TBS's Dec. 4 edition of "Newscaster" aired a long report on the run-in that kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizo had with a man at a Tokyo bar in the wee hours of Nov. 25, a dustup that resulted in Ebizo's hospitalization with a fractured cheekbone and broken teeth. Elaborating on the principle of "it takes one to know one," the show's announcer, Shinichiro Azumi, asked his co-host, comedian Beat Takeshi, for a personal take on the incident. In 1994, Takeshi was involved in a scooter accident that does not resemble the Ebizo incident in the slightest except that he also was drunk and did serious injury to his face.
Takeshi wriggled out of offering an opinion by quoting someone else's: Tomio Umemiya, a stage actor who performs a kabuki-like entertainment called taishu engeki (theater for the masses). Umemiya griped that Ebizo would eventually return to his hallowed position because he is the heir to the Ichikawa dynasty. "If I had done something like that," Takeshi quoted Umemiya as saying, "I'd be finished in show business."
Considering that Umemiya has over the last decade successfully changed from a stage performer to a wisecracking TV personality, there isn't enough of a similarity between the two men's careers to make the analogy meaningful, but the sour grapes oozing from the comment say enough; and because Takeshi related this sentiment it would seem he shares it. Both men built their careers from nothing, and they may resent the dispensation that allows Ebizo and his kabuki ilk, who are born to the life, to get away with such public mischief.