuro once said of her: “If she had been a man her acting would have surpassed mine.” At one time she was called the “Woman Danjuro”, her acting so closely resembled that of her master. But such was the handicap of sex in Meiji that Kumehachi was not given the freedom to develop that would have proved her genius, and although she was undeniably popular with the people, the fact that she was a woman proved a stumbling-block to her advance. In its craze for new things and desire to imitate the Western theatre, Tokyo overlooked Kumehachi, and she died obscure and neglected, the company she had formed disbanding for want of leadership.

Nor did the attractive Sada Yakko ever succeed in reaping but a small measure of success from her barren Shimpa environment. She was a dimming star when towards the end of Meiji she founded a school for actresses that was to form a new departure of the progressive Imperial Theatre.

At the beginning of the craze for imported plays men attempted to portray the rôles of women. Their manner of walking—a sort of hop, skip, and jump—was as true to the habits and customs of Occidentals as the mincing stage gait of Orientals affected by Western players. Men were seen to be an impossibility as the heroines of the intellectual drama of the West, and a demand for young women for such rôles increased the number of stage-struck damsels in all parts of the country. Many a would-be actress strutted her brief hour upon the stage as Juliet or Ophelia, and then was heard of no more.

The career of Matsui Suma-ko clearly represents a certain undesirable phase of westernisation, a sort of frenzy for imported drama that took hold of the theatre reformers. At the time she entered Dr. Tsubouchi’s Bungei Kyokai, or Literary and Art Society, that was to reform stagnant Kabuki by producing Western drama, the novelty of the actresses was at its height, in Osaka as well as Tokyo. Dr. Tsubouchi sought to create intellectual actresses removed from all immoral influences. Matsui Suma-ko was the most promising aspirant for the newly created position, and she became the star of the society. At the age of 18 she had married an innkeeper in a fishing village. Later she was divorced, and came to live with her brother, who kept a cake shop in Tokyo. She waited on customers until she found another husband who was interested in the new drama, and with him she joined Tsubouchi’s company.

It is an unpleasant story how she parted from her second husband, fascinated Shimamura Hogetsu, Dr. Tsubouchi’s chief supporter and stage manager, causing him to resign as professor of Waseda Daigaku and to abandon his wife and children. Together they formed a company called the Art-Theatre. It was as Tolstoy’s heroine in Resurrection that Miss Matsui made her greatest success, and with this and other Western plays she toured the country, the novelty of her venture and the boldness of her character bringing her a fair measure of success.

When Shimamura died in 1919, her position was greatly changed. He had been almost wholly responsible for her success. She did not possess the mental or spiritual capacity to go on alone, without his assistance. He had been conspicuous among Japanese literary men for his study of Western literature, and was the recognised leader of the naturalistic school. She had no reserve of education or experience to draw upon. Furthermore, after his death voices in the audience called out tauntingly, and some of the minor Kabuki actors who had been asked to play with her in an effort to maintain her popularity refused to do so. Things had come to an end, and she could go no further in plays that were not indigenous to Japanese soil. The only way out of the many difficulties she had created for herself was to make a grand exit, and this she did some weeks after the burial of her leader, Shimamura, by hanging herself in the building that had been erected as the headquarters for the new stage naturalism.

Matsui Suma-ko, a daughter of the rice fields, essayed to play the whole repertoire made famous by Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Sarah Bernhardt, Julia Marlow, and Mrs. Leslie Carter. It was an impossibility. There was no natural growth from within, only unhealthy camouflage. She attempted to produce, but always failed, because what she could impersonate never sprang spontaneously from her own soul. All her efforts aimed not to construct, but to dazzle for the moment,—time and strength wasted in a vain endeavour.

By way of contrast there is Nakamura Kasen, a natural successor to Kumehachi, whose influence and popularity were very great. She owned a little theatre in Tokyo, and it was always crowded. She had the temerity to imitate the Kabuki actors, and was never so popular as when in a male rôle. She began her stage work at the age of 13, and was practically self-taught, never having come under the instruction of an actor, but studying Kabuki plays and players from the vantage of the audience. Much of her success was due to the fact that she was true to herself and the traditions of Kabuki. She created her own sphere, and was regarded as a woman-ronin of the Tokyo stage, but has now retired.

