Kabuki and Shakespeare: Balancing Yin and Yang

Author(s): James R. Brandon

Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 15-53
Published by: The MIT Press
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Kabuki

and

Shakespeare

BalancingYin and Yang

James R. Brandon

During most of kabuki's history, performance can be characterizedby what

I will call here a "balance of yin and yang." We find reciprocal stability and
change, the known and the unknown side-by-side, and the old coexisting
with the new: that is, a balance of new and active yang with the old and stable
yin. Kabuki is an art that originated and flourished during the Tokugawa period (I603-I868). Throughout this period, the main members of each troupe
gathered in early winter, in anticipation of the new kabuki season, to select the
worlds (sekai) that would be used for that company's five or six annual productions. A world was a known constellation of actual or legendary figures
acting out the crucial events in their lives. These dramatic worlds were completely familiarto the spectators, giving stability to the play. Iizuka Tomoichiro
has identified 275 worlds that kabuki playwrights used during the Tokugawa
period (1926:5-55). In the course of the annual theatre season, house playwrights crafted new plays based on these worlds through the device of fabricating unusual or unexpected plots (shuko). In principle every play was "new"
and received its own unique title. Hence the present-day researcher faces the
mind-numbing circumstance that upwards of I0,000 kabuki play titles lie in
indexes and bibliographies. Sekai and shuko provided a yin-yang balance in
play creation. I believe that much in kabuki can be viewed this way.'
It is not strange that most observers, Western and Japanese alike, privilege
the traditional, the stable, the conservative yin side of kabuki, emphasizing
family acting traditions and established conventions of performance, for these
characteristicsof kabuki are obvious. Major acting lines, exemplified by illustrious names such as Ichikawa Danjur6 and Kataoka Nizaemon, go back I2
and 14 generations respectively. Distinctive plays and acting styles created by
actors in these families have been passed on from father to son for centuries.
The fact that management of the large, licensed kabuki theatres was hereditary
as well, especially in the city of Edo (Tokyo), also contributed stability and
continuity to the production system. We who translatekabuki plays (and I include myself) choose favorite pieces that are part of the traditional, classical,
canonical repertory (Brandon [1975] 1992 and 1982; Brandon and Niwa 1966;
Ernst 1959; Leiter I979a; Scott I953a and I953b).
In this article, I would like to redress this imbalance in a small way. I will
focus on the new, the active, the positive (as well as the unstable, the uncerThe Drama Review 43, 2 (T162), Summer 1999. Copyright ? 1999
New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I5

I6 James R. Brandon
tain, the indeterminate), that is, the yang side of kabuki, taking as a point of
departure the case of kabuki's engagement with the new and exciting plays of
William Shakespeare. As Kawatake Toshio has suggested, kabuki and
Shakespeare share a similar "baroque" spirit and the two would seem to be
natural partners (I967:201-02).

Leonard Pronko

and others have detailed

points of affinity between Shakespeare and kabuki in books and articles for 20
years, so that this point is now something of a cliche.2 I will suggest here that
the meeting between kabuki and Shakespearein Japan has not been natural or
simple, nor, for that matter, particularlysuccessful. In my opinion, kabuki artists have responded to Shakespeare in three radically different ways, and none
of these has satisfactorilyfused the unique strengths of Shakespeare (the new,
positive, outside yang element) with kabuki's powerful theatrical nature (the
familiar, the conservative, inside yin element).
Before proceeding, I should say something about my approach and method.
English-language kabuki studies are still in their infancy, and much of what
has been written to date, by myself included, covers basic aspects of the theatre form. Here I am trying to move beyond generic description and examine
a specific phenomenon that occurred at a particular historical point. In order
to do this, I am impelled to turn to a wide range of kabuki sources, mostly in
Japanese language, so vast that they cannot be fully researched for this article.
Further, in using fragments of this data as examples and illustrations, I necessarily bring up unresolved issues in kabuki studies. For example, I use data
from both the Edo and Kamigata (Kyoto-Osaka) kabuki systems, but I do not
go into the important issue of the differences between the two systems. Also, I
think it is essential to suggest some concrete number of kabuki actors who
were working during the Tokugawa period and give some indication of their
mobility, but a full study of the topic would occupy several years of research.
The relationship between the large, licensed theatres (oshibai)and small, often
unlicensed, theatres (koshibai),affects this topic. Yet the known history of the
small theatres is sketchy.3 Therefore, I make estimates and suggest trends and
possibilities derived from partial evidence. I try to suggest how I arrive at my
interpretations so readers can follow out their own lines of reasoning. My intention is to bring up new topics for kabuki research and to encourage fuller
exploration of difficult issues.
I would first like to consider some of the factors that contributed to newness and change within kabuki itself, the yang side of the equation. If we look
at kabuki in the city of Edo, stability and continuity would seem to be suggested by the fact that the city's "Three Theatres," the sanza (san, three; za,
theatre)-continued under the same names, the Nakamura-za, the Ichimuraza, and the Morita-za-for two-and-a-half centuries (the city's fourth-largest
kabuki theatre, the Yamamura-za, was ordered destroyed by the government
in 1714 after 72 years of operation and does not figure in this analysis). The license to produce kabuki at each theatre was held by one person, known as
the zamoto (literally, "theatre founder") and that license was inherited by a
zamoto's descendants. Thus the license to produce at the Nakamura-za was
held by the heirs of zamoto Nakamura (originally Sarawaka)Kanzabur6I for
I3 generations, at the Ichimura-za by the heirs of zamoto Ichimura Uzaemon
III for 12 generations, and at the Morita-za by heirs of zamoto Morita Kanya I
for 12 generations.

But beneath this appearanceof continuity, disruptions and changes of many

kinds occurred. "Fires and quarrelsare the two flowers of Edo" was a popular
saying, but as Nojima notes, it would be more accurate to say "fires and quarrels were the two shames of Edo" (I988:appendix 27). The recurring destruction and chaos caused by conflagrations as well as floods and typhoons is
horribly clear when we read through a list of disasters that struck Edo.4 On

Kabukiand Shakespeare 17
more than a hundred occasions between 1657 and 1864, one or more of Edo's
large licensed theatres was destroyed by fire; or, to put it differently, on the
average a major theatre burned to ashes every second year. The Nakamura-za
and the Ichimura-za, located next to each other, burned in tandem more than
40 times, and in nine fires all of Edo's licensed theatres were simultaneously
destroyed. One of the worst periods was I710 to 1730, when theatres were
incinerated at the rate of nearly one a year (I8 burnings in 20 years). Beyond
this, a dozen times floods and typhoons destroyed theatres, or fires in neighboring districts forced theatres to temporarily close their doors.
The direct effects of these disasterswere severe, if temporary, disruptions of
production and heavy financial losses. In order to restore the flow of ticket income as soon as possible, managers rebuilt their theatres within three or four
weeks if possible, paying greatly inflated prices for scarce lumber and labor.5
The auditorium, stage, hanamichi(runway), mechanical devices, scenery, and
equipment, as well as actors' valuable personal costumes and wigs all had to be
replaced and paid for. Fire was the direct cause of numerous changes in the
physical stage. As Earle Ernst has noted:
[F]requent rebuilding of theatres after fires provided ample opportunity
for architecturalinnovations [and] permitted the series of minor changes
in the theatre building which over almost three centuries resulted in
quite a different architecturalform from that with which the Kabuki
stage began. (1956:39)
Theatre managers went bankrupt because of such catastrophes (and because
of financial mismanagement and other reasons). When this happened control
of a theatre passed outside of the Nakamura, Ichimura, or Morita family. On
at least 15 occasions, one of Edo's three zamoto could not mount a season of
kabuki plays and the license devolved to a substitute license holder who took
over rights to stage kabuki according to a "reserve license" (hikaeyagura)system.6 In Kamigata, the license holder was called the nadai while the actormanager of the theatre was called the zamoto

(Mizuochi

1990:22-23).

The

licensee, as in Edo, would continue for many years; on the other hand, an actor-manager was temporary and could move each year. The management of
theatres, therefore, was less permanent than in Edo, and more varied. A
Kamigata theatre could be identified by the name of the licensee (Miyako
Mandayf-za, that is, the theatre licensed to Miyako Mandayf), or by its location (Naka no Shibai, or Center Theatre). It was also common to identify the
troupe and theatre by the name of the actor-manager (Iwai Hanshiro-za, the
Iwai Hanshiro Troupe/Theatre). To illustrate with one example that I don't
think is unusual, we find that 10 different troupes, named after their actormanagers, or zamoto, moved in and out of the Kado-za (Corner Theatre) in
Osaka over the 20-year period I716 to 1735 (Ihara I956-I963, 8:503-o8).7
Each of these fascinating topics deserves detailed study that cannot be done
here. However, I believe that from this brief overview of the physical circumstances of kabuki production we can see how considerable fluidity, to say
nothing of disruption and instability, was commonplace.
Kabuki was a popular theatre that purveyed dramatic versions of sensational
events-recent lovers' suicides, public vendettas, and scandalous murders (all
dynamic yang elements)-to an eager popular audience much as docudramas
on television or gossip items in supermarket tabloids do today. House playwrights could easily incorporate these current events into familiar worlds by
the shuk6-sekai system already mentioned. Actors in intense competition with
each other looked to each new play as an opportunity to reach the audience
afresh. Government decrees ordered theatres to operate in specific theatre dis-

18 JamesR. Brandon
tricts, so troupes performed side-by-side, vying for the same pool of spectators
passing on the city streets. In this cutthroat environment, actors, playwrights,
and producers happily seized on any extraordinary contemporary happening
to give them an edge over rivals across the street or down the block.8
I suggest that in the formative period of male kabuki, that is, during the
Genroku period (1688-1704)

and at least into the H6reki period (1751-1764),

acting was a precarious occupation overall. Today, of course, the kabuki actor
has a guaranteed lifetime career, but that was not the case then, except for a
fortunate few. Rather, every kabuki actor competed with hundreds of fellow
actors. Let me cite some figures drawn from documents of that period to suggest why I think there was a great flow of people into and out of kabuki. As
many as 3,000 kabuki actors may have been performing at any one time during the first part of the i8th century. This number would include actors at the
large licensed theatres who were important enough to have their names published in theatre programs (banzuke)and critical commentaries (hyobanki)and
painted on sign boards (kanban)posted over the theatre entrance. From three
to six of the most important actors in a company had their pictures painted on
the large board over the play title; hence they were known as "title actors"
(nadaiyakusha).
All together, between eight and twelve large licensed theatres operated in
the three large metropolises, Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto (depending on the year,
usually two or three, but sometimes as many as seven theatres per city). If we
look at actor critiques (yakushahyobanki)published during the 75-year period
from I660 to I735, we find the names of more than 5,ooo actors (Kabuki
I972-I977,

appendix vol.:4-I37).9

These actors played the leads and support-

ing roles in a troupe, as mentioned above, and had sufficient popularity with
audiences to be worth critical attention. Among them, a fortunate few had
been born, or adopted, into famous families and had an excellent chance of
spending their lifetime onstage. The career of the average actor, however,
seems to have been quite short, perhaps Io to 12 years.'?Let me cite one situation as an illustration. If we look at the Miyako Mandayfi-za in Kyoto during
the period 1697 to 1700, we find that the great actor Sakata Tojfr6 I (I6441709) was actor-manager

those four years (Kabuki

I972-1977,

appendix

vol.:28o-8i). This was an extremely successful theatre and Tojur6was at the

height of his fame, yet within a decade the names of three out of four actors
in his company disappear from actor critiques entirely (Ihara I956-I963,
1:204-69).

The probability is that they were no longer acting." Extrapolating

from the total number of actors and the average length of a career, it seems
that something like 500 to 700 ranked actors were competing with each other
in the large, licensed theatres of the three cities at any one time.'2 The acting
company at a major theatre also contained, in addition to ranked actors, a
number of minor actors and supernumeraries.These actors were jammed into
a single large dressing room (obeya)located off to the side backstage and close
to the shrine dedicated to the fox god Inari, so they were commonly called
obeya or Inari-machi(Inari Town) actors. Because they were of low rank, their
presence is rarely recorded on playbills or sign boards, or in actors' critiques,
and their numbers must be inferred.'3 In addition, at any one time in
Kamigata, from two to four troupes were performing in cha shibai, "middle
theatres," in each city.14 As the term suggests, these were important theatres,
ranking just below the 6shibai, and they were used by established performers
whose names appear in the critiques.
Then too, other actors of all ranks were touring the hinterlands or performing at theatres in Japan's medium-sized cities (Nagoya, Hakata, Kumamoto,
Sendai, Kanazawa, and Shizuoka, for example). Or they were playing lucrative one- or two-month engagements at religious festivals or markets that

Kabukiand Shakespeare I9
were held several times a year at important centers of pilgrimage, such as the
Ise Shrine and Miyajima Shrine. Two theatres operated at Ise (Yoshida
1933:8-14)

and as many as six or seven kabuki, puppet, and other theatres

competed with each other at Miyajima's midsummer market (Susukida

1975:302-03).

An Edo theatre regulation

in 1794 ordered actors to refrain

from making regional and festival tours at their whim, because the big-city
theatre managers lost money when the stars were absent (Wigmore I983:9596). As a special case, the superstarIchikawa Danjuro VII (I79I-I859) toured
continuously to cities in central and western Japan for seven years after the
government

banished him from Edo in 1842 (Nishiyama

1960:204-08).

