O-KUNI OF IZUMO
To a woman, O-Kuni, a ritual dancer attached to the great Shinto Shrine
of Izumo, in the “Province of the Gods”, belongs the credit of founding
the popular theatre, some time in the year 1596, on the dry bed of the
Kamo River in Kyoto.
According to _Izumo O-Kuni Den_, or The Biography of O-Kuni of Izumo,
in the possession of the late Baron Senge, from whose family come the
hereditary ritualists of the Shrine, O-Kuni was a miko, or sacred
dancer. Her father was called Nakamura Sanyemon, and served the Shrine
in the capacity of an artisan. The family name of Nakamura was derived
from the district of Nakamura in Kitsuki, where O-Kuni’s family lived,
the site of the great Shrine of Izumo then as now.
O-Kuni left Kitsuki on a pilgrimage, so the story goes, wandering
through several provinces, performing her dance, and asking for
contributions for the repair of the Shrine, and at last reached Kyoto.
Evidently the gay capital exerted such a powerful fascination over her,
that she felt no inclination to return to her duties in connection with
the Shrine. There is no record that tells of O-Kuni’s change of heart,
or what eventually prompted her to set up a platform on the banks of
the Kamo, where were to be found all the motley train of entertainers
who flourished at that time.
Kyoto, the birthplace of the popular theatre, was, when O-Kuni made
her appearance, a city of half-a-million inhabitants. Murdoch
says in his _History of Japan_: “It is well to remember that if
Japan had no Free Cities, she had what Germany, or indeed any other
European country, had not,—a single great city with a population of
half-a-million. Such Kyoto was even at one of the lowest ebbs in its
prosperity at the date of Xavier’s visit to it in 1551. In 1467 at
the outbreak of the war of Odin, it contained 160,000 families, or,
perhaps, 900,000 souls. Few cities in contemporary Europe could boast
even a tenth of that population.” Captain Francis Brinkley also refers
to the splendours of Kyoto palaces and fine residences in the fifteenth
century, and says that even men who made medicine or fortune-telling
their professions and petty officials such as secretaries had stately
residences.
Fenollosa in his _Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art_ writes about
Kyoto civilians, and as to the patrons of the artists, he asks: “Who
were Okio’s patrons? Why, the silk weavers, bronze casters, the
embroiderers and fine lacquerers, the æsthetic priests of Kyoto
temples, the great potters grouped at the foot of Arashiyama, the great
merchants who sent their fine wares all over Japan even to the daimyo’s
yashiki.”
Such was Kyoto, the political as well as artistic centre of Japan, when
O-Kuni gave the impetus that started the movement to establish Kabuki,
the people’s stage, that to-day has inherited all the wealth of past
materials and is turned resolutely toward the promise of the future.
Her performances were of the simplest character. She has been described
as wearing a priest’s robe of black silk, with a small metal Buddhist
gong suspended from her neck by a vermilion silk cord, and as she
struck the gong with a mallet, she danced and chanted a Buddhist sutra.
Seiseiin Ihara, Kabuki’s leading historian and one of the prominent
dramatic critics of Tokyo, who was born in the shadow of the Shrine
of Izumo, has taken great pains to gather from the old records the
story of O-Kuni. He says that it may seem incredible that a Buddhist
dance should have been performed by the miko of Izumo Shrine,
but he points out that it was the period when Shinto, or the “Way of
the Gods”, the reverence and worship of the ancestors of the race
and departed souls who were great in life, and Buddhism, the “Way
of Buddha”, or the faith in a universal being and a future state of
happiness, lived peacefully together. Buddhist priests were prominent
at Izumo, and a bronze image of Buddha was placed in front of the
Shrine where incense was burned, and the sutras were recited by eight
females who performed to musical instruments used in Buddhist as well
as Shinto ceremonies. To-day the combination seems hard to believe,
since Shintoism and Buddhism are strictly separated.
