Modern Dramatizations of Togitatsu no Utare : A Contrastive Analysis of the Noda Version of Kabuki and Kimura Kinka s Adaptations
著者 Hiranoi Chieko
出版者 法政大学人間環境学会
journal or
publication title
The Hosei Journal of Sustainability Studies
volume 21
number 1
page range 33‑49
year 2020‑10‑31
URL http://doi.org/10.15002/00023616
1. Introduction
Togitatsu no utare （The revenge on Togitatsu） is one of the few kabuki comedies and it was originally written by Kimura Kinka as a short story based on an old kabuki drama, Katakiuchi Takasago no matsu, and published in the magazine Kabuki in 1925. The story was adapted by Hirata Kenzaburō into a one-act, three-scene drama and was also first performed at the end of the same year in the Kabuki-za Theatre. The title role was played by Ichikawa Ennosuke II, who actively learned Western theatre overseas and contributed to productions of newly written kabuki and revival performances of classic programmes of kabuki. Togitatsu got a revised and enlarged version, as a five-act, seven-scene drama under the same title and two extra one-act comedies, Keiko-chu no Togitatsu （Togitatsu practising Kendō） and Koi no Togitatsu （Togitatsu the playboy） at the very beginning of the Shōwa era, all of which written responding to the popularity of the original Togitatsu by Kimura Kinka and Hirata Kenzaburō.
When the author refers to ‘the original kabuki version （drama）’ or ‘the original Togitatsu （by Kimura）’, it always refers to the five-act, seven-scene drama:
Modern Dramatizations of Togitatsu no Utare
―
A Contrastive Analysis of the Noda Version of Kabuki and Kimura Kinka’s Adaptations
Chieko Hiranoi
Act 1: Samurai station in Awazu castle
Act 2: Murder at the horse stop outside Awazu castle’s main gate
Act 3: Kurikara mountain peaks on the prefectural border between Shinshū and Ecchū.
Act 4: Azumaya inn
Act 5, Scene 1: A teashop near Daishidō hall, the Zentsūji temple Act 5, Scene 2: Daishidō hall with pilgrims
Act 5, Scene 3: Behind Daishidō hall
Noda’s kabuki version is supposed to reflect both the five-act, seven-scene drama and the extra one-act comedies by selecting and adapting each episode and character to create his own version of Togitatsu. It was the first Noda kabuki play and was launched in 2001 in the Kabuki-za Theatre. All the four Noda kabuki plays including the recent Noda kabuki version of Sakura no mori no mankai no shita （Under the cherry blossoms in full bloom） are co-operative works inspired by Nakamura Kankurō V （Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII） to produce a new genre of kabuki intended for contemporary audiences, and Kanzaburō XVIII played the three title roles, Togitatsu, Nezumi-kozō and Aida-hime. Although Kanzaburō XVIII passed away in 2012, his two sons succeeded to the co-operative work with Noda and appeared in the Noda kabuki version of Sakura no mori no mankai no shita in 2017.
On the other hand, the original Togitatsu no utare written by Kimura Kinka and Hirata Kenzaburō has also continued to be shown as an abridged version of the entire five-act, seven-scene drama. Kankurō V （Kanzaburō XVIII）
played Togitatsu also in the series in 1991 in the Shinbashi Enbujō Theatre and in 1993 in the Minami-za Theatre before asking Noda to write his adaptation based on the kabuki drama. Recently, Ichikawa Somegorō VII （Matsumoto Kōshirō X） and Kataoka Ainosuke VI played Togitatsu in the 2010s according to the original kabuki drama.
The author describes and analyses such contemporary works on Togitatsu, mainly focusing on Noda’s kabuki version and one of the recent shows in the original kabuki line featuring Ainosuke as Togitatsu. Noda’s kabuki version has been performed in 2001 and in 2005 in the Kabuki-za Theatre. Although both performances are available on DVD, they are very similar, and the author will discuss the 2001 version. On the other hand, Ainosuke’s version （2016） was broadcast on the Eisei Gekijō in July 2020.
