History of Japanese theatre all the way to modern media
So, history of theatre to modern media in Japan, here we go.
Side-note: I found out that Japanese theatre is pretty complex, this took months.
Table of Contents
- ANCIENT HISTORY OF THEATRE IN JAPAN
- NOHGAKU HISTORY OF JAPAN
- SOME BASIC KABUKI-INFO
- HISTORY OF KABUKI
- THE LAST RISE AND FALL OF KAMIGATA-KABUKI
- KABUKI MODERN SITUATION
- JAPANESE THEATRE
- Back to Shingeki stuff
- MOVIE STARS INTERNATIONAL
- MOVIES IN JAPAN
- THE NEXT GENERATION OF SILENT-ERA ACTORS AND DIRECTORS
- HISTORY GENRE HYPE (50s)
- POST WAR COMPANIES
- THE GOLDEN DIRECTOR-AGE OF CINEMA (1950s)
- NEW GENERATION OF ACTORS ARRIVES
- MONSTER AND HERO MOVIES (1960s)
- NEW WAVE CINEMA (1960s)
- HORROR (1960s)
- ASADORA AND TAIGA (1960s)
- YAKUZA HYPE OF THE SHOWA ERA
- TRENDY DRAMAS (80s-early 90s)
- LATE 90s
- MODERN TIMES post-2000s
So there are a few different types of surviving traditional Japanese theatre, for convenience I will quickly mention them as a start to kinda get the basics out of the way. For existing arts it all starts with Nōgaku/能楽 consisting of three forms: Shikisanba/式三番 where an old man character gives blessings for peace, Noh/能 which is general spiritual theatre with masks and its comedic interval-partner art of Kyōgen/狂言which was meant to entertain.Then we got Kabuki/歌舞伎, which was more for entertainment of the common folks. There's also Bunraku/文楽/Ningyō jōruri which is basically puppet theatre (3 dudes control 1 doll) and finally Yose/人寄せ席 which is a form of seated entertainment story-telling consisting of Rakugo/落語 (comedy), Kaidan/怪談 (spooky) and a bunch more. There's also Kumi odori/組踊 which is a mix of Japanese & Chinese theatre from Okinawa 1719.
Example of Kabuki, Nōgaku and Kumi Odori respectively
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THEATRE IN JAPAN
So due to how ancient this stuff gets; things are a bit fuzzy on the details of how theatre was introduced into Japan but it is certain that it did originate from mainland China probably roughly around the Nara period (710-794). We will work our way through the timeline. The first mythical described dancer of Japan was Ame-no-uzume/アメノウズメ/Uzume, goddess of performance arts among other things, who was described in the Nihonshoki/日本書紀 in 720. In the famous legend, she basically dances a very unique dance to get a reaction from others and thus lure the sun goddess Amaterasu out of her cave. This dance is said to have inspired the神楽/Kagura dance (I assume very loosely) which was performed by people who were deemed to descend from the goddess in the Heian era (794-1185), it is still performed today in different forms like by shrine maidens.
Interpretation picture of Amaterasu being lured out by goddess Uzume's dance
Gigaku/伎楽 dance was first introduced to Japan in 612 by a Baekje (Korea) migrant called Aji Masayuki/味摩之. He really just entered Japan, taught some gigaku he learned from China and left the history-books with that. It was a temple theatre performance with dance, a parade and giant masks that fit over the head but the practice dwindled during Kamakura period (1185–1333). Its elements were incorporated into gagaku/雅楽 music which has dance performances called bugaku/舞楽.
Modern-interpretation of now extinct Gigaku (玄奘三蔵会/Xuanzang Sanzokai event).
So for the music & dance performance-art of Gagaku/雅楽, it has a lot of sub-genres across Asian countries. A wellknown one is Togaku/唐楽 which originated from Tang-dynasty mainland China and was performed in Japan first in 702, this developed into a unique Japanese style of gagaku which ended up mainly being for the Japanese elite. Another countries gagaku-version is called Rinyugaku/林邑楽 from Linyi (Vietnam) and was introduced in 738 by a visiting monk who taught it to the local monks by showing them the 抜頭/Batou dance. Gagaku became popular due to the increased influence of Buddhism but because it attained such a position as highclass music for the elite, a lot of the artform became lost over time.
Modern-interpretation of Gagaku
One example of Japanese gagaku dance specifically for women is 五節舞/Goseimai which is a five-section dance, usually for a festival or the emperor.
Goseimai dance
Sangaku/散楽 was used for various entertainment performance arts of acrobatics, dance, music and comedy. It is written that in the year 735 the Japanese emperor Shomu saw a Baixi/百戏 performance by Chinese entertainers which is when the inspiration for Sangaku happened. Sangaku became an imperial court performing art and was abolished years later due to its popular and obscene nature in 782 but a new emperor reinstated it later (final forreal abolisment took place in 963). Sangaku began being performed at shrines and on the street more where it spread around Japan and changed into new forms with groups performing Dengaku/田楽 (spiritual prayer theatre) and Sarugaku/猿楽 (comedy/spiritual) the latter being an early form of Noh.
Old depiction of Sangaku
Shirabyoshi/白拍子 existed around 1185-1333/the Kamakura period. This hype for spiritual dance is said to have originated from shrine maidens/miko/巫女 dances for Shinto rituals (like the Kagura dance), where it was deemed a type of possession by a god to take on the role of a different gender temporarily. In the different (from Shinto) religion of Ryukyu kingdom (Okinawa) there were the Noro/祝女 priestesses doing possession-stuff as it was believed the creation goddess Amamikyu/アマミチュー bestowed the gift of spirituality to women. But back to mainland Japan; Shirabyoshi was a dance in male clothing performed by mostly women and youngsters. The performers were mostly high-educated female entertainers who visited highclass mansions, but the dance in itself was a spiritual performance. There are a few famous Shirabyoshi women in the history of Japan but the art died out bigtime in favor of male-only artforms (cause they basically banned all women from performance-art for hundreds of years). Later Shirabyoshi-elements helped form aforementioned Sarugaku which was to become the beloved high-class Noh.
Modern-interpretation of Shirabyoshi
NOHGAKU HISTORY OF JAPAN
Nohgaku or more specifically Noh/能 (formerly Sarugaku) is known for its masked performances with a low voice and spiritual meaning. Noh uses a standing posture called Kamae/カマエ in which the performer lowers their center of gravity by bending their lower body slightly, so that's pretty unique. There's different types of plays in Noh like Kami Mono/神物 about gods, Shura Mono/修羅物 about warrior ghosts, Katsura Mono/鬘物 about female characters, Kiri Mono/切り能 about monsters and also Okina/翁 which roughly means ''Respected old man''. An Okina performance differs from regular Noh since its basically a sacred ancient ritual for blessings where they use a mask depicting an old man. The audience will be expected not to leave until the ritual is finished.
Noh, as still performed in Japan today
The name for Nohgaku was used to replace the name of the performance-style Sarugaku in 1881. The main evolution of old Sarugaku to modern Noh is mainly thanks to some guy called Kan'ami/観阿弥 (1333-1384) and his son Zeami/世阿弥 (1363-1443). Kan'ami was a Sarugaku performer who lived in a time when Dengaku-performance was held in higher esteem than Sarugaku in the capital. But through sheer power of good music and graceful dance he became a popular Sarugaku performer which gained him samurai sponsors. His well-educated son Zeami went on to make Sarugaku/Noh very popular for the high-class. He invented ''Mugen Noh''/Spooky Noh with supernatural main leads (shite/シテ) and human side-characters (waki/ワキ). Lotta Onryō/vengeful spirits appearing in those stories.
An old-man character in Noh
Zeami dude also wrote a book called ''風姿花伝/Fushikaden'' where he claims the actual mastermind behind Sarugaku was his own ancestor (later promoted to god of entertainment) called Kawakatsu Hata/秦河勝 (~300-700) who once danced in front of a Japanese prince. Kinda odd but it's a theory I guess. Anyway Zeami's family ended up making the Konparu school/金春流 which is the oldest Noh school in existence. But don't worry aside from his origin-theories he did also invent an important standard for Japanese classical arts called Jo-ha-kyū/序破急, meaning: Slow start (1), buildup and high-point (2) and quick return to calmth (3). These three steps basically describes the basic order of plotlines in Noh and this also goes for other art-forms that took inspiration from Noh.
A demon-character in Noh
Noh-performers nowadays are categorized in different roles: Shite-kata: Main lead, the mask person (also: Shitetsure for additional main actors) Waki-kata: Not the main lead (also: Wakitsure for additional not-main-leads) Kōken: Stage hands Jiutai: The chorus of singers Hayashi-kata: Musicians (four different types of instruments) Kyogen-kata: Entertainment-interval actors
Again an old dude character
Those who can call themselves a professional Noh-performer nowadays are usually members of 能楽協会/Nohgaku Association, which is a lot of power to give to one organization but ok. They are made up of 4 main Noh schools called Kanze School, Hosho school, Kongo school and (Zeami's legacy) Konparu school. However, there are Noh-performers specific to regions or shrines or even entire schools (Kita school/喜多流) that operate outside of this system. For example, the Izumi school of Kyōgen was also banned from the Nohgaku-association in 2002 because they had appointed the son of the previous sōke/head of the family. A short while before his father died, Izumi Motoya at 21 years old was given the name-ceremony and appointed as head of the school, by others he was seen as too inexperienced.
Some Noh-picture I found while searching for the Kita School lol
The classic stage of Noh is made up of a central stage designed after a shrine with a tree painted on the back of the stage. There is also a type of bridge (hashigakari) leading to the main stage where the performers enter and exit the stage from. Noh used to be performed mainly in shrines and it took legit a whole day to finish a performance back then. In the Edo-period (1603-1868), Noh-performers started to perform outside of shrines due to the rich Tokugawa leaders who fancied themselves Noh-performers to entertain guests in their mansions. World War 2 brought more exchange of knowledge between Noh schools as the few remaining stages were used by different schools and differences between styles became apparent to performers. Only men were allowed to perform Noh for most of history, a big contrast from the older performance-art of Shirabyoshi which was popular for women. But don't worry nowadays it is allowed to become a female Noh-artist, something that is still much more difficult in Kabuki which will be our next art-form to discuss.
A classic Noh-stage
SOME BASIC KABUKI-INFO
Turns out a hundreds year old art-form has a lot of customs and traditions, skip if you just wanna know solely the history. But I will try to explain the basics of that as best I can. First of all, how is Kabuki/歌舞伎 different from the older Sarugaku/Noh? There are a bunch of differences. For example the way they sing is way deeper in Noh. The accompanying music (hayashi/囃子) in Noh is 4 instruments and Kabuki also notably adds the Shamisen instrument. From watching the performances; in Kabuki they use make-up while Noh uses masks for unique expressions/female characters. Noh was also popular for the ruling class due to its abstractness while Kabuki was for the working class.
Kabuki Woodcut art
The Kabuki-community as a whole is sometimes refered to as Rien/Rion/Pear Garden/梨園 which refers to the first-known performer-school called Liyuan in China founded in the Tang-dynasty around 712-755 by an emperor who was really into entertainment. Sometimes Chinese opera is also refered to as such. An important note here about the Kabuki-community is that one company called Shochiku controls all major Kabuki-theatres, it didn't used to be that way, but now it is, so every major Kabuki-actor is basically dependent on them. So it can be a tight but also a bit of a controlling environment to grow up in.
One of the most important current Kabuki-families (Ichikawa Danjuro-family) centered in middle
As for Kabuki-theatre design, the general interior of a Kabuki theatre has a few things that stand out namely the Hanamichi/花道 which is the long stage that extends into the audience where Kabuki actors can walk on. Then there's also the stage-curtain/定式幕 which has 3 colours and differences are mainly originating from the time there were three large theatres in Edo (Edo Sanza/江戸三座). When Shochiku didn't own all of Kabuki yet. Aside from that there's the stage-technical stuff like lifts and rotating stages that is really popular.
A traditional Kabuki-theatre, notice the difference from the Noh-theatre
The roles for Kabuki developed over hundreds of years, but here are a few examples: Tachiyaku (立役) – Basic Male role Onnagata (女形) – Basic Female role And then further sub-divisions of those two like: Wakashugata (若衆方) - Young Male Role Iroaku (色悪) – Evil Handsome Male Role Oyajigata (親父方) - Old Man of good nature Jitsuaku (実悪) – Leader-level enemy Chikajingata (敵・千家方) - Villains or Enemies Kashagata (家女方) - Woman of old age
A Tachiyaku (left) and Onnagata-role (right)
During the Edo-period things were put into types of ranking-lists called Banzuke/番付 to give a hierarchy. The Banzuke for Kabuki was specifically called Kaomise Banzuke/顔見世番付 which was basically the cast-list of the first kabuki performance of the year since the contracts of kabuki actors were yearly and casts changed. Even today Kaomise is performed as the most important yearly event in Kabuki and usually happens in the winter-period. The 8 character types/八枚看板 of Kaomise Banzuke/顔見世番付 are as follows: Ichimai-me (一枚目): The protagonist, the central character in the story. Nimai-me (二枚目): The romantic lead, a charming character. Sanmai-me (三枚目): The comic character, a humorous and lively role. Yonmai-me (四枚目): The supporting lead, a role that holds the story together. Gomai-me (五枚目): The antagonist, the rival of the protagonist. Rokumai-me (六枚目): An antagonist with redeeming qualities, a likable character. Shichimai-me (七枚目): The main antagonist, often referred to as the "final boss". Hachimai-me (八枚目): The leader of the troupe, the artistic director.
What a Kaomise Banzuke kinda looked like
The two biggest forms of Kabuki are from old regions like Kamigata Kabuki/上方歌舞伎 and Edo Kabuki/江戸歌舞伎. Kamigata Kabuki is from Kyoto & Osaka/Kansai/Kinki-region and is known for a softer and graceful style of acting (also called wagoto/和事 style) with more romance and domestic themes. Edo Kabuki is from Edo/Present-day Tokyo and was known for robust and energetic acting (also called aragoto/荒事 style) and more historical and heroic tales. You can oversimplify it and just remember that the most famous Onnagata-actors are from Kyoto/Osaka and the most famous Tachiyaku-actors are from Tokyo. The best historical Kabuki-names are the early dudes influencing these genres which is Ichikawa Danjūrō for aragoto-style/Edo Kabuki and Tojuro Sakata for wagoto-style/Kamigata Kabuki.
Left Kamigata-style/wagoto-style, Right Edo-style/aragoto-style
For details within performances of Kabuki, one of the distinctive things about primarily the Aragoto-style Kabuki is the Mie/見得 which is a pose expressing an emotion struck by an actor. Of course, like so often, there are different styles of Mie too like Genroku mie/元禄見得 (stamping on floor) or Hashimaki no mie/柱巻きの見得 (pole-wrapping pose). In Aragoto-style it is also typical to use Kumadori/隈取/flashy face-paint where it is red colour for heroes, blue for villains. There are many types of Kumadori, like Beniguma where they use red lines, which itself also has different forms. The minimalistic red lines near eyes in Mukimiguma is make-up for heroes, Ipponguma with a round cheek-line is make-up for reckless characters, Nihonguma with two red lines is for mature characters and finally many red lines in Sujiguma to represent anger. There's other make-up styles like Aiguma (blue lines) with its many villain or ghost roles. Since actors do their own make-up usually, styles can vary a lot.
Likely the most famous aragoto-style Mie
Of course outside of acting-styles, Kabuki is also categorized based on the story-writing styles, often caused by changes in writings. This is exemplified in Shin Kabuki/新歌舞伎/New Kabuki which is a name for Kabuki-stories written from late-Meiji to early Showa-period. Mainly cause the writers of this time were highly-educated and tried to make their stories literary and/or historical works instead of having more chaotic plotlines like in the past. There's also Shinsaku Kabuki/新作歌舞伎 which refers to stories written during or after World War 2. Finally there's also Super Kabuki/スーパー歌舞伎 which kinda does away with most of the traditional-limitations of Kabuki and just goes full Naruto anime-adaptation or any anime they find popular enough.
Super Kabuki adaptation of Naruto lol
Kabuki also often uses ''inspiration'' from other entertainment forms for their own artform. This can be seen in the early adaptations of Bunraku/Ningyo Joruri (puppet) stories and the later inspirations from Nohgaku that were taken. Even resulting in their own genres, the Bunraku/Ningyo Joruri-inspired ones being called Gidayu Kyogen/義太夫狂言 and the Nohgaku-inspired ones are called Matsubamemono/松羽目物. Also actors often have their own ''kata''/acting-style if they are famous, so they might make minor revisions in Kabuki-plays to make their own family-history or their own uniqueness stand out. It keeps things refreshing for the hardcore fans of Kabuki as well. Aside from the Kabuki-actors themselves there's also the Kurogo/黒衣, dudes dressed in black who help on the stage, you're supposed to ignore their presence and focus on the play.