It was therefore not unusual that O-Kuni’s Shinto dance should have
been modified by Buddhism, and that her performances were later greatly
influenced by the sermons of the priests, as an old book about the
people of Kyoto records.
But if her dances had remained in a simple and semi-religious state,
it is doubtful if O-Kuni would have succeeded in impressing herself so
vividly upon her day and generation as she did. Her art was to undergo
a sudden transformation. One day she met Nagoya Sansaburo, one of the
handsomest and bravest young samurai of Kyoto. They fell in love and
married. Sansaburo, who was famous for his military exploits, joined
O-Kuni in her public appearances and soon became renowned as an actor.
He recognised that her dance was not sufficiently interesting, and set
himself to carry out improvements that soon made O-Kuni one of the most
popular personages of the time.
Sansaburo’s ancestors had been samurai in the Province of Owari. His
father served under the great general Hideyoshi, and was advanced to a
post of honour. He was blessed with ten children, Sansaburo being the
seventh. And as the father’s income was not sufficient to maintain such
a large family, he was sent at an early age to Kennin-ji, a Buddhist
temple in Kyoto, to be brought up by the priests.
In 1590, when Hideyoshi attacked the Castle of Odawara, one of his
right-hand men was Gamo Ujisato, whom Murdoch, in his history of the
early relations between Japan and other countries, characterises as the
most brilliant proselyte the Jesuits had made. Gamo Ujisato was one
of the bravest captains of the age, and Hideyoshi began to fear his
ascendency. He was poisoned at a tea ceremony party by an underling who
acted on a hint from Hideyoshi, and so died in his fortieth year.
This Gamo Ujisato held a review of his troops in the neighbourhood of
Kyoto previous to the storming of a feudal stronghold. The inhabitants
of the city went to see the spectacle, and young Sansaburo clad in a
priest’s purple robe was among the curious throng. Ujisato on horseback
caught sight of the acolyte and was greatly taken with the handsome
boy. Later he asked his father if he might engage Sansaburo as a
page. Soon after Ujisato returned to his domain in Izu, and Sansaburo
followed in his suite.
At the time that Ujisato undertook one of his most daring military
campaigns, Sansaburo followed his master, wearing a garment of pure
white silk lined with crimson, and armour woven with variegated
colours, and carrying a spear in his hand. His courageous conduct in
this campaign formed the theme of a popular song, and his name soon
spread to all parts of the country.
After Ujisato’s death, Sansaburo returned to Kyoto with considerable
property left him by his lord, and led an extravagant life, passing
his time in the pleasures of the capital. It is easy to see that the
alluring O-Kuni, who was such a novel amusement to the citizens of
Kyoto frequenting the popular entertainment resort on the Kamo River,
must have captivated his fancy, for he quickly decided to cast in his
lot with hers.
Sansaburo, bred in a military family and having associated with one
of the celebrated feudal lords of the period, was in consequence
acquainted with the best in literature and art. That he was familiar
with the Nō stage, particularly with the Kyogen, or comic pieces
given between the Nō plays, is very certain, for he soon changed
O-Kuni’s simple Shinto-Buddhist dance into the nature of Kyogen. No
doubt he considered that her performances savoured too much of religion
to please all and sundry, so he taught her popular songs and also
composed pieces for her.
She did not, however, succeed in winning the highest popular favour
until she transformed herself into a male, wearing swords and covering
her head with a peculiar head-dress. From the time that O-Kuni assumed
the outward guise of a man, dancing with two swords thrust through her
belt, the people flocked to see her.
For the first time Sansaburo called her performances Kabuki, the name
by which the Japanese stage is known at the present day. The word was
no new invention. It had been in use for a long period to signify
something comic, and gradually came to lose its original meaning and
was used to denote the particular kind of theatrical entertainment that
had arisen, and from that time forward Kabuki was applied to everything
pertaining to the popular stage.
