Nureki Chimuo Archive

The sections of my diary about the Tsurukame Theater and the Shirahige Theater contain nothing of importance.

Namely, the daily performance times during this period, how many days each play ran, and how much my salary was.

(I clearly remember only that I received my salary regularly every month. I’ve forgotten the amount.)

A single run might have lasted half a month, ten days, or perhaps just a week. Since we aren’t a traveling troupe, we didn’t change the program daily. Today’s “popular theater” troupes change their program daily, performing completely different shows in the afternoon and evening. That’s nothing short of superhuman, bordering on divine skill.

The Bando Takejaku troupe, known as “flower-form kabuki,” performed for ten days per run. They changed the play and ran for twenty days total, meaning they did two runs at the same theater, as far as I recall.

Performing just once a day, only at night, what time did they open the doors in the evening?

Tokyo, especially the lower town, was littered with ruins from American air raids. Come nightfall, it was so dark you could barely see your feet.

Streetlights were almost nonexistent; it was the immediate postwar era.

Such detailed records are not found in my diary.

It’s remarkable that audiences came for these night-only performances over ten-day runs. I vaguely recall they only did two shows, day and night, on Saturdays and Sundays.

Thinking back now, things like admission prices, audience numbers, and audience reactions are incredibly interesting, yet I wrote nothing about them.

After all, I was sixteen. Still a child.

My first experience as an apprentice to a kabuki actor was so busy every day, leaving me no mental space, that simply jotting down the playbill and cast list in my diary was probably all I could manage.

It was also the immediate postwar period, a time of utter chaos where tomorrow was uncertain.

(Now, looking back, I think all the more that I should have recorded things in greater detail, being right in the thick of such an era.)

Schools had been destroyed by the war, and there was no talk of rebuilding them. Before I knew it, I had given up on returning to school.

My heart must have been far more unstable and hopeless than I can imagine now, a gray daily existence, always trembling with fear of something.

Still, I’m glad I recorded even just the plays and cast like this.

Even if it’s just a brief, hastily scribbled note, it serves as a clue to recall my state of mind back then.

The Bando Takejaku Troupe returned to the Tsurukame Theater in Kameari after finishing their performances in Mukojima.

The promoter’s method was to have the troupe that had been performing at the Tsurukame Theater move directly and entirely to the Shirahige Theater to perform there. It was an efficient system with no waste.

The performances by the Takejaku troupe upon their return to the Tsurukame Theater were as follows.

1. Light Theater: The Careless Messenger. Three Scenes

Lord………Hideo Umezawa Jiroemon………Saburo Kawabe Chinkuro Ueno………Jun Yamamoto Daughter………Harue Kawabe Disciple………Tomma Kawabe

2. The Pine Gate of Kotobuki /The Residence of Jokan Yamazaki Scene 1

Jokan………Onoe Takenosuke Yogoro………Ichikawa Fukunosuke Azuma………Onoe Otojo Jibemon………Kataoka Tobei Kiku………Bando Takejaku

3. Comedy: The Mountain Maiden One Act

The cast and roles are the same as before.

As I mentioned earlier, this cast list was handwritten on paper and posted on the wall behind the small hanamichi built on the stage left side. I took notes from it.

It was a time when there was no paper for making programs and the printing shops had been burned down in the war.

It’s just a literal note listing the kyogen names and cast, but I think I did well to write it down at sixteen.

In an era of utter scarcity, no paper, no food, no shelter, no clothes, the very existence of such a theater troupe seems astonishing when I think about it now.

Yet I have personally come to understand how essential entertainment is for human beings.

On the very day American planes flew in formation over Tokyo dropping bombs, I wore a makeshift air-raid hood, a rolled-up cushion, and I went to see Akira Kurosawa’s “Sanshiro Sugata” and “Miyamoto Musashi” starring Chiezo Kataoka.

During the screening, the “alert siren” sounded. It was the warning signal that American bombers were approaching the Kanto region.

