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CHAPTER 1

Early Kabuki

No clearly defined documentation of the actual birth of Kabuki has been found. Some recognized scholars in this field believe Kabuki had its initial performance in Kyoto around the 5th year of Keichō (1600). It was about the same time, 1600 to be exact, when Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the longest reigning dynasty of shōgun (military dictators) in Japan, won the battle of Sekigahara, defeating the generals who had given their allegiance to Hideyori, son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, considered by some historians to be Japan's greatest military strategist. Hideyoshi, born of humble parentage, rose to become the military ruler prior to Ieyasu's ascendancy but never attained the rank of shōgun because of his plebeian birth. The government instituted by Ieyasu after his victory over the Toyotomi forces is known in Japanese history as the Tokugawa bakufu or Tokugawa shōgunate. It was destined to continue for more than two and a half centuries.

Other Kabuki scholars believe that Kabuki was not founded until the 8th year of Keichō (1603), which would coincide with the year that Ieyasu assumed the title of shōgun. From that time until the fall of the shōgunate in 1868, the age was called the Edo or Tokugawa period, the name Edo signifying that the Tokugawa had established their capital in Edo, the city which became Tokyo in 1869.

The Edo period, like preceding periods, was divided into a number of eras during which Kabuki blossomed from a coarse, erotic form of entertainment into that of classical theater as it is known today. Names of eras were often changed after some disastrous occurrence, such as war or loss of crops. It was a common belief that the adoption of a new era name would usher in a happy, prosperous interval. The over-all era names were not changed except by permission of the emperor. Today there are no such changes, each new era deriving its name from the succession of an emperor.

OKUNI KABUKI

Caprice has credited a woman with the origin of Kabuki, Japan's time-honored, traditionally male theater. It easily could have been otherwise, for various forms of entertainment which might have caught the fancy of the townsmen prevailed. Yet it was a woman who offered the spark that fired the success of one special form beyond all the others existing at that time.

After a turbulent age of successive wars, there was a relatively peaceful period. The populace gave vent to its long-suppressed desire for pleasure in an era of unrestrained joy. New customs and trends spontaneously erupted. These were commonly called kabuki, an abstract noun taken from the verb kabuku, which at that time literally meant a "thing leaning"—in other words, an "extraordinary thing" signifying something abnormal, queer, or not common. A person who attracted undue attention by conspicuous traits of behavior, wore gaudy, exaggerated clothing, or swaggered with great bravado was referred to as kabuki or kabuki-mono, with its nuances of emancipation, pleasure, sensuality, and perhaps lawlessness, since the Japanese are peculiarly bound to the laws of tradition and strict rules of behavior.

In the wake of this new era in public tastes, legend has it that Okuni, a priestess of the great Izumo no Ōyashiro Shrine in central Izumo Province (now Shimane Prefecture), journeyed across the mountains to notso-distant Kyoto, ostensibly to obtain contributions for the maintenance of the shrine through performances of a prayer-dance. This dance, the nembutsu-odori (literally "dance of prayer to Buddha") was an outgrowth of five centuries of teaching prior to Okuni by such priests as Kūya, Ippen, and during Okuni's time by the priest Hōsai, who believed that the principles of Buddha could be most easily understood not by difficult or tedious preaching but by plunging into ecstasy through song and dance. Later the nembutsu-odori became familiar as a folk dance.

Okuni's arrival in Kyoto about 1600 is considered a historical event in the annals of popular theater in Japan, for it presaged the beginning of various theatrical forms which gradually evolved into the present-day Kabuki.

Okuni belonged to a class of young maidens known as miko or shrine virgins, albeit of questionable virginity, who served the gods of the Shintō shrines, danced before them, and made themselves generally available for any menial task. Since people from all walks of life visited the shrines, inevitably bawdyhouses abounded in their vicinity. The miko often performed in these houses after dancing for the gods.

The miko did not usually come from aristocratic families, but quite often from the shake (the hereditary families of Shintōist priests), a wealthy class who helped support the shrines by donations. However, miko could come from any class. These girls did not necessarily enter a permanent religious life. Most of them married young, but a few remained unmarried in the shrines.

