Red Geranium
This red geranium
is missing three
petal clusters:
two eyes
and a wide mouth.
A yellow jacket
stops in its center.
See the red
kabuki mask,
yellow nose
snuffling the wind.
Kataoka Nizaemon and Bando Hikosaburo as Yotsuya Samon and Naosuke from TokaidoYotsuya Kaidan -- Utagawa Kunisada/Toyokuni III
This red geranium
is missing three
petal clusters:
two eyes
and a wide mouth.
A yellow jacket
stops in its center.
See the red
kabuki mask,
yellow nose
snuffling the wind.
Kataoka Nizaemon and Bando Hikosaburo as Yotsuya Samon and Naosuke from TokaidoYotsuya Kaidan -- Utagawa Kunisada/Toyokuni III
Kabuki is a classical Japanese dance-drama known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. The kanji (characters) mean “sing” + “dance”+ “skill,” but the word probably derives from “kabuki” (to lean, to be out of the ordinary). It began in 1603 when Izumo no Okuni, a shrine maiden who performed various tasks such as sacred cleansing and performing the sacred Kagura (god-entertainment) dance, began performing a new style of musical drama in the dry riverbeds of Kyoto. She 1st gained attention for her sensual performances of the nembutsu dance in honor of the Amida Buddha, then recruited prostitutes and other female outcasts to form a dance troupe. (Another possible derivation of kabuki is from the bizarrely dressed swaggerers known as kabukimono ("to lean in a certain direction" + "people"). In 1629 women were banned from performing kabuki, due to their association with prostitution, and kabuki became an all-male art form, but this was also soon banned due to its continuing ties to prostitution. Both bans were rescinded by 1652, but the tradition was carried on by adult male performers rather than boys. One of the most popular kabuki shows was “Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan” (Ghost Story of Yotsuya in Tokaido) written in 1825 by Nanboku Tsuruya. The plot revolves around the ruthless mureders committed or commissioned by Iemon Tamiya and the vengeance taken by the spirits of his victims. Yotsuya Samon was Iemon’s father-in-law and one of his victims, and Naosuke was a murderous hawker of medicine. Eventually Naosuke killed himself and Iemon went mad before he was murdered in turn. Most prominent kabuki actors were adopted into acting lineages. Two of the famous 19th-century actors associated with the play were Kataoka Nizaemon VIII (he originally performed as Kataoka Gadō I; he had been the adopted son and student of Ichikawa Danjūrō VII before the relationship was dissolved and he was adopted by Kataoka Nizaemon VII) and Bandō Hikosaburō IV. Kabuki was also closely connected with a genre of woodblock prints and paintings known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world,” i.e. the hedonistic lifestyle of the emerging merchant class which also patronized kabuki). The most popular, prolific, and commercially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in the 19th-century was Utagawa Kunisada. The son of a ferry-boat operator (and a well-known poet), Sumida Shōgorō IX was orphaned at an early age and then apprenticed to Utagawa Toyokuni I, the leading woodblock artist of the time. Thus he was given the name Kunisada. For decades he was known as Gototei (a reference to the family ferryboat business) and Kochoro (a combination of the pseudonyms of master painter Hanabusa Itcho, and his successor Hanabusa Ikkei, with whom Kunisada had studied in the mid-1820s). But in 1844 he started calling himself "Kunisada becoming Toyokuni II” before finally settling on Toyokuni II (sometimes with his other studio names as prefixes). However, he is known as Toyokuni III; for some reason he in naming himself he ignored "Kunisada becoming Toyokuni I’s pupil/son-in-law, who had succeeded his mentor as head of the Utagawa school from 1825 until his death in 1835.
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