2. The Noda Version of Togitatsu no Utare
This is the most renowned version of Togitatsu today because of the popularity of Kanzaburō XVIII, Noda Hideki and their collaboration. While Kanzaburō XVIII was highly acclaimed in his traditional performances in a variety of classical kabuki drama and dancing such as Kanadehon chūshingura
（The treasury of loyal retainers） and Shunkyō kagami jishi （The mirror lion）, he tackled enlarging and fortifying the potential of kabuki with Noda Hideki and Kushida Kazuyoshi. Kushida Kazuyoshi is the director who had contributed to a series of kabuki shown in a Western style of theatre, Theatre Cocoon, intended for modern audiences. Noda is a modern playwright and director, originally from a student theatre, Yume no Yūmin-sha, founded in the University of Tokyo. His early works are characterized by rapidly developing scenes with not only spectacular, athletic physical movements but also fast and intertwined speech plays. However, he came to respect serious subjects and plots such as prejudice, discrimination, violence and wars, keeping such entertaining features. Both of them are supposed to have played an important role in inviting new audiences to kabuki and vice versa. Yamamoto （2013）
discusses Kanzaburō XVIII’s performances broadly as one of our contemporary critics, categorising his achievements in classic kabuki drama, kabuki dancing, new kabuki drama and experimental kabuki.
The Noda version of kabuki consists of the following five scenes:
Scene 1: Sword practice hall inside Awazu castle
Scene 2: Murder at the horse stop outside Awazu castle’s main gate Scene 3: Tsutaya hot spring inn in the Dōgo district
Scene 4: Mountain peaks
Scene 5: Behind Daishidō hall, the Zentsūji temple
The opening is a very impressive introduction to the whole drama, presenting the final part of a vendetta, which occurred in 1703, where the group of loyal Asano retainers avenged the harassments Kira Kōzukenosuke conducted on their lord, Asano Takuminokami and its consequences.
Takuminokami was bitterly insulted by Kōzukenosuke in the palace and he could not help drawing his sword. As a result of this quarrel caused by Kira, only Asano was severely punished to death, harakiri, a ritual suicide for samurai. In addition, the Asano family was ruined, the land owned by the Asano was confiscated and the retainers lost their official positions with income.
Noda’s version was written set in the very beginning of the eighteenth century, starting with a scene a few days after the incident. The silhouette of actors fighting in the introduction is outstanding and efficient in getting audiences involved in the topic of interest discussed through the entire drama, as well as familiarising them with the chief retainer’s drumming rhythm of Yamaga-ryū, famous for being an instrumental device on a battlefield.
Noda omitted the original first act, where Togitatsu makes fun of the other retainers who practise Sadō （tea ceremony） as part of their samurai culture. He is not familiar with such samurai culture or discipline like sword practice, because he originally comes from the townsmen class as a sword grinder. Audiences assume that the lord Awazu took him as one of his retainers for some reward. This act has an important role in describing
Togitatsu’s personality, especially arrogance among coworkers and repeated flattery towards the lord, his wife and the chief retainer. He was despised among the retainers not only because of his origin and career as craftsman but also such an egoistic personality. The chief retainer, Hirai Ichirōemon, also accuses Tatsuji of trying to promote himself by slander to the lord’s wife against other retainers. In response to such an accusation and his intention to fire Tatsuji, he finally discloses what he has done and that he has given tributes to Ichirōemon to be liked and supported in front of other retainers. In the end, Ichirōemon gets furious and spits on Tatsuji’s face, which causes a burst of scornful laughter among the other retainers in the station. It is a direct trigger for Tatsuji to kill Ichirōemon in an underhand manner.
Instead of the original first act, Noda adopts one of the extra one-act plays, Keiko-chū no Togitatsu （Togitatsu practising Kendō） to show such features of the villain. Thus, the flow from the opening to the first scene seems sensible and easy to follow. The original one-act play depicts Tatsuji visiting the sword fighting practice hall for townsmen in the Awazu town to beg for some quick sword training in just a few days even though it is supposed to be a lifelong discipline. Finally, the master allows Tatsuji to practise sword fighting in his hall. However, Tatsuji is harshly beaten by an instructor and such a shameful scene is witnessed by his colleagues from the castle.
This one-act play was clearly written to show comical fighting scenes to arouse laughter and its note states that it should be played after the original first act, even though the original first act scarcely refers to sword practice as a samurai’s duty. However, except for such travesties, most depictions concentrate on clarifying Tatsuji’s personality, just as the original first act does. Noda rewrote the first scene as a series of events and conversation that occurred in the practice hall in Awazu castle, combining and arranging the original first act and Keikochū no Togitatsu. He made Tatsuji make cynical comments on the forty-seven rōnin and their lord Asano, that Takuminokami’s
confrontation against Kōzukenosuke drawing his sword was shallow, ridiculous and irresponsible as a feudal lord and part of his retainers who joined the revenge might feel empty after the vendetta. Thus, Noda was successful in describing Tatsuji’s personality and making use of travesties in the one-act play, Keikochū no Togitatsu by transferring them onto his stage.
