Nureki Chimuo Archive

The brilliance of Tsurukame Theater’s “Terakoya,” featuring Takejaku as Matsumaru, Fukunosuke as Chiyo, Takenosuke as Takabe Genzo, and Otome as Tonami, has kept me a “Terakoya maniac” or “Terakoya freak” for the subsequent fifty years, right up to the present day.

Even after the Katabami-za, the last bastion of small-scale theater, eventually disbanded and vanished, whenever “Terakoya” was staged, whether at the Kabuki-za, the Shinbashi Enbujo, the National Theater, or any other venue, I went to see it.

(I was always poor, so naturally I watched from the cheapest seats.)

The “Terakoya” performed in grand kabuki productions, of course, possesses a first-rate flavor, always intoxicating me and sending me into raptures.

Of all kabuki plays, I love this “Terakoya” the most, and I have seen countless actors portray Matsumaru.

The origin of this likely stems from encountering the brilliance of Bando Takejaku’s Matsumaru.

(Before Takejaku, I saw Matsumoto Korainosuke’s Matsumaru at the Honjo Kotobuki Theater. At that time, Takebe Genzo was played by Jitsukawa Enmatsu, which was also quite interesting.)

That said, I possess absolutely none of the loyalty or devotion to one’s lord depicted within “Terakoya.”

My affection for parents or children is also extremely thin, I have no brotherly love whatsoever.

I sometimes shudder at how heartless and inhuman my character is, so devoid of affection for my own kin.

I value trusting relationships with strangers who understand me more than I do my own family.

I sometimes get carried away saying or writing things like “blood is thicker than water,” but as I write it, I scoff at myself, thinking “what a liar,” and give a wry smile.

Even if it’s true that I was “born and raised in Asakusa,” I’m an egoist who believes “blood is thinner than water.”

The reason I love the play “Terakoya” is that while it prominently features loyalty to one’s lord and parental affection, it actually depicts the irrationality, the unethical behavior filled with egoism, and the absurd actions of humans disguised as “beautiful duty and affection.”

It is a perfect drama that wraps the most cruel human psychology and actions in a lyrical wrapper.

I was deeply moved by it, and I have held onto that emotion ever since I was sixteen.

Looking back, the Takejaku troupe’s “Terakoya” was perfect both in terms of acting and overall direction.

If I were to go into detail about that here and now, I’d likely stray off topic again.

I recall the Takejaku troupe’s “Terakoya” at the Tsurukame Theater ran for a week.

If they performed twice daily on Saturday and Sunday, that makes nine performances total. I, too, played the role of “Grandpa” with the drooling child in all nine performances.

During this short run, I memorized every line and every movement of every character in “Terakoya.”

As a kabuki actor (even a lowly rookie), it was only natural, but I even memorized the joruri verses.

The “Iroha Okuri” in the final scene was utterly heartrending in both lyrics and melody. By this point, my level of rapture would soar, and I would be overcome with a feeling of my very soul being torn apart, almost reaching a state of ecstasy.

“...Relying on the gate’s firelight, the young lord and lady together raised their sobbing tears. Entering the temple for the journey to the afterlife, the master became a disciple of Amida Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, and the Six Paths’ Enlightened Ones. At Sai no Kawara, children write the Iroha alphabet with sand as their model.ow fleeting is life, how inevitable the

parting. Who will nurse them tomorrow night? The parent’s heart grieves, seeing their sorrowful eyes. Crossing the sword and the mountain of death, feeling like a shallow dream, leaving no trace in the gate fire. Parting from Kyoto, their homeland, heading toward Toribeno…”

Oh, I’ve written it.

I never meant to write such gidayu lyrics here, but deep within my ears, the bass shamisen began to play, and carried away by its sound, I just wrote it.

In other words, it means I memorized the script for “Terakoya” word for word.

A sixteen year old boy’s brain is malleable.

It wasn’t that I thought, “I must memorize this,” and then memorized it. Rather, as I watched the actors performing on stage, the lines naturally entered my mind. Each word seeped into the folds of my brain, becoming impossible to forget.

And that state continues even now, nearly sixty years later.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I still perform on stage several times a year as an actor (though not kabuki).

However, I simply cannot memorize lines anymore. My brain is aging.

So, I manage to get through the performances by cheating in every way possible.

I haven’t forgotten the lines of every character in the over two-hour play “Terakoya” for sixty years, yet I absolutely cannot memorize my own few lines in a one-hour play.

Kataoka Tobei, playing the drooling child, throws a tantrum at the edge of the hanamichi toward “grandpa” who has come to greet him.

“If you don’t take me to the place beyond the station, under the red lights, where all the pretty girls in fancy dresses are, I’m not going home!”

Then, I, playing “grandpa,” say, “What nonsense are you spouting, you little brat? Stop being so stubborn and hurry home, home!” and soothe the drooling child.

On the third or fourth night after the “Terakoya” started, after the play ended and I saw Master Fukunosuke off at Kameari Station, I mustered my courage and went alone to that “place with the red lights where lots of pretty women stand in a row.”

Tobei had advised me, “You’re still young, so you don’t have to know about it, but since they say those things in the play to make the audience laugh, you might want to see it once, even if you just peek from outside.”

But I was truly uncomfortable approaching such a place.

(I still am uncomfortable, as I wrote last time.)

I had more than my fair share of interest in the opposite sex, and a sixteen year old boy’s sexual desire should have been sufficiently strong, yet for some reason, I was extremely timid about the act of buying a woman’s body with money.

Despite that, I harbored a strong, romantic longing for the world of such amorous affairs as depicted in plays, movies, and novels.

In reality, though, I felt nothing but revulsion toward those “places of flesh” and the women who worked there.

I felt a sense of terror at the thought of touching that reality, suffused with such revulsion.

(Now, R-san, who stays in my shadow and sun, clinging close, is intensely curious and occasionally makes me guide her to such places. I tremble helplessly and hurry past those areas where that kind of smell is vividly present, because I am afraid.)

For me, women were, above all, pure romanticism.

They were richly emotional beings, wrapped in sweet sentimentality.

Perhaps I vaguely sensed and feared that such a “dream” would be shattered.

I went to that place, located east of Makeari Station, which had relocated there after being burned out of Koto Ward’s Kameido.

Off the main street in the town center, along a dark, backwater ditch, stood a row of makeshift shacks that looked hastily thrown together. That corner was the red-light district.

Red-tinted lamps were indeed strung along the eaves, and men were shuffling along beneath them.

Though only from the outside, I saw a red-light district for the first time in my life.

Seeing the sad, horrifying reality I had anticipated there, I was shocked.