Nureki Chimuo Archive

In my last two entries, I wrote about a photo shoot featuring what I imagine to be “punishment photos” of an actress from a travelling theater troupe eighty years ago, bound and taken away. That is to say, it’s a story born from the imagination that bubbled up, surged and swelled within me while gazing at the old photographs now treasured in the sex museum. Looking at these old, story-driven “punishment photos,” SM-like emotions well up endlessly, one after another, and character concepts and background instantly come to mind. And thus one can immerse oneself in the pleasure of fantasy. This very spark of imaginative power is the greatest joy, the supreme delight, in viewing “punishment photos.” Therefore, the so-called “SM photos” of today, incapable of evoking such fantasies or delusions, hold little appeal for us. (Ultimately, photographs that focus solely on exposing the crotch and labor over such details are not bondage photos, but ordinary erotic photos. The creators are producing mainstream pornography, not bondage photos that delight enthusiasts. Thinking of it that way, it doesn’t make me angry). While writing the previous entry and the one before that, I recalled something. It was about the stepchild bullying plays performed by traveling theater troupes. This is neither imagination nor delusion; it’s a story I actually witnessed during my boyhood. In April 1946 (Showa 21), I was sixteen years old. Our house had been burned down in the indiscriminate bombing of Tokyo’s downtown area by the U.S. Air Force the previous March, and our family had moved to company housing for Hitachi Ltd. employees in Shimo-Yahgiri, Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture. Toward the end of the Pacific War, under the government’s compulsory order, my father was assigned to work at Hitachi’s Kameari factory. This was called conscription. Had my father

been a little younger, he would have been drafted as a soldier and sent to China or the southern islands. I too was forced to work at the same munitions factory as my father, under compulsory student mobilization orders. Thanks to my father being employed by an organization aligned with those in power, although our home and school were destroyed in the air raids, our family was able to live in the factory’s company housing. Over thirty minutes’ walk from the current JR Matsudo Station, atop a hill, stood a hastily built housing complex of over a hundred units. The roofs were flimsy, covered with thin cedar bark. The foundations were extremely crude, consisting only of rows of round stones, forming single-story structures. Each building was divided into four units. In other words, it was a row house where four families lived together in one building. Even after the war with America ended, our family lived on this land for a very long time. We had nowhere else to go. At that time, our family consisted of my parents, myself, and my younger brother and sister. Five people in all. My father continued working at Hitachi Ltd. until retirement. There was also the matter that if he didn’t, he would be evicted from the company housing. In the years following defeat, from the summer of 1945, the world was in the midst of utter chaos. Though suffering from hunger and poverty, the common people stubbornly clung to life. (What was I living for back then, day after day?) The hillside where over a hundred company housing units stood was surrounded almost entirely by farmland and mixed woodlands. It was enveloped by a rural landscape. There was a village of local farmers who cultivated that field for their livelihood. Some farmhouses resembled the grand estates of feudal lords seen in period films, while others were humble peasant dwellings that looked distinctly like tenant farmers’ homes. Outside the earthen-walled mansion lay a vacant lot overgrown with weeds. In the spring of 1946, a troupe of traveling actors arrived there from who knows where. And so, using the vacant lot outside the wall, they strung up tarps and began putting on plays. My family’s situation right after the war must have bored readers, but now I’ll get to the main topic of this chapter.

As I watched actors dressed in costumes, wearing topknots and thick white makeup, parading through the streets lined with company housing, beating drums on rickshaws with a deep, rumbling sound during their “town rounds,” I felt as if I were in a waking dream, my heart racing. They were dressed to the nines, beaming with charm, promoting the play they were putting on, but to my eyes they never looked beautiful. They seemed like “monsters.” Captivated by the procession of those “monstrous beings,” I would go to the vacant lot beside the mansion at night. A small theater had been built there. Well, not quite a theater, it was simply an enclosure. The auditorium, stage, and dressing rooms were enclosed by a tent made of thick, coarse, dirty brown fabric. The tent on the stage left was pressed tightly against the earthen wall of the mansion. Because of this, half of the theater appeared to be leaning against the wall. In fact, it might actually have been leaning against it. Only over the stage and dressing room was a roof constructed from the same brown tent material as the enclosure. Black cords stretched long from the mansion over the wall, and several bare light bulbs dimly illuminated the stage. The seating area had no roof. It was open-air. There were no chairs; instead, mats were laid out on the cut grass. I don’t remember the admission price for this play. I only recall that it was cheap. My father and mother, born in Tokyo’s working-class neighborhoods and known for their sharp tongues, called it “beggar’s theater.” However, there was no hint of contempt or pity in those words; rather, he called them that with a sense of familiarity. The script for the “beggar play” changed every night. It was a serial drama. The admission fee was extremely low because they wanted customers to come every night. The stage consisted merely of some kind of platform about fifty centimeters high, with boards laid across it. Even so, a curtain hung between the stage and the audience. When opening or closing the curtain, the wire stretched overhead and the metal rings attached to the curtains would rub against each other, producing a strangely melancholy, jangling sound. On the stage of this travelling troupe, I saw a play about stepchild abuse for the very first time. The troupe leader was Sakura Sennosuke. The star actress Sakura Kyoko was Sennosuke’s wife.