With the opening of the Imperial Theatre in 1911 came the introduction of actresses into the sacred fold of Kabuki, following the custom of the mixed players of the Western stage. The new recruits, having no art of their own, were obliged to imitate that of the long-established male stage, and as no copy is ever equal to the original, it has gradually become recognised that they are unable to compete with the actors. During the first years of the new experiment the actresses played freely and frequently with the actors, but now there is a separation, the female company performing at stated periods during the year, supported by several of the young, progressive actors, and occasionally honoured by the assistance of one of the stars of first magnitude. The audiences prefer to see the actors performing in their own masterpieces, and the actresses in new pieces. From this it appears that mixing men and women players is not the success in Japan it was thought it would be.

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.

One of his best pieces is the music-drama, Omori Hikoshichi, a favourite play of Matsumoto Koshiro, the seventh, in which a warrior, Omori Hikoshichi, meets a seductive-looking maiden on a country road and volunteers to help her across a river. He is performing this kindly deed when she draws a short sword and attacks him. He is in possession of her father’s precious blade, and she is determined to recover it. Instead of retaliation, as she had expected, he generously presents the much-desired weapon to her and behaves in so chivalrous a manner that she goes on her way rejoicing, while he feigns to be overcome by enchantment in order to distract the attention of his companions, and mounting his black velvet stage-steed rides off triumphantly.

Fukuchi lived through an unprofitable period of the theatre, tried to conform to the demand of the time by writing “living-history” pieces for Danjuro, and the interest of the public cooling, he was pushed aside, and passed away forgotten and neglected. Many of his plays are more appreciated to-day than they were in his lifetime, especially Kasuga no Tsubone, or The Lady Kasuga.

A pioneer among the literary playwrights of Meiji, Dr. Tsubouchi wrote several elaborate dramas, showing the influence of his Shakespearean studies. The most ambitious of his works are Kirihitoha, A Leaf of the Kiri-tree, and Maki-no-Kata, The Lady Maki. The first is a play in seven acts and many scenes, and has for theme the overthrow of Osaka Castle by Iyeyasu, when Hideyori, the son of the great Hideyoshi, perished in the flames.

The climax of Oriental stage splendour is reached in the production of this long play. There is such an elaboration of detail, extravagance of gold screen, and prodigality of colour forming the stage pictures that is at once sumptuous and overpowering. The play would become nothing more than a series of tableaux vivants were it not for the characters of Yodogimi and Katagiri. Yodogimi, the mother of Hideyori, mistress of Hideyoshi, drawn from history, goes insane as Iyeyasu’s forces gain entrance through the gates of the castle and the watch-towers are seen in flames. Katagiri, a faithful old retainer of Hideyoshi, bowed with age and infirmity, gives proof of his loyalty as he watches the burning castle.

Among Dr. Tsubouchi’s music-posture pieces there is O-Natsu Kyoran, or Mad O-Natsu, a maiden all forlorn seeking her lost lover, and mistaking a stupid country bumpkin of a horse-driver as the hero of her dreams. In 1920 his Honan, or Religious Persecution, was produced. This centred about the founder of the Hokke sect of Buddhism, and shows the martyrdom of Nichiren and his followers. It created a storm of discussion by press and public, a play with a religious theme being somewhat of a novelty in Tokyo. The appointment of Dr. Tsubouchi as an adviser to the Imperial Theatre comes after a lifetime spent in literary work, translations, playwriting, and endeavours to reform the stage. It is with his lectures and translations of Shakespeare that his name is largely identified. Waseda University was founded in 1882, and since that year Shakespeare has continued the favourite study of the department of English Literature, of which for many years Dr. Tsubouchi was the head. Collegiate interest in Shakespeare, however, dates back to 1877, with the creation of the literary department of Tokyo University, now the Imperial University of Tokyo.

During the middle part of Meiji, Okamoto Kido began to write for the Tokyo stage, and is regarded as the representative modern playwright, both for the number and variety of his successes. He is a most indefatigable worker, and several of his new pieces are produced yearly. One of his favourite themes is the persecution of the early Christian converts in Japan,—and he has written a number of plays concerning these martyrs.

An Okamoto play that is often repeated, and is certainly one of his best, is The Mask-Maker, showing the high regard in which the artisans of Old Japan held their work. It expresses Kabuki’s love of the Spartan spirit, when the daughter of the mask-maker returns home in a dying condition, after attempting to protect the Shogun from attack, and her face inspires her father to execute a masterpiece.