Fi-

nally, still other actors acted in the numerous small unlicensed kabuki theatres
(koshibai, "small theatre") that were found clustered together in half a dozen
locations in each large city. When a small theatre was set up in the precincts
of a shrine or temple it was called miyaji shibai (temple or shrine theatre) or
hyaku nichi shibai (hundred-day theatre), the length of time it was legally allowed to operate. Other koshibai were erected at transportation hubs and in
busy commercial districts. The poorest of the temporary structureswere called
odedeko, "mat-wall theatres," referring to the straw mats that made up the
walls and roof Koshibai were not allowed to have a drum tower (yagura),at
the entrance (indicating a license to perform), hanamichi, revolving stage, or
draw curtain, for these were the prerogatives of the large licensed 6shibai.'s In
Kamigata, professional troupes of child actors were popular at koshibai, acting
standard kabuki plays or imitating puppets (ningyoburi)to chanted narrative
(Matsudaira I993:52).6

A fundamental

question is, apart from the large and

medium theatres, how many provincial, festival, shrine, and crossroadsminor

theatres were available for kabuki performance? Based on scattered sources, a
conservative estimate of around oo00or I20 small kabuki theatres in the country does not seem unreasonable.17If the average small troupe had I5 actors,
also a conservative number, then some 1,500 to I,800 kabuki actors would
have been working in koshibai theatres. All together then, if we include actors
employed at 6shibai, chf shibai, and koshibai, it doesn't seem excessive to believe that as many as 3,000 kabuki actors were active at any given time, and
possibly more.
I think it is likely that in the early days of kabuki, actors crossed over between the large licensed theatres and small unlicensed theatres with some degree of frequency. Later generations of licensed actors, however, sought to
protect their prerogatives and did not favor outsiders joining their select
group. Abe Yuzo states that in Edo "exchange among actors of licensed and
unlicensed theatres was slight" during the late Tokugawa period (1970:I6). As
one example, when the Nakamura-za and Ichimura-za burned down in 1809,
middle-ranking actors from the two theatres moved to a koshibai at Ichigaya
Hachiman Shrine. In response to protests from the managers of the three licensed theatres, the government closed the koshibai and the actors had to
write a letter of apology before they could return to the major theatres (Abe
1970:14).8

In 1874, Ichikawa Ennosuke

I (1859-1880)

was expelled

(hamon)

from the ranks of licensed actors by the head of his acting family, Ichikawa
Danjro IX (1839-1903), because Ennosuke had accepted a position as actormanager of the Nakajima-za,

a minor theatre (Bach I990:28-36).'9

In the

Kamigata region, actors moved among large, medium, and small theatres
more freely (Mizuochi

1990:24).

I can point to a number of star actors who

began as nobodies in unlicensed theatres, but it is hard to say with what frequency this occurred. In any case, I believe an overall picture of many hundreds of actors in intense rivalry is clear enough. Actors were in constant
competition with each other for audience support in order to gain advances in
rank, fame, and income.

20

JamesR. Brandon
We have ample evidence of important actors, including stars, moving from
one licensed theatre to another and from one city to another throughout their
careers. Some actors moved a lot, some little, depending on circumstances. I
will cite a few examples, all from oshibai, to illustrate. At one extreme, during
the six decades that the star Nakamura Shichisabur II was acting in Edo, I7II
to 1770, he remained, contentedly it would seem, at one theatre, the
Nakamura-za, for at least 5I years.20At the other extreme, supporting actor
Tomisawa Montar moved 16 times in I9 years (Kabuki I972-I977, appendix
vol.:226). Because actors signed a yearly contract, there was no impediment to
moving at the end of a season; they were not obligated to stay on with a particular theatre or troupe. Supporting actor Tamagawa Gensabur6 moved 14
times in 28 years, while over a 24-year period Sodesaki Karyu played at 13
different theatres, which entailed moving to another city io times (Kabuki
1972-1977,

appendix vol.:209,

218). Even the great star Ichikawa Danjro

II,

who presumably could obtain optimal conditions from theatre zamoto, found
it useful to move among Edo's four large theatres seven times between 1705
and I736.21That is, his average stay at a theatre was four-and-a-half years (Kabuki 1972-1977,

appendix vol.:I67).

Or, if we return to Sakata Tojuro's im-

portant troupe at the Miyako Mandayf-za in Kyoto mentioned before,

records show that just five of thirty-six actors stayed with him the four years
he was actor-manager; each year half of his troupe moved on to another theatre (Ihara 1956-1963,

1:204-69).

Actors moved from one theatre to another during the season as well. In
Edo this was, in effect, breaking the yearly contract. But numerous commentaries for the period I763 to 1876 (found on a collection of illustrated programs, or hon banzuke) make clear that managers had to replace actors, acts
had to be abandoned, and new scenes had to be written and rushed onstage
because actors had left in mid-run (Waseda 1990:67-68, 197, 221). In Kyoto
and Osaka, it was not unusual for a troupe to play in several theatres during a
single season. As one rather extreme example, in 1788, Arashi Bunkichi's
company opened at the Nishi no Shibai in Osaka, moved to the Nishi no
Shibai at Fourth Street in Kyoto, and then returned to Osaka to the Onishi
Shibai, all within one 20-day period (Ihara I956-I963, 5:66-67). The constant
movement of actors among troupes and theatres suggests to me that kabuki
operated in a relatively fluid manner. It suggests creativity as well as uncertainty. That is, kabuki was not a fixed, or at times even a stable entity.
It could be added that kabuki actors were in competition with performers of
other popular genres as well. To illustrate this with one example, if we look at
a I68I map of Edo's major theatre district, located in adjoining Sakai-ch6 and
Fukiya-ch6, we find 13 theatres side-by-side in a four-block area. Eleven are
large theatres with a prominent drum tower indicating these are governmentlicensed theatres managed by a hereditary zamoto: four kabuki theatres (the
large Nakamura-za and Ichimura-za and the smaller Zengoro-za and Miyako
Dennai-za),22six puppet theatres (two featuring chanting in the new commercial jruri style and four in the old-fashioned religious sekkyostyle), and one variety theatre (gei zukushi). Two are unlicensed variety shows (misemonoshibai)
(Kabuki I972-I977,

I:I84-85).

Each theatre vied for the same customers, and

the kabuki actor rubbed shoulders with hundreds of fellow performers not
only from outside his theatre but from outside kabuki as well.
I believe instability in kabuki is also shown in the enormous attrition that has
characterized the kabuki acting profession during the past two centuries. This
can be seen by comparing the number of acting families that were active in the
Tokugawa period with the number of acting families existing today. Today all
actors belong to some 40 acting families. These are the successful survivors of a
much larger group of actor families that competed ferociously in the Tokugawa

Kabukiand Shakespeare 2I
period. To understand what occurred, I must first say something about acting
families and actors' names. Commoners in the Tokugawa period were forbidden by law to have family names (myojior sei); they could only have given, or
first names. Therefore, kabuki actors, who were even lower than commoners
(they were classed among hinin, nonhumans, or eta, outcasts), were referred to
in government documents merely by their given names, Danjuroor Koshirqfor
example. However, kabuki actors used "art names" (geimei) in public, consisting of a family name and a given name, such as Ichikawa Danjiur or
Matsumoto KOshiro(Hattori 1986:249-52).23 The actor's given name changed as

many as four to six times during the actor's lifetime, marking advances in success, status, and lineage, while the family acting name usually remained the
same and was passed on from generation to generation to an actor's heirs. A
number of actors within the family would share that family name and acting
style or lineage. Hence the acting "family" in kabuki was basic to the art form.
In the I8th century, 600 family names of actors are found in the records (Kabuki I972-I977, appendix vol.:158-278). The 40 or so acting family names that
have survived into the 20th century represent a mere seven to eight percent of
what was formerly an enormously rich and varied acting community. Rather
than boasting of kabuki's great acting heritage, the data tells us that 19 out of 20
acting families died out. Indeed, to look at a list of the 600 acting family names
is to enter a museum of dinosaur bones. They tell a story of catastrophicfailure
to survive. There are no living actor descendants for the family names Akita,
Fujita, Ikuta, Kojima, Kokan, Kokin, Katayama, Katsuyama, Katsumura,
Murayama, Matsushima, Miyajima, Nagashima, Takeshima, Sendai, Sakai and
Sakurai,Suzuki, and Shimazuka, and on and on and on. The family names that
did survive are Arashi, Band6, Ichikawa, Ichimura, Jitsukawa, Kataoka,
Matsumoto, Nakamura, Onoe, and Sawamura. The great majority of actors
share these names.24In later periods, hereditary families gained increasing control over kabuki. Actors on the periphery, those whose histories are unknown
and unwritten, found it harderto rise to importance. The huge, shifting, circulating "gene pool" of actors and acting families that was typical of early kabuki
shrank in size: the balance in kabuki moved toward the stable, yin direction.
But even when the flux and flow of people through the kabuki world slackened, as it did in the Igth century, competition with one's peers did not lessen.
A ceaseless rivalry with other actors and a desire to gain an advantage over
one's peers, that I have noted, as well as changes in Japanese society, provided
strong incentives to experiment with the new. Some actors from traditional
families daringly sought out imaginative, original approaches to kabuki, while
others remained intensely conservative. The former preserved their important
family plays and simultaneously devised new styles of performance in order to
attract a current audience. Since the actor had no permanent name, Hattori
makes the persuasive observation that each time the actor changed his geimei,
he was "reborn" in a new identity, thus reinforcing the felt need to always be
reinventing oneself and one's acting (1986:250).

Therefore, when the Meiji period (1868-1912) burst upon the Japanese
people and brought Shakespeare into their midst literally overnight, kabuki
had had two-and-a-half centuries of experience in adapting to new circumstances.25It wasn't strange for actors and managers to try out new dramatic
materials and otherwise keep kabuki abreast of the times. Kabuki had always
been "modern" and up-to-date. During the first decade of the Meiji period,
owners and managers sought to attract audiences of the new elite and middle
class. They moved from the unfashionable old theatre district of Saruwaka-ch6
in Asakusa to upscale Ginza and Azabu in the center of Tokyo. They built
large new theatres, quickly reaching the legal limit of 10 that the Meiji government allowed in 1873 (Abe 1970:23; Ihara [1933] I975:24). The hereditary

22

James R. Brandon

zamoto and actor Morita Kanya XII (I846-I897) opened the first modern
kabuki theatre near the foreign settlement in Tsukiji in 1872. Named the
Shintomi-za because it was in Shintomi-ch district, it offered chairs for Western visitors and introduced first gas and then electricity for stage lighting.
Kanya produced kabuki programs at night from five in the afternoon until
eleven in the evening in the Western manner (daytime performance had been
mandatory during the Tokugawa period).26 Kanya's modernizing and Westernizing strategiesincluded staging plays that would appeal to foreign residents
and visiting dignitaries. The Shintomi-za quickly became the theatre of choice
for Meiji-period elite and foreign spectators. For example, with this wealthy
audience in mind Kanya staged two kabuki plays set in Europe in the 1879
season (they will be discussed later). Many foreigners, including Crown Prince
Heinrich of Germany and former President Grant, came to the Shintomi-za
that year. For Grant'svisit, Kanya mounted The Last ThreeYearsof the Northern
Wars (Go Sannen Oshu Gunki) as the third item on a four-play program.
Newly written by Kawatake Mokuami, the play was based on General Grant's
victories in the Civil War: events were placed in a Japanese setting and
Ichikawa DanjuroIX, the leading actor of the day, played Hachiman Tar6, the
Japanese general modeled on Grant (Kimura I943:581-82).
In the first two decades of the Meiji era, that is the I87os and I88os, new
types of kabuki plays were created, reflecting European customs, technology,
and ideas that were flooding into Japan. Ichikawa Danjuro IX, known as the
greatest kabuki actor of his generation, publicly declared his disgust with traditional kabuki plays and acting styles at the Shintomi-za in 1878, vowing to
"reform"-that is, to Westernize-his art (Ihara 1956-1963, 7:233-36). He
adopted several strategies to accomplish this aim. He developed a plain, realistic acting style he called haragei, literally "stomach art," that is, instinctual or
"gut" acting. He eschewed kabuki's "feudal" conventions such as mie poses
and the old musicalized style of speaking (yakuharai)dialogue that was written
in conventional seven-and-five syllable meter (shichigocho).He also chose to
act in a new genre of serious drama called "living history" plays (katsurekigeki)
written for him by kabuki's preeminent playwright, Kawatake Mokuami
(1816-1893). In consonance with the goal of returning theatre to historical
truth, Danjfirogave up traditional whiteface makeup (oshiroi)and wore real armor on stage.27These efforts, his intellectual advisor Fukuchi Ochi assured
him, would improve the artistic level of kabuki and help bring social respectability to this previously despised theatre form. During four overseas missions
on behalf of the Meiji government, Ochi had seen that ballet and opera were
patronized by the European elite and he wanted kabuki to hold a similar, favored position in Japan'smodernized culture.
Danjfir's contemporary and rival, Onoe KikugoroV (1844-1903), enthusiastically sought out new plays set in the Meiji present. The genre was popularly called cropped-hair drama (zangirimono)because men in the Meiji period
were required by law to cut their hair short in current Western style. All of
the physical trivia of modern, that is European and American, life was put on
display for the entertainment and edification of audiences. A typical new
kabuki play, Kawatake notes, would show cloth umbrellas, shoes, suits and
dresses, chapeaux, briefcases, pocket watches, glass carafes, lamps, and pistols,
while characterswould converse knowingly about new institutions and occupations-banks, railroads,post offices, police stations, academies, newspapers,
public officials, and bellboys. At the same time, the productions continued to
use old-style writing structure and staging techniques: chanted narrative
(jruri), wooden-clapper sound effects (hyoshigiand tsuke), rhythmic dialogue
(shichigocho),divided dialogue (warizerifu), and curtain tableau (hippari mie)
among them (Kawatake 1959:789-9I). We can see something of the adven-

