Kabuki Costume. Ruth M. Shaver
change the pronunciation of the character or the word Kabuki as a whole. By the time the new meaning was established, Kabuki was composed solely of men.
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 question the highly stylized characterizations of the aragoto plays, they rejected the soft feminine love stories of the wagoto plays of Kamigata. In wagoto plays, acting is noticeably predominant, whereas there is a preponderance of dancing or rhythmic movements throughout an aragoto drama. Musical accompaniment with a distinct personal style is therefore essential to aragoto drama.
Kimpira jōruri (puppet plays about a supernaturally strong man) were the favored dramatic fare preceding aragoto. The puppets used in this medium do not exist today; only pictures of them remain. The hero of Kimpira jōruri was Sakata Kimpira, a picturesque character who symbolized matchless strength and who destroyed evil characters. Sometimes Kimpira would demolish an entire army single-handedly. When he annihilated demons, he displayed such great power and roughness that the head and limbs of many of the puppets were hurled off into space. It was largely from this vigorous theater that Danjūrō I is said to have taken his aragoto, its costumes, and possibly its make-up. Responsibility for the eventual unpopularity of this type of jōruri was attributed to the performance of a play entitled Kimpira Saigo (The End of Kimpira), in which the sustaining character dies. Without the hero, fans lost interest and deserted the puppet theater for the live theater of Kabuki.
Danjūrō I is credited with originating kumadori, the art of special and unusual make-up. Kumadori refers not only to make-up of the face but also to make-up of the arms and legs. In 1673, when Danjūrō was fourteen, he made his initial appearance in the role of Sakata no Kintoki in Shitennō Osanadachi (The Childhood of Four Strong Warriors or Four Faithful Bodyguards) wearing the first recorded kumadori, a weird make-up produced by the use of bold colored lines (see Chapter 23). Danjūrō had his face painted entirely red, and black lines were drawn over this to delineate and emphasize his features. The most prominent features of the make-up were large, fierce, upward-curved eyebrows exemplifying vitality. This style of kumadori later became known erroneously as Genroku-guma. Kumadori continued to develop during the Genro era, and Danjūrō was its most versatile exponent.
Danjūrō's costume for the role of the hero Kintoki was patterned with alternating purple and white squares called dōji-gōshi (Fig. 71), and to accentuate Kintoki's virility he wore a dark blue obi—an immense, round, wadded obi tied in a tombo-musubi (dragonfly knot). Kumadori extended to the arms and legs in those early times. Today, flesh-colored tights, or nikujuban (niku, flesh; juban, underneath garment), on which the kumadori pattern is painted, are worn instead of make-up, thus allowing actors to change costumes rapidly without danger of soiling their garments.
Niku-juban were devised in 1904 by Kawachi Hanshichi, a maker of tabi (bifurcated socks). He offered the niku-juban to Onoe Kikugorō VI, who at first was hesitant to use them, feeling that it would be difficult to move his arms with his accustomed grace, but on the advice of Band5 Mitsugorō VII, a great Kabuki dance star, Kikugorō yielded, and nikujuban (flesh-colored tights) are now in general use.
The original niku-juban covered the body to the elbow. Ichikawa Shinjūrō, student of Danjūrō IX, is thought to have been the first actor to order niku-juban which extended below the elbow to the wrist. Eventually, it was designed to cover the hands. It should be noted here that costumers still persist in making the niku-juban with such outmoded knitted material that even on the first day's performance it looks as long underwear does after it has been worn for a number of days. Topped off with a brocaded costume, nothing could be more incongruous or ghastly in appearance.
Although Danjūrō I revolutionized Kabuki with his introduction of aragoto plays, he did not confine his playwriting exclusively to this medium. Three of his dramas still survive: Narukami (Thunder God or The Fall of the Recluse Saint Narukami), Shibaraku (Wait a Moment), and Fuwa, the original drama of saya-ate, the "rude challenge." Saya-ate (saya, sheath of a sword; ate, to hit) was the extremely rude and offensive act of a samurai's deliberately bumping into another's sword. If no apology was forthcoming, a fight ensued, for the sword was the embodiment of the spirit of the samurai. For the overly aggressive warrior, saya-ate was a perfect means of promoting a fight, and instances of it abound in the drama.
ACTORS AND ROLES
Kabuki made steady progress under the effective guidance of Danjūrō I and other celebrated actors. Among the most outstanding of these were two Kamigata actors: Sakata Tōjūrō I (1647-1709), a great tachi-yaku (actor of leading male roles) whose hata (stylized format) was copied by the puppet theater, and Yoshizawa Ayame I (1673-1729), probably the foremost onnagata of all time, whose training and style of acting had the greatest influence in molding later onnagata. Yoshizawa Ayame I wrote the Ayame-gusa, the standard textbook for the female impersonator.
Another famous actor, Nakamura Denkurō I (?—1714), created saruguma, the "monkey-type" make-up, in the third year of Genro (1690), as well as the acting style for the role of Asahina as it is seen today in Yakko Asahina Ōiso Gayoi (The Dandy Asahina Haunting the Famed Pleasure Quarter in Ōiso).
The actor Yamanaka Heikurō (1632-1724) was known for his katakiyaku (villain roles), especially those of the kuge-aku (wicked noblemen). He also invented a favorite and devilishly effective make-up, variously called Heikurō-guma, hannya-gwna, or kijo-guma, for the demoness who appears in the last scene of the dance-drama Kyō-Ganoko Musume Dōjōji (The Gay Scene of the Maiden in Kanoko Kimono at Dōjō Temple). Heikurō first presented his demoness make-up in 1705 at the Ichimura-za during his seventy-third year, a ripe age at which to be creative. The costume and make-up for the kuge-aku (wicked noblemen) roles of today are taken from those originated by Heikurō and another famous actor, Nakajima Mihoemon (1699-1762), who followed Heikurō.