Attached to the Kabuki-za during Meiji was the late Enomoto Torahiko. He started his career on the newspaper Yamato Shimbun, then studied under Fukuchi, and after Fukuchi’s death succeeded as head sakusha of the Kabuki-za. He was a deep student of French drama, and his plays were influenced strongly by the literature he so greatly admired. One of his most popular plays is Meiko Sakaido Kakiyemon, or Kakiyemon, the Potter. This tells how Kakiyemon devoted himself to making a rich red-glaze porcelain. A wealthy neighbour wished to gain the secret that he might profit thereby, and withheld aid from the old man until he was so reduced he could not buy wood to keep his kilns going. A good scene in this piece is that of the kilns in the moonlight, the red glow of the fires, the smoke rising into the air, while in the background is the glare of a conflagration—the city of Nagasaki on fire.

An Osaka playwright who has given Kabuki several fine plays is Takayasu Gekko. His father was known as one of the leading physicians of Osaka, and he was expected to take up the same profession, but preferred to devote himself to literature and the stage. Sakura Shigure, or The Cherry Shower, is regarded as his best play. An old man angry with his son for an affair with a belle of the gay quarter expels him from home. Shifting for himself, the son and the woman he loves begin life together in a cottage. The father happens to pass that way one day, and is caught in a shower. He seeks shelter within the humble cottage, but does not know that he is accepting the hospitality of his despised daughter-in-law. She prepares ceremonial tea for him, he is struck with her accomplishments and good manners, and when he discovers that she is the wife of his son, a reconciliation is effected.

Dr. Ogai Mori worked persistently during Meiji in the translation of German literature and drama. Osanai Kaoru translated from the French and German, and has produced a number of his own plays. Matsui Shoyu was tireless in his efforts in the translation of English drama, and is known as an adapter rather than an original playwright. The late Miigita Torahiko, attached to the Imperial Theatre, produced a number of excellent plays. Masuda Taro, a clever writer of light society pieces and farce, has composed chiefly for Miss Mori and the actresses of the Imperial. One of his successes was Noroi, or The Curse, with an imaginary Damascus of a thousand years ago as setting. After a week’s run it was noticed that the wicked princess who causes all the trouble, and who must die in the end in order that the good shall triumph over evil, according to the eternal convention of the fairy-tale, did not tumble down at the fateful dagger thrust, but remained erect, standing in a very commanding pose upon the throne with the final curtain. The police authorities who censor plays had objected to the death by such means of so exalted a personage. It was not proper in their minds to kill the princess, although she richly deserved it, and the whole point of the play was lost.

Among the playwrights of Taisho, some of the best known are Oka Onitaro, Yoshii Isamu, Kume Masao, Yamamoto Arizo, Osada Hideo, Yamamoto Yuzo, Yamazaki Shiko, Ikeda Taigo, Nakamura Kichizo, Nagai Kafu, Dr. Rohan Koda, Roppuku Nukada, Mushakoji Saneatsu (brother of Viscount Mushakoji), and Juichiro Tanizaki, whose plays have been much discussed and criticised. During 1921 the best play to be produced by an aspiring playwright was Tojuro no Koi, or The Love of Tojuro, and concerned an incident in the life of Sakata Tojuro, the great actor of the Genroku period. It was by Kikuchi Kan, of whom much is expected in the future. He also wrote Okujiyo no Kyojin, or The Mad Man on the Roof, which was a success at the Imperial. Miss Chiyo-ko Hasegawa and Mrs. Kayo-ko Omura are among the women who have written plays for the Tokyo stage.

Not in their wildest dreams could the stage folk of fifty years ago have predicted the remarkable development of Kabuki in the years 1918–1920. Ten years before this the chief playhouses of Tokyo were almost deserted, and at best they were never more than half full. But the audiences increased to such an extent that standing room in the topmost gallery was at a premium.

This overflowing of the theatre was due to the general prosperity of the country as a result of the Great War. Faith in the West was rudely shattered, and the people swung back to their own institutions with a new zest and enthusiasm.

For lack of stimulus Kabuki had been at a standstill for half-a-century before the Restoration; then came the flood-tide of Western influence. Unconscious of the value of its art, Kabuki remained powerless to proceed, and led the superficial observer to believe that it was unable to create and on the downward path to oblivion. But the forces within were gaining strength, and during the height of national prosperity brought about by the European War, the existence of Kabuki was justified as never before in its three hundred years of history.