The word for theatre, “shibai”, also came into general use at this
time, meaning to sit on the lawn or grass, from the fact that the
platform for performances was a temporary affair and the audience sat
on the ground.
Still later Sansaburo introduced more and more of the Nō elements,
the externals of O-Kuni’s stage being largely borrowed from the
aristocratic theatre. And how the present highly complex stage of Japan
developed out of O-Kuni’s dance is the story of the rise of Kabuki.
O-Kuni was not only popular with the masses, the nobility patronised
her. On one occasion she was invited to the Fushimi Palace, near
Kyoto, to entertain Hideyasu. He was the son of Iyeyasu, who was later
to found the Tokugawa Shogunate. But Hideyasu had been adopted by
Hideyoshi, Japan’s military overlord at this period, and was held as
a hostage and guarantee of Iyeyasu’s good faith. When O-Kuni danced
before this young prince, she wore around her neck a crystal
rosary, which is evidence of the Jesuit influence upon Kyoto, for the
Portuguese and Spanish priests at this time went about wearing their
long strings of beads to which was attached the cross. In imitation,
O-Kuni, when performing, hung one about her own neck, more as a
decoration than a declaration of the Christian faith.
This novelty of the day interested Hideyasu, but he considered that it
was not good enough for her, and taking some coral ornaments from his
armour presented them to her. At parting, O-Kuni conveyed her thanks
in a poem which she composed on the spur of the moment. He was so much
impressed by her performance that it cast him into a melancholy mood,
and he made the comment to one of his retainers that among thousands of
women this one had won fame for herself as the greatest dancer, and yet
he had not been able to obtain any special distinction.
Hideyasu might well reflect upon O-Kuni’s reputation, for although he
distinguished himself for his valour and military genius, he was not
chosen from among his many brothers to succeed as the second Tokugawa
Shogun.
There is also an account relating how O-Kuni was appreciated at Court;
how an Imperial princess held an entertainment in 1601 to which the
actress was summoned to dance, and how the younger members of the court
imitated her.
In 1607 she went to Yedo, the seat of the shogunate, now Tokyo and the
capital of the Empire. She performed on a temporary stage that had
been used by Nō actors who had just held Kwanjin Nō, or performances
to raise funds for the repairing or building of temples and shrines.
In Yedo, these Nō performances were given under the patronage of the
Shogun, and were often not so much for religious purposes as to help
swell the incomes of the Nō actors. They were generally held within
the compound of the Shogun’s palace, the performances taking place
on a temporary stage erected for the occasion, to which, as a great
concession, thousands of the common people of Yedo were invited.
The leading actors of the Kwanze and Komparu Nō schools had just ended
their programme, and it was on this stage that O-Kuni appeared.
It is also related that she danced before Oda Nobunaga, one of the
foremost military leaders of the time, by whose death Hideyoshi was
able to rise to power. And it is said that both Hideyoshi and his chief
retainers patronised O-Kuni. There is a story that she was invited by
Hideyoshi’s faithful lieutenant, Kato Kiyomasa, to the southern island
of Japan, where he held sway as the daimyo of Kumamoto. But it seems
impossible to believe that O-Kuni should have been engaged to such an
extent, and more probable that some of the great ones recognised her
talent, and the story was applied to all the outstanding personalities
of her time. For, after all, while the great and noble of the land may
have appreciated her, it was to the people that O-Kuni particularly
addressed herself.
_Kabuki Koto Hajime_, or Beginnings of Kabuki, a book written by a
Kabuki playwright, Tamenaga Icho, and published in 1762, says that
O-Kuni was beautiful, that she was skilled in calligraphy—an important
female accomplishment—that she had a sympathetic nature, loved flowers
and the moon, and that a snowy evening or a maple scene in the autumn
inspired her to poetry. There is an account of O-Kuni written by an
author who must have attended her performances, and yet he does not
dilate upon her beauty, which must have been an oversight, for judging
from the general details known about her she certainly possessed some
superior power of attraction.
