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Early Kabuki
No clearly defined documentation of the actual birth of Kabuki has been found. Some recognized scholars in this field believe Kabuki had its initial performance in Kyoto around the 5th year of Keichō (1600). It was about the same time, 1600 to be exact, when Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the longest reigning dynasty of shōgun (military dictators) in Japan, won the battle of Sekigahara, defeating the generals who had given their allegiance to Hideyori, son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, considered by some historians to be Japan's greatest military strategist. Hideyoshi, born of humble parentage, rose to become the military ruler prior to Ieyasu's ascendancy but never attained the rank of shōgun because of his plebeian birth. The government instituted by Ieyasu after his victory over the Toyotomi forces is known in Japanese history as the Tokugawa bakufu or Tokugawa shōgunate. It was destined to continue for more than two and a half centuries.
Other Kabuki scholars believe that Kabuki was not founded until the 8th year of Keichō (1603), which would coincide with the year that Ieyasu assumed the title of shōgun. From that time until the fall of the shōgunate in 1868, the age was called the Edo or Tokugawa period, the name Edo signifying that the Tokugawa had established their capital in Edo, the city which became Tokyo in 1869.
The Edo period, like preceding periods, was divided into a number of eras during which Kabuki blossomed from a coarse, erotic form of entertainment into that of classical theater as it is known today. Names of eras were often changed after some disastrous occurrence, such as war or loss of crops. It was a common belief that the adoption of a new era name would usher in a happy, prosperous interval. The over-all era names were not changed except by permission of the emperor. Today there are no such changes, each new era deriving its name from the succession of an emperor.
OKUNI KABUKI
Caprice has credited a woman with the origin of Kabuki, Japan's time-honored, traditionally male theater. It easily could have been otherwise, for various forms of entertainment which might have caught the fancy of the townsmen prevailed. Yet it was a woman who offered the spark that fired the success of one special form beyond all the others existing at that time.
After a turbulent age of successive wars, there was a relatively peaceful period. The populace gave vent to its long-suppressed desire for pleasure in an era of unrestrained joy. New customs and trends spontaneously erupted. These were commonly called kabuki, an abstract noun taken from the verb kabuku, which at that time literally meant a "thing leaning"—in other words, an "extraordinary thing" signifying something abnormal, queer, or not common. A person who attracted undue attention by conspicuous traits of behavior, wore gaudy, exaggerated clothing, or swaggered with great bravado was referred to as kabuki or kabuki-mono, with its nuances of emancipation, pleasure, sensuality, and perhaps lawlessness, since the Japanese are peculiarly bound to the laws of tradition and strict rules of behavior.
In the wake of this new era in public tastes, legend has it that Okuni, a priestess of the great Izumo no Ōyashiro Shrine in central Izumo Province (now Shimane Prefecture), journeyed across the mountains to notso-distant Kyoto, ostensibly to obtain contributions for the maintenance of the shrine through performances of a prayer-dance. This dance, the nembutsu-odori (literally "dance of prayer to Buddha") was an outgrowth of five centuries of teaching prior to Okuni by such priests as Kūya, Ippen, and during Okuni's time by the priest Hōsai, who believed that the principles of Buddha could be most easily understood not by difficult or tedious preaching but by plunging into ecstasy through song and dance. Later the nembutsu-odori became familiar as a folk dance.
Okuni's arrival in Kyoto about 1600 is considered a historical event in the annals of popular theater in Japan, for it presaged the beginning of various theatrical forms which gradually evolved into the present-day Kabuki.
Okuni belonged to a class of young maidens known as miko or shrine virgins, albeit of questionable virginity, who served the gods of the Shintō shrines, danced before them, and made themselves generally available for any menial task. Since people from all walks of life visited the shrines, inevitably bawdyhouses abounded in their vicinity. The miko often performed in these houses after dancing for the gods.
The miko did not usually come from aristocratic families, but quite often from the shake (the hereditary families of Shintōist priests), a wealthy class who helped support the shrines by donations. However, miko could come from any class. These girls did not necessarily enter a permanent religious life. Most of them married young, but a few remained unmarried in the shrines.
Such was the life to which Okuni was inured at the time she gave the first public performance of her dance in Kyoto, captivating the citizenry with her original embellishment of the nembutsu-odori. It is believed that she gave performances en route to Kyoto, though no written record exists.
Upon reaching Kyoto, Okuni proceeded to a dry place in the bed of the Kamo River, since it was there that low-class entertainers could perform without being taxed, and the space was free for the asking. At the foot of Gojō Bridge she made use of a koyagake butai (outdoor stage) for her performances. This type of temporarily built open stage—made of logs, bunting, and matting—can be seen today at circuses and shrine festivals. The word koyagake itself is a very old and popular expression meaning "hut-styled" or "temporarily built."
The townspeople regularly frequented the Kamogawara—that is, the kawara or riverbed of the Kamo—to be regaled by debased performances of Dengaku, Sarugaku, and other promiscuous entertainments, and for several centuries after Okuni's appearance there Kabuki actors were weighed down with the ignominious names of kawara-mono (riverbed fellow) or kawara-kojiki (riverbed beggar).
Only by examining old paintings can we envisage the costumes worn by Okuni. When presenting her first dance in Kyoto, she is thought to have appeared in a priest's black silk robe over an ordinary kimono, both ankle-length. A nurigasa (nuri, painted; kasa, hat; that is, a lacquer-coated, umbrella-shaped hat) covered her head, while around her neck was hung a scarlet breast-length strap of karaori (brocaded silk) on which was fastened a kane (small metal gong). Okuni struck the kane with a wooden hammer called a shumoku as she sang the well-known tunes of the day and danced in a most enticing manner.
Many, if not all, of the events surrounding the story of Okuni's life are based on legend. Documentation fails to record accurately where fiction ends and truth begins. So be it what it may, fate stepped into Okuni's life in the form of a handsome man-about-town, Nagoya Sanzaburō, who undoubtedly had been drawn to Okuni by her physical charms and daring exhibitionism. Born in 1576, the seventh child of a samurai, young Sanzaburō, or Sanza as he is popularly known, studied for the priesthood at a Kyoto temple until 1590. Then, at the age of fourteen, already bored with the austerities of priesthood, he gladly became a page to Gamō Ujisato of Aizu, a Christian daimyō. The death of Ujisato in 1595 brought Sanza back to Kyoto with a fortune bequeathed to him by his late master.
Lombard states in The Japanese Drama that Sanza "led a life of social freedom, and was popularly known for excellence in social arts, including the Kyōgen" (comic interludes of the Nō). This was the background of the man who it is said became Okuni's mentor as well as lover for a few years.
Sanza, a musician proficient with the Jue (flute) and tsuzumi (hand-drum), taught Okuni popular songs to which he wrote ribald lyrics. Together, they borrowed freely from the Nō and Kyōgen. These performances put Okuni on the highest rung of the ladder of popularity. In these, Okuni donned a man's costume and Sanzaburd a woman's, a reversal of their apparel which made them look ungainly for those times, but which the public nevertheless found exceedingly refreshing and humorous. The male members of the audience in particular found the spectacle of a young woman dancing in masculine attire to be highly beguiling and erotic.
To her Japanese audience with its jaded appetite, Okuni's entertainment was welcome and stimulating. Okuni hastened to capitalize on her popularity by collecting