Example of Bunraku (when you see the puppets move, its more immersive and you can ignore the group of dudes)
There was a clear seperation of main-actors and supporting-actors in Kabuki traditionally. Being a supporting-actor was refered to as Ōbeya haiyū/大部屋俳優/Big Room Actor because they all had to use one big dressing room while the main-actors got their individual dressing rooms. In Edo/Tokyo-region there was usually a large room on the third floor so they call supporting-actors Sankai-san/三階さん there, a bit mean. There was also a whole apprentice class-system developed for Kabuki-actors. Even to this day there exists Nadai/名題/Famous Topic and Nadai-Shita/名題下/Less Famous Topic. So how do you become a Nadai-level actor in modern Japan? If you have over 10 years of experience in Kabuki-acting you can enter the Title Qualification exam from the Japanese actor association/日本俳優協会. This exam consists of a written and practical-part and the passing-rate is around 50%. If you pass you can hold a promotion ceremony if everyone in your job gives their approval. Back in the old days? Just be popular to the audience and get your name on the front-sign, done deal.
Picture of actor Toma Ikuta when he suddenly got hype for Kabuki, it was a thing
Now the naming-system of Kabuki, which is... a lot. This is truly at the heart of a succesful career as a Kabuki-actor in modern Japan. First there is a Myōseki/名跡 which is a type of brand-name of artists managed by a family or descendants. These Myōseki names are given value based on historical art-achievements of people with that same name. If the value of a brand-name has become legendary, then actors in that family will use intermediate-names before inheriting the legendary name. An example of this is the aragoto-style family of Danjūrōs where the newest dude went through the names Ichikawa Shinnosuke VII and Ichikawa Ebizō XI before being allowed to call himself Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII (which is like a legendary shiny name in Kabuki). Each of these phases of his artistic-career will have a naming-ceremony, with the most prestigious names having the biggest celebrations. The ceremony of attaining a new name is called Shuumei/襲名 ceremony. These names represent a passing of tradition and skills and are only given to those with qualifications. The person who inherits the name doesn't have to be bloodrelated (there is a lot of adoption in Kabuki-history) but rather needs to have been in a mentor-pupil relationship or show a clear mastery of those specific skills. Inheriting a famous name from a master will open a lot of possibilities in the Kabuki-world.
Picture of a part of an official name-announcement/Shuumei
Aside from the Myōseki brand-names of families there's also Yago/屋号 which are basically guild-names of Kabuki-actors. You can recognize Edo-Kabuki Yago names because they always end with -ya, while Kamigata-Kabuki Yago names traditionally end with -ie. This whole thing of guild-names for Kabuki-actors started when Kabuki-actors were no longer classed as sub-human/ Kawaramono/河原者 by the Edo-government in 1708, so they could finally move up in status and start businesses and having a business meant needing a guild-name. One famous Yago is again from the family of Danjūrō which is called ''Naritaya/成田屋'', the name originates from some story of Danjūrō going up the mountain Narita to pray for a child which he gets eventually so that influenced his name-choice. In kabuki it is common practice for the audience to shout the Yago-name of an actor if they do something hype like making a wellknown pose. For another unique detail; in the past Kamigata-actors would often choose a different Yago-name than their own master before the artform kinda went along with Edo-trends.
Picture of a scene of a Kabuki-play
In short, Kabuki actors can have many names in their lifetime like their real name, haiku-poetry name, artist-names, guild-name and even a retirement-name. Sometimes they wanna switch artistic-vision or they get a new master and they get a new artist-name to represent themselves.This is a risky move though, like switching careers, since names have value in Kabuki. It's like a famous brand choosing to rebrand under a new name. Families who invested by doing Kabuki hundreds of years ago (and survived long enough to pass skills) now have their male descendants learning this skill from childhood and earning a living. While those from non-Kabuki families have to forge their own path and find their own master.
I will mention a few Kabuki-plays examples that stood out to me, to kinda give an idea about what goes down in these plays. For the vengeance-fans there's Soga kyōdai no adauchi/Sogamono/曾我物 which is based on an event in Japan where the two Soga brothers around 1193 decided to kill their fathers murderer and some other samurai too, anyway they died rip. Some make this play interesting by including one aragoto-style actor and one wagoto-style actor for the brothers, it's a neat difference.
Depiction of the Soga brothers
Then there's also a more masculine dance-oriented play called Renjishi/連獅子 about a travelling monk encountering dancing lions on a stone bridge, which is fun to see as they wear huge wigs and swing the hair around on the beat. It's also often performed by real father-son duos in Kabuki, since the art-form is a bit of a family-business.
Kabuki Renjishi play
Then there's the femine dance-oriented play called Sagi Musume/鷺娘 about a heron bird transforming into a woman and getting tortured when her true nature is discovered.
Photo of scene in Sagi Musume
For supernatural genre fans there's Musume Dojoji/娘道成寺 which is a story of a beautiful Shirabyoshi woman visiting a temple who reveals herself to be a snake-demon.This is an onnagata-specific dance performance that was seen as peak-kabuki dance because it requires a lot of strenght and artistic ability to dance for over one hour.
A special edition performance of Musume Dojoji, with the famous temple-bell
And for the disguise-fans there's Benten Kozō/弁天小僧/青砥稿花紅彩画 which is about a band of 5 thieves and a scene where one of them disguises themselves as a woman to steal from a clothing-shop. Making a dramatic reveal-speech when they are caught stealing.
The famous tattoo-arm of Benten Kozō
Finally for the sad hero-tales there's Sakura Yoshiminden/佐倉義民傳 which is about farmer Sakura Sōgorō/佐倉 惣五郎 begging the Edo-leader for a reduction in taxes for the farmers. Spoiler; he is executed with his entire family but the farmers do get that reduction in taxes and he gets a temple. You can still visit the dudes temple in Narita, its the Sogo Reido Sanctuary.
Scene of Sakura Sōgorō who tries to reach the leaders to plead for justice
To specifically further explain the two main genres I will give two examples for both Aragoto and Wagoto. For Aragoto: So first of all the most famous kabuki-play by far is Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura/義経千本桜 based on an old epic in Japan where the main hero Yoshitsune travels to escape his brothers army and has adventures. This play has originally fifteen scenes and took like half a day to see, which is why they cut it down for modern audiences. Nowadays most people don't wanna reserve a whole day for watching Kabuki anymore times change.
The magic-fox scene of Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura
There's also Shibaraku/暫, しばらく which is not really as much of a full play as it is like a short drama to keep the kabuki-theatre hype going but ok. It's a story about an evil lord who intends to execute the royal family in front of a shrine. However, when the execution is about to take place a superhuman hero shouts ''Wait a minute!'' and he defeats the lords soldiers saving the day.
That one famous Mie from Shibaraku
For Wagoto: One famous wagoto-play is called ''A Love Letter From Yamato''/恋飛脚大和往来 in which a dude called Chubei really likes a brothel-lady called Umekawa and he breaks a seal (this scene has multiple variations) so he can take money to buy her free but he becomes a fugitive together with her. Pretty emotional story.
Scene of the two lovers in ''A Love Letter from Yamato'' escaping through the snow
There's also Kuruwa Bunsho/廓文章 for the love-drama which is about a dude Izaemon who is in love with a brothel-lady Yugiri but he finds her with another guest and gets jealous but they reconcile. This is like peak wagato story since its mainly about them feelz.
Scene from Kuruwa Bunsho with the main characters
Short and kinda sad story of Futininwankyu/二人椀久, a wealthy Osaka merchant meets a female courtesan and falls in love with her, spends a fortune on her and gets disowned. He gets locked up but his will to meet his crush is strong enough that he escapes and falls asleep. Suddenly his lover appears before him, they have some happy interactions before he realizes its all a dream and awakens in sorrow.
Scene from Futininwankyu where the merchant and courtesan meet in a dream
A few fun traditional things in Kabuki are for example the Fune Norikomi/船乗り込み where Kabuki actors will take a boat-ride through the city which is meant to be a throwback to the Edo-times when actors of other regions would arrive to the local theatre by boat.
The Fune Norikomi event in modern times
There's also the ''Oshiguma''/押隈 where kabuki actors will press their face with make-up onto a silk sheet and create an imprint for their patrons or for sale. So you can forever see their faces I guess.
Example of Oshiguma merch
Then there's also Edomoji/江戸文字 which is like a typeface for Japanese. You could immediately see based on the typeface what sort of business the text was for, there was a specific one for Kabuki called Kanteiryū/勘亭流. A typical type of skill exists in Kabuki which is being able to play multiple roles in the same play through fast costume-change (Hayagawari/早替り). In the play Osome no shichiyaku /お染の七役 there are seven roles played by one person. In this play Osome has a lover Hisamatsu (both played by the same actor) and they aren't allowed to marry until Hisamatsu has restored the status of his family.You can go even wilder than that with Date no Juyaku/伊達の十役 which has 10 roles playable for the lead actor.
One dude portraying all these 7 roles in one play
Something else interesting is that similarly to Nohgaku (Shikisanba/式三番, the old man giving peace blessings) Kabuki also has a sacred-ritual type of performance to it despite being more entertainment-focused. In Kabuki this is called Sanbaso/三番叟 and it serves to ask for blessings, in this case originally for a good harvest, on special occasions.
Scene of Kabuki Sanbaso
Nowadays in popular Kabuki-performances you can buy an electronic audio-guide for during the performance. Some Kabuki-fans say this is evil, but they are wrong. Legit how do they expect new fans to fully enjoy a performance with a ton of history behind every scene, actor and movement without some guidance? Are they gonna be the ones to tell them? I didn't think so.
Now of course I looked into the most important part of Kabuki: shipping culture. Now Kabuki has something interesting called Golden Combi/ゴルデンコンビ which is a tachiyaku/male-role and a onnagata/female-role combo that has good chemistry. So people advertise these two together and wanna see them perform together. So a few examples of ships I found on a website are: Iwai Hanshirô V & Matsumoto Kôshirô V, Onoe Baikô VI & Ichimura Uzaemon XV, Onoe Baikô VII & Ichikawa Danjûrô XI and finally Bando Tamasaburo & Kataoka Nizaemon. But yeah that's all you need to know.
Bando Tamasaburo & Kataoka Nizaemon ship
HISTORY OF KABUKI
Kabuki has the kanji-sign for Uta/Sing/歌, Ma/dance/舞 and Ki/skill/伎. But where does the word Kabuki/歌舞伎 originate from? It seems to come from the word かぶき者 or Kabuki Mono/Kabuki Sha/Kabuki person, this basically was a trend in the late Sengoku to early Edo period where young people would dress in eccentric ways and engage in anti-establishment behaviour like smoking and stealing; basically ancient delinquents with an interest to try experimental fashion. This sub-culture eventually disappeared due to government interference but left influences for the performing arts due to its fashion aestethic.
In 1603 the woman Izumo Okuni/出雲阿国 creating the Kabuki Odori/かぶき踊/Kabuki Dance and this became the prototype for Kabuki as a whole. There was some theory that Okuni could have been a travelling shrine maiden since that wasn't uncommon. Okuni's dance included a scene in which a man accompanied a woman in a teahouse (the Edo word for brothel). It became popular and was widely used as a performance by female entertainers and later also wakashu (male youth). It became banned for women to perform kabuki around 1629 because of constant fights and stabbings of samurai over the female entertainers and eventually also wakashu. So eventually only adult men could do Kabuki roles.
Depiction of Izumo Okuni, founder of Kabuki
17TH CENTURY KABUKI
So, only dudes can do Kabuki now ever since 1629 due to samurai who went full jealous boyfriend-mode, so what did the dudes do? I will go into detail about important dudes in the history of Kabuki here starting with Genroku era/17th century: A Kyoto dude called Tojuro Sakata/坂田藤十郎 (初代) (1647-1709) invented a kabuki-style called Waji-gei/和事芸 which are performances depicting everyday life. He was an important dude for Kamigata-kabuki development. Small-side note but during this time a lot of Kabuki-actors had Haiku-names (俳号) in addition to their stage-name and family-name, kinda like a writer pseudonym. For Tojuro Sakata it was something like 冬貞,車漣 which means Winter Loyalty, Vehicle Waves. It probably means something deep.
Depiction of the og Tojuro Sakata
Around that same time there was another dude, a guy called Danjuro Ichikawa I/市川團十郎 (初代) (1660-1704) who had a big role in developments of Aragoto-gei/荒事芸 which is bold and exaggerated acting of heroic or strong-willed characters. It's no surprise he was living in Edo which was filled with samurai who were hype for this style of Kabuki. His Haiku-name was 才牛/talented ox, which was kinda iconic. He was also stabbed to death on stage at 44 years old for unknown reason by another Kabuki-actor, which is kinda sus. Don't worry we will check back in on how his future desciples are doing in a few hundred years.
Depiction of og Danjuro Ichikawa
And then there was Ayame Yoshizawa/芳澤あやめ (初代) (1673-1729) who was just kinda really popular as an onnagata/女形/female-role due to their method acting. They tried other roles in Kabuki too but yeah.. Lets just say that didn't work out, so they are a famous onnagata now! Their haiku-name was 春水/Spring Water which sounds pretty chill.
Depiction of Ayame Yoshizawa
18TH CENTURY KABUKI
Then we get to the 18th century, Kabuki lost its popularity to Bunraku/puppet theatre. Some of those stories in Bunraku (for example: Yoshitsune Senbonzakura) were pretty cool though so Kabuki-theatre kinda ''borrowed'' a bunch of those stories. Copyright just was not the same back then because Kabuki would be sued a lot otherwise. Tales originating from Bunraku/Ningyo Joruri are called Gidayu Kyogen/義太夫狂言. This was also around the time when the niche-art of Ningyōburi/人形振り was born which is basically Kabuki-actors pretending to be dolls, which is cool to see. But those dolls were still taking the Kabuki-actors jobs and something needed to be done.
An example of Ningyōburi, notice the two Kurogo/黒衣 in the back ''controlling'' the onnagata
It was kinda the onnagata/female-role star-actors who kept Kabuki relevant during those years. So one of the famous onnagata of this era was Segawa Kikunojo I/瀬川菊之丞 (初代) (1693-1749). They were able to get out of prostitution-work by joining Kabuki but they did not receive success due to their low voice and plain looks. Due to this they retired acting at 25 years old and married some guy in Osaka and they also started a shop. But when they returned to acting 3 years later their charm gradually became recognized, they later adopted a son to pass on their acting-name.
Depiction of Segawa Kikunojo I
Another famous onnagata was Nakamura Tomijuro I/中村富十郎 (初代) (1719-1786). A son born from aforementioned Ayame Yoshizawa I who was one of the first popular onnagata-dudes. He was then adopted by another Kabuki-actor dude (adoption is common in Kabuki) so he has a different artist-name from his biological father. After kinda switching between kabuki-acting and prostitution he finally landed a hit-acting gig and made kabuki his main career. He received a bunch of prizes for being the best Kabuki-actor at the time but he lost both his adopted children later in his life unfortunately.
Depiction of Nakamura Tomijuro I
19TH CENTURY KABUKI
So now we get to the 19th century. Kabuki is growing again in popularity again however the center of Kabuki slowely starts shifting from Kamigata Kabuki (Kyoto & Osaka) to Edo Kabuki (Tokyo). Also in 1832, Ichikawa Danjuro V (fifth name-bearer of the Aragoto-dude) made 18 plays kinda his faves, which he called Kabuki Juhachiban/歌舞伎十八番 which included the famous Shibaraku play (暫). It is kinda a thing for the most famous Kabuki-houses/families to have specialized in certain plays, a phenomenon called Kabuki House Performances/歌舞伎の家の芸一覧.
In this period of time a lot of theatres burned down in flames due to well.. They were all made from wood and random fires happen quite often. But the theatre of Yamamura-za was specifically demolished in 1714. So why did Yamamura-za go down? Well, that would be the Eshima Ikushima Incident/江島生島事件. Basically some old lady called Eshima from the Ooku (the palace harem) decided to visit some grave, on her way back she was invited to visit a Kabuki-play by Shingoro Ikushima/生島新五郎 (1671-1743) and got a bit too invested. So she made it back too late for the Ooku curfew, resulting in a giant investigation being launched into the Ooku-rules. The Kabuki-theatre personel involved was banished to some island and the theatre ceased existing. So anyway, there were at this point three main surviving theatres that were called Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za and Morita-za. Historically this aggregation of three theatres is refered to as: Edo Sanza/江戸三座.