Such was the life to which Okuni was inured at the time she gave the first public performance of her dance in Kyoto, captivating the citizenry with her original embellishment of the nembutsu-odori. It is believed that she gave performances en route to Kyoto, though no written record exists.

Upon reaching Kyoto, Okuni proceeded to a dry place in the bed of the Kamo River, since it was there that low-class entertainers could perform without being taxed, and the space was free for the asking. At the foot of Gojō Bridge she made use of a koyagake butai (outdoor stage) for her performances. This type of temporarily built open stage—made of logs, bunting, and matting—can be seen today at circuses and shrine festivals. The word koyagake itself is a very old and popular expression meaning "hut-styled" or "temporarily built."

The townspeople regularly frequented the Kamogawara—that is, the kawara or riverbed of the Kamo—to be regaled by debased performances of Dengaku, Sarugaku, and other promiscuous entertainments, and for several centuries after Okuni's appearance there Kabuki actors were weighed down with the ignominious names of kawara-mono (riverbed fellow) or kawara-kojiki (riverbed beggar).

Only by examining old paintings can we envisage the costumes worn by Okuni. When presenting her first dance in Kyoto, she is thought to have appeared in a priest's black silk robe over an ordinary kimono, both ankle-length. A nurigasa (nuri, painted; kasa, hat; that is, a lacquer-coated, umbrella-shaped hat) covered her head, while around her neck was hung a scarlet breast-length strap of karaori (brocaded silk) on which was fastened a kane (small metal gong). Okuni struck the kane with a wooden hammer called a shumoku as she sang the well-known tunes of the day and danced in a most enticing manner.

Many, if not all, of the events surrounding the story of Okuni's life are based on legend. Documentation fails to record accurately where fiction ends and truth begins. So be it what it may, fate stepped into Okuni's life in the form of a handsome man-about-town, Nagoya Sanzaburō, who undoubtedly had been drawn to Okuni by her physical charms and daring exhibitionism. Born in 1576, the seventh child of a samurai, young Sanzaburō, or Sanza as he is popularly known, studied for the priesthood at a Kyoto temple until 1590. Then, at the age of fourteen, already bored with the austerities of priesthood, he gladly became a page to Gamō Ujisato of Aizu, a Christian daimyō. The death of Ujisato in 1595 brought Sanza back to Kyoto with a fortune bequeathed to him by his late master.

Lombard states in The Japanese Drama that Sanza "led a life of social freedom, and was popularly known for excellence in social arts, including the Kyōgen" (comic interludes of the Nō). This was the background of the man who it is said became Okuni's mentor as well as lover for a few years.

Sanza, a musician proficient with the Jue (flute) and tsuzumi (hand-drum), taught Okuni popular songs to which he wrote ribald lyrics. Together, they borrowed freely from the Nō and Kyōgen. These performances put Okuni on the highest rung of the ladder of popularity. In these, Okuni donned a man's costume and Sanzaburd a woman's, a reversal of their apparel which made them look ungainly for those times, but which the public nevertheless found exceedingly refreshing and humorous. The male members of the audience in particular found the spectacle of a young woman dancing in masculine attire to be highly beguiling and erotic.

To her Japanese audience with its jaded appetite, Okuni's entertainment was welcome and stimulating. Okuni hastened to capitalize on her popularity by collecting the entrance fees for the dance performances and fees from the eager patrons for her troupe's after-hours profession, prostitution. The shrine's needs were forgotten.

Okuni was the only woman of her troupe privileged to wear male costume. Her costume, after she joined with Sanza, was a wide departure from her original priestlike garb. It was an ankle-length figured kimono, probably made of silk with tie-and-dye and embroidery, without the customary pleated skirtlike hakama (culottes), but with full sleeves extending to just below the elbow. The kimono was worn with a simple, narrow, stiff obi tied in karuta-musubi style: a flat, oblong bow, the squared loops and knot of which are all exactly the same size.