Tatsuji tries to pretend to be diligent and brave in front of the lord’s wife begging the chief retainer his sword training, because the old man is supposed to be a sword expert. He is defeated drastically by the chief retainer. In the end of this scene, Tatsuji swears he will avenge such a shameful experience in front of the lord’s wife caused by the chief retainer and he also “wishes to continue to survive selfishly and to witness each retainer’s funeral happily smiling’’ （Noda, 2008, p. 30）. Throughout the scene, contrastive depiction of Tatsuji’s straightforward desire for life and representative aesthetics of samurai spirit, dying for honour or loyalty is explicit. Ichirōemon says a samurai will never die of a stroke, a heart attack, cancer and so on.
Scene 2 depicts Tatsuji’s unintended assassination of the chief retainer, Hirai Ichirōemon. Noda’s Tatsuji simply wants to embarrass Ichirōemon by abruptly attacking him, just cutting off part of his hair in the dark. He asks his previous fellow craftsmen for help to control the mechanical device by which a weird doll starts to move to cut off the old man’s hair, the topknot. Tatsuji successfully surprises Ichirōemon ― but too much. Ichirōemon dies because of a stroke, which he said samurai would never die of. Ichirōemon’s subordinates accompanying him get in a panic due to such a dishonourable cause of death and make up a story that Tatsuji killed Ichirōemon by sword. This is unbelievable from the depiction of cowardly and awkward Tatsuji in the sword practice hall in Scene 1. They force Ichirōemon’s sons to avenge his father’s death.
There is another implausible flow shortly after Ichirōemon’s death. Although Tatsuji did not intend to kill Ichirōemon, he comes to believe he is responsible for his death. This is unnatural reflecting on his egoistic and opportunistic
characterization.
Noda deals with Tatsuji’s identity issue as well in Scene 2. He asks his previous fellow craftsmen to help his ridiculously complicated device to work properly to surprise and attack Ichirōemon in the beginning of Scene 2.
However, nobody is willing to help him ― they all claim an additional wage, specialization of labour, and labour hour regulation, even referring to the Union.
A man says to Tatsuji as he is finally giving up on their support and trying to do part of the work by himself, “You are a samurai now. You are not allowed to deprive craftsmen of work’’ （Noda, 2008, p. 35）. Tatsuji does not belong to either side, samurai class or craftsmen class, even if he gains renewed appreciation for craftsmen’s honesty and frankness. Ironically, his identity is restored in Scene 5, when he grinds swords for the Hirai brothers to kill him with.
In the beginning of Scene 3, the Hirai brothers appear to express their delicate feeling about the revenge. They have gradually become tired in their clueless trip looking for Tatsuji, sometimes with aspiration, other times with anxiety. The elder brother, Kuichirō says:
I come to realize I don’t hate the enemy. I feel sorry for our father but I cannot hate him really. Um, sometimes I think I hate him, but it’s not because he killed our father but because he caused us to endure such a plight.（Noda, 2008, pp. 45-46）
In the original Togitatsu, a similar phrase is delivered by Kuichirō in Act 5, Scene 1, shortly before their catching Tatsuji in the denouement （Kimura, 1927, p. 509）.
Noda’s Scene 3 is an abridgement of one of the extra one-act comedies, Koi no Togitatsu, which was supposed to be shown after the original Act 4 in Azumaya inn, as Act 5. Tatsuji is running after a geisha and seems
repeatedly refused by her. He also tries to seduce young sisters staying at the inn separately. He leads such a loose life without paying for his long stay.
