“I entered the world of bunraku by accident, without knowing anything about it,” says shamisen player Tsuruzawa Enjiro, who has just received the prestigious stage name Tsuruzawa Enza (VI) previously held by his master. In 1977, at age 18, Enza VI — then known ...

In 1962, in order reverse a general decline in kabuki in Osaka, Kataoka Nizaemon XIII mobilized his three sons and a number of friends to independently stage their own performance. Osaka’s kabuki world, after thriving during the first few decades of the 20th century, ...

In 1953, kabuki actor Nakamura Ganjiro III (then known as Nakamura Senjaku) scored his first major success on a Tokyo stage with his unorthodox perfomance in “Sonezaki Shinju (Double Suicide at Sonezaki),” a 1703 work by the celebrated playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The director, Nobuo ...

After working for the Tokyo National Theater for almost 35 years, Koji Orita became director of its Department of Performing Arts in 2003. During his time at the NT, Orita has mastered the direction of kabuki, a task formerly assigned to zagashira, the lead ...

Last October, 27-year-old kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke called theater director Yukio Ninagawa, who was working in London at the time, to see if he would create a unique kabuki piece for Kikunosuke’s debut production for the Kabuki-za. Together they decided to ask playwright Toyoshige ...

The Bunraku version of “Sendaihagi,” currently running at the National Theater, Tokyo, begins when Yoshitsuna, Lord of Sendai, retires from his position and hands his post to his young son Tsurukiyo. He abdicates because he has been plotted against by his uncle Nishikido Gyobu ...

The Kabukiza in Ginza is presenting special kabuki programs in March, April and May to celebrate the shumei (succession to a stage name) of Nakamura Kanzaburo XVIII. Kanzaburo, 50, has mastered both tachiyaku (male lead) and onnagata (female) roles. He is showing off his ...

Kabuki is flourishing in Tokyo at the beginning of the year of the cock as the four of the city’s major theaters vie with one another to present the best kabuki performances. At the Tokyo National Theater in Hanzomon, there is a three-hour production ...

The Tokyo National Theater is currently showing a three-hour bunraku performance drawn from the play “Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami” (literally translated as: “Sugawara Certifies a Disowned Disciple to Perpetuate His Line of Calligraphy”), written by Takeda Izumo and collaborators in 1746. “Sugawara Denju Tenarai ...

The Kabukiza is currently presenting two plays from its October program as tsuizen (memorial) performances for Matsumoto Koshiro VIII, who died in 1982. Koshiro VIII, also known by the stage name of Matsumoto Hakuo, considered these plays very important to the repertoire he performed, ...

Audiences at the Tokyo National Theater are being treated to two full-length Bunraku masterpieces being staged in its smaller auditorium this month. The first play, at 11 a.m., is “Futatsu Chocho Kuruwa Nikki (Chogoro and Chokichi and Their Diary of the Pleasure Quarters).” A ...