Kabukiand Shakespeare 23
turesome, offbeat spirit of the cropped-hair plays in the following example. In
1891, an Englishman named Spencer was making spectacular balloon ascents
in Ueno Park in Tokyo. Within months the cropped-hair play Riding the Famous Hot-Air Balloon (Fisen Nori Uwasa Takadono)28
was written by Mokuami
and staged at the Kabuki-za in Tokyo starring Kikugor6 V as Spencer. Suspended from a balloon high in the theatre's rigging, Kikugor6 made a speech
in English: "Ladies and gentlemen. I have been up three thousand feet. Looking down, I was pleased to see you in this Kabuki-za. Thanks [sic]you. Ladies
and gentlemen, with all my heart, I thank you" (Ihara I956-I963, 7:375). The
play was enthusiastically received during its run of 33 days largely, one gathers, because of the spectacularstaging and the novelty of the subject.
I argue that flying Kikugor6-as-Spencer from the rigging of the Kabuki-za
was no different than flying an actor-as-Tadanobuthe fox in Yoshitsuneand the
ThousandCherryTrees(YoshitsuneSenbonZakura),a popular scene in the standard
repertory. During nearly three centuries it was normal for new types of kabuki
plays and performing techniques to be devised to express the changing social reand
ality of successive historical periods: bravurahistory plays (aragoto-jidaimono)
in the Genroku period (I688gentle domestic love stories (wagoto-sewamono)
and
1704), adaptationsof puppet plays and their performing style (maruhonmono
ningy6buri) in the I740s and I750s,29 long dramatic dance plays (buyo geki) after

the I78os, and plays about gangstersand crime (kizewamono)in the mid-I8oos,
are some obvious examples. Therefore, when kabuki playwrightsand actors created living-history and cropped-hair plays in the Meiji period, they were only
continuing an accepted and ordinaryprocess of molding play forms and performance to suit contemporaryaudience expectations.
Kabuki actors and managers examined Western theatrical practice to see
what they might adopt for themselves. When it was discovered that European
societies allowed actresseson the stage, the possibility arose that women might
play female roles in kabuki (as is well-known, actresses were banned from
public stages in 1629). Important literary and government figures of the Theatre Reform Committee (Engeki Kairyokai) argued that actresses should replace male actors of female roles, the onnagata. In 1879, Kanya XII placed
English actresses onstage at the Shintomi-za. The play A StrangeTale of Castaways: A WesternKabuki (HyoryuKidan Seiyd Kabuki), was newly written by
the Shintomi-za house playwright, Kawatake Mokuami, to capitalize on interest in the West. Stars DanjuroIX, Ichikawa Kodanji V (I850-I922), and Iwai
Hanshir VIII (1829-1882) played major roles. Kanya spent lavishly to make
his production authentically foreign: complex stage settings were built to represent scenes in San Francisco, London, and Paris, and Kanya imported a
troupe of ten English and American actor-singers and musicians from Hong
Kong (led by a Mr. Wilson). In a scene set in a Parisian theatre, the foreign
performers sang sections of three operettas: La GrandDuchessde Gerolsteinby
Offenbach, The Daughterof the Regiment by Donizetti, and La Fille de Madame
Angot by Lecoq. But Kanya's production was a failure. Audiences could not
understand the English dialogue (it sounded like chickens cackling) and the
Western singing evoked howls of laughter. According to some reports, the
foreign actors were inept. Unable to repay the capital he had borrowed to
stage the play, Kanya was forced to relinquish his position as hereditary
zamoto: in I880 a theatrical corporation took control of Shintomi-za management (Kawatake I959:780-8I;
Ihara I956-I963,
Ihara [1933]
7:248-49;
1975:246; Tsutsumi 1998:183). Four years later at the same theatre, Kikugor6

V arranged for a dozen geisha from the Shinbashi entertainment quarter to

dance in the party scene of the traditional kabuki play, The Song of Ise: Love's
Blunt Sword(Ise Ondo Koi no Netaba). To avoid improper mixing of the sexes,
the geisha were given a separate entryway and were not allowed to exchange

24 James R. Brandon
dialogue

with the actors (Ihara I956-I963,

7:290; Ihara [193311975:70I).

Somewhat later, the sister of actor Bando Mitsugor6 VII and the sister of
Ichikawa Sadanji II appeared on the kabuki stage (Komiya 1956:316). And in
1893, the two young daughters of Danjfir IX appeared with their father at the
Kabuki-za as the butterflies in The MirrorLion Dance (KagamiJishi) (Toita
I980:8; Ihara I956-I963,

7:403).

The person who should be given most credit for women reappearing in
kabuki is the talented actress Ichikawa Kumehachi I (1846-I913). She trained
in kabuki dance as a child, apprenticed with actor Iwai Hanshiro VIII, and
then became a favored pupil of Danjro6 IX. Around i866, she began performing kabuki in public in small theatres when it was still illegal for women to act
in public. By 1873, she was featured at the newly built Satsuma-za. She gained
a reputation starringin the classic kabuki dance plays (buyo and buyogeki) The
List (Kanjincho),The Maid of Dojo Temple(MusumeDqjYji),and The
Subscription
Heron Maiden (Sagi Musume) (Kawatake 1960-1962,

I:I66 and 2:582).

In 1887,

she performed with male kabuki actors at the newly built Azuma-za in
Asakusa (Ihara [I933] 1975:700). A police regulation in 1890 specifically re-

ferred to her, noting that "mixed casts of actors and actresses have been appearing at the Azuma-za," and went on to say that because "foreigners will
ridicule the extremely licentious custom of men dressing as women," henceforth, "when performances by actresses and actors occur in the future, this
should be allowed" (Ihara I956-I963, 7:369). In 1893 Kumehachi opened the
new Misaki-za as troupe leader (zagashira)of an all-female kabuki company
and the following year became theatre manager (zamoto) of the Asakusa-zaimportant events marking women's reentry into Japanese professional theatre
after a lapse of two-and-a-half centuries (Nojima 1988:77).30Kabuki seemed
to have moved far in the direction of modernization (and Westernization) in
these first 25 years of the Meiji period.
But the fact is these cases were exceptions; other actors did not follow
Danjfir's or Kikugoro's, or, for that matter Kumehachi's, example. Men continued to play female roles in kabuki, as they do today. As Faith Bach notes
(1990:17), Danjfir6was cruelly satirized for the nit-picking historical research
he carried out to make his living-history performances authentic: one famous
cartoon showed Danjir6 surrounded by long-nosed demons (tengu)jeering at
him, "Go look at the scrolls in H6ryf Temple! Go look at the treasures in
T6dai Temple!"31By all accounts audiences found Danjir6's new acting style
profoundly dull. By the end of the I88os, even Kikugor6 had abandoned his
experiments with cropped-hair plays.
But new subjects were readily available in European plays. Playwrights and
producers adapted scenes and whole plays to the kabuki stage. At the most superficial level, a Western locale had exotic appeal, being distant and unknown,
as with the exotic settings in a James Bond film in our day. Dozens of Western plays were produced as kabuki during the first decades of the Meiji period
but I can only mention a few of the more important. In 1872, at Kyoto's
Kitagawa-za, A Tale of WesternSuccess(Saikoku Risshi Hen), was set in Paris
and the kabuki cast played the roles of Frenchmen dressed in chic Western
frock coats and trousers (Ihara [1933] I975:769). One of the new kabuki plays

that Kanya staged at the Shintomi-za in 1879, and contributed to his financial
ruin, was Mokuami's adaptation of Bulwer-Lytton's Money (titled Ningen
Banji Kane Yo no Naka, or Humanity and the World of Money), in 1879. The
play was exceptionally successful-77,630 spectators, a 60-day run, and boxoffice income

of 35,450 yen (roughly $I million today).32 But the play was

very costly to produce (Kanya had to pay 33 Dutchmen to come from

Yokohama each evening to fill the stage) leaving Kanya deeply in debt. The
typical kabuki program of the time was made up of several independent plays

Kabukiand Shakespeare 25
1. Film was combinedwith
liveperformance
earlyin the
2oth century.Kabukiactor
IchikawaSadanjiII in
The Bells (Suzu), Meijiza, 1911. As village head,

he grandlygesturestoward
a snowyscenewith a rearprojectedfilmof a moving
horse-drawn
sleigh. (From
Engei Gah6 [1911]; cour-

tesy ofJamesR. Brandon)

2. Scarpiain Tosca was

(midori)and Money was one of four items on the bill (Kawatake 1959:779;
Ihara 1956-1963,

7:243). In the attempt to discover what Western tales would

please Japanese audiences, kabuki producers tried all types of plays, from
RobinsonCrusoepreceded by an explanatory lecture at the Sakai-za in Kyoto
in 1887, to Victorien Sardou's Tosca at the Kabuki-za in 1891, to Leopold
Lewis's The Bells at the Meiji-za in I9II. Scenes were rewritten and condensed to fit into a standard three- or four-play kabuki program and plots
were transferredinto Japanese settings, contemporary or historical. Thus, in
January 1905 at the Meiji-za in Tokyo, when Hugo's Hernaniwas played as
kabuki, it was transferred to the world of novelist
Kyokutai Bakin's mammoth The Storyof Eight Virtuous Warriors(Hakkaden)set in I4th- and I5th-century Japan; and two months later at the same theatre
Schiller's WilliamTell was placed in the world of The
VirtuousCommonerof Sakura(SakuraGiminden)set in
the I7th century (Kawatake 1959:852, 872-74; Ihara
I956-I963, 7:320, 33I-32, 380-8I and 8:I82, I84).

During the first two decades of the 20th century,

kabuki management and leading actors tried to use
the wondrous new performance technology imported from Europe and America called "action pictures" (katsudo shashin) to hold their audience.
Motion pictures were shown several times a year at

.-

the Kabuki-za starting in I898.33 As early as I9OI, a

film was used as a backdrop for a kabuki production

at the Ichimura-za. Some 20 kabuki plays were recorded on film in the first decade of the century, beginning with The Maple Viewing(Momijigari)starring
Danjur6 IX and Kikugoro V and Two Maids of Dojo
Temple (Futari Dojoji) with Ichimura Uzaemon XV
(I874-I945)

and Onoe Baiko VI (I870-I934),

both

filmed onstage in I899. Audiences were so enthralled

with the new kabuki films that in I9II the Association of Tokyo Theatres (Tokyo Gekij6 Kumiai) attempted to ban kabuki actors from appearingin them

one of manyEuropeanroles
playedby kabukiactor
MatsumotoKoshiroVII,
ImperialTheatre,Tokyo,
1913. Powdered wig, ruffled

lacekerchief,and a casual
pose withfingerslightly
touchingthe cheekreproduce
a Westernimageof sophisticatednobility.(From
Engei Gah6 [1913]; cour-

tesyofJamesR. Brandon)

26 James R. Brandon
(Nojima 1988, appendix:3 I-32). Of course, the cinema would grow into an
entertainment industry that soon surpassedkabuki in size and in the ability to
interpret current life.
In the early 20th century film was not yet a serious competitor to kabuki, but
two new forms of live theatre were starting to challenge kabuki's dominance.
Shinpa,literally "new style," dramaput contemporary events from Meiji-period
Japan onstage, while shingeki,"new drama,"was transplantedEuropean modern
drama-Chekhov, Strindberg, Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw-performed in Japanese. Some young kabuki actors were fascinated by shingeki's realism. New
theatres were built to accommodate the needs of the new genres: in Tokyo the
Masagoya-za, Hongo-za, and Meiji-za for shinpa; the Yuraku-za and the Tsukiji
Sh6gekij6 (Tsukiji Little Theatre) for intimate shingeki productions; the
Teikoku Gekij6 (Imperial Theatre) for large-scale modern drama, opera, and
ballet; and scores of movie houses. The managers of the staid Kabuki-za, the
premier kabuki theatre in Tokyo, recognized the appeal of European theatre
and booked light Western entertainment in the intervals between monthly
kabuki programs: the Charlie Taylor Company from Europe playing Rip Van
Winkleand CrossPurposesin repertory (January I9OI); the W.E. Davies variety
show from England, matinee and evening performances (February I902); and
the CarmansuelaTroupe, an all-girl singing and dancing show from the United
States (November

I903)

(Ihara I956-I963,

8:64, II8, I56).34 In order to attract

an upscale, educated audience the Kabuki-za even lent its stage to scholar
Tsubouchi Sh6y6's Literary Arts Society (Bungei Ky6kai) for its first theatre
production in November I906. One item on its program was the trial scene
from The Merchantof Venice,directed by Shyo and played by the Society's amateur actors (Ihara I956-I963,

8:223; Engei Gaho I907:before

I).

Against this background, let us see how kabuki initially encountered the
plays of Shakespeare. Shakespeare was known in Japanese in the early Meiji
period as Shahikio. In shortened form he was called Sa6 or Shao, the phonetic
reading (ateji) of the characterses, sha, sand, and -j,0, a respectful form of
addressfor an elder, hence "Old Master Sha(kespeare)"(Kawatake 1960-1962,
2:552). Scholars have identified dramatic sequences suggestive of Shakespeare's
stories in a handful of pre-Meiji period kabuki plays. Kawatake Toshio calls
attention to the offer of human flesh to be taken in compensation in
Chikamatsu Monzaemon's 1695 puppet drama Birthday Picture of Buddha
(Shaka Nyorai Tanjoe), a situation that somewhat parallels The Merchantof
Venice.The 1771 puppet play, Mount Imo and Mount Se: An ExemplaryTale of
Womanly Virtue (ImoseyamaOnna Teikin), by Chikamatsu Hanji and others,
shows two young lovers who die when their feuding families forbid their
marriage, a situation similar to RomeoandJuliet (Kawatake I974:482).35
Several scholars have noted that young lovers are separated and death is
caused by poison in The Puzzle of Tangled Love Resolved (Kokoro no Nazo
Toketa Iroito), a kabuki play staged in Edo in I8IO (Kawatake 1959:706;
Toyoda I940:5). It constituted part two (nibanme)of an all-day program at the
Ichimura-za and it featured major stars, Ichikawa Danjufr6VII, Matsumoto
Koshir V (1764-1838), Iwai Hanshir V (1776-1847), and Onoe Shoroku I
(1744-1815). The script was written by Tsuruya Nanboku IV (1755-1829),
the most respected playwright of his time. Known as "Nanboku the Great,"
he was famous for his facility in concocting bizarre plots. Ihara notes that the
play concerns the sudden death of a thread-shop girl following her marriage.
Her corpse is exhumed, blood overflows from sake cups, and geisha dance for
their patrons while wearing kimonos soaked in the blood, an action eliciting
the patrons' admiration

(Ihara I956-I963,

5:449-50).