The couple had a daughter named Koume, who was thirteen or fourteen years old, and a son named Matsutaro, who was about ten years old. There was also Ichimura Nagamatsu and Ichimura Namie, a middle-aged couple, and all six of them were actors who also worked behind the scenes. There was one more man, a fifty-something year old called “Den-san” who was known as head of the office and managed all administrative affairs. Why I remember the names of the actors in this “beggar troupe” will be explained later. The Sakura Sennosuke troupe, with a mere six actors, specialized in plays about stepchild abuse. By “specialized,” we mean these plays drew the largest audiences. They were wildly popular. The story is extremely simple: a couple takes in a little girl around ten years old as their foster daughter. The girl’s biological parents met an unfortunate end, either from an epidemic or an unexpected disaster. The girl, orphaned and destined to be raised in another household, is abused by her new step-parents. In other words, she is bullied. The “stepchild bullying” drama is precisely that insidious form of bullying crafted into a tearjerker. During my boyhood, that is, until around the 1950s, such plays, known as “stepchild bullying” stories, served as part of the common people’s entertainment. I looked up “stepchild” in the Kojien dictionary. “Stepchild” A child not biologically related, not one’s own flesh and blood. “Stepchild treatment” Treating someone like a stepchild, deliberately singling them out and treating them like an outcast. “Stepchild abuse” Bullying a stepchild. “Stepchild mentality” A stubborn, resentful attitude, like that of a stepchild. There’s more, but I’ll omit it. The stepchildren appearing in plays were usually girls. It stands to reason that girls are more pitiable, more poignant, and more alluring than boys.

I have since seen the play “Bullying the Stepdaughter” performed by troupes other than Sakura Sennosuke’s company several times in various places (mostly at vaudeville theaters), and the victim of the bullying is always a girl. In Shitaya’s Negishi district, there was an old vaudeville theater that had escaped wartime destruction. The stepmother-bullying play I saw there featured a young man dressed in women’s clothing. This was strangely perverse and fascinating. A young actor dressed as a girl is beaten with a bamboo cane by his spiteful mother. In the scene where he writhes and cries with his kimono hem wildly disheveled, the actor’s inner thighs, whitewashed with powder, were visible, creating an ethereal eroticism. In the Sakura Sennosuke troupe, Kyoko, nearly forty years old, played the role of the bullied girl. Kyoko was petite with a round face and slender limbs, so with the right makeup, she could easily pass for a child around ten years old. More than just dressing up, to my eyes, it felt more like she was transforming. Her delivery was realistic and innocent, and when it came to portraying a pitiful girl mercilessly bullied for being slow-witted, her skill was astonishingly masterful. And Sennosuke plays the middle-aged stepmother. This troupe leader is also skilled at playing female roles. He becomes a truly spiteful, hateful stepmother, tormenting the adorable young girl played by Kyoko with every trick in the book. At the time, it was a play about stepmother cruelty, rooted in the so-called Shinpa tragedy that was popular, influential, and deeply ingrained in the public consciousness, yet it was well-received by audiences. Peep-show mechanisms, their pictures and narrations, and even kamishibai shows persisted as enduring forms of entertainment. The term “rough-and-tumble” must refer to the kind of acting Sennosuke’s troupe does. It’s a gritty art that sometimes makes you want to laugh, but it keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and brings them to tears. What I still can’t forget is the scene where Oka, played by Kyoko, wets the bed, and her angry stepmother punishes her. Just now, on a whim, I looked up “punishment” in the Obunsha Japanese dictionary and found something interesting written there. This is a bit of a tangent, but I’ll transcribe it here. “Punishment (折檻: kekkan)” To severely reprimand. To inflict physical punishment as a form of discipline. This term originates from an