When Tatsuji is interrogated by a local official because of the non-payment, he pretends to be on his trip to avenge his father’s death and explains the use of a fictitious name for the inn’s booking that way. To enhance his fabrication, gidayū storytelling is introduced here, which is normally used in traditional historical kabuki plays. This is a parody in which Takemoto Kiyotayū tells of an avenger’s adversity on the main stage, just beside Tatsuji. Instantly Tatsuji becomes very popular and gets sympathy and admiration in the inn. He also refers to the names of the Hirai brothers as his enemies in his talk to the official. Everybody believes Tatsuji and tries to help him to catch his enemies, when the Hirai brothers come to the inn. As easily imagined, a series of travesties take place in the scene. For example, another parody of traditional kabuki convention, an unconventional form of danmari, describes the chaotic situation, where Tatsuji tries to escape and the Hirai brothers look for him in the darkness. The other people in the inn join the confusion, still more they believe that Tatsuji must defeat the Hirai brothers as his father’s enemy.
In the next short scene, such curious onlookers finally find out that it is Tatsuji running on the mountain peaks who is about to be avenged by the Hirai brothers, after continuing to chase the three people to encourage Tatsuji.
The crowd turns into Buddhist pilgrims praying fervently in the Daishidō Hall in Scene 5. Though Tatsuji seeks to hide himself among the prayers, they help the Hirai brothers to find him out by pointing him.
The Hirai brothers drag him out the hall to face him for the vendetta.
The chief priest of the temple comes out to ask the brothers about the circumstances. Tatsuji repeats evasive talks and behaviours inefficiently and the brothers all the more get irritated and upset. They persistently threaten him to face the vendetta in vain. Noda’s Tatsuji is less eloquent than in the original kabuki. He even cannot clearly explain what he really did. He only
made and operated a strange device to cut Ichirōemon’s topknot. The shallow crowd who would like to witness a vendetta surround the brothers and Tatsuji to urge them to go ahead. A man shouts that he wants to watch it before going to work. On the other hand, Oyoshi and Omine, the sisters who would like to get married to a successful vendetta hero, have chased the three people to the temple as part of the crowd and eagerly encourage the brothers to kill Tatsuji now. Noda clearly emphasizes people’s cruelty caused by blindness and irresponsibility when they put themselves in a crowd. Ryōkan, the chief priest, brings a bowl and a grindstone for Tatsuji to sharpen the swords he will be killed by. Ryōkan also suggests the brothers that they should help Tatsuji. Tatsuji starts to notice he has forgotten his identity as a craftsman and it has caused his misfortune, as he grinds the swords. He quietly compares him to falling maple leaves from the trees surrounding him. Now, the crowd is split in two, to kill or to help. However, once the Hirai brothers leave without finishing the vendetta, they start to accuse them as cowards. This is Noda’s interpretation of the accusation. In the original kabuki, the accusation is intended for Tatsuji, as normally expected. However, the performance DVD
（Noda, 2001） shows that the words are clearly cast on the brothers leaving with their vendetta unfulfilled. The crowd simply complains against the brothers who could not show them what they really would like to witness.
Then they easily leave as soon as they happen to hear about another possible vendetta nearby. Finally, the brothers return and fulfill their vendetta without the crowd. However, Kuichirō silently says, “I have suddenly come to feel reluctant in going home. . . . As Tatsuji said, I feel like I have done a murder. . . . I feel embarrassed thinking that we would be praised by people when we go home” （Noda, 2008, p. 95）, same as in the original kabuki （Kimura, 1928, p. 522）.
Owing to preserving the original lines, the Noda version also enhances the issues of human rights, unfairness, violence and conservative sense of values worsening them.
Noda’s characterization of Tatsuji is a kind of trickster like Falstaff described by Shakespeare, an active braggart and lecher as seen in Scene 3, Koi no Togitatsu. He works by challenging received ideas in the samurai class under the feudal system as well. In addition, Kanzaburō XVIII’s inherent atmosphere makes the character come across to audiences as carefree and pleasant, not as a villain. The death of Tatsuji is depicted as pathetic and is intended to elicit sympathy from audiences.
In this very modern kabuki drama, the issue of identity is strongly addressed through the contrastive depictions of samurai aesthetics and townsmen’s common materialism. Tatsuji has challenged the class border by leaving such cultural differences behind. Though he boasts of his worldly wisdom, he fails to please his colleagues and explicitly arouses their antipathy.
He is clearly depicted as arrogant and awkward in the practice hall in Scene 1. He has also lost solidarity with his previous fellow craftsmen and cannot get sympathy from them, which is easy to notice in Scene 2. He has finally come to realize that he has failed to recognize his own identity in the sword-grinding sequence in Scene 5. This is an outstanding depiction as a modern interpretation of this drama.
