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| Ichikawa Ennosuke IV in Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura. Photo: Shinoyama Kishin. |
Apologies for the delay in posting covers from Engekikai (Theatre World), Japan’s kabuki magazine of record. Postal restrictions stemming from the coronavirus are to blame. The issues themselves are less robust, of course, because of the limits placed on production over the past year. Two more issues recently arrived, closing out 2020. This cover is for October 2020 issue, #10. It shows the “Yoshinoyama” scene from Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura, starring Ichikawa Ennosuke IV as Satō Tadanobu, in reality Genkurō the fox.
While the issue has
many other things in it, the headlines on the cover point to several of its
leading articles. The biggest headline, at the right, is for “The Opening of
Young Stars [Hanagata] Kabuki in August,” a series of commentaries by fifteen
of the actors involved. At the left is mentioned an interview with the great
star Nakamura Kichiemon II. Headlines at the bottom point to an essay on “Zoom
Kabuki,” the streaming of kabuki productions during the pandemic; a transcript
of the September “earphone guide” to that month’s productions at the Kabuki-za,
a service inspired by the limitations on audience attendance in the wake of Covid-19;
August and September theatre trends; the next installment in actor Matsumoto
Kōshirō’s long-running series “Kōshirō’s Thousand and One Nights”; and the
reprinting of an old essay about Nakamura Kichiemon I, one of the greatest
stars of the first half of the twentieth century.
