ENGEKIKAI (#2) February 2020: Cover and Contents

Kabuki Woogie is devoted to a variety of kabuki-related subjects. It began with a series of essays, including photos and videos, of a research trip to Japan in 2010, subsequently added my 25-chapter history of the first Kabuki-za, and then began a series of covers of and selected photos from Japanese books about kabuki from my collection. The current posting continues that series.

Kabuki Woogie also posts monthly covers of tprhe kabuki magazine ENGEKIKAI, with details on their contents, and, when available, essays by guest contributors, including papers delivered at conferences and the like.

One can poke around in its archives to find past posts.

Onoe Kikunosuke as Naushika in Kaze no Tani no Naushika. Photo: Sasayama Kishin.

The February 2020 issue (#2) of ENGEKIKAI, the kabuki magazine of record, is a pathbreaker, showing not the usual traditional kabuki play but one of the increasingly common productions that seek to take kabuki theatre into the 21^st century with stories and techniques inspired by the contemporary world. This movement, born in the mid-1980s, when Ichikawa Ennosuke II created his lavish productions—half Las Vegas spectacle, half kabuki conventions—has recently become a mini-flood with leading actors vying for new and exciting ways to bring young audiences to the theatre. A good recent discussion of the phen)omenon is available here.

The cover, then, is a photo of the December Kabuki-za production of the play whose 1984 anime original, created by Hayao Miyazaki, is known in English as NAUSICÄA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (Kaze no Tani no Naushika). Starring as Naushika is the kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke. 

The headlines on the cover announce the issue’s major contents, beginning, at the upper left, with an article about performances judged by a roundtabe panel to be deserving of 2019’s Personal Favorite Kabuki Grand Prize (Kyokushiteki Kabuki Taishō). If anyone can offer a better version of this prize's name, please let me know on the Facebook kabuki page, or otherwise. Perhaps there's an official English name I'm not aware of. 

At the lower right we’re informed of an article about Kataoka Nizaemon in the “Yoshidaya” scene of KURUWA BUNSHŌ, while next to it is mentioned the latest installment of actor Matsumoto Kōshirō’s ongoing series, “Kōshirō’s Thousand and One Nights.” This is followed by an article on the recent production of KOMORI NO YASU-SAN, about a kabuki adaptation of Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 film, CITY LIGHTS, in which a popular kabuki character called “Bat Yasu” (Komori no Yasu-san), is converted to a Japanese version of the character played by Chaplin (see the entry for last month’s issue). Other articles are an interview with Kataoka Kamezō and an introduction to the traditional kabuki play KEISEI YAMATO SŌJI. Finally, notice is given of reviews for December productions at the Minami-za, the Kabuki-za, the Kokuritsu Gekijō (National Theatre), Shinbashi Enbujō, and elsewhere.