he appears in Otokodate Gosho no Gorōzō) is among the most colorful of the Edo-period types portrayed in Kabuki.
5. Tanzen-sugata. The apparel of the early-Edo bath-house dandy was singularly fanciful, and his conspicuous style was known as tanzen-sugata—that is, bold-designed-kimono style.
6. Tanzen-roppō. Taking their name from the tanzen attire of the bathhouse dandies of Edo, tanzen-roppō (bawdy plays) became a feature of Yarō Kabuki.
The dandy wore two quite distinctive decorative swords known as musori-kakutsuba katana (musori, uncurved; kaku, square; tsuba, sword guard; katana, sword)—that is, swords with square guards and uncurved blades—thrust through the obi in kannuki fashion: like gate bolts. These swords easily identified the dandy if his elegant manner of walking failed to do so, because they differed markedly from the samurai weapons.
Tanzen-roppō—that is, bawdy plays—were first produced in Edo but also became popular in western Japan in the district then known as Kamigata.
It is pertinent to the history of Kabuki to digress here for a brief explanation of the name of this district. Kamigata was the colloquial word for the present-day area of Kansai (kan, barrier; sat, west), which refers to the provinces west of the old Hakone barrier. This encompasses the large cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Kamigata (kami, upper or higher; kata, direction) meant the "higher place," or the direction of the emperor, who remained in his capital, Kyoto, in counterposition to the shōgunate in Edo (present-day Tokyo). Kamigata ceased to be used as the name of the western provinces when Emperor Meiji moved to Edo in 1868. The eastern provinces were collectively known as Kanto (kan, barrier; tō, east). Since Edo was the only influential city in the eastern provinces during the Edo (Tokugawa) period, Kanto is not used in the history of Kabuki as is Kamigata, which covers the three important western cities.
Tamon Shozaemon, an actor, is credited with the introduction of the distinctive style of walking and acting, as well as the costuming and manner of wearing the swords, in tanzen-roppō (Fig. 6). Tanzen has been transmitted to us today in the furi, or choreography, of such plays as Sukeroku, Saya-ate, and Modori Kago and in the dramatic role of Fuwa Banzaemon in Ukiyozuka Hiyoku no Inazuma, more commonly called Nagoya Sanza.
In 1664, twelve years after Yarō Kabuki emerged, rapid and epoch-making progress was made with the presentation of tsuzuki-kyōgen: dramas of two acts. In Osaka, Hinin no Adauchi (Revenge of a Villain), written by Fukuoka Yagoshiro, was staged at the theater known as the Araki Yojibeiza. Also during this period, Imagawa Shinobi-guruma (the meaning of the title is no longer clear), by Miyako Dennai, was presented at the Ichimuraza in Edo.
As the composition of the drama became somewhat more complex, the staging also changed. For the first time in Kabuki, draw curtains were introduced to mark the change of scenes. With these developments, Kabuki emerged from its formative years to take its place in a new era of cultural enlightenment in which the common man, for the first time in Japanese history, was the focal point. The Kabuki at last had reached maturity in form and could be proud of its name. It was, however, over two centuries before Kabuki was admitted to the realm of classical theater.
CHAPTER 2
Genro Kabuki
Japanese culture attained the peak of bourgeois fulfillment in the fifteen years of the Genro era (1688-1703), which falls in the middle of the Edo period. This era, though brief, is frequently referred to as the Japanese Renaissance. Its influence was pronounced through the succeeding Hōei (1704-10), Shōtoku (1711-15), and Kyōho (1716-35) eras, covering some thirty-two years of unparalleled maturity in the arts. Even today, aspects of the Genro era remain.
It has been said that at about this time the writing of the word Kabuki changed from kana, the Japanese syllabary script, to kanji, Chinese ideographs, though this is not accepted as true by some authorities. The three ideographs ka
Sparked by the rapidly expanding influence of the merchant class, plebeian arts reached the zenith of their expression in the Genro era. The growing self-consciousness of the citizenry demanded beauty and entertainment peculiarly their own. In this milieu, Kabuki found the freedom it needed for creative growth. The imagination, foresight, and great talent for mimicry of the Genro actors brought forth the basic kata, the peculiar stylized Kabuki forms of acting which encompass direction, makeup, costuming, dancing, hair-styling, hand- and stage-properties, musical accompaniment, elocution, and stage settings. During the early years of Genro, the dramatists wrote plays in several acts and scenes with plots of increasing intricacy. For the first time Kabuki plays were produced in an indoor theater. The roofless theater ceased to exist for Kabuki.
Among playwrights who rose on the crest of the cultural tide was Japan's foremost dramatic poet and first professional dramatist, Sugimori Nobumori, better known by his pen name Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The novelist Ihara Saikaku, the haikai (seventeen-syllabled verse) poet Matsuō Basho, and Chikamatsu formed a trio of the most illustrious writers of the Japanese Renaissance.
Chikamatsu wrote for both contemporary popular theaters: first for the Kabuki; then for the ningyō-jōruri-shibai, today generally referred to as Bunraku (the puppet theater). Chikamatsu's great and popularly acclaimed masterpieces were jōruri dramas (dramas in which the puppet action is accompanied by a musical narrative) written expressly for the puppet theater. Jōruri dramas were readily adapted to the Kabuki stage. Chikamatsu's plays continue to be presented with persuasive appeal to modern-day audiences, much as Shakespeare's plays are performed in the West.
DANJŪRŌ I AND ARAGOTO
The founder of the ranking dynasty of Kabuki actors in Edo, Ichikawa Danjūrō I, was also the guiding spirit of the stage during the Genro era. Danjūrō, writing under the pseudonym of Mimasu Hyōgo, was an amazingly versatile playwright as well as an inventive actor. He created the vigorous masculine style of acting called aragoto, which was to continue as the gei (special art) of the Ichikawa family.
The aragoto drama, written to be performed in a grandiose and exaggerated form of acting, is a type of play or sequence of acts in which the central character displays superhuman qualities or spiritual strength and even occasionally represents a divine or an evil spirit. It readily appealed to the masses, who found in the aragoto actors substitute heroes for the valiant warriors of the glorious past. This romantic appeal reflected the temper of the Edo populace, which had always shown great enthusiasm for the legendary events in its history. While the theatergoers of Edo accepted without
