Cinema Kabuki: Izumi Kyoka
About the Works
Izumi Kyoka (1873 - 1939)
Izumi Kyoka was an idiosyncratic, but very important modern Japanese writer. While other novelists, like Kyoka's teacher Ozaki Koyo (1868 - 1903) tried to find a modern Japanese form for the Western novel, Kyoka was interested in beautiful language and the resources of Japanese language and tradition. Kyoka's works are an important part of the repertory of Shimpa (a Japanese theatrical genre), such as Nihonbashi and Taki no Shiraito. His plays seem to be the essence of the nostalgic world of Shimpa, the world of geisha and their patrons and the melodramatic stories around them. However, none of these works were actually dramatized by Kyoka himself. The scripts were written by professional playwrights to showcase the Shimpa stars. Although these plays are based in a naturalistic depiction of the modern world, they all have strange fantastic touches that set them apart from other Shimpa plays, such as the doll display in Nihonbashi, or the streams of water cascading through gardens of paper iris blossoms in Taki no Shiraito.
After helping to translate a German Symbolist play, Kyoka was moved to write plays of his own. But perhaps because they broke so severely with the conventions of theater of the time, they were never staged in his lifetime. This includes plays like Tenshu Monogatari, Kaijin Besso and Yamabuki. They have delirious rush of poetic language and usually have a strong dose of fantasy. But they also share the concerns of Shimpa plays: from economic and social constraints to sexual relationships, the relation of ideals and fantasies to aspirations, the clash of various worlds whether it be the clash of the worlds of geisha society and the respectable world or the human and non-human world. They are very difficult to stage, because like classical Noh theater, the colorful world of Kyoka is all created by the language, a language that is very poetic and very difficult, language that creates an entire world on a nearly bare stage.
After a long period of being considered an obscure and outdated author, Kyoka was reevaluated in the late 20th century and writers like Mishima Yukio saw him as a pioneer sharing their aesthetic and erotic ideals. The kabuki actor Bando Tamasaburo has been particularly active with this revival of Kyoka's plays, both as an actor and director, and even as a film director. He has also arranged them into Kabuki plays that are presented today in theaters as part of the Cinema Kabuki series.
Original text taken from Kabuki-za Theater's July 2009 Grand Kabuki Program
(c) Shochiku Co., Ltd.
All Rights Reserved