The tailoring of the kimono was unique. The width of each mihaba, one of the four identical sections of the kimono body, was almost double the width of the sode-haba (width of sleeves) used today; consequently, the kimono was extremely wide, and when closed in front, overlapped somewhat in the manner of Nō costumes. Okuni's hair was styled in the young man's, or wakashu, mode, with a white hachimaki (headband) tied around the head. Her accessories included an ōgi (folding fan) probably an all-white haku-sen, and a leather bag. A small hyōtan (the gourd many men carried for holding sake or water) hung from the right side of her obi, and a juzu (a Buddhist rosary) adorned her neck. To emulate the samurai, Okuni tucked a set of katana, the long and short swords, through the left side of her obi. The sheaths and hilts of the swords were gaudy with gilded metal mountings.

It is curious to note that some paintings show actresses of Onna Kabuki, which followed Okuni Kabuki, impersonating Sanza wearing a Roman Catholic rosary with a cross. Though the cross had no definitive meaning to the people in general, and certainly not to the actresses, it was thought to be an exotic accessory. Since the spread of Catholicism in Japan was approaching its zenith, the wearing of a rosary with a cross was not an unusual sight. Whenever a daimyō became a Christian, all of his retainers likewise had to become Christians, and each undoubtedly took to wearing the emblem of Christianity.

When Okuni's form of entertainment reached its peak of popularity, presumably in 1603, it was called Kabuki, with its inference of something degenerate or unorthodox. This appellation was Kabuki written in kana, the Japanese syllabary script. Okuni is well delineated by the word kabuki or kabuki-mono, so that the application of this contemptuous term to the entertainment she popularized seems plausible.

Okuni was the creator of the Natsu Kagura no Mai (Dance of the Summer Kagura). The choreography for the dance was based on the Kagura, an ancient religious pantomimic dance form brought down through the centuries in ceremonies performed at Shintō shrine festivals. The costume for the dance was an elegant white silk suikan, similar to robes worn by court nobles in ancient days, and red naga-bakama, long pleated trousers which trailed for two feet or more, giving the wearer the appearance of crawling on his knees. Her hair was plainly dressed. It was tied chastely just below the nape of the neck and hung free down the back. The simple beauty of this costume was accentuated by a branch of the sacred sakaki, the camellia-like shrub used in Shintō ceremonies, carried in the hand. It is probable that Okuni patterned this costume after the masculine white robe and red naga-bakama (long trousers) worn by the shirabyōshi, the gay professional dancers who flourished during the Heian and Kamakura periods, and who sometimes are said to have been predecessors of the geisha. The shirabyōshi wore this costume in imitation of men's wardrobe.

The fact that Okuni and her troupe were occasionally invited to perform before samurai is an indication of the rapidly expanding popularity of Okuni Kabuki. It remained, however, essentially, an expression belonging to the world of the commoner, who had only enough artistic sensibility to enjoy its suggestions of obscenity. He remained complacently unaware of its lack of inspiration or imagination. Denied any stimulus to advance, Okuni Kabuki found it difficult to break through an accepted level of mediocrity. However, Okuni Kabuki with its element of novelty was sufficiently appealing as a performing art to continue as popular theater.

Okuni continued her chosen profession long after her short-lived liaison with Sanzaburō ended. Possibly tired of the gay life, Sanzaburō changed his given name to Kyūemon and became a samurai attached to the feudal lord Mōri Tadamasa at Tsuyama in Mimasaka Province. One of the few instances where fully documented evidence about Sanzaburō is obtainable records the fact that Sanzaburō died in 1604 in a quarrel with a fellow retainer. As for Okuni, historical records mentioning her last years are so confusing that it is useless to speculate when and where she died.

ONNA KABUKI

During Okuni's ascendancy, troupes of actresses were rapidly formed to capitalize on the popularity of her art. These female imitators achieved such acclaim that their presentations became widely known as Onna Kabuki—that is, women's Kabuki. Improvements in repertoire made by Onna Kabuki enlarged its audience to include members of many classes of society. Its influence spread rapidly into the realm of the courtesans. who adopted it as another means by which they could charm and attract customers. Courtesan troupes were referred to significantly as Yūjo Kabuki, meaning prostitutes' or pleasure-women's Kabuki. The background connection of prostitution with Okuni Kabuki, Onna Kabuki, and Yūjo Kabuki (the latter two judged to be the same by some authorities) was identical. The link was accepted and ignored until the prostitute-actress became so notorious that, in 1629, all women in any capacity were banished from the stage by the shōgun's order, on the grounds that their appearance there corrupted the public morals.