incident during the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han, when he became enraged by Zhu Yun’s admonishment and attempted to have him removed from court. Zhu Yun resisted by clinging to the palace gate’s bars, causing them to break. Huh, I didn’t know that. Looking things up in the dictionary is educational. However, the Kojien dictionary is straightforward. “Punishment” To severely reprimand. To express strong criticism. Only the source is listed: “The Book of Han: Biography of Zhu Yun.” The Kojien dictionary is several times thicker and larger in format than the Obunsha Japanese dictionary, yet it provides insufficient service. Well, anyway, the stepmother played by Sennosuke slaps the buttocks of the daughter who wet the bed with a ruler: smack, smack. “How many times do I have to tell you? You really are a badly behaved child. If you keep wetting the bed night after night like this, it won’t just ruin the futon, it’ll rot the tatami mats too!” “Mom, please forgive me! I was wrong! I won’t do it again, so please forgive me!” The girl pleaded in a pitiful voice, crouched motionless as the ruler lashed her shoulders and back. “It’s this ass, this ass is the problem.” The stepmother would grab the hem of her daughter’s kimono, pull it up to her thighs, and slap her with a ruler, making a sharp, stinging sound. The setting is likely intended to be the late Taisho or early Showa era. All the characters wear kimono, and the stepmother wears a Japanese-style wig. There are no plays in this troupe where the actors wear Western clothing. The punishment scene unfolding under the dim light of a bare bulb appeared so eerily stimulating my sixteen-year-old boy’s eyes. On the surface, it’s a play about a stepmother tormenting her stepdaughter, but if you disregard the roles, it becomes a scene where the husband, Sennosuke, is scolding his wife disguised as their young daughter.

When the audience clapped or shouted encouragement, Sennosuke would intensify his portrayal of the spiteful stepmother, rolling up his wife Kyoko’s kimono to her hips and snapping a ruler. When I first saw it, I naturally had no idea that the two people on stage were actually a real married couple. From the conversations of the regulars around me, I gradually began to understand the inner workings of this troupe. Then, a more perverse, intensely stimulating hue was added to the simple story of stepchild abuse, making my heart pound. As I wrote before, this troupe excelled at serial dramas. That is, they would build up the stage action to a certain point, and just when things were getting good, the actors would suddenly stop the play. Then, kneeling upright on the stage, she bows toward the audience and declares: “The rest shall be told tomorrow night. From this point on, this play will unfold with ever-increasing suspense and excitement. What fate awaits this poor girl? Whether she meets misfortune or finds happiness depends entirely upon you, our honored guests. Please do come again tomorrow night, inviting your neighbors and friends. I will bow repeatedly and humbly beg you.” This is how they pull at the audience’s heartstrings. The audience is willingly drawn in and comes back to watch again. I, too, was drawn in and went to watch every night. The audience is limited. It consists only of those farming in the hills away from Matsudo’s city center and residents of the military factory company housing. Without them coming every night, this kind of play simply wouldn’t work. No matter how much she was punished, her bedwetting habit wouldn’t stop, so as a punishment Kyoko was tied to a tree in the garden. (Oh, how lovely, heartbreaking, beautiful, and erotic it was to see Kyoko Sakura, nearly forty years old, dressed in a kimono, disheveled, tied up with her hands behind her back, and bound to a tree!) Sitting in a corner of the room on a mat laid directly on the floor, I held my breath and gazed at Kyoko Sakura in a state of rapture. Under the dim light of a bare light bulb, Kyoko’s fragile beauty, as she writhed and let out faint cries, tightening my sixteen-year-old heart with a sharp, painful ache. The stepmother withdrew into the house, and a travelling medicine seller appeared before the daughter, who remained tied to the tree.

The character is a medicine peddler from Etchu-Toyama, played by one of the troupe members, Ichimaru Chomatsu. He is portrayed as a kind-hearted old travelling salesman. The medicine seller took pity on the girl, untied her ropes, and told her to come with him, promising to help her escape. As he tried to grab her hand and escape, the stepmother appeared, clutching a kitchen knife in one hand, “I won’t let you escape! I plan to sell that girl as a geisha once she’s a little older!” She made a dramatic gesture, her face twisted in a demonic grimace. Here, the gong sounds, the play is interrupted, and the announcement is made: “The rest will be performed tomorrow night.” The next night, the plot thickens: the daughter, having failed to escape, faces even harsher punishment than before. There’s no way I’d miss such a compelling serial drama.