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.