Both Sansaburo and O-Kuni died while the O-Kuni Kabuki was at its
height. The chroniclers do not tell how they parted company, or ended
their stage careers, but Sansaburo gave up acting and became a retainer
of the lord of Tsuyama, whose wife was his sister. He was killed by
the daimyo’s chief retainer during the building of Tsuyama Castle.
This man had been long in the service of the daimyo, but Sansaburo
aspired to outrival him on account of his relationship, and because
of his association with the illustrious Gamo Ujisato. The two had a
dispute and fought, and Sansaburo was killed. His friends retaliated by
immediately taking the life of the chief retainer, and his two brothers
were also punished by self-inflicted death at the command of the daimyo.
When O-Kuni grew old, and had outlived her career on the stage that she
had created with Sansaburo, she returned to her old home in Kitsuki,
near Izumo Shrine. Here she retired from the world, and lived in a
rustic cottage, spent her time in reciting the sutras, writing verse,
and died at a ripe old age. This account of O-Kuni’s last days appears
to be very reliable, as it is from _Izumo O-Kuni Den_, or Biography
of O-Kuni of Izumo, from records preserved among the Shrine archives.
The exact date of her death is not given in this record, and her last
resting-place is also unknown.
Seiseiin Ihara, who has made exhaustive researches concerning O-Kuni,
finds many conflicting statements in the old books, which were written
without much care for accuracy regarding names and dates. _Kabuki Koto
Hajime_, or Beginnings of Kabuki, says that Yoshiteru, one of the last
Ashikaga Shoguns, summoned her to dance in his presence several times
and praised her. But this is somewhat imaginary, since in such a case
she would have appeared in Kyoto many years previous to 1596, in which
year, most of the records agree, she began to practise the new art.
_Kabuki Koto Hajime_ also says that Sansaburo was in the service of the
Shogun Yoshiteru, as was O-Kuni, that they fell in love, were dismissed
and became ronin, which is one of the many improbable tales related of
the pair.
Another book says O-Kuni went to Sado Island, following the report
that gold had been discovered there. This is quite possible, but on
the strength of this story some writers state that she was a native
of Sado, which is certainly not true. Other writers are so mixed up
in their dates, that they make out there was a wide gulf in years
between O-Kuni and Sansaburo, and that it was impossible that he should
have married a woman so much his senior, while others declare that it
was O-Kuni’s daughter that Sansaburo married. In _Tokaido Meishoki_, or
Noted Places of the Tokaido (the great highway between Kyoto and Yedo),
O-Kuni is said to have married a Nō Kyogen actor, and there are other
misleading and confusing stories.
One of the most interesting of these is attributed to Lafcadio Hearn.
He objected to the account of O-Kuni in _Things Japanese_ by Basil Hall
Chamberlain, especially to that sentence where it is written that the
reputation of O-Kuni and her companions was far from spotless. Hearn’s
story is to the effect that O-Kuni was a priestess in the great temple
of Kitsuki, and she fell in love with a swashbuckler, Nagoya Sansaburo,
and fled to Kyoto with him. On the way her extraordinary beauty caused
another soldier of fortune to make love to her; Sansaburo killed him,
and the dead man’s face haunted the girl. She supported her lover by
giving dances on the bank of the Kamo River, and he became a famous
actor. When he died she returned to Kitsuki, becoming a nun, and built
a temple that she might pray for the soul of the man who had been
killed.
Hearn’s love of the ghostly carried him very far away from the
true facts, but nevertheless he felt the romance of the O-Kuni
legend strongly enough not to wish to tarnish her name, as the more
matter-of-fact Mr. Chamberlain does so lightly.
It was long after O-Kuni’s day, when the second and third O-Kuni were
carrying on her traditions, and this woman’s stage employed mixed
players, that the laxity of morals set in.