In many of Shake-

Kabukiand Shakespeare 27
speare's plays we find equally gruesome events, but not in Romeo andJuliet.
Typical of 19th-century kabuki performance, Hanshir6 played two roles, the
dead bride and her sister. In 1932, Takemura Satoru proposed that Nanboku
had been influenced by Shakespeare's play. He argued that Dutch merchants
living on Dejima Island in Nagasaki Harbor knew Shakespeare's Romeo and
Juliet, that they performed it there in 1809, and that knowledge of this performance reached Nanboku before he wrote The Puzzle of TangledLove Resolved
the following year. He also noted that Nanboku's play had many revivals
(1829, 1840, 1844, and 1871), indicating to him that the play was somehow
Takemura's speculations are
exceptional (Takemura [1932] I982:I97-204).36

discounted by scholars today and Toyoda suggests that any similarities are the
result of coincidence or due to influence of Chinese literary models (I940:4).
In 1875, the writer Kanagaki Robun published Hamlet: A WesternKabuki
(Seiyo KabukiHamuretto)in three installments in the IllustratedSyllabaryNewspaper(HiraganaEiri Shinbun),and in 1879 playwright Kawatake Mokuami began a retelling of Hamlet for kabuki which he did not complete (Kawatake
[1982] 1997:I49). Neither of these adaptations was staged at the time. The first

kabuki production of Shakespeare of which we have certain knowledge was

The Merchantof Veniceperformed as a domestic play (sewamono)in an adaptation by Katsu Genz6. Given the fanciful title A Time of CherryBlossoms:A
Worldof Money (SakuraDoki Zeni no Yo no Naka), it proved a great success at
the Ebisu-za in Osaka in I885. Since this was the i8th year of Meiji, one can
hardly say that Shakespeare had been rushed to the stage. However, I suggest
that Shakespeare could not have been adapted for kabuki performance earlier.
Several steps of adaptation, in Japanese and in English, and in media other
than the stage, had to be taken first. A Time of CherryBlossoms:A Worldof
Money was five removes from Shakespeare's play: (i) Genz6's Japaneselanguage play was based on (2) a serial novel by Udagawa Bunkai previously
published in Osaka in the Japanese-language Asahi newspaper that followed
(3) an earlier Japanese-language translation of (4) the I8-page English-language synopsis of The Merchantof Venicethat Charles and Mary Lamb had
composed for children and published in Talesfrom Shakespeare(1807), which,
in turn, was taken from (5) Shakespeare's play (Kawatake 1974:498; Ihara
1956-1963,

7:304; Kawatake

1959:833;

Minami

1996:1-2;

Lamb [1807]

The play was set in Japan and its theme was the mercy of
Buddha, changes intended to make its strange story more familiar to Japanese
audiences. The role of Kinokuniya Denjir6 (Antonio) was played by the
I892:I04-2I).37

popular

actor-manager,

Nakamura

Sojuro I (I835-I889),

known

as the

"Danjiur of Kyoto-Osaka." A leading figure in the movement to modernize

kabuki, his interpretation of Antonio was strongly influenced by Western
ideas of acting (Kawatake i959:827-28). Genzo's adaptation proved extremely
successful with kabuki actors and popular with audiences: it was the basis of at
least 12 separate productions in Osaka and Tokyo between I885 and 1908,
usually under the title The World of Money (Kane no Yo no Naka) (Minami
1996:2-6;

Ihara 1956-I963,

7:44I,

531). In one revival Shylock was called

Yokubari Ganpachi (Stubborn Tightfist), identifying the character's nature

while hiding his Western origin (Toyoda 1940:8).
The next play by Shakespeare to be staged by kabuki actors was Hamlet, in
1907 and 1908. It is helpful to place these two productions in the context of
kabuki's difficulties in the first decade of the 20th century. The two greatest
stars of Meiji-period kabuki, Danjfir6 IX and Kikugor6 V, had died in 1903,
leaving no mature successors.38 The shinpa troupe led by the husband and
wife team of Kawakami Otojiro and Kawakami Sadayakko39had just returned
to Japan from a year-and-a-half tour of Europe and America where they had

28 JamesR. Brandon

3. Othello, thefirst
shinpaproductionof
Shakespeare,directedby
KawakamiOtojiro,Meijiza, Tokyo, February1903.
Muro Washiro(Othello)
holdsthe handof thefallen
Katsu Yoshio(Cassio).
The adaptationis set in the
present,in Meiji-period
Japan, and Othello,played
by Otojiro,wearsaJapanesemilitaryuniformand
blackmakeup.(From
Engei Gaho; courtesyof
JamesR. Brandon)
performed with great success. During their time abroad they had made a point
of seeing and studying European and American theatre. In 1903 they mounted
ambitious shinpa-style adaptations of three of Shakespeare'sgreatest tragedies
for runs of five to seven performances each. Othello,at the Meiji-za, and Hamlet, at the Hongo-za were localized and set in Japan, following the usual pattern of adapting Western plays to Japanese settings. Othello (Otojiro) became
a Japanese general named Muro Washir6, Desdemona (Sadayakko)was called
Tomone, Cassio was Katsu Yoshio, Brabantio was Fura Banjo, Iago was Iya
Gozo, and so forth. The ghost scene in Hamlet was set in Tokyo's Aoyama
directed
in
Hamuretto,
4.
Cemetery. On the other hand, the trial scene from The Merchantof Venice,
shinpastyle by Kawatake
staged at the Meiji-za, was advertised as being a faithful copy of Western
Otojiroat the Hongo-za,
Shakespeare. Otojiro had met Henry Irving and had carefully studied his Shylock when the two men were performing in Boston at the same time in 1899.
Tokyo, 1903. Shinpa actor
FujisawaAsajiro,wearing Otojir6's role was called "Shylock" in the program and costar Fujisawa
casualkimonoand reading Asajiro's "Antonio," and a photograph shows them wearing European cosa book,portraysHamletas tume. Yet a review noted the prevalence of old-style pauses (omoiire)and posa youngJapaneseintellecturing (shigusa),suggesting the production mixed Japanese and Western styles
of acting (Tsubouchi I903b:3), which is not strange considering that this was
tual, largelyerasing
Shakespeare'sforeignness. an early attempt at replication of Western theatre.
(Photocourtesyof
Otojir6 and Sadayakkowere the firstJapanese actors to have direct theatrical
KawatakeToshio)
experience in Europe and America and so their interpretationsof Shakespeare
excited intense public interest in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe where the
productions toured over the next few years. Shinpa drama was in its "Golden
Age" and other troupes were quick to add Shakespeare'sstories to their repertories. Minami identifies over 40 professionalshinpa productions between I9OI
and 1915 of adaptations of Julius Caesar, King Lear, The Merchantof Venice,
Hamlet, Othello,Romeo andJuliet, Macbeth,Henry IV, TwelfthNight, The Merry
Wives of Windsor,and, most popular of all, Timon of Athens, staged 20 times
(1996:4-13). Shinpa represented an undeniable threat to kabuki at this time.
Not only that, in 1908 New Hamlet (Shin Hamuretto)was staged at the Misakiza in Tokyo by the all-female kabuki troupe organized by actress Ichikawa
Kumehachi I (Kawatake 1967:406). Now called the Actress' Company (Joyuza), the group and its imaginative productions suggested a new direction for
Japanesetheatre that directly challenged all-male kabuki.
Given these circumstances, it is not strange that several adventuresome

Kabukiand Shakespeare 29
kabuki producers and actors looked to Shakespeare for new play material. In
I907, Ichikawa Kodanji V played Hamuretto in Yamagishi Kayo's adaptation
of Hamlet, titled Hamuretto,at the Meiji-za in Tokyo. The following year, the
rising star of kabuki in Osaka, Nakamura Ganjiro I (I860-I935), revived the
role of Hamuretto with considerable success. Kawatake Toshio refers to
Kayo's adaptation of Hamlet as an example of "new kabuki" (shin kabuki)
(I967:416-I8).

The hero's name has an exotic ring but everything

else was

localized. The action was placed in Ashikaga-period Japan (I4th to I6th centuries) and the script was crafted in old-fashioned kabuki style: it included a
great deal of chanted narrative (j6 ruri) that interpreted and commented on
the action, poetic sections were written in standard kabuki phrases of seven
and five syllables (shichigocho), and offstage music (geza) accompanied the
action. In the player scene, Hamuretto summoned a troupe of no performers,
played by Nakamura Matagoro I and other kabuki actors. Because kabuki actors do not sing, Ophelia's mad song was given to a geza musician seated offstage (Kawatake

1974:216-26).

Neither

the adapter nor the actors were

interested in using Shakespeare'smelancholy Dane to inaugurate a new style

of kabuki drama or performance. Photographs of Hamuretto show all the
physical attributes of a standardkabuki history play-settings, costumes, wigs,
makeup, and stage positioning (see Kawatake I967:before I).
These early encounters between Shakespeareand kabuki were decisively in
favor of Japanese culture and kabuki theatrical form. Shakespeare's foreign
dramatic material was assimilated into kabuki dramatic worlds (sekai) and the
Japanese characterswere presented through kabuki acting techniques. Among
the techniques that were applied to Shakespeare were rhythms of hyoshigi
wooden clappers to open and close the curtain, tsuke sound-effect patterns to
support action, entrances through the audience on the hanamichi, and vocal
and movement techniques unique to kabuki (mie, yakuharai, for example), as
well as offstage shamisen,
drum, and flute music
and jo ruri narrative already mentioned. Further, the productions
were staged in kabuki
theatres as part of theJIM
.............
regular kabuki season
their "otherness" was not
emphasized by placing
them outside the kabuki
production system. In
brief, managers and actors presented audiences
with a more or less normal kabuki performance
and, in order to do this,
:
Shakespeare's presence
was completely or largely
erased. (It is extremely
interesting to note that in
............
India, China, and Korea
traditional theatre artists
localized and absorbed
Shakespeare's stories into
popular performing styles
-. . ...
in a similar fashion. For 1

5. KawatakeOtojiroas the
ghost of Hamlet'sfatherin
the shinpaproductionof
Hamuretto at the Hongoza, Tokyo in 1903, is

dressedin aJapanese
general'suniformof the
time, changing
historicaltale
Shakespeare's
(jidaimono) into a

docudrama
of currentevents
(sewamono). (Photocourtesy of KawatakeToshio)

6. ShinpaactorKawakami
Otojiroas Shylockprepares
to cut his pound offlesh
from Antonio (shinpaactor
and teacherFujisawa
Asajiro)in the "Trial
Scene"fromThe Merchant of Venice, Meijiza, Tokyo, 1903.

Costumingand hairstyles
follow theAmericanmodel
of HenryIrvingas Shylock
(insert),an earlyattemptto
a Westernpro"replicate"
ductionof Shakespeare.
(From Engei Gaho
[1903]; courtesy ofJames

R. Brandon)

30

James R. Brandon

7. Yamagishi Kayo's adap-

tationof Hamlet, entitled

Hamuretto, wasfirstproducedat the Meiji-za, Tokyo, in 1907. Performedby

kabukiactorsand completelylocalized,
versionwas
Yamagashi's
set in 14th-century
Japan.
The madnessof kabuki
princessOrieHime
(Ophelia),playedby
onnagataspecialist
IchikawaMetoraI, is symbolizedby the sprayof
flowersin herhand. Yuri
no Mae (Gertrude),
played
by IchikawaEnjo, and
HamuraOjiyasu
(Claudius),playedby
IchikawaDansho, watch
from the right.(Photocourtesyof KawatakeToshio)

8. & 9. Shakespeare's
plays havelongbeenadapted,localized,andperformed
by indigenoustheatrecompanies
in China, Korea,andIndia,as well as inJapan.Hamlet(left)
andMacbeth(right)havelost theirEuropeanidentityand arepresentedthroughregional
in IndiawearingstandardnorthIndiantheatrical
costume,Bombayarea,
theatreforms
192os.

(From Sisson [1926]; courtesyofJames R. Brandon)

Kabukiand Shakespeare 31
example, see Brandon [1997], Kim [1995], Li [i995],
and Sisson [I926].)

Direct translationsof Shakespeare'splays into Japanese

were not used for these earlykabukiproductions.Rather,
playablescriptswere worked out from second- and thirdhand sources. In the I88os, adaptationsof Shakespeare's
stories began appearing in serial form in illustrated
newspapers (eirishinbun).We are indebted to Kawatake
Toshio for publishing a number of fascinating illustrations of the Kanagaki Robun's serial version of
Hamurettothat appearedin the TokyoIllustratedNewspaper (Tokyo Eiri Shinbun), in 22 installments, OctoberNovember, I886 (I967:before I). The characters are
pictured in conventional kabuki style, some in a mie
pose with one crossed eye (nirami)that is familiarin traditional ukiyoe prints of kabuki actors. The adaptation
included sections of narrativewhich, of course, do not
appear in Shakespeare'splays, but are typical of kabuki
scripts of the time (Kawatake 1967:188-89; Kawatake
I997:I5I).

Because

adaptations

are set in Japan, the

adapterwill choose an appropriatename for a character

that sounds Japanese and at the same time relates back
to Shakespeare, either in sound or through suggested
meaning. Thus Hamuretto sounds like Hamlet,40while
Orie Hime, sounding something like Ophelia, also
means Princess Broken Branch, an image suggesting her
nature. In some adaptations, Ophelia is called Mikariya Hime, Princess of the
True Sword House.
Although Robun's version of Hamlet was not staged during the Meiji period, it was performed in pure kabuki style in I991 (although not in a kabuki
theatre such as the Kabuki-za or the National Theatre). Producer Kawatake
Toshio and director Orita K6ji followed Robun's I886 adaptation in which
the play was set in 14th-century Japan, thus reviving the long-abandoned pattern of localizing adaptations of Shakespeare. It was translatedas Kabuki Version "Hamlet"from its original title, HamurettoYamatoNishikie. The young
kabuki star Ichikawa Somegoro VII (b. 1973) played the dual roles of Hamlet
(Hamura Maru) and Ophelia (Mikariya Hime) using traditional kabuki quickchange costume techniques (hayagawari).This "sensational" adaptation traveled to England and Ireland and was restaged in September 1997 at the
Sunshine Theatre (Sanshain Gekij6) in Tokyo (Sanshain Gekij6 1997:1-2).