The issue of crowd mentality Noda often refers to is a contemporary aspect as well. Unrealistic as it is, the group of people moving from the inn to the temple with Tatsuji and the Hirai brothers symbolically describes the universal crowd mentality everywhere, blindness and irresponsibility leading to cruelty. Both Tatsuji and the Hirai brothers are frequently embarrassed by such an untrustworthy crowd. Finally, Tatsuji desperately protests against such a crowd asking why they call him ‘the enemy’ although he is not their enemy.
This is the very original script Noda wrote for his Tatsuji to emphasise the crowd mentality. Deguchi （2017） points out that such a crowd mentality works among the retainers as well, when they disguise Ichirōemon’s death as Tatsuji’s assassination to protect his honour, representative of their honour.
Noda’s kabuki version of Togitatsu no utare is a contemporary kabuki drama connecting our current issues to the traditional performing arts.
3. A Modern Abridgement of the Original Kabuki Drama
While Kanzaburō XVIII’s Tatsuji is a comic and pathetic trickster, Kataoka Ainosuke VI’s Togitatsu clearly impresses Tatsuji as a villain.
Ainosuke’s Togitatsu consists of:
Act 1, Scene 1: Samurai station in Awazu castle
Act 1, Scene 2: Murder at the horse stop outside Awazu castle’s main gate Act 2, Scene 1: Kurikara mountain peaks on the prefectural border
between Shinshū and Ecchū.
Act 2, Scene 2: Azumaya inn
Act 3: Behind Daishidō hall, the Zentsūji temple
Act 1 features the retainers’ station in Awazu castle and it starts with Tatsuji’s scorn against his colleagues practising Sadō or tea ceremony. He makes fun of their tea drinking posture as weird like “a frog having mosquitos”
（Kimura, 1928, p. 487）, though his own sitting posture looks loose and ugly with the back arched, which shows his origin. He boasts of his loyalty and he says samurai culture such as Sadō and sword practice is useless to serve the lord. Instead of such a self-discipline, he is extremely good at flattery for his lord’s wife and gets her sympathy. He often tries to twist someone’s remark or deed to make a false accusation. The chief retainer, Hirai Ichirōemon gets worried in case Tatsuji makes a false charge against other retainers seriously in the future, and he decides to suggest the lord fire or demote him. In turn, Tatsuji argues he has ground Ichirōemon’s swords for free and has regularly presented something to be liked and patronaged by him, in front of other
retainers. Ichirōemon gets furious and spits on his face. The other retainers in the station burst into scornful laughter. The Noda version’s Ichirōemon bitterly beats him up in sword practice and Tatsuji completely loses face in front of the lord’s wife. However, he only thinks of a mischievous revenge with a weird mechanical doll. This is partly because it is Tatsuji who asked for Ichirōemon’s training for him and he says he does not have such courage as to murder him.
On the other hand, Tatsuji in this original Togitatsu no utare clearly shows his deep-rooted anger and grudge because of Ichirōemon’s treatment such as insulting and showing physiological dislike against Tatsuji. Needless to say, Ichirōemon does not regard Tatsuji as an independent or decent human being.
His behaviour discloses his oppressed discrimination against Tatsuji. Ainosuke’s stylised facial and physical expression of kabuki at the end of Act 1, Scene 1 stirs up foreboding that a serious tragedy might occur in the near future.
Thus, Act 1, Scene 2 shows how Ichirōemon’s assassination is fulfilled by Tatsuji. As Ichirōemon is a well-known sword practitioner, Tatsuji makes a pitfall for his surprise attack in an underhand manner. Shortly after killing Ichirōemon, he says, “I feel like somehow I have instantly become important”
（Kimura, 1928, p. 499）. The phrase also characterizes Tatsuji as a villain.
However, he immediately flies away on an escape trip finding out a vendetta will be started by the Hirai brothers.
Act 2, Scene 1 describes a challenging trip to cross a rope-bridge in a basket over the Kurikara mountain peaks. In the original Togitatsu, the Hirai brothers look for Tatsuji separately. Tatsuji and Kuichirō happen to meet in the middle going in opposite directions from each other in baskets. When Kuichirō recognises Tatsuji halfway asking for a tobacco light, Tatsuji cuts the rope tying Kuichirō’s basket onto the rope-bridge without hesitating an instant. Tatsuji laughs triumphantly seeing Kuichirō falling into the valley. The trip on a rope-bridge including Tatsuji’s attack on Kuichirō is a spectacular kabuki scene. Noda’s kabuki version presents such a trip in a symbolic form.
