Kabuki was short-lived. Only twenty-odd years after Onna Kabuki vanished from the scene, Wakashu Kabuki disappeared in the same way. In 1652, wakashu actors were abruptly banished from the stages of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto by the shōgunate for the same reasons that actresses had been banned from the theater. During the civil wars wakashu had been allowed to accompany warriors to the battle front, where no women were permitted. They were invited for the express purpose of homosexual prostitution, although their agreeable talents as entertainers were not overlooked. The passing of civil strife by no means ended the intimate association between samurai and wakashu. Open indulgence in homosexual affairs became common, and the excesses committed ranged from the lurid to the absurd. Finally a public brawl between two samurai over the favors of a young actor evoked the shōgunate ban.
To carry out the order of the shogunate, Ishigaya Shōgen, the famous Edo marshal, issued an edict requiring all wakashu in the area of his jurisdiction to shave their forelocks in conformity with the adult male fashion. His rigorous order was copied in Osaka and Kyoto.
YARŌ KABUKI
In 1653, the year after the disappearance of Wakashu Kabuki, the shōgunate unexpectedly gave permission, subject to three specific restrictions (to be noted presently), for the reopening of the theaters. This came about, quite probably, in response to earnest appeals made by the theater managers. When the government reinstated Kabuki, however, permits to open were issued to only four of the fifteen existent Kabuki theaters in the city of Edo: the Ichimura-za, Morita-za, Nakamura-za, and Murayamaza. The Nakamura-za was the oldest theater in Edo and bore the name of its actor-owner Nakamura Kanzaburō, also formerly known as Saruwaka Kanzaburō.
Upon the reopening of these four theaters, managers and actors agreed to abide by the following three restraining conditions: that only those whose hair was shaved in front and dressed in adult yarō-atama style could appear on the stage; that their performances should not degenerate into a state of immorality; and that wakashu should not perform Kabuki, which meant they were not permitted to dance, but could appear in monomane-kyōgen-zukushi (realistic drama).
Presumably the government officials concerned with the banning of Wakashu Kabuki understood monomane as being a sober, decent, and realistic stage art. They were correct, for monomane is the basic art of every dramatic diversion—the art of imitation. Monomane was the closest form to a drama, featuring both dialogue and pantomime. Thereafter, Kabuki was referred to by its fourth name, Yarō Kabuki, and so continued to be burdened with the stigma of its name—this time yarō, a not too respectable term used colloquially in referring to men of low class.
At the outset the main elements of Yarō Kabuki still were song and dance, but the actors realized that they projected little theatrical magnetism. With forelocks shaven, they felt denuded of much of their physical beauty. The theatergoer might as well stand on the street and watch the passing scene. They recognized also that the public was ready for something more substantial and interesting in theatrical effort.
Through necessity, Yarō Kabuki began to produce plays with simple plots. This was a progressive movement in the history of Kabuki, for the new drama demanded sincere, realistic acting. The study of histrionics and stage techniques was taken up and rose quickly to unprecedented heights. Furthermore, with the development of plots that introduced an array of new roles, actors and others attached to the theaters were afforded unlimited opportunity to display their creative abilities in many ways. Inherent genius for color and design brought forth a variety of costumes (Fig. 3). These were enhanced by the invention of katsura (wigs), which for some inexplicable reason had not been thought of previously. All of these innovations gave new life to the performances of these stage productions.
3. Yarō Kabuki. As the successor to Wakashu Kabuki, Yarō Kabuki began to produce plays with simple plots, thus making the first progressive movement in Kabuki's history.
No one attached to the theater at this time could be called a playwright. The one-act plays, known as hanare-kyōgen, were produced from mere outlined suggestions for plots, to which dialogue was added as freely conceived by theater managers and leading actors, and performed ad libitum. Audiences never expected to hear a definite or established dialogue. In successive performances, actors would experiment and improvise according to their diverse whims and temperaments, and such lines or actions as appeared to be well received were retained, until, through repeated use, they became standard parts of a play. One new play followed another.
Eventually a play was so enthusiastically received that the manager had it recorded for repeat performances. The emergence of this script or daihon (dai, subject; hon, book) was the origin of Kabuki play writing in Japan. Nō scripts of this age are in existence, but fortunately there are records mentioning them. According to these records, a play was never withdrawn from the theater as long as it drew an audience.
There were two distinct types of plays in the first half of the Yarō Kabuki period, the keisei-kai (keisei, courtesan; kai, buying, purchase) and the tanzen-roppō. Plays of the first type, the keisei-kai, were concerned with the affairs of courtesans and were usually set in the irozato, as the licensed quarters of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka were called. The Yoshiwara district in Edo, the Shimabara in Kyoto, and the Shimanouchi and Minami in Osaka were the irozato.
The costumes for the keisei-kai plays were most lavish and glamorous, and much of the traditional stage business, settings, and costumes seen in Kabuki plays depicting licensed quarters were founded in this type of Yarō Kabuki.
The second type, the tanzen-roppō, delineated a rather bawdy side of life, not for the sake of bawdiness as such but for the excitement in the characterization of people associated with it. The word tanzen propounds two entirely different meanings: one is related to theatrical arts or geigoto (gei, theatrical arts, dance, music; koto, matters), with which, peculiarly enough, we are not immediately concerned; the other, which is relevant, refers to a distinctive type of Japanese apparel that became popular in the seventeenth century: the dress worn by the dandies, who habitually lingered in bathhouses.
During the Shōō era (1652-54), in the Kanda district of Edo, in front of the mansion of the lord Hori Tango-no-Kami, there was a public bathhouse frequented by samurai, rōnin (masterless samurai), and otoko-date (chivaIrous cavaliers, swashbuckling street knights) of the city (Fig. 4). This bathhouse became known as a center of relaxation and revelry. Here yuna (female bathhouse attendants) not only washed the backs of the bathers but also engaged in less homely tasks. In rooms prepared for such purposes, they played the samisen (a three-stringed instrument similar to a balalaika), danced, and were congenial drinking companions as well as amiable bedfellows.
The apparel of the bathhouse addict was singularly fanciful and attracted much attention not only to the wearer but also to his destination—specifically, the bathhouse in Kanda in front of Hori Tango-no-Kami's mansion. The destination, shortened to tanzen (literally, in front of Tan's) became the popular designation of the dress. Later tanzen was applied to the attire worn by the habitues of any bathhouse (Fig. 5).
The conspicuous figure of the bathhouse dandy came to be known as tanzen-sugata (tanzen, bold-designed kimono; sugata, style, figure; literally, tanzen-clad figure). His hair was dressed in the tanzen-tate-gami style, a mode born at this time, when samurai who hoped to cover up their identities while they lingered in the plebeian bagnio cunningly tried to pass as patients taking a cure. By deliberately not shaving the forepart of the head and allowing the hair to grow stiffly upward about an inch, the tanzen-sugata indicated they had been too ill to shave the head properly.
4. Otokodate. The swashbuckling street knight