Alleged scene of lady Eshima and actor Shingoro meeting
Then the Tenpo reform/天保の改革 (1841-1843) happened which restricted entertainment. They basically banished the contemporary Danjuro Ichikawa (a familiar name) for his extravagance and put restrictions on actors. Kabuki was moved out of Tokyo city towards Saruwaka town/猿若町 but since there was less fire there, this actually helped stabalize Kabuki theatre. Kabuki-actors around this time of the Edo-period were seen as low-class and refered to sometimes as Kawaramono/河原者/Riverside beggars.
A painting of the theatre town of Saruwaka where Edo-Kabuki was relocated upon Tenpo reform
MEIJI ERA KABUKI
A government recommendation was received by all major Edo Kabuki-theatres, it was time to relocate to Tokyo city and starting in 1872 that started happening. Shockingly, a fire happened in one of the new Kabuki theatres called Shintomi-za (formerly called Morita-za). But the owner Kanya Morita/守田勘彌 had actually been saving up for this occasion and proceeded to build a giant Western-style theatre Shintomi-za where the most succesful Kabuki-actors of the time would act and even perform at night with the lamps.
How old Kabuki-theatres used to look like before Meiji Westernization
In 1889 construction begins on Kabuki-za sponsored by the Theatre Improvement Movement who intend to use it to forge a new image of Kabuki. But aforementioned Kanya Morita forged an agreement (four theatre alliance/四座同盟) with all other major Kabuki-theatres at the time to make sure Kabuki-za got no performers. It was settled with money in the end and Kabuki-za could finally open. Older Kabuki theatres had square and flat audience-seatings, like a masu-seki/ます席-type thing but newer theatres would have Western-style chair-seatings. It would be rebuilt after a fire and be struck by the Great Kanto Earthquake, still they persevered and rebuilt that building again. Kabuki-za is one of the biggest remaining kabuki-theatres in Japan and the whole rebuilding thing gives some nice lore to the whole phoenix-symbols they added to the building.
Kabuki-za building today
So regarding the legend Danjuro Ichikawa IX/市川團十郎 (9代目)'s origin. Following the collapse of the Shogunate (end of the samurai-era) around 1867 a lot of turmoil happened in the country. Gonnosuke Kawarazaki VI, adoptive father of Danjuro Ichikawa IX, was stabbed to death in 1868 by a ronin burglar while his adoptive son hid in the closet nearby. The most famous art-lineage of Edo-Kabuki actors could've ended right there. Danjuro Ichikawa IX was to become one of three most celebrated Kabuki-actors of the Meiji era and his lineage became essentially the royals of Kabuki. So now its 1886, the Meiji Theatre Improvement Movement/演劇改良運動 for reforms of existing theatre happens and Danjuro Ichikawa IX is there to support it. They basically wanted to change Kabuki so that it would be for a high-class audience and a more honorable career. In 1887, Danjuro Ichikawa IX was among the actors to first perform a Kabuki-play for the Meiji emperor. This was something unthinkable in the past as Kabuki was seen as a commoners artform but reforms were happening. The emperor commented ''This is easier to understand than Noh'' and honestly I agree with that. There are two other famous Edo-Kabuki-actors of this era, they are collectively known as the 團菊左/Dankikusa.
Actual photo of Danjuro Ichikawa IX
The second legend Sadanji Ichikawa I/初代 市川 左團次 (1842-1904) was a man born in Osaka, he entered the Kabuki-stage at seven years old. However, since he was a Kamigata-Kabuki actor, he found great difficulty establishing in Edo-Kabuki due to his accent despite his rumored beautiful appearance. When his adoptive Kabuki-father died, he began being shunned from the stage and his wife threatened to divorce him. With the help of a friend he was finally able to return to the Kabuki-stage. He too ended up performing for the emperor as he was a driving force behind the ''Shin Kabuki''/New Kabuki movement that intended to remove absurdist elements in favour of creating literary works.
Actual photo of Sadanji ichikawa I
And the third legend of that time is Onoe Kikugorō V/ 五代目 尾上菊五郎 (1844-1903). He was very devoted to his craft, even visiting the real battlefield of Ueno (1868) to learn more about war. He was one of the main kabuki-actors doing Zangirimono/散切物 which was a Kabuki-style which incorporated contemporary Meiji-era elements. Also importantly for the continuety of this text, he acted together with Ichikawa Danjūrō IX in the first preserved Japanese movie called Momijigari/紅葉狩 in 1899. His disciple-lineage more than a hundred years later would result in the first dual-nationality French & Japanese kabuki-actor in 2023 called Onoe Maholo and the boys mother Terajima Shinobu becoming the first main role adult woman in the Kabuki-za theatre in a long time.
Onoe Kikugorō 5th gen
Then finally there's the woman Ichikawa Kumehachi/市川九女八 (1847-1913), the first professionally recognized Kabuki actress since the ban of 1629. She first became a Kyogen performer for a feudal lord and then joined Kabuki. She was also the only female disciple of Danjuro Ichikawa IX and had a very similar style of acting. Anyway Danjuro IX ex-communicated her when she performed a play without his permission but she got back in eventually. She performed in Kabuki, Shinpa, Shingeki and even Bunshigeki/文士劇 (an amateur-theatre form for writers). Her adopted daughter died young so she couldn't pass on the name and that's where that ended. Not a lot more famous and recognized female kabuki-actresses after this as of 2024.
I couldn't find pictures of her, so here's Danjuro IX's female descendant Botan/市川ぼたん performing in Kabuki-za, being the first girl to do so in 60 years in 2022.
THE LAST RISE AND FALL OF KAMIGATA-KABUKI
So, personally, I think this is important to talk about separately since it basically shows an important change. So at one point Edo and Kamigata-Kabuki were pretty comparable in quality. But at some point Kamigata Kabuki-actors started appearing in Hama Shibai/浜芝居 plays which were riverbank plays outside of the traditional theatre-houses that were deemed lower-class. Then the Kyogen writers/狂言作者 which wrote plays started to decline and originality disappeared. But it was still an era of relative fortune and was called En Sō U/延宗右 which had three actors to represent it.
First Nakamura Sōjūrō/中村宗十郎 (1835-1889) who loved performing arts from a young age, so he learned to dance and play the shamisen instrument and left home. He moves to Osaka and receives the name ''Nakamura'' from his master and just kinda picks the name ''Sōjūrō'' randomly, reflective of Kamigata-Kabuki not really caring for names as much as Edo-Kabuki. He once got into beef with visiting Edo-Kabuki actor Tanosuke Sawamura III/澤村田之助 (3代目) and got so insulted by the dude that he quit Kabuki and opened a kimono-shop but he returned eventually. Then at some point they made him act together with famous Edo-Kabuki actor Danjuro Ichikawa IX, big mistake. Nakamura Sojuro stepped up to Danjuro Ichikawa IX and told him he was a scumbag and that Onoe Kikugorō V was a much better actor, they got to fighting. Kind of an iconic moment in Kabuki-history. He was very passionate about his job and training the new generations. He also did much more realistic acting for a Kabuki-actor which made him one of the inspirations of the whole Shinpa-movement. He played onnagata-roles during a time when it was deemed lower-rank for actors to play women roles, but he just didn't really care. He also fell off a stage once when he got too into playing a blind character. Truly the method-actor of his time.
My dude Nakamura Sōjūrō, ready to throw down anyone at any time, icon
Second is Ichikawa Udanji/市川右團次 (初代) (1843-1916). He grew up in a Kabuki-community and got discovered by a master of Keren/ケレン/Stage tricks who saw his potential. Using this Kamigata-Kabuki Keren he became popular everywhere including even Tokyo. At the time Keren were seen as lacking elegance as cheap tricks but he was so good at it that he convinced people it was actually a proper art. Aside from that he loved tea-ceremony and got a lot of respect from others for being sincere and kind. Later these techniques of Keren would be developed by Keren-fans and eventually Super Kabuki would be born from it.
The chill dude Ichikawa Udanji
Third is Enjaku Sanekawa/實川延若 (初代) (1831-1885) who went by like 5 different names and of course he also had a haiku-name. He went to Edo and became a Kabuki disciple for some dude, then Kikugoro Onoe IV spotted him and was like ''mine'' and adopted him and gave him a name ''Baiko''. The Kikugoro family did not like that and they never accepted him, eventually he returned the name to them. The Edo-audience did not like his Kamigata-style and described him as ''vulgar'' in reviews (Basically the equivalent of getting hate-comments MDL). Returning to Kamigata-kabuki, he often had beef with Nakamura Sōjūrō, at this point, who didn't? But they completely reconciled at the end of his life. He died from lead poisoning (hint: the make up). Before his death he recognized the talent of a young Nakamura Ganjirō and set him up for success.
Enjaku Sanekawa, who got a lot of hate-comments
The legend Nakamura Ganjirō/中村鴈治郎 (初代) (1860-1935) became the biggest Kamigata Kabuki-star in his time. To the point of not being able to go outside without a disguise even though he lived a simple life. He had good looks and had learned techniques from both Edo and Kamigata-Kabuki but he became known for the gorgeous and soft style typical of Kamigata-Kabuki. He tried many different roles (some went better than others) and was known to improvise. His fans also chased a rival Kabuki-actor of him out of Osaka once (cancel culture of those days) but anyway there was more money to be made in Tokyo for Kabuki so he probably survived. This Ganjiro dude was kinda like a popstar with tons of female fans. But due to Kamigata-Kabuki not really seeing Kabuki as a family-art and successors not being a priority, the popularity of Kamigata went way down after Ganjiro. Also, the company Shochiku he partnered with didn't have the forsight to promote other actors so when he died, he took the entire popularity of Kamigata-Kabuki with him. Meanwhile Edo-Kabuki & Shochiku just praised Danjuro so much that he has become the core-planet that all of Edo-Kabuki orbits around but for them it worked out.
Icon of Kamigata-Kabuki Nakamura Ganjirō
After Ganjiro passed, there were still successful actors but the audience and promoters wanted a new Ganjiro and never got it. Some onnagata-actors like Kataoka Nizaemon XII/片岡仁左衛門 (12代目) (1882-1946) also moved to Tokyo since there was a shortage of onnagata-actors there. But he was kinda murdered with an axe in Tokyo later on due to being harsh to their live-in apprentice. Also due to the war many patrons had left cities to settle in Tokyo for economic reasons and money was kinda needed. So eventually that leaves Ganjiro Nakamura II/中村鴈治郎 (2代目) (1902-1983) to pick up the pieces but he could never reach his masters level and he knew that. He also got into beef with the company Shochiku's promotion-policies focussing on another dude and neglecting the Ganjiro-family status. So together with his son Tojuro Sakata IV he left Shochiku to join the movie-scene. This caused further chaos in the Kamigata-Kabuki scene.
Ganjiro Nakamura II (center) leaves Kabuki and joins the movie-industry (Movie: 水戸黄門漫遊記)
So at this point everything splinters apart, some actors join movies like Kazuo Hasegawa/長谷川一夫 (1908-1984) and Raizo Ichikawa VIII/市川雷蔵 (8代目) as they see more opportunities there. Some flee to Tokyo for Edo-Kabuki, others join Western-style theatres. It became a situation where people could not live off of Kabuki-acting alone so they had to do other things. One dude called Tomijuro Nakamura IV/中村富十郎 (4代目) (1908-1960) leaves Edo-Kabuki to join Kamigata-Kabuki (a rare occurance) but Shochiku company gives him the legendary Tomijuro name that's related to Kamigata-Kabuki. So one Kamigata-Kabuki actor was like ''So if the newcomer is getting that legendary name, what kind of name am I getting?''. So yeah, wasn't received well. At some point him, another Tokyo dude called Jukai Ichikawa III/市川壽海 (3代目) (1886-1971) and Osaka-native Jusaburo Bando III/阪東壽三郎 (3代目) (1886-1954) were the only dudes pulling the near-dying Kamigata-Kabuki forward.
Jukai Ichikawa III photo
A hope on the horizon for Kamigata as Nizaemon Kataoka XIII/片岡仁左衛門 (13代目) (1903-1994) enters the scene. After his birth he was immediately adopted by Kataoka Nizaemon XI and moved to Tokyo. In 1939 he transferred to Kamigata Kabuki and got his mastery-name. He saw the sad state of Kamigata-kabuki and said ''If we were to abandon Kamigata as it is now, wouldn't we be so sorry not only to our ancestors but also to our seniors who have built up Kamigata's plays over several generations?'' and he promised that if Kamigata-Kabuki could not be saved, he would end his own life over it. He funded 5 successfull Kamigata-Kabuki plays and gave lessons to highschool students. When his life was near the end he became completely blind but still performed on the Kabuki stage. It's said that his performance style became much more refined in his last few years as well. Even now a slow recovery of Kamigata-Kabuki is still ongoing in Osaka and Kyoto. It nearly got extinguished and its far from Edo-Kabuki popularity but it survives and Nizaemon Kataoka XIII can rest easy knowing he did save his artform.
Nizaemon Kataoka XIII
INTERESTING/ INFLUENTIAL KABUKI-ACTOR LIVES Kinda gonna be a short chapter focussed on some memorable Kabuki-actors, cause I think it's the individuals that shape the artform the most in Kabuki. And sometimes its just an interesting story. Ichimura Uzaemon XV/市村羽左衛門 (15代目) (1874-1945) had an interesting background as the first French-Japanese Kabuki-actor. So the story is like this; some French-born American general called Charles Legendre wants to be an advisor for the Meiji-government. During his work the general meets a geisha one day, that's how he was born. He was adopted by a kabuki dude at four years old and became a famous for his handsome male roles. In any case, he was shipped with onnagata Onoe Baiko VI cause they had chemistry later on.
Ichimura Uzaemon XV
There was also some Australian English teacher dude called Henry James Black who renamed himself as Kairakutei Black I/初代 快楽亭 ブラック (1858-1923) and became the first foreign-born kabuki-actor. He did this all to be rebellious to his family who didn't accept his Japanese entertainment hobbies like rakugo and kabuki and once his brother stormed into the theatre to curse him out for this. His popularity did not last and in his last years he lived with an adoptive Japanese family as his own family broke off contact. He was burried in Yokohama cemetery for foreigners.
Henry James Black/Kairakutei Black I
So, famous onnagata actor Utaemon Nakamura VI/中村歌右衛門 (6代目) (1917-2001). Kinda an icon of their time, they had a leg problem early in life but continued to play roles. Throughout their life they specialized in onnagata roles and performing Kabuki internationally. Also they had a huge collection of teddy bears from around the world. They once also apparently had a scandal in 1938 where they ran away with a male attendant to a hot springs resort, wild times. Anyway after that didn't work out they married a female dancer called Tsuruko.Now one important thing to note about Kabuki-actors wives that I have not mentioned before: They essentially dedicate their lives to their husbands profession. So she did the housework, educated the children, attended to guests, took care of the disciples of the actor and helped out with the stage-work. Needless to say, that in combo with surviving a war took its toll and she died in 1957. Utaemon Nakamura VI deeply mourned her though and mentioned he tried to make her proud by working even harder on stage.
Utaemon Nakamura VI does their stage make-up
This is when Tojuro Sakata (4th gen)/坂田藤十郎 (4代目) (1931-2020) hits the scene. He is so hype for Kamigata-Kabuki that he is allowed to inherit the legendary name of wagoto-creator of like hundreds of years back. Don't know how they decided that but ok apparently he was worthy. He got a lot of prizes for his acting, but also he was a giant playboy and was known in the media for it. His wife, a Takarazuka actress, just got to a point of not caring anymore about his eternal cheating-ways and just stayed married to him till his death.
Tojuro Sakata 4th gen, the cheat-dude
Can't really neglect to mention Ichikawa En'ō II/市川猿翁 (2代目) (1939-2023), the originator of Super Kabuki genre. At some point in his career he lost both his grandfather and father in a short period, meaning he had to search to other schools of Kabuki to continue his learning. He grew to love Keren/ケレン/Stage tricks from Kamigata-Kabuki and made himself stand out with that within the Edo-Kabuki tradition. He had a son in his first marriage but kinda distanced from him so that his son had to create his own kabuki career with a new name. His disowned son got cancelled in 2022 for assaulting women while drunk, so that didn't end well. Anyway the disciple he didn't disown is his nephew Ichikawa Ennosuke IV, also known since 2023 as that guy who killed his parents cause he got exposed by the media for harassment. In that way, the family name kinda did get a worse reputation.
