Kabuki Costume. Ruth M. Shaver
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 the entrance fees for the dance performances and fees from the eager patrons for her troupe's after-hours profession, prostitution. The shrine's needs were forgotten.
Okuni was the only woman of her troupe privileged to wear male costume. Her costume, after she joined with Sanza, was a wide departure from her original priestlike garb. It was an ankle-length figured kimono, probably made of silk with tie-and-dye and embroidery, without the customary pleated skirtlike hakama (culottes), but with full sleeves extending to just below the elbow. The kimono was worn with a simple, narrow, stiff obi tied in karuta-musubi style: a flat, oblong bow, the squared loops and knot of which are all exactly the same size.
The tailoring of the kimono was unique. The width of each mihaba, one of the four identical sections of the kimono body, was almost double the width of the sode-haba (width of sleeves) used today; consequently, the kimono was extremely wide, and when closed in front, overlapped somewhat in the manner of Nō costumes. Okuni's hair was styled in the young man's, or wakashu, mode, with a white hachimaki (headband) tied around the head. Her accessories included an ōgi (folding fan) probably an all-white haku-sen, and a leather bag. A small hyōtan (the gourd many men carried for holding sake or water) hung from the right side of her obi, and a juzu (a Buddhist rosary) adorned her neck. To emulate the samurai, Okuni tucked a set of katana, the long and short swords, through the left side of her obi. The sheaths and hilts of the swords were gaudy with gilded metal mountings.
It is curious to note that some paintings show actresses of Onna Kabuki, which followed Okuni Kabuki, impersonating Sanza wearing a Roman Catholic rosary with a cross. Though the cross had no definitive meaning to the people in general, and certainly not to the actresses, it was thought to be an exotic accessory. Since the spread of Catholicism in Japan was approaching its zenith, the wearing of a rosary with a cross was not an unusual sight. Whenever a daimyō became a Christian, all of his retainers likewise had to become Christians, and each undoubtedly took to wearing the emblem of Christianity.
When Okuni's form of entertainment reached its peak of popularity, presumably in 1603, it was called Kabuki, with its inference of something degenerate or unorthodox. This appellation was Kabuki written in kana, the Japanese syllabary script. Okuni is well delineated by the word kabuki or kabuki-mono, so that the application of this contemptuous term to the entertainment she popularized seems plausible.
Okuni was the creator of the Natsu Kagura no Mai (Dance of the Summer Kagura). The choreography for the dance was based on the Kagura, an ancient religious pantomimic dance form brought down through the centuries in ceremonies performed at Shintō shrine festivals. The costume for the dance was an elegant white silk suikan, similar to robes worn by court nobles in ancient days, and red naga-bakama, long pleated trousers which trailed for two feet or more, giving the wearer the appearance of crawling on his knees. Her hair was plainly dressed. It was tied chastely just below the nape of the neck and hung free down the back. The simple beauty of this costume was accentuated by a branch of the sacred sakaki, the camellia-like shrub used in Shintō ceremonies, carried in the hand. It is probable that Okuni patterned this costume after the masculine white robe and red naga-bakama (long trousers) worn by the shirabyōshi, the gay professional dancers who flourished during the Heian and Kamakura periods, and who sometimes are said to have been predecessors of the geisha. The shirabyōshi wore this costume in imitation of men's wardrobe.
The fact that Okuni and her troupe were occasionally invited to perform before samurai is an indication of the rapidly expanding popularity of Okuni Kabuki. It remained, however, essentially, an expression belonging to the world of the commoner, who had only enough artistic sensibility to enjoy its suggestions of obscenity. He remained complacently unaware of its lack of inspiration or imagination. Denied any stimulus to advance, Okuni Kabuki found it difficult to break through an accepted level of mediocrity. However, Okuni Kabuki with its element of novelty was sufficiently appealing as a performing art to continue as popular theater.
Okuni continued her chosen profession long after her short-lived liaison with Sanzaburō ended. Possibly tired of the gay life, Sanzaburō changed his given name to Kyūemon and became a samurai attached to the feudal lord Mōri Tadamasa at Tsuyama in Mimasaka Province. One of the few instances where fully documented evidence about Sanzaburō is obtainable records the fact that Sanzaburō died in 1604 in a quarrel with a fellow retainer. As for Okuni, historical records mentioning her last years are so confusing that it is useless to speculate when and where she died.
ONNA KABUKI
During