Initial Steps to Canonize Kabuki by Ichikawa Danjūrō IX Jihye

English Journal of JSTR Initial Steps to Canonize Kabuki by Ichikawa Danjūrō IX Jihye Kim Abstract Ichikawa Danjūrō IX1 was a renowned kabuki actor who was a central figure in attempts to reform kabuki during the early Meiji period. For instance, Danjūrō promoted a new genre that employed historical investigation and an acting method based upon realism in order to revise existing historical plays. But eventually Danjūrō became more conservative and responded skeptically to untested new plays, committing himself to restaging old masterpieces. It is a common belief that the emergence of shimpa plays, which captivated audiences by concentrating upon spectacular battle scenes instead of plots and acting, aggravated Danjūrō’s sense that kabuki was in crisis. Indeed, it has been argued that Danjūrō then shifted his stance to pursue the promotion of kabuki as a lofty tradition. However, there was also another core impetus behind Danjūrō’s conversion. In this paper, I examine pieces of evidence showing that Danjūrō began to endeavor to canonize the traditional form of kabuki around the time when kabuki plays were staged for the Emperor Meiji for the first time in 1887. I contend that this unprecedented event, tenran kabuki, convinced Danjūrō to abandon his stance on the reformation of kabuki. In particular, after this time he started to deploy the power of Kanjinchō (The Subscription List), one of the plays in the setlist of tenran kabuki and mainly performed plays adapted from canonical nohgaku or Chikamatsu jōruri. The process of canonization carried out by Danjūrō seriously affected the direction of the entire kabuki industry and lent momentum to the trend in which kabuki actors preferred traditional plays in order to distinguish kabuki from contemporary performances. By illuminating Danjūrō IX’s efforts to canonize kabuki, I clarify the initial steps in establishing modern kabuki as a traditional performing art. Introduction Kabuki is one of the three major types of classical theater of Japan, along with nohgaku (a generic term for noh and kyōgen) and jōruri and it dates back to the early 17th century. In spite of its 400-year history, however, it is only a short time since kabuki came to be considered a traditional performing art. During the early years of Meiji period, a number of kabuki plays reflecting the zeitgeist of the time and portraying the flowering of modern civilization were created.2 At the same time, kabuki became a target of reformation in the heat of modernization. As a result, government officials encouraged the kabuki industry to revise existing kabuki plays, in order to develop Japanese national theater and erase the image of kabuki as a vulgar and lowbrow medium. Although kabuki was a contemporary art embracing kaleido- scopic changes until this time, it could not resist adjusting its direction to become a traditional performing art in the middle of Meiji period. ——————————————————————————————— 1 In the present paper, Japanese names are given by family names followed by first names like Ichikawa (family name) Danjūrō (first name). 2 For example, zangiri-mono (cropped-hair plays) are a genre of plays that depicted new civilization or characters after the Meiji Restoration and, in a broad sense, they are one kind of sewa-mono, contemporary plays utilizing real incidents and scandalous stories of commoners, in contrast to historical plays called jidai-mono. – 26 – Initial Steps to Canonize Kabuki by Ichikawa Danjūrō IX Ichikawa Danjūrō IX (1838–1903) was a kabuki actor who took an active part in the kabuki industry between the late Edo period and the Meiji period, and he was always at the center of both the trend toward reformation and the trend toward canonization of kabuki. Danjūrō is a name that has been taken by renowned kabuki actors who are pillars of the Ichikawa family, a major group of kabuki actors, and therefore, it can be said that he was qualified to be a central figure in the kabuki world by birth. However, it was not only lineage that led him to perform a leading role. All of Danjūrō’s activities and challenges to earlier styles were greatly influential among audiences and in the kabuki industry as a whole due to his prompt reactions to the rapidly changing society of the Meiji era. For example, Danjūrō created and promoted katsureki-mono (living history plays), a new genre employing historical investigation and an acting method based upon realism, in order to revise existing historical plays. By doing this, Danjūrō attempted to abolish stylized performances of kabuki which he saw as anachronistic and irrational. Danjūrō’s dedication toward katsureki-mono was at its peak in the mid-1880s but eventually he became conservative and reacted skeptically to untested new plays. Even though Danjūrō did continue to stage katsureki-mono in the 1890s, he generally renounced his unorthodox performances opposing the conven- tions of kabuki and preferred to adapt plays based