certain unexpected pockets, such as Zenshinza and in Japanese dance,
onnagata
continue to exist even outside of Kabuki.
I soon heard of a particular
onnagata
called Tamasaburo. Unlike the others, he had achieved fame outside of Kabuki as his face was everywhere – on TV, on posters, in advertisements. In 1967, at the age of seventeen, Tamasaburo had caught the eye of the public with his appearance in the play
Sakurahime Azuma Bunsho
(
The Scarlet Princess of Edo
)
.
Yukio Mishima wrote a play for him; teenage girls besieged the theaters. For the first time in a century, a Kabuki
onnagata
had become a popular star.
The February after the Minamiza
kaomise
, I saw Tamasaburo perform for the first time, at the Shinbashi Enbujo Theater in Tokyo, in the dance ‘Sagi Musume’ (‘Heron Maiden’) – Kabuki’s
Swan Lake.
In it, a young maiden dances as a white heron in the snow. Through successive costume changes, from white, to purple, to red, she passes through the stages of girlhood, young adulthood and first love. Then comes heartbreak: her wing (or sleeve) is wounded. She becomes deranged and whirls madly through the snow. At the end, mounting a red felt-covered platform, her face distorted with suffering and rage, she strikes a final pose.
The beginning of the dance was quiet. Sagi Musume, dressed in a pure white kimono, a white hood over her head, turned slowly at the center of the stage, her movement so smooth and perfectly controlled that she seemed like a marble statue. Though Tamasaburo had yet to show his face, he had already conjured up a quiet, twilit, snow-covered world. The hood fell, revealing the pure face of an angel, radiantly white. The audience gasped; this was not the usual
onnagata.
Impossible to describe, the beauty of Tamasaburo is almost a natural phenomenon, like a rainbow or a waterfall. At the end, when, her long black hair disheveled, Sagi Musume mounted the red platform brandishing a magic staff, she was like a shaman of ancient times, evoking the wrath of heaven. The audience around me wept.
Afterwards, a friend of the Kaika master took me to Tamasaburo’s dressing room backstage. Out of make-up, Tamasaburo was a tall, thin young man, who looked not much different from somebody one might sit next to on the subway. In contrast with his sadness-tinged femininity of the stage, he was no-nonsense, cheerful, funny. He was then aged twenty-seven, two years older than me.
Kabuki, an almost perfectly preserved remnant of Japan’s feudal past, is dominated by a handful of old families. Actors are ranked according to the importance of their hereditary names,
like barons and dukes in the peerage. Actors not born into a Kabuki family are doomed to spend their whole lives as
kuroko
– the black-clad attendants, supposedly invisible to the audience, who appear onstage to supply a prop and remove or adjust a piece of costume. At best, they might appear in a row of maids or retainers. But occasionally someone manages to gain entrance to the hierarchy from outside, and Tamasaburo was one of these.
Although not born into the Kabuki world, Tamasaburo began dancing when he was four. At the age of six he was adopted by the Kabuki actor Morita Kanya XIV, and appeared as a child actor under the name of Bando Kinoji. From then on, his entire life was devoted to the stage; he never went beyond high school. When I met him, he had just returned from his first trip to Europe and was dying to talk to someone about world culture. Fresh from Oxford, I seemed to him to be the ideal candidate. For my part, having just watched Sagi Musume, I was still marveling at his genius, and had a host of questions to ask about Japanese theater. We hit it off at once, and soon became fast friends.
From then on, I neglected Oomoto and stole every opportunity to take the train to Tokyo to see Kabuki. Jakuemon and Tamasaburo gave me free run of the backstage, and Tamasaburo’s adoptive mother, Kanshie, was a master of Nihon Buyo
onnagata
continue to exist even outside of Kabuki.
I soon heard of a particular
onnagata
called Tamasaburo. Unlike the others, he had achieved fame outside of Kabuki as his face was everywhere – on TV, on posters, in advertisements. In 1967, at the age of seventeen, Tamasaburo had caught the eye of the public with his appearance in the play
Sakurahime Azuma Bunsho
(
The Scarlet Princess of Edo
)
.
Yukio Mishima wrote a play for him; teenage girls besieged the theaters. For the first time in a century, a Kabuki
onnagata
had become a popular star.
The February after the Minamiza
kaomise
, I saw Tamasaburo perform for the first time, at the Shinbashi Enbujo Theater in Tokyo, in the dance ‘Sagi Musume’ (‘Heron Maiden’) – Kabuki’s
Swan Lake.
In it, a young maiden dances as a white heron in the snow. Through successive costume changes, from white, to purple, to red, she passes through the stages of girlhood, young adulthood and first love. Then comes heartbreak: her wing (or sleeve) is wounded. She becomes deranged and whirls madly through the snow. At the end, mounting a red felt-covered platform, her face distorted with suffering and rage, she strikes a final pose.
The beginning of the dance was quiet. Sagi Musume, dressed in a pure white kimono, a white hood over her head, turned slowly at the center of the stage, her movement so smooth and perfectly controlled that she seemed like a marble statue. Though Tamasaburo had yet to show his face, he had already conjured up a quiet, twilit, snow-covered world. The hood fell, revealing the pure face of an angel, radiantly white. The audience gasped; this was not the usual
onnagata.
Impossible to describe, the beauty of Tamasaburo is almost a natural phenomenon, like a rainbow or a waterfall. At the end, when, her long black hair disheveled, Sagi Musume mounted the red platform brandishing a magic staff, she was like a shaman of ancient times, evoking the wrath of heaven. The audience around me wept.
Afterwards, a friend of the Kaika master took me to Tamasaburo’s dressing room backstage. Out of make-up, Tamasaburo was a tall, thin young man, who looked not much different from somebody one might sit next to on the subway. In contrast with his sadness-tinged femininity of the stage, he was no-nonsense, cheerful, funny. He was then aged twenty-seven, two years older than me.
Kabuki, an almost perfectly preserved remnant of Japan’s feudal past, is dominated by a handful of old families. Actors are ranked according to the importance of their hereditary names,
like barons and dukes in the peerage. Actors not born into a Kabuki family are doomed to spend their whole lives as
kuroko
– the black-clad attendants, supposedly invisible to the audience, who appear onstage to supply a prop and remove or adjust a piece of costume. At best, they might appear in a row of maids or retainers. But occasionally someone manages to gain entrance to the hierarchy from outside, and Tamasaburo was one of these.
Although not born into the Kabuki world, Tamasaburo began dancing when he was four. At the age of six he was adopted by the Kabuki actor Morita Kanya XIV, and appeared as a child actor under the name of Bando Kinoji. From then on, his entire life was devoted to the stage; he never went beyond high school. When I met him, he had just returned from his first trip to Europe and was dying to talk to someone about world culture. Fresh from Oxford, I seemed to him to be the ideal candidate. For my part, having just watched Sagi Musume, I was still marveling at his genius, and had a host of questions to ask about Japanese theater. We hit it off at once, and soon became fast friends.
From then on, I neglected Oomoto and stole every opportunity to take the train to Tokyo to see Kabuki. Jakuemon and Tamasaburo gave me free run of the backstage, and Tamasaburo’s adoptive mother, Kanshie, was a master of Nihon Buyo
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