ENGEKIKAI (#3) March 2019: Cover and Contents

Kabuki Woogie began in 2011 as a way to record a research trip to Japan I took on a Mellon Fellowship a year earlier. My day-to day-experiences on that trip, including videos and photos, are archived at the beginning of the blog. Over the past few years, Kabuki Woogie provided regular entries on the history of the first Kabuki-za, Japan’s leading kabuki playhouse, founded in 1889, and still on the same site after four additional incarnations. The series, which offered 24 chapters, ended recently with a chapter on 1911, when the theatre underwent significant renovation, ending its first incarnation.

In November 2018,  I began to post images of the cover of each month’s issue of the long-running kabuki magazine, Engekikai (Theatre World), which I’ve provided on Facebook for a number of years. I will also post any other items of kabuki interest as they become available, including my own writings. All previous entries remain intact and can be found by using the search box.

Photo: Sasayama Kishin.

The cover of Engekikai, the kabuki magazine of record, for March 2019, #3, shows Matsumoto Hakuō II (formerly Matsumoto Kōshirō IX as Lord Ichijō in Ichijō Monogatari (a.k.a. Kiichi Hōgen Sanrakyu no Maki at the Kabuki-za in January. The issue’s partial contents listed on the cover include an interview with Hakuō; an interview with Onoe Shōroku III on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of the death of his father, Onoe Tatsunosuke II; and a section devoted to reviews of the various New Year’s programs at the Kabuki-za, the Kokuritsu Gekijō (National Theatre), Shinbashi Enbujō, Asakusa Kōkaidō, and the Ōsaka Shōchiku-za. Also noted is an article explaining the kabuki classic Kumo Ni Magō Ueno no Hatsuhana, better known by its two main segments, Kochiyama and Naozamurai, and the latest entry in the series by Matsumoto Kōshirō X whose English title would be “Kōshirō’s Thousand and One Nights.”