Ichikawa En'ō II, whose family had issues
Also gonna mention Tanosuke Sawamura III/村田之助 (3代目) (1845-1878). This onnagata was hailed as a young genius but fell of the stage once and got necrosis. But he was so dedicated that he kept performing even as he lost his limbs slowely over the years to the point he had no legs to stand on. His dedication to the art paid off as he continued to be popular for his beauty, then he died from lead poisoning, a common way to go at the time for the profession.
Tanosuke Sawamura III, another victim of lead poisoning
A familiar face??? That's right famous controversial writer Yukio Mishima/三島由紀夫 (1925-1970) was also into kabuki though he was not a kabuki-actor! He saw his first Kabuki-play (the play Kanadehon Chūshingura/ 仮名手本忠臣蔵) when he was 13 and fell in love with the artform. Kabuki was considered by his traditionalist family to be too obscene due to older (likely brothel-related) stereotypes of Kabuki, despite it having changed a lot. Yukio Mishima got interested in creating in many art-forms, some more problematically depicted than others. But in 1957 he wrote a unique fanfic (kinda basic-titled ''Onnagata'') of an onnagata and a contemporary actor falling in love so that was cool. He was also pretty much simping over onnagata Tamasaburo Bando V/坂東玉三郎_(5代目) (1950-now) and wrote an essay about him. Which is very interesting considering that his close friend was other famous onnagata actor Utaemon Nakamura VI/中村歌右衛門 (6代目) (1917-2001) and that guy famously had a long-standing beef with Tamasaburo Bando V. So idk how all that went down at the time and if that impacted their friendship.
Utaemon Nakamura VI and Yukio Mishima meet up
So, the final one is Tamasaburo Bando V/坂東玉三郎 (5代目) (1950-now). We know about him that he was kabuki-shipped with Nizaemon Kataoka XV and that he had beef with Utaemon Nakamura VI but what was his life like? He is a famous onnagata-actor that did multiple international performances. He contracted Polio and during rehabilitation he grew to love dance. He became a roommate of a kabuki-actor who adopted him and so he could enter the world of Kabuki as an outsider. Being pretty tall for an onnagata and dealing with the after-effects of polio he did suffer hardships but he got through it.
The famous & beautiful Tamasaburo Bando V
KABUKI MODERN SITUATION
So a short-explanation on what ended up happening. So the company Shochiku came in at some point with the two brothers Matsujiro Shirai and Takejiro Otani in 1895. They basically over the years bought every major Kabuki theatre and restored a few of them whenever they were earthquaked/bombed/lit on fire. They also made movies from 1920 onwards but that's for later. So they own Kabuki-za & Shinbashi Enbujo in Tokyo, Minami-za in Kyoto and Shochiku-za in Osaka. Basically they got all the major towns and kabuki-forms covered. No written contract exists today between Kabuki-actors and Shochiku but it's a mutual understanding that Shochiku creates performances and hires qualified actors of good art lineage-history. Shochiku also own the copyright to the word Kabuki, so yeah, no real competition for them in the kabuki-world and they will copyright strike you for kabuki-content. Some detail info for BL fans: There is a Kabuki-play about gay romance called Somemo Yochugi no Goshuin/染模様恩愛御書 but it was last performed in like 2006. If you wanna find out the big current Kabuki-stars just research the ones awarded with the ''Living National Treasure'' title.
Poster of modern generation of Kabuki-actors performing in ''New Year Asakusa Kabuki''/若手歌舞伎俳優の登竜門
CHINESE OPERA DETOUR Quick small detour here about Chinese opera since I feel its interesting to learn about and of course countries have some level of cultural-exchange. Won't go into detail since obviously the history is WAY too much to cover. Chinese opera has SO MANY different forms aside from the wellknown Peking Opera and a lot of them aren't even properly documented in English. Opera-forms are distinguished by: Vocal-type, Clothing-style, Language, Stage-tricks, Story-repetoire ect.. Similarly to Kabuki, they have names for roles like ''Sheng''/生/Man, ''Dan''/旦/Woman, ''Jing''/净/Warrior man, ''Chou''/丑/Clown. Obviously there are many more, I won't go into that. There's also a ton of skills in Chinese opera like water-sleeves, teeth-playing, face-changing ect.. Lotta stuff. So here I will mention a few of the enormous amount of forms.
Example picture of Peking Opera
Jing/京剧/Peking opera is the most wellknown form of Chinese opera. It was initially a male-only form of opera due to bans on female performers starting in 1671 and most of the audience has traditionally been male due to restrictions. The first female performers began ignoring the ban in 1870 and in 1912 the ban on women in Peking opera was finally lifted. In the meanwhile of course men had taken on the roles of women similarly to what happened in Kabuki. In the old days students were picked personally by teachers from a young age and trained for seven years after which they had to pay back the costs to their teacher through performances. Nowadays the training schools are less harsh but the training remains extremely tough. They also use water-sleeve/水袖, which essentially just means having long sleeves and waving them around in specific ways. Anyway it's pretty iconic for the high-voice thing and very popular like from that movie Farewell My Concubine. One iconic dude in this opera style is Mei Lanfang, he will be mentioned later on as well.
An example of Water Sleeve-technique
Kunqu/崑曲, this is the oldest surviving opera-form in China and has retained many older traits. Its most famous play is probably The Peony Pavillion. Some love story about a girl that dies and a dude who longs for her after death, the full version is 22 hours long, ancient Chinese opera did not mess around. Famous kunqu actor includes: Mei Lanfang/梅蘭芳 (who also did other forms). Mei Lanfang is essentially THE ICON of modern Chinese opera, if you remember one name remember his. He was one of the first to spread Chinese opera to other continents and he refused to act during the occupation of China and lived in poverty during those years. He played a ''dan'' which is the Chinese-version of an onnagata/female-role.
Photo of Mei Lanfang
There's also Yue/越剧 opera from 1906, which when compared to Peking opera is similarly to Wagoto-style in Japan much more focused on romance themes and grace, softness ect... It has rural origins but settled in Shanghai where it became very popular. Most of the performers are nowadays women and the focus is more on love-stories than acrobatic fighting.
Photo of Yue opera performance
Nuo/傩戏 drama is vaguely related to Japanese Noh due to them both taking some influences of the extinct Baixi/百戏 entertainment-form. Nuo originates from Nuoism which is a folk religion, they basically worship the first two humans of humanity as gods. This religion interestingly influenced a few parts of the Japanese Shinto religion like funeral exorcism by priests. In Japan these are called hōsōshi/方相氏 priests and in China they were fangxiangshi/方相氏 priests, notice the kanji being the same. Similarly to Japanese Noh, Chinese Nuo is also used to ask blessings from the gods through masked performances. Traditionally only men are allowed to touch and make the masks, when they wear it, they are supposed to be possessed by a god or spirit and aren't allowed to speak. That is one difference with Noh where they have this deep voice thing going on.
Example of Nuo mask
Huangmei/黃梅戲 originates from Anhui province where women used to sing in the mountains while picking tea-leaves. It has got a pitch in the song that stays high for the entire song. Costumes for this opera-form are generally pretty casual and sometimes modern clothing is even used.
Example of a Huangmei performance
Ningbo/甬劇 and more specifically Ninghai-style is known for its cool boar-teeth/耍牙/Shua Ya performances. Where actors will use the teeth to express moods of the characters, its an awful and painful process to learn this skill.
Example of Shua Ya performance
Wuju/婺剧 opera originates from the rural areas in Jinhua (East-China) and is around 400 years old. It was mainly rural people taking up this acting-style, going all out to please the crowds. This opera-style breaks the border between literary opera and martial arts opera in order to get a compelling plot with compelling action-scenes. Needless to say, the action-scenes are often beautiful but also impressive to watch as performers have trained their bodies for acrobatic stunts. A lot of tricks seen in other opera-forms also exist in Wuju opera. They have the face-change skill too, which is just very fast switching of masks using a fan or sleeve to cover the face for a second.
Wuju opera scene of the famous ''Legend of the White Snake''
Teochew/潮剧//Chaozhou/Chiuchow opera has a history of 400 years and originated in Southern China. It also gained popularity in South-East Asia, especially Thailand, due to travelling Chinese troupes and Hongkong even made early Teochew-style movies. The diaspora of the Teochew ethnic group in South-East Asia is also quite large in number. The costumes aren't super extravagant due to the large distance for travelling troupes and the tone of the singing is not falsetto but just normal voice.
Example of Teochew opera scene
There's many more forms, details and history to Chinese opera but its just meant as a small detour. Japanese entertainment history is already large, Chinese entertainment history is next level and I couldn't cover it all. But I hope it was nice to read a bit about it!
JAPANESE THEATRE
Well, it was about time to start explaining how theatre in Japan came to be, we will visit and learn about Shinpa and Shingeki. Lets gooo!!
SHINPA ORIGIN A more Western-approach to theatre kinda all begins with Shinpa/新派 which started in 1888, it is a modern form of theatre and was apparently melodramatic af. It was called Shinpa to kinda contrast it against the ''Old School'' Kabuki. It was meant to attract more high-class audiences who were becoming more Westernized in the Meiji era, basically the whole Meiji theatre improvement thing. Meanwhile samurai were dissatisfied with their new Meiji-situation and rebelled, forming a ''Liberal Party Warriors''/自由党壮士 group. The Meiji-government did not like that and suppressed them. Sadanori Kaduko was a random Kyoto police officer, when he saw that the ''Freedom and Civil rights movement'' was being cracked down upon he resigned and eventually got exiled to Osaka. There he saw a Kabuki-play and realized the potential of promoting his politics through theatre. The play called Sou Shibai/壮士芝居 by Sadanori Kakudo/角藤定憲 (1867-1907) is deemed to be the Shinpa origin and was meant to spread the idea of freedom and civil rights by talking about the plight of the samurai after the whole samurai-system fell and all that.
Depiction of Meiji era government of Japan
Otojiro Kawakami/川上音二郎 (1864-1911) enters the game after running away from home, getting chased for stealing food and settling in Tokyo. He's the leader of the liberal party and gets inspired by the play Sou Shibai of Kakudo.He becomes a Rakugo-storyteller, travels to France for a bit, marries famous geisha Sada Yacco/Sadayako. When the Sino-Japanese war starts in 1894 he makes a theatre play about it, next he travels to Korea to see the war himself and then again makes a theatre-play about that. He was kinda about those war-theatre plays back then. In 1895 he performed a play in the Kabuki-za, it was unusual to see non-Kabuki actors on there. Kabuki-dude Danjuro Ichikawa reacted pretty calm to learning that a non-Kabuki actor used their stage, he cut down the stage that they used afterwards. At some point he toured in America and saw some controversy go down about an ''obscene'' play called Sappho where a British actress got arrested for it. He immediately made a censored version of the play for the next day. Cashing in lots of money, good favor from conservatives and and getting his wife into the Actress Club. Returning to Japan he makes Japanese versions of a bunch of Western plays and dies as both the father of Shinpa genre and of modern Japanese theatre in general. Now his niece Tsuruko Aoki becomes relevant later as she becomes the first female Japanese Holywood star.
Otojiro Kawakami, theatre dude
Now for the first modern theatre actress of Japan, Kawakami Sadakko/Sada Yacco/川上貞奴 (1871-1946). She was adopted into a geisha house at seven years old and received the full education and became one of the most wellknown geisha of Japan at the time. She married Kawakami in 1894 and when his career went wrong she attempted to escape the country but she washed ashore some island. In 1899 she went on a Japanese dance tour in America but someone ran away with all the funds. Luckily local Japanese residents helped them and the group quickly rose in popularity and she met some famous people. She started the first theatre-actress school in Japan in 1908 which later became the Imperial Theatre and she retired in 1911 as Japans first modern actress when her husband died. Then she got attacked by a dog and some guy saved her, she made him her romantic lover, which was complex since he married another girl a while later. But their romance somehow worked out, which did suck for the girl he married to back then.
Sada Yacco, first Shinpa actress
So one other famous Shinpa actor was Yi Loho/伊井蓉峰 (1871-1932). He worked in a bank but got interested in Kawakami's plays and joined his theatre troupe but soon parted ways as he found Kawakami to be arrogant. He produced a bunch of plays with his own troupe from Western plays to traditional plays. He was basically at some point the president of Shinpa. He was later invited to play in a movie but had himself such an arrogant attitude that it caused the entire crew to split up or quit.
Yi Loho
Then there was Takeo Kawai/河合武雄 (1877-1942), who did the onnagata-role in Shinpa. You have to imagine, during this time there were only a handful of actual female actresses (like Sadakko) and Shinpa still held onto some Kabuki-habits so he quite easily got the female roles. In 1917 he joined hands with Yi Loho and Kitamura Ryokurō to save Shinpa theatre and they became known as The Three Heads/三頭目. They really liked groupnames.
Takeo Kawai in onnagata-character
The final of the three is Kitamura Ryokurō/喜多村緑郎 (初代) (1871-1961) who was also an onnagata-role Shinpa actor. He just kinda vibed with performance arts and liked cigars, coffee and whiskey. He remained with ''Main Shinpa''/本流新派 while his disciple Hanayagi Shotaro and the rest of the younglings started ''Shinsei Shinpa''/新生新派. Eventually post-war it all merged into Gekidan Shinpa/劇団新派 anyway. He got a lot of awards for being a cool Shinpa actor and living to an old age
Kitamura Ryokurō
For the later generations there's Ritsuko Mori/森律子 (1890-1961). They were a woman from a wealthy family, her father was the long-haired samurai/lawyer/politician Hajime Mori who was known for grabbing weapons when he lost his temper. She entered acting school and was taught by the first actress Sada Yacco but this was a time when actors were seen as a low-class job. So while she became a star, she received much hate for being rebellious against the set rules of society. Being inspired by many different actors such as Mei Lanfang she ended up famous. Her success changed the reputation of actresses in Japan for the better.
Theatre-Actress Ritsuko Mori
Then the dude Hanayagi Shotaro/花柳章太郎 (1894-1965) who was also another famous Shinpa onnagata. They became a disciple of Kitamura Ryokurō in elementary school. They had their breakthrough role as Ochiyo in Nihonbashi/日本橋 for their beauty. But Hanayagi felt frustrated with Shinpa which was in decline and felt like it was inbetween Kabuki and Shingeki in terms of development. He was invited to join Kabuki but declined. He formed his own version of Shinpa called Shinsei Shinpa.
Hanayagi Shotaro
Then there's Mizutani Yaeko/水谷八重子 (初代) (1905-1979), she was a woman who was scouted first by Shingeki's Osanai Kaoru but ended up with Shinpa theatre. She also appeared in movies, participated in the formation of Gekidan Shinpa post-war and tried to fuse elements of Shinpa and Shingeki. At the end of her life she focused on teaching the new generation of Shinpa-actors like Kenji Sugawara (1926-1999), she died on the stage as she performed.
Mizutani Yaeko
Shinpa remains a surviving theatre-form, often visited by kabuki-actors and sometimes even considered a permanent alternative to the kabuki-life since they allow onnagata-roles in shinpa theatre. Through this it has acquired a diverse set of actors and actresses over the years. Shinpa was also a thing in Korea for a while due to the Japanese occupation.
A Shinpa-scene
SHINGEKI ORIGIN Then there's Shingeki/新劇 (not related to Attack on Titan anime) which developed in the eartly 20th century and was based on modern realism, due to the focus on realism women were welcomed on the stage instead of onnagata. Basically they saw Shinpa as too irrational/melodramatic and the rest as too fuedal. So there's two important dudes for this Shingeki movement. First Osanai Kaoru/小山内 薫 (1881-1928) founded a theatre troupe that combined kabuki with Western theatre but eventually he mainly just produced translations of Western works. Second there's Tsubouchi Shōyō/坪内 逍遥 (1859-1935) who was kinda the first researcher of theatre in Japan. He wrote very psychological-type plays and wanted to modernize literature. He respected kabuki and saw it as a separate artform.