The movie was immediately halted.

Audience members crouched small between the seats, covering their ears with their hands and pressing their fingers over their eyelids, waiting for the alert to be lifted.

They said if you didn’t do this, the blast would pop your eyeballs out and rupture your eardrums, leaving you deaf.

Looking back now, it seems utterly unbelievable, a ridiculous story. But the common people listened closely to what the authorities said, and everyone did these things with the utmost seriousness. That was the era I lived through.

Oh, I’ve gone off on a tangent again.

I must write about how a non-Kabuki actor named Kawabe Saburo suddenly appeared at the Tsurukame Theater, leading a group.

That was the first act, a period drama titled “The Careless Messenger,” deliberately billed as “light theater.”

Only Hideo Umezawa, playing the lord, belonged to the Takejaku troupe. The rest was a slapstick comedy based on a storyteller’s tale, performed by a group of men and women led by Kawabe Saburo.

To my eyes, it was a shallow play, completely unsuited to the Takejaku troupe.

What I remember from this “Careless Messenger” is only the figure of Hideo Umezawa, playing the lord with proper seriousness.

Incidentally, Umezawa was a young man who had jumped into the theater world, admiring Umezawa Noboru, who was popular in Asakusa at the time and called the “King of Sword Plays” or the “King of Sword Fights.” He even chose the stage name “Umezawa” himself, out of his desire to become like Umezawa Noboru in the future.

Furthermore, during the early Showa years, I often went with my father to see the swordplay plays of popular troupes like Umezawa Noboru’s troupe and Osamu Kanai’s troupe in Asakusa.

(Truth be told, my father was a troublesome man who loved anything performed on stage and would abandon his work to go see it.)

My father, who especially loved Umezawa Noboru, had even joined his fan club under my name.

If I start talking about this sort of thing, I’ll inevitably digress endlessly, so I’ll stop here. I’ll write more when the opportunity arises.

Why did the patron incorporate a group that performed such slapstick comedies into the Takejaku troupe?

It was likely influenced by box office receipts, that is, performance results.

As a child and low-ranking actor, I was unaware of such internal circumstances within the troupe.

But I could tell that the kabuki plays performed by Takejaku, Tsuruzo, and Fukunosuke didn’t draw large crowds. Empty seats were indeed becoming conspicuous in the theater.

From the promoter’s perspective, running at a loss was a problem. It was only natural they’d want to make even a small profit and try something new.

That’s how the Kawabe Saburo group came onto the scene. Both their atmosphere and the material they performed clearly clashed with the Takejaku troupe.

For example, a character wearing a chonmage topknot and dressed as a young merchant’s son would appear, strumming a guitar and singing songs.

Yet Takejaku, Fukunosuke, Takenosuke, Otojo and even Tobei performed their serious, authentic plays without flinching at the sounds of guitar or accordion.

They properly performed rare kabuki plays, the kind only small-time actors could pull off.

The second act play, “Nebiki no Kadomatsu,” following the slapstick comedy reminiscent of amateur theater, is one such example.

It is written as “寿の門松” and read as “Nebiki no Kadomatsu.”

Its full title is “Yamazaki Yojihei Nebiki no Kadomatsu,” written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon at the age of sixty-six.

Since it’s a rare play seldom staged in major kabuki productions, I’d like to introduce its basic plot using the Tokyo Sogensha publication Masterpieces of Kabuki, Volume 21: Chikamatsu Monzaemon, which I have at hand. However, it would become too lengthy, so I’ll omit it.

Performing such a serious, old-fashioned tragedy immediately after a “light comedy” where actors slip and fall on stage while strumming guitars and playing accordions must have been quite painful for the proud kabuki actors, even in a small-scale production.

Yet, I never once heard such complaints from the mouths of Takejaku or Fukunosuke.

Looking back now, my heart swells thinking how brave, dedicated, and pure-hearted they truly were.