The real reason behind the banishment of actresses was a little more involved. During the Tokugawa shōgunate social grades were kept separated, since the shōgunate frowned upon samurai and high officials mixing with people at the lower levels because it often brought about the drawing of swords. Also many samurai lost their full substance when attending the Kabuki, since it cost an enormous amount of money to associate with a courtesan. Therefore the banishment of women from the stage not only stemmed from public-order reasons but social and political reasons as well.

WAKASHU KABUKI

Wakashu Kabuki, or Kabuki in which wakashu (youths of thirteen and fourteen) took leading roles, developed gradually but did not attain prominence until after the ban on actresses (Fig. 2). The term wakashu derives from olden times when a youth of kuge (nobility) or samurai family, upon becoming an adult, went through a ritual known as gempuku: the ceremonial cutting off of the maegami or forelock. Youths who still wore the maegami were called wakashu.

Except for the fact that the actors were young men instead of young girls, Wakashu Kabuki offered little or no change in audience appeal. The sensual dance, executed by the star actor in a provocative and suggestive manner, remained the foremost attraction. Supporting actors merely lined up on the stage to display their handsome faces and figures or danced as a group.

Undoubtedly to offset the inevitable boredom of all-male casts, the role of the onnagata—the female impersonator—the ultimate in Kabuki allurement, was born. Murayama Sakon is credited with being the original onnagata of an all-male troupe, though Nagoya Sanza previously had appeared in female dress. Sakon first appeared as a woman in Kyoto in 1649. Later he brought his act to Edo, where he danced at the Murayamaza, a theater owned by his elder brother, Murayama Matasaburō. Sakon's innovation was enthusiastically accepted and became so popular that he soon had onnagata rivals, among whom the most highly acclaimed during the next form of Kabuki, known as Yarō Kabuki, were Ukon Genzaemon, Nakamura Kazuma, and Kōkan Tarōji.

2. Wakashu Kabuki. Kabuki in which boys in their teens took leading roles attained prominence following the ban on actresses in 1629.

Although the Kokon Yakusha Taizen (All about Actors Old and New) furnishes some facts about Sakon, it has little to say about his costumes. It is known only that he wore a silk kimono and a beautifully colored oblong silk cloth over his partially shaven head and that he used cloths of different colors for various roles. It can be assumed that he used female make-up.

Wakashu Kabuki was short-lived. Only twenty-odd years after Onna Kabuki vanished from the scene, Wakashu Kabuki disappeared in the same way. In 1652, wakashu actors were abruptly banished from the stages of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto by the shōgunate for the same reasons that actresses had been banned from the theater. During the civil wars wakashu had been allowed to accompany warriors to the battle front, where no women were permitted. They were invited for the express purpose of homosexual prostitution, although their agreeable talents as entertainers were not overlooked. The passing of civil strife by no means ended the intimate association between samurai and wakashu. Open indulgence in homosexual affairs became common, and the excesses committed ranged from the lurid to the absurd. Finally a public brawl between two samurai over the favors of a young actor evoked the shōgunate ban.

To carry out the order of the shogunate, Ishigaya Shōgen, the famous Edo marshal, issued an edict requiring all wakashu in the area of his jurisdiction to shave their forelocks in conformity with the adult male fashion. His rigorous order was copied in Osaka and Kyoto.

YARŌ KABUKI

In 1653, the year after the disappearance of Wakashu Kabuki, the shōgunate unexpectedly gave permission, subject to three specific restrictions (to be noted presently), for the reopening of the theaters. This came about, quite probably, in response to earnest appeals made by the theater managers. When the government reinstated Kabuki, however, permits to open were issued to only four of the fifteen existent Kabuki theaters in the city of Edo: the Ichimura-za, Morita-za, Nakamura-za, and Murayamaza. The Nakamura-za was the oldest theater in Edo and bore the name of its actor-owner Nakamura Kanzaburō, also formerly known as Saruwaka Kanzaburō.

Upon the reopening of these four theaters, managers and actors agreed to abide by the following three restraining conditions: that only those whose hair was shaved in front and dressed in adult yarō-atama style could appear on the stage; that their performances should not degenerate into a state of immorality; and that wakashu should not perform Kabuki, which meant they were not permitted to dance, but could appear in monomane-kyōgen-zukushi (realistic drama).