Osanai Kaoru & Tsubouchi Shōyō
So then you get into the pre-war period where it kinda became more politically-left and more Japanese plays start getting written. The ones that went too overtly politically-left got arrested by the Japanese government at the time and almost all Shingeki was disbanded by authorities during the Worldwar. So post-worldwar the Americans thought that Shingeki was perfect to promote for the Westernization of Japan. So Shingeki got another start after near extinction, then they basically all became communist because the JCP (Japan Communist Party) was supporting Shingeki-actors and so they took part in the Anpo-protest against American-treaty of the 60s. But the Shingeki-association wanted strictly pacifist protests and this caused a rift after counter-protestors injured Shingeki members. This event caused the creation of Angura/アングラ/小劇場/shōgekijō in the 1960s which basically meant ''Underground'' theatre and it was mostly performed outdoors. Tadashi Suzuki/鈴木 忠志 (1939-now) for example developed an entire performer training technique (the Suzuki method) for Angura that included both traditional Kabuki/Noh and avant-garde (weird art) elements. In general Angura sought to challenge the Shingeki movement in every way by including overt sexuality and other stuff.
In this way it was similar to the Butoh dance/舞踏 which formed at the same time where people would paint their skin white and use slow movements to enact taboo topics or absurdism. Which was a reaction to dance mostly either imitating the Western-styles or being traditional, a re-curring theme of rejecting the old and splintering off into new forms of art. Anyway guess what the first performed Butoh piece was? Forbidden Colors/禁色 in 1959 inspired by none other than Yukio Mishima which explored gay relations and somehow a chicken was involved idk. The creator was banned from that festival for the performance. Anyway the point is, this Butoh and Angura laid the perfect foundation for what was to come in media later on: Pink films lol.
A scene of the (slightly unique-looking) Butoh
Back to Shingeki stuff
The three main theatre troupes for Shingeki were called Bungakuza/文学座 (1937), Gekidan Mingei/劇団民藝 (1950) and Gekidan Haiyūza/劇団俳優座 (1944). So specifically for the Bungakuza, they had a split of membership forming their own theatre troupe over disagreement of communism very early on due to involvement with China. Then later the controversial Yukio Mishima was involved with them and he wanted to perform his play called The Harp of Joy/喜びの琴 which was anti-communist. This was too much for the company and he set up his own theatre company due to the disagreement calling it basically ''New Bungazuka''. Anyway, Shingeki as an artform continues to be spread by small theatre-groups though they have declined in modern Japan and the Shingeki-label is often left out. During the ''Pure Film Movement''/純映画劇運動 of the 1910s, which advocated for more modern filmmaking, there were Shingeki directors who produced stuff like ''The Glow of Life'' (1918) and ''Souls on the Road''/路上の霊魂 (1921) the latter being hailed as groundbreaking cinema in Japan for using cutting-edge stuff like flashback scenes and all that. It is the oldest surviving film of the Shochiku company.
A scene of ''Souls on the Road'' Shingeki movie
So one wellknown Shingeki actress is Sumako Matsui/松井須磨子 (1886-1919). Due to her father passing away early she married early but divorced again within a year due to illness. After this event she married an actor which inspired her to get into acting. She was rejected from acting school and underwent plastic surgery due to this, which was just them injecting wax into her face which longterm was not a good idea. She had a career after this in theatre and also made songs. Anyway she divorced again and had a love affair with a married man, who died of Spanish flu, so she then also died from sadness. Her death was impactful on the newly emerging scene of actresses in Japan. Actress Ritsuko Mori gave a speech at her funeral lamenting why she had chosen death and left the other struggling actresses of Japan to continue their fight for recognition without her.
Sumako Matsui, Shingeki actress
MOVIE STARS INTERNATIONAL
So there were a bunch of international Japanese-actors and I will try to highlight a few with interesting stories.
AMERICAN MOVIES Tokuko Takagi/高木 徳子 (1891-1919) became the first Japanese actress to appear in American film shorts professionally between 1911 and 1914. She had dropped out of highschool and married at 15 after which she moved to America. After a while the couple decided to get into entertainment business and she learned to sing and dance. Eventually her (problematic age-gap) husband becomes her manager but during worldwar 1 they have to move back to Japan. She entered into an exclusive-contract with Shochiku to have funds to divorce her abusive husband after which she re-used her birth-name ''Tokuko Nagai''. Unfortunately after this she ended up relying on a sketchy yakuza guy for support, she died tragically young of health-complications.
Now for the most wellknown Japanese-American star-couple Tsuru Aoki/青木鶴子 (1889-1961) and Sessue Hayakawa/早川雪洲 (1886-1973). Tsuru Aoki was adopted as a child by her uncle the famous theatre-contributor Otojiro Kawakami and his actress wife Sada Yacco/Sadakko. She went with them on tour as a child in the United States. However, under American law she was required to attend school so she was left in the care of a Japanese-American painter in San Francisco and the troupe moved onto Europe without her. They had made a promise with the painter that Tsuru Aoki would return to Japan on her 16th birthday but by that time she had already grown accustomed to America and she saw the painter as a father-figure. When the painter died in 1912, instead of returning home she made up her mind to become an actress and joined a drama school living off of the little money she had left. From here on she would befriend Sessue Hayakawa, they would co-star in many movies and marry in 1914.
Tsuru Aoki
Sessue Hayakawa was raised by a strict father who loved martial arts, as a child he was made to clean 20 lamps every morning. Which he learned to avoid by getting the children in the neighboorhood to do it in return for sugar. His father eventually encouraged him to join the navy but at school he got into many fights which worried his family. Eventually he was forced to learn flower arranging and tea ceremony due to this habit of his. Eventually he reads the book No Return/Funyouki/不如帰, in which a woman enjoys a happy marriage but her husband joins the war and she dies from disease. This story was made into a theatre-play which he skipped school to see, marking a start for his interest in acting. But he failed his fathers expectations when he wasn't allowed in naval school due to a ruptured eardrum. He attempted to die due to this but was saved by a barking dog which got people to notice his wounds. He was sent to a Zen Temple for a while due to this, but in 1907 an American ship stranded nearby and he translated the needs of the survivors to the villagers. This event inspired him to move to America and his father warned him to go study. He didn't study, but he did watch a Japanese play in Little Tokyo of Los Angeles. He thought the play was boring so he went to complain and when asked for alternatives he remembered No Return/Funyouki which he knew by heart, he was allowed to star in the play and this inspired him to become an actor.
Sessue Hayakawa
Sessue and Tsuru's first feature movie was Wrath of the Gods 1914 which was also released in Japan a few years later but banned for unfavorable depiction of Japan. A few years later he became an international star with The Cheat in 1915. The movie depicted him as a villain but he became a popular male idol regardless. However, this movie also was controversial among Japanese-Americans for the evil character role, since there was an Anti-Japanese movement growing.Sessue issued an apology but it was not enough to undo the damage. So Japanese-American groups formed to cancel screenings of his movies and he received a lot of hate-mail from Japan. Eventually in 1917 the ''Japanese Photographic Actors Union'' was formed with Sessue Hayakawa as director to prevent anti-Japanese films and promote equality for Japanese actors. Sessue and Tsuru were at this point a celebrity couple who lived extremely wealthy lives in a castle and interacted with other Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin. They formed their own film company and produced movies with a motivation to show America the real Japan. Some more successful than others, these attempts include Temple of Darkness 1918 and The Dragon Painter 1919.
Sessue and Tsuru in a car
Sessue had the difficult job of balancing the stereotypes American audience had grown accustomed to and proper Japanese representation. Around 1918 Japanese actors began leaving Hollywood and returning to Japan, they held farewell parties for them. In 1920 Shochiku company had a little visit to America and asked Sessue to star in a film of theirs but he declined due to being busy. While he was famous, Sessue had a lot of love affairs and cheated literally all the time, but each time Tsuru forgave him though she was saddened by it. She even adopted one of his children with another woman as her own. Despite his wellknown success, the tides were turning after World War 1 as Anti-Japanese sentiments rose again. There were even Anti-Japanese propaganda cars stopping in front of his home. Sessue had a life-insurance and the money would go to his own company after his death, which caused a merged distribution company to start trying to get him killed. An appendecitis surgery was postponed on purpose but he survived that then he decided to visit the president and plan his retirement from movies. One day when he arrived on set for a movie in 1922, he was meant to film a big earthquake scene. The art-director approached him and said the set-piece was going to fall towards him, probably not wanting a death on his name and all that. Sessue entered the scene nervous and the set-piece indeed did fall towards him but he could run away in time and no one got hurt.
Sessue and Tsuru
Sessue left Hollywood for good and returned to Japan where he received a mixed welcome of haters and fans. He moved to France and started filming a movie when World War 2 broke out, so he was stuck there for a while. He refused to cooperate with the German troops and when the war ended he worked to free Japanese who were imprisoned on suspicion of collaboration with Germans. Meanwhile Tsuruko had remained alone in Japan with barely any friends and limited Japanese language-skills, she had adopted another two children Sessue had created by cheating. So she was a single mom of three and the only news she got from her husband was when he had a cheating-scandal in France. Then World War 2 broke out, Tsuruko somehow makes money enough to survive with three kids. Her child Yukio gets bullied by others for looking half-American and they are suspected as spies. Then their house gets burned down by an air raid which they also survived. When the war ends Tsuruko uses her English-skills to get translation-jobs and asks an American newspaper to look for her husband Sessue. Some Hollywood people find Sessue in Paris, ship him to America for a few more movies and then he finally returns to Tsuruko in 1949 after 12 years. She finds out through newspaper that he returns to Japan and he buys her a house as an apology, he still cheats tho. She returns to Hollywood one more time in the 1960s for a movie, where she actually gets recognized by one of the old guards in the studio. After which she ends her film-career and returns to Japan to live the rest of her life with Sessue
Sessue & Tsuru one last time
Some other Japanese-descent actors of the old Hollywood days include: Thomas Kurihara/トーマス・栗原 (1885-1926), Sōjin Kamiyama/上山 草人 (1884-1954), Yamamoto Tōgō/山本冬郷 (1886-1952), Tetsu Komai/駒井哲 (1894-1970), Yutake Abe/阿部 豊 (1895-1977), Misao Seki/関操 (1884-unknown), Mitsugi (Miki) Morita, Toyo Fujita (1893-1959), Goro Kino (1877-1922), Toshia Mori (1912-1995), Saburo Shigeta/ジェームズ・シゲタ (1929-2014), George Kuwa (1885-1931) and also for 1 role the Japanese-German Sadakichi Hartmann.
REST OF THE WORLD
For Europe the famous Japanese actresses include the French Yoko Tani/谷洋子 (1928-1999) who had an interest in dance and also did some nightclub stuff. She acted in a Japanese movie after the screenings of Akira Kurosawa's movies in Cannes France were hyped. Then there's the German Michiko Tanaka/田中路子 (1909-1988) who was in Germany at an unfortunate time. She dated many famous men, including the playboy dude Sessue Hayakawa whom she sued to get the gifts back she gave him. She also drank a lot of alcohol to the point they once had to cancel a performance after she drank too much sake in Japan.
Yoko Tani (left) & Michiko Tanaka (right)
Now interestingly there was also a famous Chinese-Japanese actress called Yoshiko Yamaguchi/山口 淑子 (1920-2014). As her grandfather was a Chinese-scholar, her father was pro-Chinese and moved from Japan to China in 1906. She gets the name Li Hsiang-lan (李香蘭) and since she speaks Mandarin she passes as a Chinese artist for many years. She gained mixed reactions for playing in both anti-Japanese and pro-Japanese films. Chinese reporters confronted her on how she could play pro-Japanese roles as a Chinese person and she subsequently apologized for it but kept her Japanese identity secret. She also befriended a controversial figure, the princess of the royal Qing Dynasty called Yoshiko Kawashima. This princess had been adopted by a Japanese family and was raised with Japanese culture. When the princess grew older they started crossdressing and doing drugs, they also became a bit of an idol in Japan. Anyway the Yoshiko's probably bonded over their shared name and both having experienced the complexity of their dual-nation identity. As the end of the war arrived, both Yoshiko's were accused of treason in China. But Yoshiko Yamaguchi was able to prove she was Japanese by smuggling in a birth-certificate in a geisha-doll. Yoshiko Kawashima was of course a Chinese princess so she had no such excuse and was executed by firing squad.Yoshiko Yamaguchi escapes China eventually and goes on to have an acting career in both Japan and America. After the war she continued to express guilt over having taken part in Japanese propaganda films, made sure to advocate for historical awareness and supported reperations for comfort women of the war. She also had a concert in 1950 for Japanese-Americans and hoped to comfort them for what they had gone through in the war in America. All in all, she had a long interesting life and tried to make amends for her mistakes.
Yoshiko Yamaguchi (left) & Yoshiko Kawashima (right)
MOVIES IN JAPAN
Yes, we made it to the movies in Japan itself at last. HISTORY OF JAPANESE CINEMA We're going allll the way back here in history to cover the start of Japanese cinema. One important thing to mention in regards to previous chapters is that many actors tried their hand at shinpa, shingeki, kabuki ect.. if the possibility was there, it wasn't set in stone which acting-styles they did. So ok, someone invents a kinetoscope which is a box you can watch little moving pictures in. It's imported into Japan and used in 1896 for the fun of it. The first film was allegedly taken in 1897 of some kabuki-actors by a foreigner. Then in 1898 it is time, the short films ''Bake Jizo'' and ''Resurrection of the Dead'' are filmed by Shiro Asano/浅野四郎 (1877-1955) after he did some experimenting with a camera. After that in 1899, the oldest preserved feature film Momijigari/紅葉狩 was filmed with famous Kabuki-actors Danjuro Ichikawa IX and Kikugoro Onoe V as a back-up for if they couldn't perform.
First preserved film of Japan, Momijigari
The father of Japanese cinema Shozo Makino/牧野省三 (1878-1929) enters the scene. In 1901 he and his mother buy and renovate movie theatre Senbonza and give it its name. Senbonza is called the birthplace of feature films in Japan as Shozo Makino produced the first historical feature film for it in 1908 called ''The Battle of Honnoji''/本能寺合戦. This would evolve into a genre that would later be known as Jidaigeki/時代劇/historical movie. This first jidaigeki film was remade by Nikkatsu in 1918 using famous kabuki actor Onoe Matsunosuke. Shozo Makino and Onoe Matsunosuke would do a lot of collabs, especially with the success of ninjutsu movies with special effects. But then kids started sustaining injuries from believing the ninjutsu was real, some kids threw stones at him when they found out ninjutsu was fake and he had to make educational videos to solve things. Anyway Shozo Makino essentially raised a large part of the next generation of filmmakers and produced hundreds of mostly lost films and his son Masahiro Makino also became a wellknown director.
Shozo Makino
So Onoe Matsunosuke/尾上松之助 (1875-1926) could basically be called the first movie star in Japan. He was active in the super early days of Japanese cinema and had a large young fanbase for his ninjutsu-type movies. At 5 years old he first helps out in Kamigata Kabuki plays due to a playhouse being nearby and he got to learn some skills. His father didn't approve of his dreams of becoming an actor so he ran away from home at 14 years old to join a troupe. It didn't always work out, he lost his winter-clothes due to not being able to pay rent and almost died of the cold but got saved by a farmer. He then gets a name succession ceremony that's so vague that historians refuse to believe it happened and nobody understands how he got the name Matsunosuke. But anyway, he's a Kabuki-actor now and can work his way up. So basically he gets scouted to perform in a movie and the audience loves his vivid expressions with his eyes. He becomes the star of the company Nikkatsu and has to film 9 movies per month at some point. Needless to say he at some point just fainted on set. But his films were done in the old-fashioned way with Kabuki-influences and onnagata-actors for women roles so his popularity declined. When he died, 50.000 people attended his funeral.
Onoe Matsunosuke in movie
So at this point most female-roles in Japanese cinema were played by men, this lasted up till the 20s. This male-bias was also a thing in theatre for other countries but it was rare to last into the introduction of cinema. But one such example from india is the first full-lenght film of India Raja Harishchandra 1913 with the Indian actor Anna Salunke playing the role of the female lead. Teijiro Tachibana/立花貞二郎 (1893-1918) is a perfect example of such an onnagata-actor in movies. During their childhood they made appearances in Kabuki but transferred to Shinpa and made their first film debut at 16 years old. His hit film though was Katyusha/カチューシャ in 1914 after which he became a popular actor. He was in Ukiyo/うき世 in 1916 which was the only movie he stars in that is still around. Anyway he died from lead poisoning and after his death the onnagata-actors quickly disappeared from the movie screen.
Photo of onnagata-movie actors, Teijiro Tachibana on the bottom left
A few examples of more modern occurances that could kinda be considered onnagata-actresses in movies are Polish-Japanese film Natazja (1994) and Tenshu Monogatari (1995) with Bando Tamasaburo. But also Black Lizard (1968) about a sadistic woman with dragqueen Miwa Akihiro/美輪明宏 (1935-now), Yukio Mishima made the play lol.There's also a few Kabuki-plays that would fulfill the criteria since it involves crossdressing like Yukinosuke Change/雪之丞変化 and Benten Kozo/弁天小僧.