The scenographer, Horio Yukio did not design baskets for actors to ride in.
Two long strips are vertically strained over the main stage and the hanamichi and actors grab onto one of them and run, which stands for crossing over the valleys. Tatsuji, hanging from a strip, cuts the other strip the Hirai brothers take, encouraged to do so by the crowd. Tatsuji feels sinful cutting the strip saying, “Although my hand cuts the rope, it is their voice that makes me cut”
（Noda, 2008, pp. 73-74）. Fortunately, the Hirai brothers do not get injured and people come to know they are chasing Tatsuji as their father’s enemy. Tatsuji desperately runs around among the audiences.
Act 2, Scene 2 takes place in Azumaya inn. Fortunately, Kuichirō is not seriously injured and he comes to stay at the same inn Tatsuji has already settled in. Tatsuji in the original drama is more careful than in the Noda kabuki version confirming he is the only samurai guest that night. There is no extra episode from Koi no Togitatsu. Kuichirō notices Tatsuji as soon as he arrives there. The younger brother, Saijirō also comes to the inn later at night and the brothers collaborate to catch Tatsuji. Tatsuji manages to escape after a series of thrilling chases in the dark, where the traditional kabuki practice danmari fits. Tatsuji comes out of the inn and falls into the water tank from the inn’s roof with water spilt, also a kabuki practice, honmizu. In the end of this scene, after a soaked Tatsuji returns on the roof, Tatsuji on the roof and Kuichirō beside the water tank are featured before the curtain closes.
Act 3 is set in the vicinity of the Zentsūji temple in Sanshū, which is Tatsuji’s hometown. As soon as the Hirai brothers happen to find Tatsuji, Tatsuji starts to run away mockingly. However, he is captured by the brothers and he starts to make excuses and otherwise talk evasively in order to survive.
His rhetoric includes the following points:
1. As Ichirōemon insulted him and spat on his face in front of other retainers, Tatsuji’s revenge was reasonable.
2. The Hirai brothers and Tatsuji were on good terms, Kuichirō asking Tatsuji for money and Saijirō teaching Tatsuji’s son.
3. Tatsuji would like to become a priest to pray for Ichirōemon.
4. He is much weaker than the brothers and he must lose in fighting.
5. This is a common murder, not a honourable vendetta, because he is a townsman, not a samurai.
6. He is a dog and the brothers must not kill him with their respectable swords.
The chief priest in the temple suggests that they should help Tatsuji and the crowd agree vigorously with the priest.
In this version also, the crowd is depicted as irresponsible, but they annoy the brothers rather than Tatsuji. In begging help, Tatsuji is urging the crowd to speak out for him. When the brothers once pretend to give up their vendetta, Tatsuji misunderstands he has managed to survive and makes a cunning smile preparing to leave. However, the brothers return to kill him and Tatsuji shows a stylised form of acting to express being killed for a villain such as Ono Sadakurō and Nikki Danjō. After the vendetta, the brothers keep silent, which suggests that they do not think their vendetta is ethically appropriate.
Ainosuke’s Tatsuji is consistently depicted as the type of villain who looks unattractive for audiences because of his meticulous, cowardly, outspoken, arrogant and ruthless characterization. While Noda’s （Kanzaburō XVIII’s）
Tatsuji tends to get sympathy from audiences when beaten up by Ichirōemon in the practice hall, it seems natural Ichirōemon gets so furious against Tatsuji’s rudeness that he spits on Tatsuji’s face as in the original version.
In the genre of traditional historical kabuki plays, major characters tend to be clearly categorised into good or evil except characters transforming themselves in order to put forward the plot, such as modori, a conventional mode of kabuki where a villain suddenly repents on his previous deeds to help good characters. Even though the original five-act, seven-scene drama
was complete in 1927, it shows such a traditional characterization of kabuki in creating Tatsuji as a villain consistently, even though it’s a comic villain, handō-gataki in kabuki terms. Such a consistent characterization is reasonable because Tatsuji kills Ichirōemon in an underhand way with resentment in this original kabuki abridgement.
Although the issue of identity is not addressed heavily in this original kabuki abridgement, the audience can see that he finds a stone good for sword-grinding when he digs a pitfall for Ichirōemon, and that he attacks Ichirōemon by the stone before chopping with his sword.
