ENGEKIKAI (Nos. 8 and 9: August and September 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. 

Kabuki Woogie also posts monthly covers of the kabuki magazine ENGEKIKAI, as here, 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.

Photo: Shinoyama Kishin.

As per the shipping delays from Japan caused by the pandemic (outlined in my last  Kabuki Woogie posting), my copy of Engekikai, a combined issue of numbers 8 and 9 (more Covid-19 collateral damage), arrived three months after being mailed. Its cover picture is a rather unusual one, showing a kabuki performance being produced for a videotaped presentation. In it, Matsumoto Kōshirō X performs the role of Yuranosuke in Kanadehon Chūshingura, while sharing the stage with a video camera, at the right, and a masked stage assistant (kurogo) at the left. The performance was streamed as “Zoom Kabuki.”

The major section of the issue, headlined at the upper left (“Kokoro ni Nokoru Meibutai”), is devoted to 30 writers recalling their greatest memories of kabuki. Each gets an illustrated two-page spread, the remembrances including such things as the Benkei in Kanjinchō performed by Ichikawa Danjūrō XII at his 1985 name-taking (shūmei) performance, or the quick-change of Kataoka Nizaemon in Sakaya. Another big section covers the reopening of kabuki (under limited circumstances) during the plague, with comments by star actors Kōshirō, Ennosuke, Ainosuke, Kankurō, and Shichinosuke. Another piece covers theatre trends of the midyear months, May through July

There also are interviews with Ichikawa Ennosuke and Onoe Kikunosuke, a conversation between actor Nakamura Ichitarō and Onoe Ukon, and the latest in the ongoing series, “Kōshirō’s Thousand and One Nights.”