Kabuki's relationship to Shakespearewas significantly altered when directors

and actors in the shingeki movement introduced modern European dramaturgy and realistic staging to Japan. After the Second World War, shingeki
would become a direct competitor for kabuki and shinpa audiences. But in the
first decades of the 20th century, shingeki's importance lay in the radicallynew
ideas and attitudes its artistsintroduced into the Japanese theatre world. Here,
let me suggest two aspects of the new theatre movement that I believe have
had profound and lasting effects on kabuki interpretationsof Shakespeare.
First, attendant on the development of modern theatre in Japan, the vast
corpus of Western drama was translated into Japanese language for shingeki
performance. While the earliest translations of Shakespeare, such as Toyama
Shoichi's Hamlet in I88I, titled Vendettaof a VirtuousPrince (Reigen Oji no
Adauchi),utilized familiarkabuki third-person commentary (j6ruri) chanted by
an offstage narrator (tayu), these were soon replaced by line-by-line translations, in poetry or prose or in combination, in the attempt to match

10. An illustration in the

style of a kabukiactorprint
(yakushamitate-e) of
KanagakiRobun'sserial
narrativeHamlet: A Japanese Tapestry (Hamuretto
YamatoNishikie)publishedin the Tokyo Illustrated Newspaper,
October1886. The charactersare ShibaKanetomo
(Claudius),flanked by
MiyauchiShuzen
(Polonius)and Mikariya
Hime (Ophelia).Dressed
in kabukicostumesand
wigs, they areportrayed
with strongkabukifacial
expressions.(Photocourtesy
of KawatakeToshio)

32

James R. Brandon

11. The youngkabukistar

VII
IchikawaSomegoroI
the
dual
roles
plays
of
HamuraMaru (Hamlet)
and MikariyaHime (Princessof theHouse of ther
TrueSword,Ophelia)in
Kabuki Version "Hamlet," SunshineTheatre,
Tokyo, 1997. Basedon
KanagakiRobun's 1886
Hamuretto Yamato
Nishikie, the localized
storyis enactedthroughtraditionalconventionsof
kabukicostume,music,and
actingin a consciousrevival
of thepatternof adaptations
of the Meii period.(From
Kabuki Version "Hamlet" advertising
flyer; courtesy ofjames R. Brandon)