Bando Tamasaburo in Natazja 1994
Now not necessarily a movie-star (that's right another detour) but still an interesting story and big in opera was Yoshie Fujiwara/藤原義江 (1898-1976) he had a feminine name but was a man. Born in Osaka to a geisha and a Scottish trader (who subsequently disappeared for like 10 years) he became a Japanese citizen at 7 years old. He grew to love theatre but due to his Western-appearance he didn't really get roles for historical theatre plays. Then he joined opera and got pretty good at that, visiting Italy for lessons from the inheritance of his dad. He ended up becoming one of the best opera singers in Japan, but did have an unfortunate spending habit and cheating habit. He got a movie made about him that was supposed to be the first partial talkie (audio-included movie) but it did have many technical difficulties on release. He started the Fujiwara Opera Company which is still the oldest professional opera company in Japan.
Yoshie Fujiwara (left) with his family
THE NEXT GENERATION OF SILENT-ERA ACTORS AND DIRECTORS
So its the 20s now and Japanese directors start popping up left and right. I'm talking directors like Yutake Abe, Minoru Murata, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Ushihara Yoshihiko, Yoshitei Nomura, Tomiyasu Ikeda, Daisuke Ito, Masahiro Makino, Yasujiro Ozu, Tomo Uchida. A lotta dudes Films were produced like Woman with Legs/足にさはつた女 (1926) which people really loved but idk what its about. A Page of Madness/狂つた一頁 (1926) which was some avant-garde stuff about a lady suffering from trauma. Tadatsugu travel diary/忠次旅日記 信州血笑篇 (1927) about a warrior who kills a lot of evil dudes. Then Roningai/浪人街 (1928) about a warrior who kills a lot of evil dudes for revenge. To end the decade, Kubinoza/首の座 (1929) was made by Masahiro Makino to honor his father who had died, it failed at the box office but it was liked by film-critics. Idk what it was about but probably a warrior killing a lot of dudes again.
A film-scene of ''Tadatsugu travel diary'' 1927
One famous director of notion from this time is Masahiro Makino/マキノ雅弘 (1908-1993). He inherited his fathers film production company but also a ton of debt. He had to move to a different production studio due to this and did sound engineering for movies before finally returning to directing. He was able to film a movie in ten days but his record was 28 hours to complete a movie, eventually he paid his debt off. Anyway he briefly got addicted to heroin but he also managed to co-direct with a lot of famous directors. He died during a famous Japanese football match; something dubbed the ''Tragedy of Doha''/ドーハの悲劇 (1993) cause Japan lost its place in the WorldCup. Conversely Korea refers to it as the Miracle of Doha/도하의 기적 lol.
Hanayagi Harumi/花柳はるみ (1896-1962) becomes the first female Japanese actress to star in a Japanese movie called Miyama no Otome/深山の乙女 (1919). She was, of course, a Shingeki actress. With this the era of female Japanese actresses had begun. Many actresses would follow in her path. One of such actresses would be Yoshiko Okada/岡田 嘉子/Окада Ёсико (1902-1992). Yoshiko Okada moved to a lot of different places in childhood, when she became a female reporter she was scouted for shingeki acting. Her first movie was Skull Dance 1923 and she became a movie star with it. However the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 stopped her activities for a while and she got into debt which she had to repay through acting-contracts. She also made statements calling for human rights and more respect for actresses and in 1927 she starred in a movie Five Women who Surround him/彼を繞る五人の女 in which she tried to change the old expectations for female lead roles. This same year she also got into a scandal after a film-director scolded her and she eloped with her lover, ending in them being tracked down and getting married. When she got back into acting, audio-movies had made their entrance and a new generation of actresses was in the spotlight, but she did find another man. In 1937 the Sino-Japanese war is ongoing and her new communist husband is at risk of getting arrested so they decide to flee to the Soviet Union. They were seen as spies and her husband was shot, she was imprisoned for years but eventually was able to visit Japan again in 1972 but retired in the Soviet Union which had become her home after so long.
Actress Yoshiko Okada
So we got some famous dudes too in this silent-film era, firstly the og ''Shochiku Kamata Three Crows''/松竹三羽烏 which were three dudes in the same company who got pretty popular. Firstly Tokihiko Okada/岡田時彦 (1903-1934), dude dropped out of highschool when he came out of a movie theatre cause he got inspired to be an actor by a film. He also married a Takarazuka actress which was pretty cool, unfortunately he died young from tuberculosis but he acted in many movies. Then there's Minoru Takada/高田稔 (1899-1977), he dropped out of music college, joined the Japanese army against the Russian Revolution and then decided he wanted to act again. He got some success, but in the post-war era he was back to doing support-roles. Finally there's Denaki Suzuki/鈴木傳明 (1900-1985), he was from a coalmine-management family and he was good at sports. He joined acting school and did that as a job for a while till he returned to managing coal-mines. In his acting-time he also got into a fight with a gangster and fired a gun at him, random part of his life. That's it for the old Shochiku Crow-dudes, don't worry this trio was the old gen, they were replaced by Shochiku for a new trio pretty fast.
The og Shochiku Kamata Three Crows dudes
New directors enter the scene like Teinosuke Kinugasa/衣笠貞之助 (1896-1982). He loved theatre from an early age as his mother took him to watch Shinpa and Kabuki. After graduating he ran away from home and joined a troupe as an onnagata-actor. Eventually he began appearing in movies as the onnagata-role but he saw in 1920 that he film industry began to hire female actresses and that his time was limited so he became a director. He left the company Nikkatsu with 12 other onnagata-actors as a protest and they were all replaced with women by the company. He made ''My Sisters Death'' which is a pretty dark movie, he starred in it himself as the sister. He eventually joined Daiei and directed The Gates of Hell in 1953 which won a Cannes Film award.
Director Teinosuke Kinugasa
HISTORY GENRE HYPE (50s)
So the silent-film era is nearing its end, but there's a new type of popular genre of movies releasing: Kengeki Movies/剣戟映画/Chanbara Movies/ちゃんばら映画. Historical films that show male heroes defeating evil by sword. There are many Kabuki-actors who went on to become movie-actors in this genre. The kabuki-community did look down upon movies and called it Doro Shibai/泥芝居/Mud plays. In 1925 Orochi/雄呂血 by producer Shozo Makino (the father of Japanese cinema dude) started the ''Kengeki Boom''. The man who starred in this movie? He is up next for discussion.
So. An iconic historical actor makes his appearance: Bando Tsumasaburo/阪東妻三郎 (1901-1953). After graduating school he realized that acting could be a fast path to success and he went to Kabuki-actors Ichimura Uzaemons XV's house where he was rejected. He walked away sad and found the nearby home of Nizaemon Kataoka XI where he was allowed to become a disciple. He mainly did chores and took notes for two difficult years, he finally saw that in the world of Kabuki tradition and family status goes above all. In an attempt to evade this fate he joined a different kabuki-troupe but didn't reach success and was unable to face his first Kabuki-master again. In 1919 he joined the film world and would slowly work their way up to becoming the best. When his first talkie/audio-inclusive film happened he lost some fans due to his voice being seen as too thin. So he voice-trained until he sounded hoarse, which apparently the fans liked so ok. Anyway he was an icon and one of the so-called ''Six Major Historical Drama Stars''/時代劇六大スタア which was basically a group of famous dudes including the dude himself and: Denjiro Okochi, Chiezo Kataoka, Kanjuro Arashi, Kazuo Hasegawa and Ichikawa Utaemon. This was also kinda the first big wave of Kabuki-actors transferring into the movie-actor life, mostly due to a lot of actors struggling with the limitations of family-status in Kabuki and/or just lack of opportunity in general.
Movie-star Bando Tsumasaburo (not to be mistaken with Kabuki-actor Bando Tamasaburo)
So of those 6 famous actor dudes of the Kengeki-movie era I have one more to talk about. That legendary man is called Kazuo Hasegawa/Chōjirō Hayashi/長谷川一夫 (1908-1984), he started acting in Kabuki in 1913 when a child-actor fell sick with the cold and he had to substitute. He quickly after that became adopted by a kabuki master and eventually taken as a disciple by Kamigata-Kabuki legend Ganjiro Nakamura himself. He excelled in the onnagata-role since he was beautiful and thus popular. In 1927 he joins Shochiku's movie-acting department and receives the stage-name Chojiro Hayashi, he was promoted a ton so quickly rose to star-status. One of his hit acts was in 1935 movie ''Yukinojo Hengen''/雪之丞変化 in which he had three different roles.
Kazuo (left) in Yukinojo Hengen 1935
Then he made a decision in 1935 to transfer from Shochiku to Toho. This was very dramatic moment, it was seen as a betrayal for Shochiku and the media. Toho studio clarified that he chose to transfer due to Shochiku's treatment of his family after Ganjiro Nakamura (kamigata-kabuki king) died. Anyway he was forced to change his stage name again and chose to use his real name Kazuo Hasegawa this time for Toho. So this dude was filming for his first movie at Toho company and he left the set to go home, some ''random'' thug slashed him with a razor in his face. He had to be hospitalized and got a scar on his face. A lot of rumors went around of who could have done this to him and why. He overcame the adversity by using make up to cover it and remained popular among primarily female fans. He said about the incident: ''Even if I investigate, my face won't be restored to its original form, and it will only bring down the film industry. It will damage the image of the industry as a whole.'' So I feel like the dude did suspect some things but just didn't want to stir up trouble. Anyway, eventually Kazuo was also one of the dudes who split with Toho in the famous 1946 Toho dispute/東宝争議, where a few actors agreed with neither the Toho company nor the unions so they formed ''Shin Toho''/New Toho. The American army was even involved in that whole drama since it involved the Japanese Communism Party which Americans were trying to get rid of.
Kazuo (left) in another role
Anyway there's also the new generation of Shochiku Crows after the old trio left the company. So this trio-name in the first place originates from the movie Engagement of Three Crows/婚約三羽烏 (1937) which all of them featured in.Their names are Shin Saburi/佐分利信 (1909-1982), Ken Uehara/上原謙 (1909-1991), and Shuji Sano/佐野周二 (1912-1978). Some of them lasted in popularity pretty long and they played roles in diverse genres.
The new gen of Shochiku Crows trio, center dude being done
Now for an actress who is basically the legend of her time. Kinuyo Tanaka/田中 絹代 (1909-1977). If you watch older Japanese movies from the 20s/30s/40s it's basically nearly impossible to avoid her. She was an actress in the first full talkie movie of Japan called ''Madam and the Wife''/マダムと女房 (1930). She was a director of multiple movies like Love Letter/恋文 (1953). She entered the industry at the near end of the silent-movie era and stayed a star. Once she got into trouble when she had stayed in the United States for a while and audiences didn't like her new attitude and clothing. But she managed to change her main roles to playing an older woman and got casted into a ton of roles again due to that. In her final years she struggled with debt and was rushed to the hospital when she got cancer, even then she was wondering what types of roles she could play as she lost her eyesight. She passed away and was burried on the same graveyard as her mother. After her death, a Tanaka Kinuyo award was made for actresses who contributed to developments of the Japanese film industry.
Kinuyo Tanaka
Then there's also Sumiko Kurishima/栗島 すみ子 (1902-1987). After her fathers death her mother married a Shinpa-actor and she entered the world of theatre due to this. She became a master at a Japanese dance-style called Mizuki-Style/水木流. She married a director but her company did not disclose her married status, leading to her purposefully appearing in a photoshoot with a round-bun hairstyle to signify she was a married woman. The fans however, saw this as her dedicating herself to her craft instead. She mostly played Shinpa-works where she would be a suffering female character. She retired in 1937 and died at old age.
Sumiko Kurishima
Another actress Sakuko Yanagi/柳さく子 (1902-1963). She lost her biological parents at an early age and was adopted by adoptive parents who adored her since they had no children themselves. They taught her traditional arts like the shamisen and dance from an early age. At the age of 10 she joined a theatre-troup called Shoujo Kabuki, probably meaning Kabuki but for girls. When the troupe disbanded she searched for a job and got into acting by joining Shochiku. She gained popularity and rapidly approached the top 3 of her company. She appeared in a ton of historical movies which was rare for actresses since it was usually male actors who stayed in that genre longterm. In 1942 she left Shochiku due to decreased film production on their part and she formed her own theatre company with a few other actresses. After the war her health deteriorated and she lost her opportunity to return to the film-business. In her later years she survived through charity and wellfare and died at 60 years old. One actor who heard about her death arranged her to be burried at a temple, where he himself also got burried a year later. Nowadays not a lot of people visit her shrine anymore but she is remembered through her contributions to Japanese cinema.
Sakuko Yanagi
Finally here's Kumeko Urabe/浦辺 粂子 (1902-1989). Born to a chief-priest she grew up as an only-child. At a young age she witnessed a ''chain drama''/連鎖劇 , which is basically like combining film-scenes with theatre-play of actors. This helped inspire her love for theatre, then she wanted to become an actress after seeing Sumako Matsui's movie. She dropped out of school in 1919 and ran away from home with 20 yen for this goal. Eventually after joining a bunch of random troupes and doing photoshoots she joined Nikkatsu and started acting in movies. She married a rich dude, divorced him within a year and returned to acting. In the post-war period she became known for her grandmother-roles and gained some fame over that. She apparently saw the rare Halley's comet pass the skyline twice in her life so that was cool. She died pretty tragically though unfortunately.
Kumeko Urabe
POST WAR EFFECTS In 1945, the second worldwar ended and Japan came under the rule of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP). Movies were managed by a foreign institution for the first time up till 1952 and movies needed to be approved by the Civil Information Educational Section/民間情報教育局 (CIE). The CIE also suppressed forms of Kabuki, Rōkyoku and general theatre/芝居 in Japan and specifically censored the themes of violence and nationalism among others. Meaning it was a tough time for the Chanbara/チャンバラ/Samurai cinema genre (sub-genre of jidaigeki) which featured sword fights a lot. A lot of jidaigeki actors like Bando Tsumasaburo/阪東妻三郎 either joined theatre troupes or went on to do acting for contemporary-set dramas during the post-war time. Movie companies weren't sure what types of movies to make at a time like this. Movie studio Shochiku went for trying entertaining movies with the first movie released post-war being Soyokaze/そよかぜ in 1945. The movie was met with harsh critiques at the time but the theme song of Ringo no Uta/リンゴの唄/Apple song became a huge hit because it resonated with the complex feelings of people in post-war Japan.
Soyokaze movie photo
POST WAR COMPANIES
So just to quickly give some info on all the relevant companies in post-war Japan. Just five companies to remember. You may also wonder what happened to the companies and directors who made military propaganda movies during the war, well since they had plausible deniability of responsiblity they just continued making movies but this time with regard for the occupational forces instead of the Japanese government. 1. Shochiku did a bunch of different movie genres, though their specialty was humanistic comedies. Eventually they mostly ended up focussing on Kabuki and Shinpa-theatre, since they bought all those up anyway, with the dying film-industry. 2. Daiei kinda just had a ton of success with movies in the 50s golden age with famous directors and then when their star-actor Raizo Ichikawa died it all came crashing down. They merged distribution with Nikkatsu but couldn't prevent their downfall. 3. Nikkatsu did action films and then when they found success with actresses they also made youth-films. Then when times got difficult they became an adult-movie company which marked their end as a succesful film-studio. 4. Toei did period movies and after the success of that kinda ended, they made yakuza movies. They're still in business today so they calculated pretty well.
5. Then there's Toho, they were generally a pretty chill company that tried to treat everyone equally no matter their fame. They accused other film-companies of yakuza-like practices (which, yes that's kinda fair) and nepotism in their hiring. When they were founded they ''took over'' many actors from other companies including a star-actor of Shochiku, suffice to say they were pissed off. This is how that star-actor ended up getting cut in the face. Anyway, from 1946-1950 the Toho dispute happened which is where the American army got involved due to a labor union strike being perceived as a communist-rebellion. Anyway, that's how Shin Toho/New Toho formed from the ones who left the company, but this Shin Toho did not last long. Toho vouched to continue making movies that were safe for families unlike the many yakuza and adult movies that started showing up. They also make Godzilla movies so that's neat.
