ENGEKIKAI #6 (June 2021): COVER AND CONTENTS

 

Matsumoto Hakuō II as Benkei in Kanjinchō. (Photo: Shinoyama Kishin.

The June 2021 cover of Engekikai, the kabuki magazine of record, shows the great Matsumoto Hakuō (formerly Matsumoto Kōshirō IX), who once played the lead in Man of La Mancha on Broadway, as Benkei, the heroic warrior-priest, in Kanjinchō, as performed in April at the Kabuki-za. The lead segment, listed at the upper right, is called “Masculine Dignity,” and consists of a series of essays on the most famous pairings of characters who are well-matched opponents in kabuki classics, something like the pairing, for example, of Othello and Iago. They include Benkei and Togashi, Nagoya Sanza and Fuwa Banzaemon, and so on.

The issue also contains an article on the veteran star Onoe Kikugorō VII and his then forthcoming May appearance at the Kabuki-za. At the bottom right is a conversation with four young stars, Nakamura Kankurō, Nakamura Shichinosuke, Onoe Matsuya, and Nakamura Chōzaburō, who were appearing at Shibuya’s Cocoon Kabuki. Other materials found in the issue, which includes lots more, include the latest in the series “Kōshirō’s Thousand and One Nights,” a piece on a kabuki actor named Nakamura Kyōzō, who recently toured abroad with lecture-demonstrations of his art, and a piece on the dark nineteenth-century classic, Sakura-Hime Azuma no Bunshō.

An unusual item in the issue is a color photo of an exquisite model of the original Teikoku Gekijō (Imperial Theatre), the revolutionary theatre, built in 1911, that was Japan's first fully Western playhouse. It still stands on the same spot, near the Imperial Palace, albeit in a much altered form. Part of the original architect's blueprint accompanies the photo.

ENGEKIKAI #4 (April 2021): COVER AND CONTENTS

 

Renjishi (left); Sodehagi Saimon (right). Photo: Shinoyama Kishin.

The cover for the April (#4) 2021 issue of ENGEKIKAI, the kabuki magazine of record, is split into two images. The issue is largely concerned with kabuki production in February 2021. The picture on the upper left is of Renjishi (Two Lions), the spirit of the father lion portrayed by Nakamura Kankurō VI, the spirit of the child lion by Kankurō’s son, Nakamura Kantarō III. The picture at the lower right  shows Ōshū Adachigara (a place name), also known as Sodehagi Saimon (Sodehagi’s Lament). Kankurō’s brother, Nakamura Shichinosuke II, is the blind Sodehagi, and his nephew (Kankurō’s other son and Kantarō’s brother), Nakamura Chōzaburō II, is her daughter, Okimi. Tokyo’s Kabuki-za has been producing three bills a day lately, and these plays were on the third part of February’s program.

The principal focus of the issue is, as the lower left headline asserts, the classic play Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees), a mid-eighteenth-century work originally written for the bunraku puppet theatre, soon adapted for kabuki, and now one of the so-called three masterpieces of bunraku-kabuki (all by the same playwrights), the other two being Kanadehon Chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers) and Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami (Sugawara’s Secrets of Calligraphy). The issue contains multiple, beautifully illustrated views of the play’s production history and values, supplemented by a narrative about the play by perhaps its foremost modern performer, Ichikawa En’o II (formerly Ennosuke III).

Also in the issue, among other features, are discussions with actors Nakamura Kazutarō, Onoe Ukon, Nakamura Yonekichi, and Nakamura Hashinosuke about their then upcoming March program at Kyoto’s Minami-za, focused on these rising “young stars” (hanagata). Finally, the issue includes the latest in actor Matsumoto Kōshirō’s long-running series, “Kōshirō’s Thousand and One Nights.”