Presumably the government officials concerned with the banning of Wakashu Kabuki understood monomane as being a sober, decent, and realistic stage art. They were correct, for monomane is the basic art of every dramatic diversion—the art of imitation. Monomane was the closest form to a drama, featuring both dialogue and pantomime. Thereafter, Kabuki was referred to by its fourth name, Yarō Kabuki, and so continued to be burdened with the stigma of its name—this time yarō, a not too respectable term used colloquially in referring to men of low class.

At the outset the main elements of Yarō Kabuki still were song and dance, but the actors realized that they projected little theatrical magnetism. With forelocks shaven, they felt denuded of much of their physical beauty. The theatergoer might as well stand on the street and watch the passing scene. They recognized also that the public was ready for something more substantial and interesting in theatrical effort.

Through necessity, Yarō Kabuki began to produce plays with simple plots. This was a progressive movement in the history of Kabuki, for the new drama demanded sincere, realistic acting. The study of histrionics and stage techniques was taken up and rose quickly to unprecedented heights. Furthermore, with the development of plots that introduced an array of new roles, actors and others attached to the theaters were afforded unlimited opportunity to display their creative abilities in many ways. Inherent genius for color and design brought forth a variety of costumes (Fig. 3). These were enhanced by the invention of katsura (wigs), which for some inexplicable reason had not been thought of previously. All of these innovations gave new life to the performances of these stage productions.

3. Yarō Kabuki. As the successor to Wakashu Kabuki, Yarō Kabuki began to produce plays with simple plots, thus making the first progressive movement in Kabuki's history.

No one attached to the theater at this time could be called a playwright. The one-act plays, known as hanare-kyōgen, were produced from mere outlined suggestions for plots, to which dialogue was added as freely conceived by theater managers and leading actors, and performed ad libitum. Audiences never expected to hear a definite or established dialogue. In successive performances, actors would experiment and improvise according to their diverse whims and temperaments, and such lines or actions as appeared to be well received were retained, until, through repeated use, they became standard parts of a play. One new play followed another.

Eventually a play was so enthusiastically received that the manager had it recorded for repeat performances. The emergence of this script or daihon (dai, subject; hon, book) was the origin of Kabuki play writing in Japan. Nō scripts of this age are in existence, but fortunately there are records mentioning them. According to these records, a play was never withdrawn from the theater as long as it drew an audience.

There were two distinct types of plays in the first half of the Yarō Kabuki period, the keisei-kai (keisei, courtesan; kai, buying, purchase) and the tanzen-roppō. Plays of the first type, the keisei-kai, were concerned with the affairs of courtesans and were usually set in the irozato, as the licensed quarters of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka were called. The Yoshiwara district in Edo, the Shimabara in Kyoto, and the Shimanouchi and Minami in Osaka were the irozato.

The costumes for the keisei-kai plays were most lavish and glamorous, and much of the traditional stage business, settings, and costumes seen in Kabuki plays depicting licensed quarters were founded in this type of Yarō Kabuki.

The second type, the tanzen-roppō, delineated a rather bawdy side of life, not for the sake of bawdiness as such but for the excitement in the characterization of people associated with it. The word tanzen propounds two entirely different meanings: one is related to theatrical arts or geigoto (gei, theatrical arts, dance, music; koto, matters), with which, peculiarly enough, we are not immediately concerned; the other, which is relevant, refers to a distinctive type of Japanese apparel that became popular in the seventeenth century: the dress worn by the dandies, who habitually lingered in bathhouses.

During the Shōō era (1652-54), in the Kanda district of Edo, in front of the mansion of the lord Hori Tango-no-Kami, there was a public bathhouse frequented by samurai, rōnin (masterless samurai), and otoko-date (chivaIrous cavaliers, swashbuckling street knights) of the city (Fig. 4). This bathhouse became known as a center of relaxation and revelry. Here yuna (female bathhouse attendants) not only washed the backs of the bathers but also engaged in less homely tasks. In rooms prepared for such purposes, they played the samisen (a three-stringed instrument similar to a balalaika), danced, and were congenial drinking companions as well as amiable bedfellows.