Footage of the Toho labor dispute
THE GOLDEN DIRECTOR-AGE OF CINEMA (1950s)
So we have three golden age cinema directors that got the most fame worldwide to talk about here, something I like to refer to as ''The golden age three international directors''. Finally at last we get to Akira Kurosawa/黒澤明 (1910-1998), most internationally famous director of Japan. He grew up with a strict father but was allowed to watch whatever media he wanted, his free-thinking was also encouraged by a teacher of his. He watched a bunch of foreign movies like Abel Glance's ''The White Rose'' which contributed to his desire to take up directing. But first he became a painter but his paintings were a bit political so that was a bit hit or miss, he did manage to get exempted from military service though so he only did directing during ww2. He got involved in some illegal communist newspaper organization but eventually quit that life and got a job assistant director in 1936. The company tended to hire university graduates but Akira Kurosawa got through due to him just being talented at art and literature. After his first movie he hated the job and considered leaving but was convinced by colleagues to stay. He eventually got a good mentor and even had a romance thing with famous actress Hideko Takamine for a bit. Anyway in 1943 he had his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata and the rest of the golden age of Japanese cinema is history. His style includes lots of movement in scenes that often represents the elements or the emotions of the characters. Also shoutout to cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa who worked on a bunch of Akira's movies and many others to the point of perfecting his craft.
Akira Kurosawa (left) on the set
So another famous director I can't neglect to mention is Ozu Yasujirō/小津 安二郎 (1903-1963). His main wellknown works are Late Spring (1949) and Tokyo Story (1953). His work focused on parent-child relationships and he used low-position shooting of his scenes. Dude got pretty addicted to movies like those of Matsunosuke Onoe and dedicated his life to it. He also really liked American actress Pearl White. He got suspended from school for his involvement in a male student sending a love-letter to another male student. From that point on he was out of the dormitory and instead commuting to school from home, which he used as opportunity to go see more movies. Then his family moved and through family-connections he joined Shochiku which allowed him to work his way up to becoming a director. Anyway, unlike Akira Kurosawa he did have to join the army where he handled poison gas and probably was guilty of warcrimes considering he was on location for the Nanjing massacre. So yeah, that is an unfortunate part about the man. He used the opportunity of confiscated American films by the Japanese army to again secretely watch movies like Gone With the Wind (1939). Anyway he continued directing after the war and eventually died.
Ozu Yasujirō
Then the third golden age director that got insane popularity is Kenji Mizoguchi/溝口健二 (1898-1956). He did movies such as Urban Symphony (1929), Sisters of Gion (1936) and Sansho Daifu (1954). His theme was usually showing women suffering from society and he prefered to film people acting as realistic as possible. He lived his chilhood in poverty due to family-circumstances but he eventually got interested in the arts. He then produced a lot of movies, saw Akira Kurosawa win an international prize and made sure to get an award himself too. Also he produced one of the first talkie-movies (movie with sound) called ''Fujiwara Yoshie no Furusato'' (1930). He had a habit of reading till late in the night when he had free days and he also loves antiques.
Kenji Mizoguchi
But those were just internationally famous, any examples of those famous in Japan? Yes. So first of all, Naruse Mikio/成瀬 巳喜男 (1905-1969) who tended to make movies like ''A Woman's Sorrows'' (1937) about women and always made sure that the temporary being of everything in life was portrayed. Meaning it was sometimes pretty depressing to watch. As he often took every project requested of him and took works other directors refused, some of his works are a bit weak in execution. But he did have a very specific style and when it worked it worked well. He also showed a different side of rugged actor Toshiro Mifune by casting him in an infidelity romance movie (A Wife's Heart 1956).
Scene of A Woman's Sorrows
Another one, Keisuke Kinoshita/木下惠介 (1912-1998). His films are roughly categorized into 3 categories: lyrical melodramas (Twent-Four Eyes 1954), comedies (Carmen returns home 1951) and social dramas (Japanese Tragedy 1953). Also he made the first movie that can be interpreted as having a gay character with Farewell To Spring/惜春鳥 (1959). He really hated the smell of pickles since his parents used to own a pickle shop and he would stop filming if he found someone took pickles with them. Random fact but yeah. There's some drama to this dude which I of course looked into, so once in 1951 he visited Paris for a few months and coincidentally met Yukio Mishima (controversial writer) who was stuck there since he was awaiting travel-funds from Japan. So Keisuke was like ''You can stay at my appartment until you have the money''. The two got very close as roommates due to this but things went wrong at some point and Yukio Mishima was not favorable towards the Keisuke later on. So this dude once got chosen to direct a novel of Yukio Mishima but Yukio Mishima said ''If he directs the movie then I don't know what it will end up like'' and he changed the director. Later Keisuke commented that he looked back on Yukio Mishima with mixed feelings of nostalgia and unpleasant memories and he didn't understand why he did that whole dramatic death thing.
Movie scene of Farewell To Spring
Finally, Masaki Kobayashi/小林 正樹 (1916-1996). He was a cousin of the famous actress Kinuyo Tanaka. He was drafted into the war but refused a rank higher than private as he was a pacifist. He made anti-war movies like ''The Human Condition'' (1959-1961) and samurai movies like Harakiri (1962).
The Human Condition movie scene
NEW GENERATION OF ACTORS ARRIVES
Can't really mention Akira Kurosawa without mentioning his bias star-actor Toshiro Mifune/三船敏郎 (1920-1997). Born in China, his father owned a Photo Studio which allowed Toshiro access to movies when his father wasn't present. He was drafted to join the imperial Japanese army in 1940 and was often beaten up there, but got a job in photography in the army. Aside from his photography job he often cooked and occasionally fought with his fellow soldiers. He also prepared young kamikaze pilots for their deaths by giving them food and drugs before they flew off, which is pretty depressing. So, after the war was over his entire family was dead or missing and he had to start anew. He did some manual labor but remembered a senior soldier had promised him a photography job during the war so he went there but was advised to try for their actor-hiring instead. Where he somehow passed despite the judges disliking his attitude. The whole Toho-dispute where a bunch of star-actors left actually allowed Toshiro Mifune to get more roles and made him more famous. Akira Kurosawa made him internationally famous and he always allowed Toshiro Mifune to do his acting however he wanted. He also once starred in a Mexican movie (Ánimas Trujano 1961) where he memorized all his Spanish lines but they dubbed over him anyway. He loved boats, cars, cooking and cleaning a lot in his life.
Toshiro Mifune (right) in a movie scene
And surprise surprise there's a 3rd generation of Shochiku Crows.These consisted of Keiji Sada/佐田啓二 (1926-1964), Teiji Takahashi/高橋貞二 (1926-1959) and Minoru Oki/大木 実 (1923-2009). There was also a 4th generation but they're less iconic so yeah won't mention those. Both Keiji Sada and Teiji Takahashi died in a carcrash, Minoru Oki outlived them by far.
Photo including all 3rd gen Shochiku Crows. Minoru Oki bottom right, Keiji Sada top left, Teiji Takahashi top center.
So let's talk about actresses of this period. Hideko Takamine/高峰秀子 (1924-2010). She was famous already as a child-actress but she had to carry a large burden. Her family lost everything in a fire so they relied on her income to move to Tokyo. This caused her to want to escape the film-industry for the Takarazuka Revue but she ended up getting a better film-deal. She also was one of the many famous actors who left Toho to form Shin-Toho/New Toho. She also moved to Paris for a while to just enjoy the freedom and went onto become a freelancer actress who starred in many movies before she retired. Like the first colour-movie of Japan ''Carmen Returns Home'' (1951).
Hideko Takamine in movie scene
So one other famous actress of the 50s was Setsuko Hara/原節子 (1920-2015). Due to her families financial troubles she dropped out of school and took acting lessons. She caught the attention of a German director and starred in a Japanese-German film called New Earth/新しき土 in 1937. They went to Germany to promote the movie, which was basically a cover-up and secret mission for signing some military-pact between Germany and Japan. Anyway after starring in a bunch more movies post-war she went into retirement in 1963 and lived a reclusive life.
Setsuko Hara in movie scene
Then there was actress Isuzu Yamada/山田五十鈴 (1917-2012), born from a Shinpa actor father and a geisha mother she grew up learning the traditional arts of Japan. Because her father had connections with Nikkatsu film-studio, she managed to debut as an actress and became one of the most popular ones for period dramas. In the 60s she shifted focus to stage-dramas and tv-dramas instead of movies. Her daughter would also become an actress
Isuzu Yamada
For villain roles there was Michiyo Kogure/木暮 実千代 (1918-1990). She was the romantic rival character of the era, but unlike her characters she held a lot of empathy for others. She had married a man and moved to China but at the end of the war she returned to Japan. She then became the first actress to appear in a commercial. She held a lot of compassion for others during her life and had students boarding in her home up till her death.
Michiyo Kogure
So after the previous historical drama group of ''Six Major Historical Drama Stars'' the new generation joined acting. These four popular Kengeki-movie stars were called Nisuke Nizo/二スケ二ゾウ and the majority of them did also originate from Kabuki or classic-arts. These men would lead the historical genre in the 50s of Japanese cinema. These dudes were called Higashi Chiyonosuke/東千代之介, Raizo Ichikawa/市川雷蔵, Okawa Hashizo/大川橋蔵 and Kinnosuke Nakamura/中村 錦之助 . We will discuss two of these. So first of all, specifically Kinnosuke Nakamura/Kinnosuke Yorozuya/中村 錦之助/萬屋 錦之介 (1932-1997). He was born into a Kabuki-family and made his debut at 4 years old, but he had multiple brothers who also were Kabuki-actors so it was difficult to get lead roles for him. He got scouted to be in a film but at the time the Kabuki-community had taken a negative stance towards movies. They were worried that it would disrupt the order of the kabuki world if young actors got fast fame. His father gave him the choice: It's either Movies or Kabuki, you will never be able to return. Which was rich since his father would later go on to be casted in multiple movies himself but we have to remember that Kabuki is a very small community with rules. In the late 1950s Japans cinema industry began its decline and he went on to star in television dramas. Anyway he went through multiple divorces and also had an affair once, but when he did find out his sons liked Kamen Rider he offered the studio to have him star as a Kamen Rider. Which was unthinkable back then as star-actors just did not do tokusatsu/hero shows, anyway he didn't get it due to that.
Kinnosuke Nakamura (right) in movie scene
The next up of the six is Okawa Hashizo/大川橋蔵 (2代目) (1929-1984), born from a geisha he was adopted by a Kabuki-actor and trained to be an onnagata-actor. However, he eventually lost the backing of a more famous Kabuki-actor who favored him due to that dude dying. So as his position in Kabuki was unstable the actor Raizo Ichikawa approached him and told him that the way out of the Kabuki-system was to join cinema and so he did. But he never let go of his Kabuki-love in his heart as he mentions that he cried of happiness when he was able to return to Kabuki for a performance. Anyway from 1960s onwards you get televisions in every Japanese household, the golden age for cinema is over and Japanese cinema companies pull out their greatest trick yet: The Five-Company agreement/五社協定. Which basically prohibits movie-actors from acting in tv-shows unless the company allows it. Severely hindering the careers of movie-actors in the process, some lost most of their audience due to this move and the decline of Japanese cinema was not stopped. Hashizo was finally allowed to appear in a drama called Zenigata Heiji/銭形平次 (1966-1984) and he mentioned about it: ''My long-awaited goal of appearing in movie, tv and theatre has finally come true.These days I've noticed a noticeable increase in the number of fans asking me to appear on TV in my fan letters, so I thought now would be the best time to do so.''.
Okawa Hashizo, with weapon
So actress Hibari Misora/美空ひばり (1937-1989), an icon. She was a singer since childhood and was supported by her mom to persue a singing career. This is also when she first met Kazuo Taoka of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang who supported her. She went onto do acting and did quite a few Shochiku movies too with actors like Kinnonosuke Nakamura with whom she got romantically involved a bit. After they broke up Hibari even wanted to go to his wedding with a new woman but was convinced not to go due to what gossip-papers would say. She was warned what it would mean to marry into a Kabuki-family and that it would not be a lifestyle for her. In 1957 a female ''fan'' of hers threw acid at her, however the damage was luckily very minor. But this did convince her to make a deal with the Yamaguchi-gumi gang, in return for Kazuo Taoka guarding her, she would be managed by their entertainment-company. She had a short marriage with Kobayashi Akira and after that she started losing family members at old age and slowly her health declined due to how she coped by having cigarettes and alcohol. Her last concert had an ambulance ready for emergencies, she died of respiratory failure but left behind a huge film-acting history.
Hibari Misora as singer
MONSTER AND HERO MOVIES (1960s)
In 1954 Godzilla the movie by Toho and director Ishirō Honda/本多猪四郎 (1911-1993) is released which becomes the first of the kaiju/big monster movies from Japan. Other monster movies like Rodan and Mothra would follow and the company Daiei makes a competitor-monster called Gamera in 1965. From 1966-1968 the ''First Monster Boom''/第一次怪獣ブーム happens thanks to the series UltraQ and Ultraman. Children in Japan become fans of the monster-movies instead of historical-movies like before. Another famous director of this genre is Eiji Tsuburaya/円谷 英二 who was basically the father of tokusatsu due to his interest in special-effects. One actor for this genre was the first main lead for Ultraman Kurobe Susumu/黒部進 (1939-now). He had moved to Tokyo to go to university but became interested in acting, then became homeless and earned a living by cleaning shoes. One day he got scouted by one of his customers and entered the exam for Toho-actors. He had varrying success until he did Ultraman in 1966 and became famous. However, like most tokusatsu actors to this day, gaining success with acting after one popular kids-show can be a struggle. So he mainly did small roles in a ton of tv-shows from that point onwards.
Ultraman and Godzilla
NEW WAVE CINEMA (1960s)
So like most things, there must always be a counterbalance. Great directors had set the norm during the golden age, but the norm had to be challenged as is typical of art. This new wave originated from film studios seeing the success of ''nouvelle vague'' and wanting to replicate it in Japan. Anyway so you had Nagisa Oshima/大島渚 (1932-2013) who rebelled by making very sexualized movies and Toshio Matsumoto/松本 俊夫 (1932-2017) who rebelled by having random camera-shots. He also made the first LGBT movie of Japan called Funeral Parade of Roses 1969. But anyway, when Japanese film-studios entered their decline in the 70s thanks to the success of television shows, it took new wave with it and the genre ended.
Scene of Funeral Parade of Roses
HORROR (1960s)
So the horror genre kinda starts during the 60s with Onibaba (1964) about two women killing samurai men. In this genre a lot of Kabuki and Noh-elements appear, likely because Noh had like a big thing for scary stories. Like it is a huge genre in the Noh fandom. The movie Kwaidan (1964) kinda further inspired the scary lady trope that would go on to be used in stuff like Ring (1998).
Onibaba movie scene, wild
ASADORA AND TAIGA (1960s)
Another small change in the early 60s, the first asadoras (slice of life) and taiga (historical) shows air. Basically high-budget shows focussing on one or a few characters and depicting historical or fictional characters as they live their lives. These shows tended to have many episodes and they were aired yearly.
Musume to Watashi/娘と私 first asadora
YAKUZA HYPE OF THE SHOWA ERA
After historical movies directors were searching for something new, that something new was yakuza/Ninkyo/任侠映画 movies. Basically most of these movies are about dudes suffering hardships and taking revenge. These movies mainly show organized crime groups and forms of chivalry that was seen in historical movies kinda found a new unlikely hero-icon in yakuza. One example is the Bakuto/博徒シリーズ movie series from 1964-1971 with director Shigeru Okada/岡田茂 (東映), this yakuza-format allowed for cheaper filming due to the scenes being easier to create. It created protest from mothers at the time which of course actually worked in advantage to the movies popularity. There was also the Nihon Kyoukaku movie series which were 11 films produced between 1964-1971 starring Ken Takakura/高倉健 (1931-2014) who was a pretty legendary actor for Yakuza movies. Speaking of Ken Takakura, he wanted to make a movie himself too, guess about who? That wild dude Yukio Mishima. Of course, these Yakuza-hype films were all highly fictional but it was so popular that there used to be yakuza-themed movie theatres in Japan. During the Bubble Economy of Japan in the 80s the genre started its slow decline, surviving in the form of V-cinema (direct-to-video tapes) but never regaining popularity. Also the Japanese government cracked down on organized crime-groups like the yakuza and they turned from rebellious heroes to trashy criminals in the publics eye.
Pale Flower 1964
So there's a few sorta yakuza-specific directors of this era, the first being Seijun Suzuki/鈴木 清順 (1923-2017), He made a lot of B-movies/low-budget movies in his career, a bunch of them yakuza-themed. During worldwar 2 he was stationed in Taiwan where he mainly just spent money on alcohol and women, arriving back in Japan without any money left. He somehow made his way into movie studio Shochiku, where he basically just did whatever he wanted during workhours as assistant-directors weren't kept in check as much. This was until he was able to move to the expanding Nikkatsu. He increasingly made his movies more surreal and got the movie studios attention, after the movie ''Branded to Kill'' (1967) he was fired. He sued Nikkatsu as a result and won but, as was practice in that time, got blacklisted for 10 years from the industry for taking them to court. He had to continue as an independent filmmaker but the event made him a counterculture hero at the time.
