The Kabukiza Theater in Tokyo has been celebrating the advent of spring this month with attractive afternoon and evening programs, featuring Danjuro Ichikawa, Koshiro Matsumoto and Kikugoro Onoe in title roles, and leading senior actors such as Uzaemon Ichimura, Tomijuro Nakamura and onnagata veteran Jakuemon Nakamura.
The afternoon program begins with the seasonable dance number "Okuni and Sanza," in which onnagata actor Tokizo Nakamura performs as Okuni, the woman who started kabuki odori (kabuki dance) four centuries ago. Set in the grounds of the Kitano Shrine in Kyoto in the spring of 1603, the year the Tokugawa shogunate was established, Okuni's performance was called kabuki odori because she appeared as a dashing young samurai dressed in exotic kabuki fashion.
In this work, created by Shigure Hasegawa and Kanjuro Fujima, Okuni, in an elegant trailing black kimono with a design of cherry blossoms, dances to nagauta music with the ghost of Nagoya Sanza, a handsome young samurai who was killed around the time Okuni first presented kabuki odori in Kyoto. Sanza is played by Koshiro's son Somegoro.