upon classic performing arts. Regarding the matter of when and why Danjūrō began to shift his stance from reformation to con- servatism, many scholars state that the decisive factor was the emergence of shimpa (new school drama),3 which captivated audiences by portraying spectacular battle scenes during the First Sino- Japanese War (1894–95). Shimpa is an early form of Japanese modern theater which features more flamboyant performance styles and modern realistic dialogue than kabuki. For this reason, Kawatake Shigetoshi argues that the conservative shift in Danjūrō’s perspective was prompted by the complete failure of Kairiku Renshō Asahi no Mihata (The Rising Sun of the Japanese Flag Flying over Victories by Land and Sea, 1894), a kabuki play that attempted to coopt the popularity of wartime shimpa plays by Kawakami Otojirō. Furthermore, he designates the period of time when Danjūrō was being conservative and engaged in canonization process as from 1893 to 1903, agreeing with the earlier historical descrip- tion of Ihara Toshirō (Kawatake 1959, 855–57). Ihara describes that Danjūrō quit attempts at kabuki reforms and converted,4 quoting Danjūrō’s words after the performance of Ōkubo Hikozaemon in September 1893: “There is no hope for new plays because they cannot please audiences at all, despite all of my efforts; whereas audiences are delighted when I merely widen my eyes while staging [existing] historical plays” (Ihara 1933, 491).5 These perspectives on Danjūrō’s conversion are consistent across all recent research. Kawatake Toshio points out that the rise of shimpa made kabuki abandon its status as a contemporary art and that most people concerned with the kabuki industry became conservative, cling- ing to old masterpieces and traditional performance styles (Kawatake 2005, 409). ——————————————————————————————— 3 Shimpa literally means “new-style” drama as opposed to “old-style” drama—that is, kabuki—and it began in 1888 as a series of political skits or plays called sōshi shibai by Sudō Sadanori. However, Kawakami Otojirō tried to develop it like modern sewa-mono using sensationalist stories of contemporary life and he introduced actresses, ending the 250-year ban on mixed casts of men and women. Shimpa dominated the Japanese modern theater during the first decade of the 20th century but later it suffered deterioration. See Rimer 1974, 14–16. 4 Although the word tenkō (conversion) has a possibility of being controversial because it may incorporate a negative con- notation close to ideological reversal or political capitulation, Ihara uses it with the meaning of merely “shift” here. Additionally, tenkō became the standard term used to signify Danjūrō’s move away from kabuki reforms in the 1890s, and it remains in use in recent research. See Kamiyama 2006. 5 In this anecdote, Danjūrō indicates his frustration and sense of futility stemming from the gap between the ideal of reforming kabuki and the reality that audiences still relished stylized performances involving mie poses with widening eyes, which he recognized as conventionalities and desired to revise. – 27 – English Journal of JSTR I accept the arguments in previous research describing how shimpa aggravated Danjūrō’s sense that kabuki was in crisis and that he became more conservative over time. Nevertheless, it is problematic to confine the cause of Danjūrō’s conversion to shimpa because this oversimplifies the concomitant issues surrounding the incremental canonization of kabuki. In my definition, canonization of kabuki means attempts to situate kabuki as a tradition by utilizing the authority of the Emperor or previous canons and emphasizing its long and storied history, so as to elevate its stature from its earlier position as public entertainment for lower classes in the Edo period. I argue that there was a core impetus that drove Danjūrō’s conversion and boosted his attempts at canonization, even prior to the rise of shimpa. After Danjūrō performed at tenran kabuki, an event in which kabuki plays were staged for the Emperor Meiji in 1887, I infer that Danjūrō realized it was more effective for the survival of kabuki to reframe it as a tradition instead of reforming it further. This paper shows how Danjūrō IX attempted to establish kabuki as a traditional performing art after the time of tenran kabuki, taking as prime examples the case of Kanjinchō (The Subscription List), which was a play on the setlists of that event, and the exploitation of preexisting canons from nohgaku and Chikamatsu jōruri. It does so by analyzing the change in Danjūrō’s objective in staging Kanjinchō before and after tenran kabuki and also by considering kabuki plays adapted from canonical plays which Danjūrō performed between the 1890s and his death in 1903. In so doing, this paper clarifies the meaning of reconstructing traditions in the 1890s, just after the early Meiji years known as “bunmei kaika no jidai” (the age of civilization and enlightenment).

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