~.~.
,
M

X,

..............l
i::::::::
:::::i::::::::::::::::::~
:::::
:: ~
ls~j:i::
B~i
....

~~~~~;iSii~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~XX...

'~~~~~~~~s"-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i

i::S~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...

. ....
iiiiiii
. ...............
'''i'ii'ii'i~
";fi:::.:::::~:::_lll~'ji~i'..
..........~?i:~rii~
...
..........5':;:
...............iil~i:::~.~i:'~

Shakespeare'stexts. Tozawa Masayasuand Asano Wasabur6published I0 trans-

lationsof Shakespeare's
playsbetween I905 and I9I0 (Toyoda I940:45-47).
Between I907 and I928, Tsubouchi Shoy6 (I859-I 935), professor of English
literature at Waseda University, finished his monumental translations of

Shakespeare's
completeworks(MilwardI963:I90-9I).

Shoy6'stranslations
es-

pecially were admired and widely performed.4' When these close translations
(honyaku)became available, adaptations (hon'an) came to be seen as inferior
and kabuki actors stopped using them.42 For example, Matsumoto Koshiro VII
(I870-I949)

used an adaptationwhen he first played Othello in

I917,

but

when he played the role a second time in I925 he used Shoy6's direct transla-

tion (KawatakeI969:2I).

Even earlierthan this, in

I907

Kodanjiand in

I908

performed The Merchant

of V/enice
Venicein separate
separate productions
productions using
using
Sadanji had performed
Sadanj'i
of
Mrerchant

Kabukiand Shakespeare 33
Shoyo's translation, and in 1911 Koshirohad played Falstaffin a direct translation of The MerryWivesof Windsorat the Imperial Theatre (Arai 1972:385-87).
It was a new experience for a kabuki actor to perform Shakespearein translation. A translation was valorized as "following the original text" (gensaku
dori), conferring on it the authority of Old Master Shakespeare himself. So
when Sadanji, Kodanji, and Koshir6 memorized a scholar's translation, they
gave up, largely unnoticed it seems, their extremely important power to act
spontaneously onstage. Improvisation in performance contributed life and vitality to Tokugawa-period kabuki. This is immediately apparentif we read the
text of any play in the standardrepertory:the written text is comprised of stage
directions (togaki) together with dialogue (serifu) and lyrics, either of songs
(uta) or of third-person chanted narrative (joruri). The stage directions contain
many places where action or dialogue is left to the actor's discretion. To take 12. Title
page of the earliest
one play as an illustration, I looked through the script of the famous Kanadehon
translation
Japanese
of
Chishingura(The Forty-SevenSamurai)and found 182 stage directions that call Hamlet
(1881)by Toyama
for actor improvisation or choice (Toita 1955, i:I-II6).43
The open-ended diShoichi. Theplay's title,
rection "as the actor wishes" (yoroshikuor yoroshikuatte) occurs 51 times. For
Vendetta of a Virtuous
example, in Act III when the lyrics of a song describe Okaru's love for Kanpei, Prince
(Reigen Oji no
the direction reads, "during this, Okaru does as she wishes" (kono uchi Okaru
andsubtitle,
Adauchi),
yoroshikuatte) (22). Similarly,when the thief Sadakur6is shot in the dark in Act Hamlet: A Western
V, the direction says, "do business of bleeding and painful coughing of blood Drama in
Japanese Naras appropriate" (chi ni nari, chi o hakikurushimukoto yoroshikuatte) (39). Or,
rative Style (SeiyoJoruri
when the hero Yiranosuke pretends to be debauched in Act VII, "there is eatHamuretto), aretypical
ing business as appropriate"(yoroshikuku koto atte) (62). Other actors' choices kabukititles. The
textfolindicated in the stage directions are dynamic poses (mie) 12 times, reflective
lows traditionalkabukiand
pauses (omoiire) 66 times, and movements or gestures (konashi)27 times. The
conventions.
mie is perhaps the best known of all kabuki acting techniques (Leiter puppet-drama
(Photo
courtesy
of
sometimes called a "frozen moment." All action in a play
I979b:232-34),
KawatakeToshio)
ceases when the actor strikes a pose, feet planted, arms
extended, the head rotated into a fixed position ac:,j;
i--i-i
companied by loud tsuke beats. To intensify his expression, a male character may dilate and cross one
>
eye over the other (nirami). As the scholar Shuzui -:....;:: .
....Kenji notes of omoiire, the actor "is free to find the
most expressive

form" (I947:264).

Finally,

I2

stage

? 1:
!tiPl

directions call for ad-libbed dialogue (sutezerifu).

4::'These are especially important as these sequences can .
.'.:
continue for some time, as in the direction "from this
:V
point the dialogue is ad-libbed" (koreyori sutezerifu
1I
nite) (14). The amount of freedom open to the actor
in even classic plays suggests that improvisation was an
:
:i '
extremely important part of successful kabuki performance.44 It was easy for actors to continue

their old

habits of improvising when they played Shakespeare

in adaptation,because the scripts were in no way sacrosanct. But a translation was Shakespeare and it was
inviolate. In this new relationship between text and
actor, text held the dominant position and the actor
served it (ratherthan the text serving the actor as was
the case in Tokugawa-period kabuki). We can only
imagine how inhibiting it must have been to the creative actor.45And here we can note that a parodoxical
reversalhas occurred. The "new" text of Shakespeare,
which at first had functioned as an active, positive

::

i:

,i
:;

I
,,

iilllllllil!;:
-1 i i.. .

-;:
X...

34 JamesR. Brandon
yang factor within kabuki, almost immediately became fixed and unchangable,
functioning as a conservative, passive yin factor that suppressedthe active, improvisatory quality of"traditional" kabuki acting.
Second, faithful translations stamped the word "foreign" on every page of
Shakespeare'splays. In performance, "authentic" settings and costumes cried
out England, Italy, Scotland, Denmark, Greece-never Japan. Japanese audiences read the translations as irrevocably "other." Characters moved and
spoke as if they were Europeans motivated by Judeo-Christian beliefs, not as
Japanese motivated by Buddhist-Shinto beliefs. The task of the kabuki actor
performing Shakespeare in translation, then, was to convincingly portray a
foreigner, a Hamlet, a Lady Macbeth. When an English observer wrote that
Koshir6 VII acted Othello so excellently in 1925 "it was in no way different
from seeing the play in London and New York" (Kawatake 1969:21) this was
accepted as a supreme compliment. The aim of performance was simple,
though difficult to realize: it was to imitate a standard, canonical British production of Shakespeare. A professional model of English-language
13. Julius Caesar, per-

formedin Englishby the

WesternDramaStudy
Group, Tokyo-za, 1907.

KabukiactorSawamura
SonosukeI as Brutus(right)
andshingekiactorArakawa
Shigehideas Caesar(left)
aredressedin Romancostume,followingWestern
tradition.(From
performance
Engei Gaho [1907]; cour-

tesyofJamesR. Brandon)

Shakespeare appeared in Japan for the first time in 1891. Husband and wife

George Crichton Miln and Louise Jordon Miln and company played The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth,Julius Caesar, King Richard III, Romeo and Juliet,
Othello, and Hamlet on successive nights at Yokohama's Public Hall. And in
1899, Janet Waldorf's company performed scenes from Shakespearefor public
audiences in Yokohama and Tokyo. Shoyo saw his first Western performances
of Shakespeare on those two occasions (Murakami 1995:250-52).

A small number of kabuki actors chose to perform Shakespearein translation

in the period from 1905 to 1925. They did so because Shakespeare was a part

of the "modern," that is Western, world they wished to be a part of. They
were attractedby exotic European culture and hoped familiaritywith it would
advance their careers within kabuki-another case of kabuki keeping up-todate. So when kabuki actor SawamuraSonosuke I (I886-I924) became interested in modern drama,he joined the Western Drama
Study Group (Yogeki Kenkyfkai), composed mostly
ii ;11_^
?ofamateur shingeki actors and English teachers. In
lM; J 9 ^
"

^H---

I907,

Sonosuke and the group gave two performances

of Julius Caesar at the newly built Tokyo-za (Ihara

a-i"55i

1
,

wrBlB

.......
........
..l...........

|_?l||l|l|l|l|l||l|^
' :
:|:;
-l||:00
~:[:i-i-:-;- : ;
:
.:::::
.: i: i-:::i......

--.- .. --i:::::::::
. - ::::
.-::::
: ::

:i

.--:

1956-I963,

8:236; Kawatake I959:I040)

and, in 1915,

Sonosuke played Shylock in the trial scene from The

Merchantof Veniceat the Imperial Theatre, both productions in the English language (Arai 1972:388;
~Minami I996:612). These were exceptional events
because it was rare for "beggars of the riverbed," as
kabuki actors were called, to know a foreign language. And of course, playing in English was also
playing at being English, a modern, stylish thing to
do. S6nosuke, burning with interest in modern European plays, played both onnagata roles, such as
Borkman's wife, Gunhild, in Ichikawa Sadanji II's
production of John GabrielBorkmanin 1911 and leading male roles, such as the young husband in
Bj0rnson's The Newly MarriedCouple at the Imperial
Theatre in 1912.
The kabuki actor most enamored of Western theatre was Ichikawa Sadanji II (I880-I940). Sadanji set
off for Europe in 1906, a young man of 27, to see

and to observe acting schools. His eight_:; - I; theatre

;

.-.-......i.-.ia;,ptia
.........I s--

month trip to Europe was the first by a kabuki ac-

Kabukiand Shakespeare 35

14. Bjornstjerne
Bjornson'sThe Newly Married
inJapanesein 1912, at
Couple (Shinfufu)performed
the ImperialTheatre,Tokyo. KabukiactorSawamura
SonosukeI as the younghusbandand shingekiactress
HatsuseNamiko as the youngbridearerealistically
costumedas Europeans.Sonosukeposeswith legs
crossedin the "Western"manner.(FromEngei Gah6

15. IchikawaSadanjiII as Shylock,in a directtranslation of The Merchant of Venice, wearstypicalWesthis kabukiactornature.(From

erncostume,suppressing
Gah6
[1917];courtesyofJamesR. Brandon)
Engei

[1912]; courtesy ofJames R. Brandon)

tor.46A year after he returned home he played Shylock in The Merchantof

Veniceand in I909 he cofounded the Free Theatre (Jiyu Gekij6) with writerdirector Osanai Kaoru. Sadanji's aim was to retrain kabuki actors to perform
modern drama, or, as the slogan went, "turn professionals into amateurs"
(Komiya

I956:292).

For 15 years Sadanji and the Free Theatre focused on

contemporary Western drama. He commissioned translations that retained

European settings. Stage photographs clearly show Sadanjiinhabiting the "foreignness" of his Western roles through costume and makeup and through
physical bearing. Theatre magazines helped kabuki actors play Western roles
by publishing sketches of current European costumes and hairstyles. Photographs of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, SarahBernhardt, and other important European actors illustrating proper ways of standing, sitting, and gesturing
onstage are found in TheatreIllustrated(Engei Gaho) and other periodicals (see
for example 1910:

17). Sadanji played Western roles of all kinds-Sganarelle

in Moliere's short comedy LoveIs the Best Physician(Meiji-za, 1908), Borkman

inJohn GabrielBorkman(Yuraku-za, I909), Satin in LowerDepths (Yfraku-za,
I9I0), and major parts in Maeterlinck's The Miracle (Yfiraku-za, I9I
Death of Tintagiles (Imperial Theatre, 1912) (Kawatake I959:I057).

I)

and The
Acting

with Sadanji in productions of the Free Theatre were kabuki actors Ichikawa

36 JamesR. Brandon
Ennosuke II (I888-I963), who later studied theatre in Europe, Nakamura Matagoro I (I885-1920),

and Sawamura

Sonosuke. Sadanji turned to Shakespearelater in his career,

playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice in 1917 and
Antony and Iago opposite Koshiro VII's Caesar and Othello
inJulius Caesarand Othello,in February and October 1925.
He used direct translations by Osanai Kaoru and followed
standard European staging conventions. A photograph of
Iago in this production shows Sadanji wearing standard
Western lace collar, velvet jacket, and tights.
Morita Kanya XIII (1885-I932), whose father had built
the Shintomi-za, was eager to bring kabuki into the 20th
century. Among his activities, he organized the Literary
Arts Theatre (Bungei-za) which became active in 1915. He
gathered around him young reform-minded kabuki actors,
such as Otani Tomoemon VI (I886-I923) and Ichikawa
Ennosuke II. They joined together with actressestrained at
the Imperial Theatre's acting school to study the new modern drama of the West. Kanya's troupe of kabuki actors and
modern actressesmounted Io productions of new plays and
of translated Western drama through 1925. Kanya played
Jean Valjean in Hugo's Les Miserables in I920 at the
Yuraku-za and Bluntschli in Shaw's Arms and the Man (Buki
to Hito) at the Imperial Theatre in

1922

(Waseda I998:245-

47). Kanya acted in Romeo andJuliet, the group's second

16. KabukiactorIchikawa
SadanjiII realistically
The Death of Tintagiles was the Free Theatre'ssixthproduction
at
dressedin Russianclothing 17. Maeterlinck's
the ImperialTheatre,1912. The kabukiconventionof cross-gender
playingwas emas Satin in the Free Theployedevenwith shingekiactors.KabukiactorsIchikawaSadanjiII as Aglovale(standatreproductionof Lower
and IchikawaShochoII as Ygraine(holdingTintagiles)play maleandfemale
Depths, Yiiraku-za, 1910. ing right)
while
Katsumi(a childperformer)
and HatsuseNamikoplay the
roles,
shingekiactresses
(FromEngei Gaho
maleroleof Tintagilesand his sisterBellangere(proneright).The actresses
weretrained
[1911]; courtesyofJames
at
the
Theatre
in
19o8.
Imperial
SchoolforActressesfounded
by Sadayakko
(From
R. Brandon)
Engei Gah6 [1912]; courtesyofJames R. Brandon)

Kabukiand Shakespeare 37
production, in I918 and played a highly acclaimed Hamlet in the group's
fourth production in I919, using Shoyo's direct translation in each case
(Kawatake I960--962, 4:photo facing 475, and 5:I34). Typical of Kanya's
troupe, he, a I3th-generation kabuki theatre manager and actor, acted opposite a newly trained shingeki actress, Otowa Kaneko, playing Ophelia
(Sanshain Gekij6 1993:4). The LiteraryArts Theatre had use of the large new
Imperial Theatre, which had been built in renaissance style as a direct imitation of a European theatre (Kawatake I959:917-I8; Kawatake I960-I962,
5:134, and 6:51).

When we look at photographs of European plays featuring kabuki actors,

they do not just deny Japan, they deny kabuki, too. Kanya, standing insolently
on the thrones of Claudius and Gertrude, is gaunt and dressed in black doublet and tights, indistinguishablein appearancefrom a canonical English Ham- 18. Kabukiactors
let (Kawatake 1960-1962, 4:facing 475). Kabuki actors in the I88os and I89os MatsumotoKoshiroVII
had tried to subsume their adapted Shakespeare into Japanese patterns of
(Othello)and Ichikawa
kabuki performance; now two decades later, Sonosuke, Sadanji, and Kanya
SadanjiII (Iago),Kabukitried to submerge kabuki into the European world of Shakespearean drama
za, 1925. For director
and theatre. Simply put, when translations were performed, Japanese bodies OsanaiKaoru'snew transwere put to the service of a foreign, English Shakespeare.
lation, theplay's
In candor, we must admit that neither of the two meetings between kabuki
is highlighted
Europeanness
and Shakespeare that I have been discussing here-adaptions to Japanese setby the Westerncostumeand
tings and translations emphasizing Shakespeare's Europeanness-have pro- makeup.(FromNissei
duced long-lasting results. The early, localized adaptationsof Shakespearedone
courtesyof
Gekijoprogram;
in kabuki style were immediately ridiculed as being vulgar distortions of the
JamesR. Brandon)
works of a foreign dramatic genius. Tsubouchi Shoyo expressed typical scholarly disdain of adaptationsin general when he wrote of the shinpa version of
Othelloin 1903 that Kawakami Otojiro had "unnecessarilychanged a historical
drama [jidaimono] into not merely a domestic [sewa] but a crude domestic
[kizewa] comedy thereby destroying the original's magnificent nature"
(I903a:I). The later translations of Shakespeare,
19. Morita Kanya XIII as
staged in Western style in
Jean Valjeanin Victor
replication of European
Hugo'sLes Miserables,a
culture and theatre, were
production
of the Bungei-za
so far removed from native
(1920, Yiraku-za). The
brilliant
redhairandflesh
that
Japanese sensibility
:
tonesof theprinttell us
most kabuki actors were
not attracted. The young
iiI r
Kanyais playinga Westnovelist Natsume SOseki
ern,not a kabuki,role.
Woodblock
noted
the
printby
trenchantly
gap
Yamamura
between the two ap..
Koka,in the ex..
aggerated
styleof Sharaku.
proaches when he reviewed Shoyo's translation
(Photoby Shizo Uemoto;
and production of Hamlet
courtesyof PhillipRoach)
in the Asahi newspaper in
May I9II: "Dr. Tsubouchi should have chosen to
become a faithful translator of Shakespeare without thinking of staging a
performance, or to be
come an unfaithful adaptor in order to put
Shakespeareon the stage"
(in Murakami I995:258).

38 JamesR. Brandon
MoritaKanyaXIII in Tsubouchi
Kabukiactor-manager
Shoyo'sdirecttranslationof Hamlet at the Imperial
Theatre'sLiteraryArts Theatre,Tokyo, 1919. Kanya,
a canonical
wearingblackvelvettunicand tights,replicates
from shingekiactors
BritishHamletand is indistinguishable
in the role. (Photoin KawatakeShigetoshi[196o-1962];.
courtesyof ames R. Brandon)

20.

1 1:
a

:a:
e

'

'
'

a
i
2J:Ii0

21. Shingeki actorsa decade

&I
afterKanyacontinuedto offer

H.l.e...a

standardblack-garbedand

Hamlets.Suzukida
brooding
KenjipondersYoric'sskullin
frontof a Christiancross,an
obvioussymbolforWestern,
and
not
r....W
s.......Japanese, culture.
Little Theatre, 1933.
TTsukiji

...

pa

(Photoin Kawatake
Shigetoshi [196o-1962]; cour-

tesyofJamesR. Brandon)

ShingekiactorSenda
Koreyaas an introspective
in
Hamlet,stilldressed
black,Tsukii Little Theatre, 1938. (Photoin
KawatakeShigetoshi
[196-1962]; courtesyof
JamesR. Brandon)
22.

It seems to me significant that for 35 years, from 1925 until I96o, no kabuki
actor appeared in any play by Shakespeare. We can understand that
Shakespeare's plays would not be performed in Japan during the Second
World War when England was a national enemy (from December I939 to
May 1946 no professionalproduction of Shakespearewas given in Japan) (Arai
972:393). In kabuki the separation (divorce?) continued for a decade and a
half after the war was over. It was as if in spite of honest efforts, the Bard and
kabuki had been judged incurably incompatible.
Then Shakespeare and kabuki were brought together in a third, new relationship. High-profile theatre organizationsinvited kabuki starsto take leading
roles in large-scale commercial productions. The first such production starred
Matsumoto K6shir6 VIII playing Othello at Sankei Hall in Tokyo in I96O.47
Following this, his son Matsumoto Koshir6 IX played Hamlet (I972, I987, and
I99I), Romeo (i974), Lear (I975), and Othello (I994), and his grandson
Ichikawa Somegor6 VII played Hamlet (I998); Bando Tamasaburo V played
Lady Macbeth (1976) and Desdemona (I977 and 1978); Nakamura Kanzabur6
XVII played Richard III (I964); Onoe Sh6roku II played Othello with his son
Onoe Tatsunosuke I as Iago (I969 andI977); Tatsunosuke played Richard III
