Izumo no Okuni

Japanese actress

• Born: 1571
• Birthplace: Izumo, Japan
• Died: 1658
• Place of death: Izumo, Japan

Izumo no Okuni is credited with the creation of a new dramatic form, combining song, dance, and other varieties of performance, called Okuni Kabuki. This art eventually developed into Japan’s internationally famous Kabuki theater.

Early Life

Very little is known concerning the early life of Izumo no Okuni (ee-zoom-oh noh oh-koon-ee), the woman normally credited with the creation of Kabuki. Those accounts of her younger days that remain combine traditions, folktales, and obvious inventions. At present, most scholars agree that it is nearly impossible to ascertain the facts of her upbringing with any certainty. Nevertheless, tradition holds that she was born in the town of Izumo in what is now Shimane prefecture. Izumo was centered on the Izumo Grand Shrine, one of the oldest and holiest sites of Japan’s native Shinto religious tradition. It is believed that Okuni was born to a family with connections to the shrine and that her father may have been a metalworker in the service of the priests there. It is also held that she was trained in song and dance in connection with the festivals of the Izumo Grand Shrine. There are reports that she was a miko or priestess of the shrine. What is more certain, however, is that she, along with a troop of other dancers connected to the shrine, adapted these religious dances, including those influenced by the Buddhist tradition, to meet popular tastes and traveled in order to appeal for alms.

Life’s Work

Surviving accounts indicate that Izumo no Okuni may have studied music and dance at the famous Kasuga Shrine, another important Shinto institution, in the city of Nara. It is also believed that she accompanied a troop of dancers who gave performances all over central Japan. Her travels certainly brought her to the imperial capital of Kyōto in the early seventeenth century. It was there that her fame was established.

Izumo no Okuni’s fame is mostly derived from a series of performances that she delivered in Kyōto, beginning in 1603. She performed at the Shinto Kitano Tenmangu shrine, as well as on the banks of the river Kamogawa, the main river running through the city of Kyōto, and achieved tremendous popularity. Her performances included skits, longer dramatic performances, song, dance, and musical accompaniment and are said to have employed some risqué material. The men of Kyōto greatly enjoyed her performances, and the fame of Izumo no Okuni spread beyond the boundaries of the city.

Originally, these performances were thought of as being a type of nembustsu odori, a form of popular Buddhist dance and performance. Their unique character was soon recognized, however, and it is held that Izumo no Okuni herself applied the name kabuki to her novel variety of performance. Scholars believe that the word was originally the noun form of the verb kabuku and referred to a form of physical transformation. It is believed that in her dances and dramatic sketches, Izumo no Okuni wore her hair short, danced in male clothing, and employed swords in the performance, and it is assumed that the name originated from this enacted gender transformation. In any case, the performances that Izumo no Okuni gave in Kyōto in 1603 are considered to be the beginning of what is now known as Okuni Kabuki, and of the Kabuki tradition in general.

In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu , a powerful general, received the title of shogun from the imperial court in Kyōto. Ieyasu’s stronghold at Edo, in eastern Japan, became the new power base in the country, and a period of political disorder and bloodshed that had lasted since the beginning of the Ōnin War in 1467 was brought to an end. While Tokugawa endeavoured to strengthen the rule of law, the climate of uncertainty, transience, and chaos of the previous era continued to exercise a strong hold on the imagination of the townsfolk of cities such as Kyōto. These urban areas were also becoming increasingly prosperous, and the desire for entertainment asserted itself more forcefully in people’s lives. It is because of this popular climate that Izumo no Okuni’s performances, characterized by an irreverent disregard for authority and taboos, garnered such popular attention in the early seventeenth century.

Although her explosive popularity in Kyōto in the early 1600’s is well documented, far less is known about Izumo no Okuni’s successive career. As the Tokugawa political order began to consolidate itself, the authorities took an unfavorable view of the new phenomenon. Edicts concerning frugality and morality were issued. Sexual morality was a particular concern of the new government, and along with efforts to control prostitution came a move to control the theater as well. In 1629, actresses, considered a threat to the public morality, were banned from the stage. The fear was that the actresses’ profession had become related to prostitution and that racy material on the stage was stirring up troubles away from the theater. The Kabuki theater survived but was fundamentally changed as female parts were taken over by men—the onnagata. It is assumed that this brought an end to the careers of Izumo no Okuni and women like her, but tradition has it that Izumo no Okuni enjoyed a long life and died at the age of eighty-seven, very old by the standards of the time. It is thought that she was buried in a small graveyard near the Izumo Grand Shrine.

Significance

Most modern scholars refuse to speculate as to how great an influence Izumo no Okuni’s brand of early seventeenth century Kabuki had on the later Kabuki tradition. Relatively little is known about the methods of Izumo no Okuni’s brand of performance, and the content of the dramatic material that she presented is also unclear compared to the canon of plays written after women were banned from Kabuki performances in 1629. What is clear, however, is that Okuni Kabuki helped to establish the musical drama as the preeminent form of entertainment for Japan’s townsmen classes, a trend that lasted until the late nineteenth century.

It is also clear that, although the subject matter may have changed, the colorful costuming and radical dance that have proven to be Kabuki’s most recognizable trademarks originated with Okuni Kabuki. Kabuki remains an important traditional art to this day, and its troupes, which remain all male, continue to pay tribute to Izumo no Okuni, the Kabuki theater’s female founder. In Japan, her life has been the subject of a number of works of fiction. Kabuki has been praised by international dramatists as one of the most complete and innovative theatrical traditions, and Izumo no Okuni is widely acknowledged as an important innovator by critics the world over.

Bibliography

Ariyoshi, Sawako. The Kabuki Dancer. New York: Kodansha International, 1994. Although it is a fictional account of Izumo no Okuni’s life, it is a major work of one of Japan’s most prominent female authors and offers insight into Izumo no Okuni’s continued influence.

Brandon, James R. Studies in Kabuki: Its Acting, Music, and Historical Context. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1978. An important book concerning the historical development of Kabuki.

De Ferranti, Hugh. Japanese Muscial Instruments. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A detailed study of the Japanese musical tradition of which Kabuki is a part. Gives insight into the religious and secular musical traditions that went into Izumo no Okuni’s style of performance.

Leiter, Samuel L. New Kabuki Encyclopedia. New York: Greenwood, 1997. This has become the standard reference work on Kabuki in English, and all aspects of Izumo no Okuni’s life and the early Kabuki tradition are covered in detail.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. A Kabuki Reader: History and Performance. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. A fascinating collection of works of importance to the history of Kabuki. Contains references to Izumo no Okuni and the development of the Kabuki tradition.