4. Conclusion
The original kabuki Togitatsu no utare is basically one of the few kabuki comedies and the popularity of its original kabuki caused extra one-act comic plays to be written and performed in a few years later than its first production in 1925. However, the original drama includes a controversial topic of vendetta based on honour and obligation, representative incidents reflecting the conservative aesthetics of samurai society in the feudal system.
In addition, a popular actor, Ichikawa Ennosuke II, played the title role. Thus, some audiences might have enjoyed it as a slapstick comedy and others are supposed to have got interested in long-oppressed discussions about vendetta with its experimental nature. Although such a dual nature of this play could have been an entertaining aspect for its contemporary audiences, it makes the protagonist’s characterization incoherent, meticulous but reckless, cowardly but decisive, worldly wise but careless and so on. Especially, such a cold-blooded assassination is incompatible with the comic image of Tatsuji. Hōkaibō is also a kabuki comedy and its protagonist Hōkaibō is completely a comic villain. The characterization is successful because the play does not include any ethical topic and focuses on its entertainment with a variety of kabuki practices and
devices, even though Hōkaibō mutilates and murders.
Kanzaburō XVIII （Kankurō V） played Tatsuji in the old kabuki version as well twice, in 1991 and in 1993, before his name succession as Kanzaburō XVIII in 2005. Ei （1992） points out his Tatsuji finished as comic, innocent and humane, and Fujii （1993） analyses that his Tatsuji seems a carefree and worldly wise man ignoring insults against him and he is unlikely to assassinate the chief retainer. This shows the inconsistent nature inherent in this original kabuki drama. That is why Noda’s adaptation is successful in depicting Tatsuji as an innocent trickster, representative of utilitarianism and honest in human desire.
In his adaptation for Kankuro V, Tatsuji might seem a pure sacrifice of the two conflicting senses of values. In order to fulfill such an adaptation, he had to transform Tatsuji’s revenge, originally an assassination into a grotesque mischief.
Many kabuki plays had been written based on incidents that really occurred. Togiya Tatsuji was an existing person in the Edo era. He killed his wife and Hirai Ichirōji because of adultery, even though he was a townsman.
Deguchi （2017） examines the incident and the revenge for Tatsuji by the Hirai brothers. He also analyses how the real story is turned into a fictional kabuki drama, Katakiuchi Takasago no matsu, first performed in 1827. It consists of an internal squabble in a feudal lord’s family and a vendetta. The original incident of adultery was completely deleted and Tatsuji was recreated as a samurai upstarting from a townsman and joining with a villain party. Such a transformation must have been caused because an internal squabble and a vendetta is likely to be connected for a kabuki story. Deguchi （2017） not only continues to discuss a great variety of Togitatsu adaptations including the Noda version and even outside the genre of kabuki, but also refers to literary works on a vendetta looking into its hypocrisy and desire. In addition, the book provides enlightening, informative and stimulating materials in discussing Togitatsu and it would greatly contribute to analysing characterization in
kabuki in general.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss our contemporary Togitatsu, especially Noda’s kabuki version and a current performance of the older kabuki version, which happens to be Ainosuke’s because of availability. The author misses and is very curious to know more about, Kōshirō X’s Togitatsu in November 2019, which is the latest Togitatsu performance in the meantime.
However, the dual nature of the original kabuki drama must still be a problematic issue to tackle for any performance.
References
Deguchi, I. （2017）. Togitatsu no keifu ― dōke to akutō no aida ［The geneology of Togitatsu ― between the fool and the villain］. Sakuhin-sha.
Ei, K. （1992）. Yakusha no kokorozashi no takasa wo kanjita nihon ［Two masterpieces featuring actors’ high aspirations］. Kabuki –kenkyū to hihyō ［Kabuki ― research and criticism］, 8, pp. 291-294.
Fujii, Y. （1993）. Gekihyō ― Minami-za no Kankurō ［Theatre review ― Kankurō in the Minami-za theatre］. Engekikai ［Theatre World］, 51（4）, pp. 78-80.
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Kimura, K. （1928）. Koi no Togitatsu ［Togitatsu the playboy］. In S. Atsumi, K. Yoshida, J.
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* All the sources are Japanese, and the author has translated the Japanese titles and quotations into English.