(I980); and Kataoka Nizaemon XIV played Hamlet (I984 and I990). All were
major commercial ventures, widely covered in the press, treated respectfullyby
critics, and sure of sold-out houses. Seventeen productions starringkabuki actors over the past 30 years is not an insignificant achievement.48
Kabuki actors, usually young stars, continue to do Shakespearein this manner. Whatever else one may say about these performances, they are not
"kabuki." The kabuki actor is not hired "to play kabuki," but in the expectation that his name will draw audiences and that his powerful stage presence
will carry a large-scale production. At the same time, publicity surrounding
the performance emphasizes the star's special status as a kabuki professional.
And so weaeare enmeshed in an ambivalent world of pretense and denial. We
can't be surprisedthat Ninagawa Yukio, who directed Matsumoto Koshir6 as

1Kabukiand Shakespeare 39
Othello in 1994, makes ingratiating remarks about his

star: "I am thankful that Koshiro is a cultured man.

Raised in the world of kabuki, he is able to give life i:
to traditional skills" (Ninagawa 1994). We understand
,
why director Asari Keita-head of the huge Shiki
with Onoe
production company-conversing
Shoroku II about their collaboration on Othello in
!
1969, hypes the actor's kabuki-ness: "The dramatic
flow moving forward through the play is the same in
Shakespeare and kabuki. Fortunately you are a
kabuki actor and so it is easy for you to act Shakel
speare" (Onoe and Asari I969:6). But this "praise of
:
kabuki" is disingenuous at best. Does anyone expect
/
,i
the kabuki star to maintain his traditions surrounded
i
by a supporting cast of shingeki, musical theatre, film,
a i
and television performers and when the director, de.
A
outside
kabuki?
are
from
and
choreographer
signer,
review in the journal New Trends in Art (Geijutsu "i ?';~
Shincho)of the 1977 Othello-which starred Shoroku, I
i
to find
Tatsunosuke, and Tamasaburo-claimed
kabuki acting and did not like it: "The heavy and
slow tempo and intonation of Kabuki overpowered
the meaning of the speeches, hindering the natural
J
development of the play" (in Hasebe I978:65). Reviewing some of the performances of the I970S mentioned above, Hasebe Kazuko struck a more cautious
note: "Their sophisticated classic and perfectly
trained voices and acting as Kabuki players evoke a unique ambience to
Shakespeare's plays" (I978:63).

"Unique ambience" is not the same as "kabuki," of course. Fortunately, we

can examine photos, films, and videotapes, as well as live performances, and
we can make our own evaluation of the way postwar kabuki actors have performed Shakespeare.9 In my opinion, most of the overall style of kabuki acting has been suppressed and all of kabuki's specific artistic techniques have
been banished in productions based on translations.Ninagawa and Asari may
have lauded kabuki acting, but they certainly did not allow Shoroku or
Koshir6to use specific kabuki acting techniques when portraying Othello in
1969 and in 1994. The prime movers of current productions are commercial
sponsors and theatre organizations-Sunshine Theatre, Nissei Theatre, Sankei
Hall, Globe Theatre, Shiki and Kumo Theatre Companies, Toho Theatrical
Corporation, and Shochiku Theatrical Corporation. With the exception of
Shochiku (and to a certain extent Toho) these groups have no connection
with kabuki or any particular knowledge of it.50A mie pose is the last thing
Ninagawa, Asari, or the Sunshine Theatre producer want to see in one of
their productions. And even Shochiku, the major theatrical producer of
kabuki in Japan in the 20th century, separates its kabuki performances from
Shakespeare. The late Shoroku, who was a famously blunt and forthright actor, understood his position in Othellovery well, saying, "I will work to avoid
playing in a kabuki manner" (Onoe and Asari 1969:6).
When I say that all of kabuki's artistic techniques have been banished from
these productions, I am making a precise and verifiable observation. The productions have no offstage geza music, no kabuki dance, no tsuke or hyoshigi
sound effects, no costume-change techniques (hikinukiand bukkaeri),no bold
kumadorimakeup, no striped draw curtain, no mie poses or omoiire or adlibbed sections (sutezerifu), no rhythmic dialogue (shichigocho), and no

X f\

is

23. The cover ofKabuki

magazine, March 1903, il-

lustratesa canonicalWestern Othellobeforetwo

Greekcolumnsand dressed
in Europeanperiodcostume,withfaceand hands
blackened.
"realistically"
Paradoxically,11 articlesin
the issuediscussKawakami
shinpa
Otojiro'sJapanized
adaptationof Othello,
whichwasfar removedfrom
the Westernimage.(From
Kabuki [1903]; courtesyof

JamesR. Brandon)

40

James R. Brandon

24. & 25. The Toho The-

hired
atricalCorporation
John DavidfromLondon
to guest directHamlet at
the Nissei Gekijo, Tokyo,
1972. The publicity photo

of kabukistarMatsumoto
KoshiroIX as Hamlet
showsa typicallydarkand
introspective
youngman
with nicelytousledhair.
Authenticatingthe
production'sEnglishness,
Koshiro'sfaceis placedin
theprogramalongsidephotos of England'sgreatest
(then)livingHamletsGielgud, Olivier,Scofield,
Helpmann,Redgrave,
Guinness,Burton,
O'Toole, and Williamson.
(FromNissei Gekij program;courtesyofJamesR.
Brandon)

hanamichi-none of the elements that make a performance kabuki. What are the performances then?
At heart they are realistic shingeki that happen to
have a kabuki star in a leading role. That actor brings
poise, physical control, and a powerful voice to his
acting, but he is placed within the context of a canonical "doublet and hose" production designed to
replicate an English model. Koshiro's 1972 Hamlet,
for example, was directed by John David from England. As if to demonstrate Koshiro's authentic Englishness, his photo as Hamlet appeared in the
program alongside pictures of (then) living great EnOlivier, Scofield, Helpglish Hamlets-Gielgud,
mann, Redgrave, Guinness, Burton, O'Toole, and
Williamson (Nissei Gekijo 1972:45).
Another equally "English" Hamlet, although in
some respects new, was Hamlet, the Play with Music
and Songs,produced by the Sunshine Theatre in Tokyo, May 1995. Performed in Japanese by a Japanese
cast, advance descriptionsboasted that the five artistic
directors-stage director, composer, script arranger,
lyricist, and designer-were all London theatre professionals. Exerting every effort to create a "genuine
article" (honmono),the producers bought "50 costumes and wigs" made in England of "actual materials." And former Takarazuka actress-singer-dancer
Asami Rei who was playing Hamlet was sent to
London to assure a correct costume fitting (Sanshain
Gekijo 1994:1, 4). Asami was photographed in black
tights and white bloused shirt and holding a rapier in

Kabukiand Shakespeare 41
26. MatsumotoKoshiroIX
as Hamlet(right)duels
withshingekiactor
NatsuragiIsao(left)as
Laertes,Nissei Gekijo,
Tokyo, 1972. Nothing in

thescenesuggestskabuki
althoughKoshirois a major
kabukiactor.(FromNissei
Gekij program;courtesyof
JamesR. Brandon)
27. Even adventuresome

productions
of Shakespeare
withintheshingekiworldare
to Envalidatedby reference
glandand to Britishmodels.
A versionof Hamlet set to
"musicandsongs"was advertisedas beingdirected,
composed,
choreographed,
and adaptedby Britisharther hand-indistinguishable from a hundred other English Hamlets. Although ists. Only theperformers,
led byformerTakarazuka
the production's uniqueness was stressed-"the first sung Hamlet"-this newAsami
ness was derived from English models in order to make "a true renaissance singer-dancer-actress
musical." In fact, the production was intended to project a wholly English, Rei as Hamlet,wereJapacanonical, image. It would be wrong to say that this was intercultural theatre nese. (FromSanshain
of
because it did not meld and balance several cultures (and theatres): value was Gekij6 News; courtesy
R.
none
culture.
on
culture
and
on
Brandon)
James
English
placed
Japanese
Commercial productions of Shakespeare with
kabuki stars simply leave no space for representing Vv1 th
mU S I
i.-:
i
anything other than exotic, European foreignness.
The modern-dress RichardIII, in 1980, that starred
the late Tatsunosuke, was not a "doublet and hose"
._
production but it erased kabuki just as thoroughly.
Here let me note one fascinating exception to this
record of missed chances. I am thinking of the brilliant onnagata actor Bando Tamasabur6 V (b. I950),
whose portrayals of Lady Macbeth and Desdemona,
noted above,s5 were extravagantly, and I think
rightly, praised. Surrounded by the usual cast of
modern drama actors, he projected an intense, exciti
ing presence in these roles that was quite exceptional.
I was fortunate to see Tamasabur6 perform Lady
i
k
Macbeth in 1976, and I retain a sharp memory of his
majestic, yet delicate, carriage and his steely, insinu._l
ating onnagata voice. Perhaps he was not "playing
kabuki," but he brought his kabuki sensibility and
technique to bear on the role much more directly
than other kabuki actors have done. He stood out
against the bland, lifeless, and powerless shingeki performers around him.
The perfunctory presence of kabuki in Shakespeare
today contrastsstrongly with imaginativetreatmentsof
his plays within other traditional Japanese theatre

42

James R. Brandon

genres. Stimulated by the Fifth World Shakespeare Congress held in Tokyo,

August 1991, experimental productions, each with its distinctive style, were
staged in the months before and after the conference, including a revival of
KawakamiOtojir's 1903 adaptationof Othelloin shinpa style; scholar Takahashi
Yasunari'singenious rewriting of The MerryWivesof Windsor(Hora-zamurai)
for
ky6gen master actor Nomura Mansaku;five differentky6gen versions of Twe!fth
Night, The Tamingof the Shrew,and A Midsummer
Night's Dream;a no version of
Hamlet;and a puppet adaptationof Othelloby the Yuki-za troupe (Minami 1996;
28. It can be argued

whetherkabukiand
Shakespeare are indeed a

good match.However,a
strongWesternrolelike
Lady Macbethtakeson
when
specialresonance
playedby a maleonnagata
actor.KabukistarBando
TamasaburoV brought
powerandpoise to this role
at the Nissei Gekijo,1976.
(FromNissei Gekijoprogram;courtesyofJamesR.
Brandon)

Murakami 1995).

Could it be otherwise? I think it could. I will mention two suggestive examples of what kabuki actors might achieve, were they to bring their talents
and training unabashedly to Shakespeare. The kabuki actor Ichikawa
Ennosuke III (b. 1939) has built a new audience with his so-called Super Kabuki, unorthodox productions of new scripts written specifically for
Ennosuke's company of full-time professional kabuki actors. The first Super
Kabuki was the extravagantlygrand YamatoTakeruthat premiered in I986 and
since then has been performed more than 400 times in revivals, most recently
in 1995. Ennosuke developed a spectacular,imaginative, rapid-paced performing style in Super Kabuki that is in the spirit of early popular kabuki even
though it doesn't necessarilyfollow traditional acting forms.52In a 1995 television interview conducted by Donald Keene, Ennosuke said that one of his
fondest desires is to stage a story of contemporary life in kabuki, perhaps a
nonsensical spy story in which he would wear a suit and tie, make up his face
in bright kumadori designs, pose in mie and make a
hopping roppoexit down the hanamichi. "I don't
know if others would call it kabuki," he said, "but if
an actor can bring his sense of kabuki to it, then
that's what I would call it" (Keene 1995). Ennosuke

has never staged Shakespeare,but I don't doubt that

a King Lear or The Tempest in Super Kabuki style
would be intensely dynamic and more true to kabuki
the very ordinary productions starring kabuki
|||^
fthan
actors of the past three decades.
The Flower Group Theatre (Hanagumi Shibai) is
a neo-kabuki troupe that exists apart from the tradi........
tional kabuki world. It was formed in I987 by young
male actors who were not from kabuki families but
who were enamored of kabuki's high theatricality,
including onnagata cross-dressing. Flower Group
Theatre devotes itself to doing plays that are derived
from or related to kabuki. The troupe did its first
^l^^^^^^^^
~
Shakespeare, Hanagumi's ShakespeareDrama: The
Tempest (Hanagumi SaO-geki Tenpesto) in I993,
adapted from a 1992 bunraku puppet version of the
play and directed by troupe leader Kano Yukikazu.
The company put aside its usual campy style of
parody (onnagata wearing horn-rim glasses and high
heels) and played The Tempeststraight. They utilized
kabuki costuming and makeup, mie, tsuke, offstage
shamisen music, and other traditional staging devices. The play was revised for performances in Seattle and Los Angeles in 1995.53

I would like to return to the first decades in

which kabuki encountered the plays of Old Master
Shakespeare. I would like to look broadly at the his-

Kabukiand Shakespeare 43

.............
iiiii'~
~a. j6'
ii:j
'~~..:sBi~.i~~l.............:
,

;igg.0*.:.
Kigg....SXS.5sX

Liii~Takeru,
??::
?j:?': i~i~::
tAsakura

Setsu'swhite-

ii;0004'

S"

:0.:.
;

29. IchikawaEnnosukeIII
as Takeruin the SuperKabukiYamato Takeru, a
"grand-scale
play writtenin
kabukistyle"by Umehara
Takeshi,in its thirdrevival
at the ShinbashiEnbuj6,
Tokyo,May-June 1995.
in designer

Blaiil~~~~~~~~~~
.>,_

kt;
-yw
fXJames
Ek,a,"E'
:!_C^t

->...'.. -

R
...

00-t000tss_E00f.s'^sss._l:il
-ss
t000000.:...':''''~''~~~~~~l~'~~
..

nese dramaticworlds
(sekai). Shakespearewas Japanized and localized,
erasingplaysconstituting an active, positive, new yang element
t hat
. Then, in the I9S
,,.performingtradi..ti...ons.

and

was subsumed

IOS, the most modern

kabuki responded to Shakespeare's plays strongly and

stically and then
optimi
with less and less effectiveness as the decades passed. In the earliest approach,

minded kabuki actors tried to play Shakespeare as Western realistic drama.

featheredcostume,is transformedinto a swan andflies

to heaven.(FromShinbashi
Enbujoprogram;courtesyof
R. Brandon)

44 JamesR. Brandon
They were inspired by the difference they perceived between modern
shingeki and kabuki. In this second approach lie several paradoxes, hardly recognized at the time. Surely it is a profound paradox that Shoy6 and other
Meiji scholars used Shakespeare to speak for Japan's modern present, when in
fact the Old Master represented a European past that was already several centuries dead. Another paradox, and one with dire practical consequences for
kabuki, was that even though Sadanji, Kanya, and Koshir6 did not use kabuki
performing techniques when playing Shakespeare, they nonetheless were imbued with the basic kabuki attitude that new material could be incorporated
into their art. They were using the social institution of kabuki to "try on"
Western patters of life, to stay up-to-date, all within the kabuki system. Because kabuki actors had always acted in new material, it was not immediately
understood that Shakespeare contained no links to the Japanese past. Could
the new material be integrated into kabuki if there were no known sekai into
which Shakespeare's stories could fit? An important link in the chain was
missing. And a final paradox was that the kabuki actor of the I920s, a master
of highly developed music, dance, and acting codes (kata),was expected to realistically replicate the behavior and customs of Europeans. Could he do this
and still function as a kabuki actor? It seems to me that these were insurmountable dilemmas. So we can see that in the end the translated texts of
Shakespeare'splays functioned as a yin factor-stable, passive, unchangeablethat overwhelmed the active yang factor of improvisation within kabuki acting. In a yin-yang view of the world, the ideal state is an appropriatebalance
between the opposites. A yin-yang analysis of the meeting between
Shakespeare and kabuki helps us see that neither through adaptations nor
through translationshas a reasonable balance between yin and yang been created. In the first case, kabuki won and in the second case Shakespeare won,
but a balance between them was never found.
What was the result of the meeting between Shakespeare and kabuki? By
the I920s, the production system of kabuki could no longer provide a viable
milieu for Shakespeare. And it can be said that when kabuki gave up on
Shakespeare (and other Western drama), it also withdrew from modern Japan.
After this, contemporary events in Japanese life would be excluded from the
kabuki stage. Japan's present, including Shakespearewho was a part of Japan's
modernity, would be abandoned, first to shinpa, and then to shingeki, the
movies, and eventually television. As Kawatake Shigetoshi has noted, by the
"kabuki had surrendered"modernity to shingeki and "changed from its
I920S,
original status as a modern drama to become a traditionaltheatre" (I959:I064).
Were Shoyo's mutual passions for Shakespeareand for kabuki a personal idiosyncrasy? I don't think so. I believe Shoyo was remarkablyprescient when
he remarked that Shakespeare was "Western kabuki," thereby suggesting a
potential for the two arts to meld in the future. That this did not occur can be
credited to a crucial failure of nerve within the kabuki world after the I9oos.
It is usually said that the Meiji-period "movement to reform kabuki" (engeki
kairyoundo) failed. It is true that the "feudal evils" built into kabuki during the
Tokugawa period-the geza music, the hanamichi, the onnagata-that reformers vowed to abolish in the name of modernity, were not exorcised.
These unique characteristics of performance constitute the core of "Grand
Kabuki" today. But in another sense, the reform movement succeeded all too
well. In retaining these traditional features, kabuki paid the steep price of
breaking its ties to contemporary Japanese society. The experiments with living-history and cropped-hair plays ended. Almost all the kabuki actors who
have performed Shakespeare in the 20th century have done so only by denying kabuki. If it is true, as Shoyo believed, that Shakespeare is the Western
drama most akin to kabuki and the most likely to be performed successfully

Kabuki and Shakespeare 45

within the kabuki artistic system, it is also true that the strengths of each have
never been genuinely fused in productions by kabuki actors.
Such attempts today wouldn't necessarily meet with success. Shakespeare's
dramatic world and kabuki's theatrical world are not identical, in spite of
Sh6oy's statement, but they may be complementary. Their meeting might
produce greatness, if each were to add its special strength to the union-if yin
and yang were equally valued. King Lear has been successfully performed as
kathakali dance-drama in India (Zarrilli 1992) and The Winter'sTale as yueju
opera in China (Li I988). One brilliant application of Asian traditional performing techniques to Shakespeare was the Shanghai Kunqu Opera
Company's production of Kunqu Macbeth in I986 and I987 (Li I988). Chinese

opera actors applied to Shakespeare's tragedy all of their vivid techniques of

song and declamatory speech, of costuming and stylized makeup, and of conventionalized gesture and acrobatic fighting movements. Audiences in China
and in Europe were thrilled by how Chinese opera had infused Shakespeare's
drama to produce a new experience of the play.