The apparel of the bathhouse addict was singularly fanciful and attracted much attention not only to the wearer but also to his destination—specifically, the bathhouse in Kanda in front of Hori Tango-no-Kami's mansion. The destination, shortened to tanzen (literally, in front of Tan's) became the popular designation of the dress. Later tanzen was applied to the attire worn by the habitues of any bathhouse (Fig. 5).

The conspicuous figure of the bathhouse dandy came to be known as tanzen-sugata (tanzen, bold-designed kimono; sugata, style, figure; literally, tanzen-clad figure). His hair was dressed in the tanzen-tate-gami style, a mode born at this time, when samurai who hoped to cover up their identities while they lingered in the plebeian bagnio cunningly tried to pass as patients taking a cure. By deliberately not shaving the forepart of the head and allowing the hair to grow stiffly upward about an inch, the tanzen-sugata indicated they had been too ill to shave the head properly.

4. Otokodate. The swashbuckling street knight known as otokodate (shown here as he appears in Otokodate Gosho no Gorōzō) is among the most colorful of the Edo-period types portrayed in Kabuki.

5. Tanzen-sugata. The apparel of the early-Edo bath-house dandy was singularly fanciful, and his conspicuous style was known as tanzen-sugata—that is, bold-designed-kimono style.

6. Tanzen-roppō. Taking their name from the tanzen attire of the bathhouse dandies of Edo, tanzen-roppō (bawdy plays) became a feature of Yarō Kabuki.

The dandy wore two quite distinctive decorative swords known as musori-kakutsuba katana (musori, uncurved; kaku, square; tsuba, sword guard; katana, sword)—that is, swords with square guards and uncurved blades—thrust through the obi in kannuki fashion: like gate bolts. These swords easily identified the dandy if his elegant manner of walking failed to do so, because they differed markedly from the samurai weapons.

Tanzen-roppō—that is, bawdy plays—were first produced in Edo but also became popular in western Japan in the district then known as Kamigata.

It is pertinent to the history of Kabuki to digress here for a brief explanation of the name of this district. Kamigata was the colloquial word for the present-day area of Kansai (kan, barrier; sat, west), which refers to the provinces west of the old Hakone barrier. This encompasses the large cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Kamigata (kami, upper or higher; kata, direction) meant the "higher place," or the direction of the emperor, who remained in his capital, Kyoto, in counterposition to the shōgunate in Edo (present-day Tokyo). Kamigata ceased to be used as the name of the western provinces when Emperor Meiji moved to Edo in 1868. The eastern provinces were collectively known as Kanto (kan, barrier; tō, east). Since Edo was the only influential city in the eastern provinces during the Edo (Tokugawa) period, Kanto is not used in the history of Kabuki as is Kamigata, which covers the three important western cities.

Tamon Shozaemon, an actor, is credited with the introduction of the distinctive style of walking and acting, as well as the costuming and manner of wearing the swords, in tanzen-roppō (Fig. 6). Tanzen has been transmitted to us today in the furi, or choreography, of such plays as Sukeroku, Saya-ate, and Modori Kago and in the dramatic role of Fuwa Banzaemon in Ukiyozuka Hiyoku no Inazuma, more commonly called Nagoya Sanza.

In 1664, twelve years after Yarō Kabuki emerged, rapid and epoch-making progress was made with the presentation of tsuzuki-kyōgen: dramas of two acts. In Osaka, Hinin no Adauchi (Revenge of a Villain), written by Fukuoka Yagoshiro, was staged at the theater known as the Araki Yojibeiza. Also during this period, Imagawa Shinobi-guruma (the meaning of the title is no longer clear), by Miyako Dennai, was presented at the Ichimuraza in Edo.

As the composition of the drama became somewhat more complex, the staging also changed. For the first time in Kabuki, draw curtains were introduced to mark the change of scenes. With these developments, Kabuki emerged from its formative years to take its place in a new era of cultural enlightenment in which the common man, for the first time in Japanese history, was the focal point. The Kabuki at last had reached maturity in form and could be proud of its name. It was, however, over two centuries before Kabuki was admitted to the realm of classical theater.