Branded to Kill 1967
Then there's also Masahiro Shinoda/篠田 正浩 (1931-now), he did a lot of Shochiku projects and did a lot of genres and did a ton of adaptations of novels. For Yakuza-genre he did Pale Flower (1964). He won a bunch of prizes and had a fairly uncontroversial life which is also a skill. But yeah he's another director of this time I found.
Another scene of Pale Flower
So one of the actors of the Yakuza period was Tsuruta Koji/鶴田浩二 (1924-1987). He was a movie actor known for his beauty that combined ''sweetness and darkness'' whatever that means. When he was 14 he decided to become an actor and joined the Kokichi Takada Troupe. He was once attacked by the Yamaguchi-gumi/山口組 gang which raised the notoriety of this group and he was sent to the hospital. But he later befriended the leader of the gang that allegedly ordered his attack so it was all good. The background to this is that the Yamaguchi-gumi gang leader called Kazuo Taoka owned an entertainment company (Kobe Geinosha/神戸芸能社) and that's how he got into beef with actors sometimes and threatened them. Koji Tsuruta was one of the biggest idols of the 50s and they said it like ''His pure white kimono turns bright red from the lipstick of female fans'' which is a wild description. Before his stardom he was a naval officer for a bit and after the war it became a trend for people to claim to have been Kamikaze pilots. So queu him claiming to have been a Kamikaze pilot, he was discovered and the Kamikaze association was like ''You can't just do that!'' and he was like ''I will donate tho''. And that's the story of how he became an honorary Kamikaze pilot. While seen as too prideful by some, he was a reliable actor and cared for the actors he liked. He was also befriended with controversial writer Yukio Mishima. There was a Yakuza-movie interview where Yukio Mishima mainly was like ''I love Yakuza movies, I watch them for Koji Tsuruta as he's handsome.''. Thus a friendship was born and Yukio Mishima added another dude to his simp-list.
Koji Tsuruta (left)
Gotta have some villain representation too, Tetsuro Tamba/丹波哲郎 (1922-2006) was an actor who mainly did villain roles and he was also into some like spirituality stuff. Dude joined the army as a student but due to his attitude kept getting corporal punishments. Then after the war he pretended he could speak fluent English and became a high-level interpreter. Eventually he got into films and did a lot of them, including foreign films due to his English skills (fake it till you make it). When he acted for ''You Only Live Twice'' he was late every day and at some point Sean Connery had to get him from the hotelroom himself. He had like a personal rule about always coming too late since he was a star but he did treat all crew equally. Anyway he also had a mistress and an illegitimate child but when that news broke out he was like ''Yeah even the taxi-driver knows about that''. So he was kinda unfazed in life. He also either didn't learn his script-lines at all or learned them perfectly depending on how he felt, there was no inbetween. When questioned he would state ''I have a policy of not bringing work to my home''. He also once visited the Louvre Museum but quickly left again stating ''This place is full of paintings. I'm going home.'' This man just had a lot of quotable moments.
Tetsuro Tamba (left)
Then there's Yujiro Ishihara/石原裕次郎 (1934-1987), a very wellknown dude. A central part of the Nikkatsu Diamond Line-up/ダイヤモンドライン which included dudes like Kobayashi Akira, Keiichiro Akagi and Koji Wada. Having grown up loving sports, Yujiro Ishihara put those dreams on hold after an injury and just lived a wild student-life. Due to his brothers connections he was able to get into acting. He also started his singing career and just dropped out of university, then married. His popular movies around this time were The Man Who Calls the Storm/嵐を呼ぶ男 (1957) and Hydrangea no Uta/あじさいの歌 (1960). Anyway eventually he outgrew the romance-genre and established his own production company called Ishihara Promotion in 1963. He did a collab with famous Toshiro Mifune once to create Kurobe no Taiyo/黒部の太陽 (1968) which was about some dam-construction. Anyway eventually the film-industry went into decline and he was convinced by those around him to star in a detective tv-drama (Howl at the Sun!/太陽にほえろ!) for a few years to make some money. Then he got a ton of different ailments and died in Hawaii, saying ''Please dissolve the company''. The company did not get dissolved since his wife didn't dare to say it to his employees so it continued till 2021.
Yujiro Ishihara (center)
So remember how the yamaguchi-gumi gang basically had free reign in the Japanese cinema industry and beat up actor Koji Tsuruta in 1953? Yeah, so this dude Kobayashi Akira/小林旭 (1938-now) had connections with this gang. So he just kinda got accepted by a film studio audition and dropped out of university and went onto become a singer and actor. He did movies like Zessho/絶唱 (1958) and Guitar wo Motawataridori/ギターを持った渡り鳥 (1959). So he just started casually dating actress Misora Hibari who had the boss of the yamaguchi-gumi as her manager. Anyway they married soon after which did not last long but they both understood why and had a peaceful divorce and he married another actress. So dude just kinda hung around yamaguchi-gumi boss Kazuo Taoka, apparently he liked to golf with murderous gangsters. He also admitted to using real guns for one of his movies and that they got detained by police for it. Once one of his stuntmen fell off a cliff and got into the hospital and Kobayashi was inspired by this to do his own stunts from then on, somehow. Anyway he has a Youtube channel now.
Sus-dude Kobayashi Akira (right), lowkey why this guy pointing a gun at the woman
There's also actresses of this era, like an actress that basically ruled the 60s in youth-stories. But she did one Yakuza movie called 俺の背中に陽が当る/The sun on my back 1963, so that's how she fits into the picture. Sayuri Yoshinaga/吉永小百合 (1945-now) lived in poverty as a child and debt collectors often swarmed their home due to her fathers failing business. When she joined acting she quickly became Nikkatsu's poster-actress, previously Nikkatsu had focused on male action movies but with this new success they started focus on youth-stories. She became part of the ''Three Nikkatsu Girls''/日活三人娘 consisting also of Chieko Matsubara/松原智恵子 and Masako Izumi/和泉雅子 and was also part of the ''Nikkatsu Pearl Line''/日活パールライン which was Nikkatsu's top 6 actresses. She graduated from university and renewed her contract with Nikkatsu on the condition that she would be allowed to appear in movies from other studios. Also her fans are called Sayurists, so yeah she was big among the post-war generation.
Fave of the Japanese Boomer-generation: Sayuri
Then there's Yamamoto Fujiko/山本富士子 (1931-now), one of Daiei's top 3 actresses along with Ayako Wakao/若尾文子 and Kyo Machiko/京マチ子 . Born in Osaka, she moved to Kyoto when allied forces took over her parents home because it had a comfy-vibe apparently. She participated in the first ''Miss Japan'' competition and won, giving her opportunity to enter the film business which she did upon her sisters advice. As her contract was up for renewal she didn't get an agreement about the terms with the Daiei president, so she waited till her contract expired and declared herself free. This enraged Daiei-president who threatened her with action of the ''five-company agreement''/ 五社協定 which was basically an illegal agreement that five big film-companies (Daiei, Toho, Nikkatsu, Shochiku and Toei) made with each other to exclude actors or directors. Summarized, she would never be able to get a job in the film-industry again, which some called a violation of human rights. Anyway, she joined the television-show industry and never looked back.
Yamamoto Fujiko
A slightly more yakuza-oriented actress was Meiko Kaji/梶芽衣子 (1947-now). She joined Nikkatsu and scolded an older actress for making fun of her lack of experience, which made her personality stand out in the company. She changed her name into Meiko Kaji for the yakuza-movie Japan Zankyoden/日本残侠伝 1969 and kept it that way. Nikkatsu eventually transitioned to an adult film studio due to decreasing income and she left to become a freelancer actress. This increased interest in adult-content for movie studios in the 60s was indeed the start of what would become the pink-film era. Meiko Kaji retired and ended up with a Youtube channel eventually.
Meiko Kaji in movie scene of Lady Snowblood
THE REIGN OF DRAMAS (70S) Something we've not really discussed before. Dramas start hitting the scene with diverse genres, it starts very experimental in 1940 with Before Dinner/夕餉前 about a single mom and her two children. Regular broadcasts would only become a thing in 1953 but proper video recording would only start with the drama ''I want to Become Shellfish''/私は貝になりたい (1958) about a dude who felt he was innocent in a war-tribunal. Anyway, during the 50s TVs were still a luxury item and meant for a whole family to watch, this would only slowely change. A lot of old footage of dramas up till the 1970s was lost due to re-use of film-tape and there were a lot of issues with filming due to low-sensitivity cameras that required extremely bright lamps to lighten the stage. This is also why ''home dramas''/ホームドラマ about families were common since they could be filmed inside mostly, like Behind the Bus-Street/バス通り裏. However, during the 1970s a lot of the technical limitations for filming disappeared so more options became possible.
Footage of old show Behind the Bus-Street
So one consequence of dramas popularity is that the female audience flocks to television-shows while the male audience sticks more to cinema movies with less restrictions. The result of this is that handsome male actors or ''nimaine'' is mainly in tv-shows while the ''tachiyaku'' type which is the more rough dude, remains more prevalent in cinema. So thats how we tie Kabuki back into this lol.
There's also superhero dramas for kids now, some continueing to this day. Ultraman about some dude transforming into giant alien in 1966. Kamen Rider about some dude becoming a grasshoper-inspired motorbike cyborg-hero in 1971. Then someone was like ''What if we had multiple Kamen Rider heroes in 1 team?'' and Super Sentai was born in 1975. These shows mostly starred relatively new or unknown actors, a tradition that remains largely to this day.
An older Super Sentai series for tv
For the genre of detectives dramas/刑事ドラマ like Special Mobile Investigation Team/特別機動捜査隊 (1961-1977), it was mainly larger group detective stories before it transformed during the 1970s into focussing on buddy-dramas of two male leads like Abunai Deka/あぶない刑事 (1986). In that regard, it's similar to the transformation the romance-genre in Japan went through with going from groups to individuals.
Cover of Special Mobile Investigation Team
So how did romance dramas form into existence in Japan? Well, it started becoming financially interesting once people began owning multiple tvs in their homes as this meant it wasn't just the whole family watching. Themes of love started seeping into tv dramas with for example 1983s ''Irregular Apples''/ふぞろいの林檎たち and ''To Friday's Wives''/金曜日の妻たちへ . But it was still entire groups being depicted, the focus on couples would soon start though.
Scene of To Friday's Wives
One example of a detective-actor was Yūsaku Matsuda/松田 優作 (1949-1989). His mother was a Korean woman who had married a Japanese man who died in worldwar 2, leaving her alone in Japan. The actor was born outside of wedlock with another Japanese man whom he never met. When he was a student he was sent to America to attend school but left quickly as he felt uncomfortable there, returning back to Japan. Thanks to starring in a popular Japanese drama called Taiyō ni Hoero!/太陽にほえろ! (1972-1986) he was able to get connections to get Japanese citizenship since he wanted to hide his Korean identity from the Japanese audiences. Anyway then during the filming of a show he and his co-star beat up a student who had hit them with a wooden stick cause he thought they were harming a woman. What exactly went down here, I have no idea but he took a break after. He then died a few years later as he refused treatment for his cancer and instead chose to keep filming. His role in Tantei Monogatari/探偵物語 as a cool but joking detective remains his most wellknown contribution.
Tantei Monogatari
There were also a bunch of popular idols who took to the acting-stage during this era. A popular actress and idol of this era was Momoe Yamaguchi/三浦 百恵 (1959-now). She had a very claiming father who even threatened her with death if she got a boyfriend, which is how she cut contact with him. She started singing at a very young age and did acting for dramas, earned a ton of money, married a co-star actor and got out of the entertainment business for good. Living a comfortable private life and leaving a legend of the 70s behind.
Momoe Yamaguchi
Then there was the duo Kenji Sawada/沢田 研二/Julie (1948-now) and Hagiwara Kenichi/萩原健一/Shoken/ ショーケン (1950-2019). Both of these dudes were in the pop-group PYG. Probably one of the first idols who actively made sure the fans shipped them due to kissing on stage in the 70s. They were friends but also rivals in a way. Anyway both got a few memorable roles due to this like in Kizudarake no Tenshi (1974) and The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979).
Hagiwara Kenichi & Kenji Sawada
I wouldn't be able to pass on the 80s without mentioning legend of; ''Oretachi wa Tenshi da! (1979)'' icon Oki Masaya/沖雅也 (1952-1983). Born to a wealthy family, he had to leave home when his fathers business failed and worked as a bartender. He eventually got scouted for a magazine and then for the film-industry by Nikkatsu, when they focused on adult movies he moved to Shochiku. He got into an accident though and then started suffering from mental health issues due to his busy schedule. Due to these issues his life ended way too early. In his last writings he asked his adoptive father to meet again in heaven. May he rest in peace.
Oki Masaya (2nd left-to-right) in Oretachi wa Tenshi da!
One more star of the 70s and beyond, Hiromi Go/郷ひろみ (1955-now).He was scouted from an early age by the Johnnys company who gave him VIP treatment above the other trainees due to the potential they saw in him. He was kinda sent to promote with the group Four Leaves as a fifth member. Eventually after gaining some fame he left Johnnys over health-issues and problems with school, then went on to become one of the most succesfull solo-artists of Japan. Starring also in a few random movies and dramas.
Hiromi Go at later stage of life
TRENDY DRAMAS (80s-early 90s)
It's 1986, Japans economy is on the rise and more young people have access to tv. One tv-station decides to air ''Summer Story of Seven Men and Women''/男女7人夏物語 which is the start of ''Trendy Dramas''/トレンディドラマ. Which are basically shows that portrayed a more extravagant modern city-life of young adults in Japan. Famous examples are ''Tokyo Lovestory'' (1991) and ''Long Vacation'' (1995). With Trendy Dramas as a new genre of course also came some new stars, we're talking about the Heisei Gosanke/平成御三家 here. The three dudes called Eisaku Yoshida/吉田栄作, Kase Taishu/加勢大周 and Oda Yuji/織田裕二. If you look up famous late 80s to early 90s dramas, you will likely encounter these dudes as they were the standard for handsome men back in their day. Only one of them went to prison later for weed.
The Heisei Gosanke: Eisaku Yoshida, Kase Taishu and Oda Yuji in the 90s
There's also an idol trying to break into dramas. Toshiko Tahara/田原俊彦 (1961-now). After entering highschool he sent a letter to the Johnnys talent agency (they manage boygroups). He never hears back so he goes to this Johnny dude himself and gets accepted. He becomes a famous idol to the point that there's rumors of other trainees of Johnnys trainingcamp not being allowed to eat dinner until he got home at 9 pm. He stars in some dramas like Teacher BinBin Story/教師びんびん物語 (1988) and gets pretty popular but his drama career isn't to last long. He gains independence from Johnnys in 1991 which severely limits his opportunities and he had to work hard to get popularity again. Needless to say he did not go to Johnnys funeral.
Toshiko Tahara (right)
Meanwhile this dude Riki Takeuchi/竹内力 (1964-now) is somehow almost on his own keeping the yakuza-genre alive in the new movie-format of V-cinema or ''straight to videotape''. He stars in クライムハンターシリーズ/ Crime Hunter in 1989 and continues his work in V-cinema for many more years. He was really dedicated to that role and is kinda a legend due to that.
Riki Takeuchi
LATE 90s
Basically in this era you get a new generation taking over. We're talking popular dudes like Takenouchi Yutaka, Kaneshiro Takeshi and Takahashi Katsunori. Of course, the real male star of this era is the SMAP idol Kimura Takuya who is in a ton of shows of this era. For actresses of this era there's women like Miyazawa Rie, Minamino Yoko, Tokiwa Takako, Yamaguchi Tomoko, Suzuki Honami and Matsushima Nanako.
MODERN TIMES post-2000s
So we in modern times now. For cinema we still got directors Hirokazu Kore-eda/是枝 裕和 (1962-now) being hype for family stories such as Shoplifters and Monster. Also newcomer Ryusuke Hamaguchi/濱口竜介 (1978-now) with unique directing techniques for ''Drive My Car'' and ''Evil Doesn't Exist''. And for jdramas, there's a few distinctive genres in Jdrama that have flourished like school genre, medical genre and office genre. But I mean, just watch whats airing I guess.
THE END
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