As someone who passionately admires the power and beauty of kabuki performance, I would like to see contemporary kabuki actors bring their superb
art to bear on Shakespeare's magnificent texts-and achieve a balance of yin
and yang-something that has not yet happened.
Notes
i. I want to thank Ian Carruthersfor suggesting that the topic of Shakespeareand kabuki
would be of interest for the meeting of the Asian Studies Association of Australia,La
Trobe University, 1996. I further applied the yin-yang formulation to kabuki, briefly
and in an opposite manner, in "Some Considerationsof Shakespearein Kabuki,"at the
1997 conference "Crosscurrentsin the Drama, East and West" at the University of
Georgia (see Brandon I998:7-18). I have developed several argumentsmore fully here.
I am gratefulto Julia Iezzi and Holly Blummer who offered new sources and ideas for
the final revision of the manuscript.
2. LeonardPronko's seminal TheaterEast and West([1967] 1974) and AndreaJ. Nouryeh's
recent observationthat there is "an affinitybetween the plays of Shakespeareand those
of Kabuki"(1993:254) are representative.
3. I am indebted to Gerald Groemer, Yamanashi University, for sharing his special
knowledge and many insights concerning the world of small, unlicensed kabuki theatresduring the Tokugawa period.
4. See, for example, the chronology in Nojima (1988, appendix:27-29).
5. For example, in 1717, Edo's three licensed theatres burned shortly after the new year
began. A newly built Nakamura-zaand Ichimura-zawere open and running within 26
days and a new Morita-zawithin 39 days of the fire (see Ihara1956-I963, 1:472).
6. The reserve-licensesystem (hikaeyagura)began in Edo in 1735, when Morita KanyaV
could not raise enough money to open the season and his license was temporarily
transferredto KawarasakiGonnosuke III. In time, the actors Miyako Dennai and Kiri
Cho kiri became the reserve producers, respectively, at the Nakamura-za and the
Ichimura-za (Kawatake I960-I962, 4:529). When a reserve producer took over an
empty theatre, he gave it his name, hence, the Kawarasaki-za,the Miyako-za, and the
Kiri-za. What did reserveproducersdo at other times? Before the hikae yagurasystem
was established,in the I68os, Miyako Dennai operated his own theatre in Sakai-cho,
next to the the Nakamura-za. Later, he apparently set up the Miyako-za at Kanda
Myojin Shrine as a small shrine theatre (miyajishibai)(Nojima 1988, appendix:4).When
Kanyawent bankruptas a producer, he was forced to act with a rival company, bitterly
"eatinganother theatre'sfood," according to the popularsaying. Furtherresearchneeds
to be done to clarifyhow the reserve-licensesystem worked in practice.
7. See Ihara'sremarkablecompilation, "Index of Theatre Names" (Gekij6 Meisakuin)
which lists the names of troupes that performed in the major kabuki theatresover 247
years, from 1561 to 1907 (1956-1963, 8:495-540). The implications of the very large
number of theatresand troupes remain to be explored. But if we take as one illustration

46

James R. Brandon

8.

9.

I0.

I .
12.

13.

14.

the 45-year period from I690 to 1735, Iharalists productionsby an amazing215 different theatre troupes performing at the main theatres. And further, if we take a single
theatre building, the Kado-za in Osaka, for example, Ihara'slist shows that 12 different
theatre troupes (za), named after their actor-managers(zamoto),moved in and out of
that theatre during the 20-year period from 1716 to 1735: Iwai Hanshir6-za (1716,
1717), Ogino Kinnojo-za (1717, 17I8), Arashi Sanemon-za (1719, 1720, 1722, 1723,
1724, 1725, 1726), Kiri no Tani Gonjiro-za (1720, 1721, 1722, 1724, 1726, 1728), Iwai
Sajuro-za(1723), Fujii Hanamatsu-za(1726, 1727), ArashiSanjur6-za(1727, 1728, 1729,
1730), Arashi Konsajir6-za (1728), Sadoshima Chogor6-za (1730, 1731), Arashi
Kokuseki-za (1731-1732), Nakamura Shinkuro-za (1734, 1735), and Nakayama
Shinkur-za (I735). Further, in 1733, the Kado-za was referred to as the Minami no
Shibai (South Theatre), because the theatre was located on the south side of D6tonbori
Canal. Because Iharais counting by calendaryear and the theatre season began in the
eleventh month, Ihara'slist suggests that eight troupes played a single season at the
Kado-za, and only three troupes lasted as long as three consecutive seasons. (It may be
that troupes listed by Iharaas the Sajfir-za and the Konsajuro-zarefer to the same person.) These two examples suggest a highly fluid situation in Osaka:a large pool of actor-producers formed and disbanded troupes and troupes moved into and out of
theatresfrequently.
Balancedagainstthe desire for the new, each licensed theatre had several "house plays"
(waki kyogen).They were performed again and again by beginning actors as practice
pieces early in the morning before the main play began. Also, favoriteplays were commonly revived, often with a new title (Brandon[1975] 1992:24).
Actors have taken acting names from the beginning of kabuki, and these names can be
found in playbillsand posters (banzuke).Actors change their names three or four times
in their career. Fortunately,the editors of the KabukiHy5bankiShfsei (Compilation of
Kabuki Actor Critiques)have brought together under one listing all the names held by
a particularactor through his career (1972-1977, appendixvol.).
This is a difficultfield for researchbecause there are many actorsand recordsare incomplete. I have looked at severaltroupesin the three cities to arriveat this rough estimate.
In order to speakwith certaintywe need to examine in detail a numberof acting careers.
Alternatively,some actorsmay havejoined low-ranking travelingtroupes (tabishibai)or
smallunlicensedtheatres(koshibai),and in this way droppedout of the written record.
These estimatesare similar to numbers given by Hattori Yukio, who notes that in the
1769 theatre season, 51, 52, and 40 major and supportingactors were employed at the
Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, and Morita-za, respectively (1993:83). If other licensed
theatreshad similarsized troupes, this would be between 500 and 700 major and supporting actors.
Hattori notes that the names of I0 to 12 supernumerariesper troupe appearin three
written lists of actors in Edo (1993:83). I think it is likely that more minor actors than
this were employed. We also need to know what rank an actor had to achieve before
his name appearedin publicity.
Some middle-ranking theatres in Osaka were also called hamashibai,literally, "beach
theatre,"because of their location on the south, or ocean side of D6tonbori Canal (see
Hattori, et al. 1983:270-71;

and Matsudaira 1993:55-57).

15. Small theatres were also called "drop-curtain theatres" (donchoshibai) because the
striped draw curtain was reservedfor the large licensed theatres. Gerald Goermer suggests the term datesfrom the late I9th century (1997).
16. Julie lezzi has explored the relationshipbetween oshibaiand koshibai in Kyoto-Osaka in
an unpublishedpaper (1989).
17. Two lists, published in 1825 and in 1840, give names and/or locations of, respectively,
I5o and 130 permanentkabuki theatre buildings in cities and provincial towns (Moriya
I988:250-57). A government order of 1714 closing "twenty-seven unlicensed theatres
in nine districts in the city of Edo" indicates that unrecorded koshibai also existed in
some numbers (Koike 1981:26). In addition, some 1,500 village kabuki stages have
been counted in various provinces, but in general professionalsdid not use these stages
(see Moriya 1988:39 [map]),so I am not including them in my discussionhere.
18. Although it was a koshibai, nonetheless it boasted a hanamichiand draw curtain like a
licensed theatre, causing managers of the licensed theatres much consternation (Abe
1970:14).

Kabuki and Shakespeare 47

19. Ennosuke'sexpulsion, which occurred in the Meiji period (1868-1912), doesn't address
the movement of actorsduring the Tokugawa era. Apparentlyexpulsion was rare:Bach
says Ennosuke's was the first and only instance of hamon;Ihara notes that Band6
Muraemon II was expelled from the Ichimurafamily, also in 1874 (I933:24).
20. This is an example of how data has to be pieced together, often with some of the
pieces missing. A summaryof the first 26 years of Shichisaburo'scareercan be found in
"Index to Actor Transfers"("YakushaIdo Sakuin"),in the appendix volume of Kabuki
It shows that Shichisabur6 was at the
Hyobanki Shfisei (Kabuki 1972-1977:232).
Nakamura-za continuously from 1711 to 1736. However, it lists performances of
Shichisabur6I and II together without distinguishingbetween the two actors. To sort
out the chronologies of father and adopted son, I turned to the entry on Shichisabur6
in Engeki Hyakka Daijiten (Encyclopedia of Theatre) (Kawatake 1960-I962, 4:248),
which notes that ShichisaburoII took the name at the Nakamura-zaat his firststage appearance in 1711. Shichisabur6II lived until 1774, but entries in the KabukiHy6banki
Shisei stop at I736. So I checked the yearly entries of productions listed in Ihara
Toshiro's KabukiNenpyo(Kabuki Chronology), volumes 2, 3, and 4, to find out what
plays Shichisabur6had been in after 1736, and therefore at which theatres he had appeared. Entries in Iharabetween 1737 and 1771 show that Shichisaburoperformed 25
seasons (years)at the Nakamura-za,four seasons at the Kawarasaki-za,and one season
at the Morita-za. I could find no entries for Shichisabur6for 1737 and 1758 (was he
sick or traveling those years?)and none for 1771 to I774 (a few years before his death
when he presumablywas sick or retired).
2I. At the time that Danjfir6was acting, the fourth of Edo's major, licensed theatres, the
Yamamura-za,was still operating.
22. I use za somewhat anachronisticallyhere for the sake of simplicity. At the time the map
was made, the zamoto's name was followed by shibai,so on the map the theatres are
identified as: Ichimura Takenojo-shibai, Saruwaka [Nakamura] Kanzaburo-shibai,
NakamuraZengor6-shibai,and Miyako Dennai-shibai. The accuracyof these maps can
be questioned, but whatever errorsthey may contain, they make clear that many theatreswere clusteredtogether.
23. Hattori Yukio arguesthat in the Tokugawa period the actor's sole identity was his art
name (geimei)and that actors' dual identity arose only after the Meiji period when actors firstbegan to use both a real name and an art name (1986:249).
24. The 313 living kabuki actors listed by Hattori share 40 family names (1983:414-35).
Half the family names are representedby a single actor and exist precariously.It is important to note that major family names can be sharedby severalacting lineages, so that
NakamuraUtaemon VI and NakamuraGanjir6III, with the same surname,head separate and quite independent family acting lines.
25. No and ky6gen were strongly tied to the feudal economic system and, while kabuki
prospered in the Meiji period, these two older, aristocratictheatre forms nearly perished when the Shogunatewas abolished (see Komiya 1956:75-87).
26. The theatreat this location was rebuilt and renamedseveraltimes. Called the Morita-za
when it was built in 1872, it was renamed the Shintomi-za in 1875. After burning
down in 1876, it was rebuilt in 1878. A year later, Kanyawas forced to relinquishcontrol over the theatre for he was hopelessly in debt (some reports say more than 80
thousand yen, or roughly $io million today). Production continued under different
management,and sometimes under other theatre names, until the theatre was acquired
by the ShechikuCorporationin 1909. After being destroyedby the GreatKanto Earthquake in 1923, it was not rebuilt. The most complete account of the theatre'svicissitudes is in Kawatake (1960-I962, 3:272-73); see also Suda (1957:350-54). For
English-languageaccounts see Takahashi(1995) and Komiya (1956:311).
27. Kartani(I993:55), quoting comments by the scholarIt6 Sei.
28. This title is found in Kawatake(1959:787) and the JapanNational BroadcastingSystem
(Nihon HosoKy6kai 1937:338). The title in Ihara,Fisen Nori UwasaTakaZakura,differs in the last character.
29. The dates indicate the general period in which a new style was developed over the
course of a number of productions. Elements of that style almost certainly appearearlier. For example, early borrowing of puppet techniques can be found in 1714, when
chobo,the term for the chanter and shamisen team from the puppet theatre, first appeared in kabuki; or in 1717, when Chikamatsu Monzaemon's early puppet play

48

James R. Brandon

30.

3I.
32.

33.
34.
35.

36.
37.

38.
39.

40.

4I.

KokusenyaGassen(The Battlesof Coxinga)was staged by kabuki actorssimultaneouslyat

three theatres in Edo (see Brandon 1982:111-I7, for a more detailed discussion). But
kabuki did not really absorbthe puppet theatre'sperformingtechniques and play repertory until the late I740s, after three-man puppets had been invented and after the great
masterpiecesof the puppet repertoryhad been written.
Kumehachi's career is fascinating and deserves further attention. She performed with
shinpa(new-style) actors and in shingeki as well as kabuki. Kawakami Sadayakkohas
been described as the "first actress"for her influential portrayalsin I903 and 1904 of
Desdemona, Portia, and Ophelia in husbandKawakamiOtojir6'sshinpa-styleproductions of Shakespeare (Ihara I956-I963, 8:I3I, 143; Kawatake 1960-I962, 2:I40;
Pronko [I967] I974:I22). We can note, however, that nearly 30 years before this
Kumehachiwas performingin public theatresregularly.
Bach (I990:I7), quoting Toita Yasuji, KabukiKonoHyakunen(This Hundred Years of
Kabuki)(Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun, 1974:I6).
Costs can be compared using various figures. The price of a seat at the Shintomi-za in
I88I was two to three yen (Ihara I956-I963, 7:257), while the price of a seat at the
Kabuki-zain Tokyo today averages$60-$70.
In I907, the Kabuki-zaadvertiseda specialshowing of"great coloredmotion pictures"(dai
chakushoku
no katsudo
shashin)by the BritishM. PatheCompany(Ihara1956-I963, 8:241).
The names appear in kanasyllabaryin Japanese sources so the spellings here are best
guesses.
For an English translationof Mt. Imo and Mt. Se, see Gerstle et al. (1990). Kawatake
discussesthe parallelsbetween this puppet play and RomeoandJulietin some detail in a
separatearticle (1996:24-25).
Minami Ryita kindly brought to my attention Takemura's unconventional theory.
Minami notes that Takemura'sclaimsare highly speculativeand unproven.
I want to thank Minami Ryuftafor allowing me to consult his excellent "A Chronological Table of ShakespeareanProductions in Japan," prior to its publication. It has
been extremely useful.
Kawatakelists the top i8 actors in I919: half were in their teens and twenties; all but
four were under 40 (I959:866-67).
Her marriedname was KawakamiSadako. She took the stage name (geimei)Kawakami
Sadayakkoduring the run of Othelloin I903. Following traditionalpractice, her new
name was formally announced from the stage during the performance (Ihara I956I963, 8:13 ).
"Hamlet"does not lend itself to transliterationin Japanese.In Meiji-period adaptations,
the name was variously written and read: Hamura Maru, Hamura Toshimaro,
Hamuretto, and even Retto (see KawatakeI967:I90, 229-31, and photos before I).
KawashimaKeiz6'sJuliusCaesarwas the first direct translationto be published, appearing as a newspaper serial in I883. Written partly in the "diction of the No-stage"
(Toyoda I940:34), it was completely unsuited to kabuki. Tsubouchi Shyo's first translation, also ofJulius Caesar,completed the following year, included narrativesequences
(j6ruri) that of course are not a part of Shakespeare'stext (Milward I963:I90). Tozawa
and Asano publishedtheir translationsof io plays in separatevolumes. Among the various translationsof Shakespeare'splays, Sh6y6's were chosen for almost all kabuki and
some 70 shingeki productions during the period before the Second World War (see
Minami 1996:8-2 ).

42. Kawatake Toshio has made an extensive study of Hamletadaptationsand translations.

From the texts of 18 productions of the play, he concludes that the transitionfrom adaptation to translationwas completed over an eight-year period, 1903 to 1911. After
91 I, only translationswere performed (I967:405-o6).
43. For an English translationof most acts of the kabuki text, see Brandon (1982).
44. I have not counted specific instructions to the actor, such as "graspsthe blade, opens
the gate" (katanao mochi,kadoguchi
o ake) (51) or "Surprised,Yfranosuke hides the letter behind his back" (Yfiranosuke
bikkurishite, buno ushiroe kakusu)(64).
45. Improvisationwas also discouragedby governmentpolicies during the Meiji period. Article Ten of the "TheatreControl Regulations"(gekijotorishimari
kisoku)of I890 saysthat
"actions outside the written play script may not be performed"(Matsumoto I980:612).
The regulationwas aimed at new playsbut it probablyaffectedkabukiactorsas well.
46. Sadanjiwas the first kabuki actor to act abroadas well. In 1928, two decades after his

Kabuki and Shakespeare 49

study trip to Europe, he led a troupe on tour to Russia, playing the classicrepertoryin
Moscow and Saint Petersburg(Shochiku 1992:45-48).
47. Because actors change names (geimei) during their careers, I am using only an actor's
most recent (and highest-ranking)name, and not necessarilythe name used at the time
of a performance.For example, when Matsumoto K6shir6 IX played Hamlet in 1972,
his geimei was IchikawaSomegor6VI.
48. The number is not large, however, when compared to the 50o-to-60productions of
Shakespearethat are stagedin Tokyo each year (see Minami I996 and monthly issues of
Engekikai).

49. A television documentary about the three generations of Matsumoto K6shir6, who
played Othello, was broadcastin September 1994. The programshowed still photos of
KoshiroVII in I925, film clips of his son K6shir6VIII in 1960, and the complete stage
production of his grandsonK6shir6 IX in 1994. None of the actors deploy identifiable
kabuki acting techniques. Although the documentarydoes not mention it, Koshir6VII
first played Othello at the Jurakukanin Kobe in I917 with shingeki actress Kawada
Yoshio as Desdemona (Engei Gaho 1917:following

I).

50. Tho has produced kabuki in the past and the company has one or two kabuki actors
under contract.
5I. A chronology of Tamasaburo'sperformances,including his appearancesin Shakespeare,
is in Band6and Ohkura (1983).
52. Bach discussesSuper Kabukiproductionsin detail (1990:166-72).
53. Lawrence Kominz kindly called my attention to Hanagumi Shibai's recent interest in
Shakespeare.

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Chiba-ken:

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James R. Brandon is Director of the Asian Theatre Program at the University of

Hawai'i at Manoa and recipient of the International Theater Institute's 1998 Uchimura
Prize. Among the 15 books he has authored or edited are No and Ky6 gen in the
World (University of Hawai'i Press, 1997), The Cambridge
Contemporary
Guide to Asian Theater (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Kabuki: Five
Classic Plays (Harvard University Press, 1975). He is currently in Japan on a Japan
Foundation fellowship coediting with Samuel L. Leiterfour volumes of new kabuki
play translations to be published by the University of Hawai'i Press beginning in 2000.

53