Leiter S.L. Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre

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MIYOSHI SHO

RAKU (1696–1772?) • 241

of Miyako (Kyoto) Dennai’s descendants who called his venue the

Miyako-za. In 1817, when another hikae yagura, the Kiri-za, operat-

inginlieuoftheIchimura-za, ran into trouble, the Miyako-za

assumed its production rights.

Kyoto’s Miyako Mandayu

-za (see MINAMI-ZA) was sometimes

also called the Miyako-za.

MIYAMASU. A no

playwright about whom little is known, and many

of whose plays are genzai mono that often deal quite dramatically

with the revenge of the Soga brothers (see SOGA MONO) or the con-

ﬂict between the Genji (Minamoto) and Heike (Taira) clans. His plays

give increased impor tance to the waki an d tsure roles, su gges ting

that he may have been a waki himself. Kokata also play a signiﬁcant

role in his plays, and the aikyo

gen scenes are inherently dramatic. He

wrote colorful stage dialogue appropriate to his military themes, and

also included large casts, sometimes requiring as many as 15 actors.

His plays were quite popular and may have had a strong inﬂuence on

kabuki, which improved on their dramatic qualities. Among his 30

works are Himuro, Kurama Tengu, Youchi Soga, and Eboshi-Ori.

MIYATO-ZA. One of Tokyo’s best-known koshibai of the Meiji

through early Sho

wa periods. It was called the Azuma-za when it

opened near Asakusa Park in 1887. It changed to the Miyato-za in

1896, and was the home base for a number of ﬁne actors. Destroyed

in 1923’s Great Kanto

Ear thquake, it was rebuilt in 1928 but it

became a venue for movies and light entertainment in 1937.

MIYOSHI SHO

RAKU (1696–1772?). Bunraku playwright. Various

traditions say he was a priest, teahouse proprietor, or physician

before becoming a dramatist. He began writing as a collaborative

dramatist (gassaku) in 1736 at the Takemoto-za and, working with

the top dramatists of the day over a 30-year period, participated in the

writing of 50 to 60 plays, many of them masterpieces. These include,

among other classics, Hiragana Seisuiki, Genpei Nunobiki Taki,

Honcho

Niju

shiko

, O

mi Genji Senjin Yakata, and the three greatest

jidai

mono

—cowritten with Takeda Izumo II and Namiki Senryu

(later Namiki So

suke)—Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami, Kanade-

hon Chu

shingura, and Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura. Despite his work

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242 • MIZUGOROMO

on them, he is considered to have been more a supportive element

than talented in his own right.

MIZUGOROMO. A wide-sleeved over-garment worn as a travel cloak,

and seen in no

and kabuki on such characters as priests, ﬁshermen,

and woodcutters. This ‘‘water robe’’—solid-colored or striped, black

or brown, and made of a dense or gauze weave—is worn by both men

and women. In the no

play Takasago, the shite’s sleeves are tucked

up a bit at the shoulders to free the arms for carrying ﬁrewood, and

then the ko

ken cuts the stitches holding up the sleeves so they may

fall to the actor’s wrists. Benkei in kabuki’s Funa Benkei wears it.

See also COSTUMES: KABUKI; COSTUMES: NO

MIZUHIKI. Also mizuhiki maku, the long, narrow, horizontal border

cloth hung above the downstage area of the kabuki stage. It masks

the scenic contrivances behind it. See also ICHIMONJI; MAKU.

MIZUIRI. When a kabuki character is ‘‘immersed in water,’’ an exam-

ple of hon mizu, as when Sukeroku in Sukeroku Yukari no Edo

Zakura hides in a barrel of rainwater.

Mizuiri is also the name of a kabuki wig whose disheveled locks

and lacquered sheen make it look water-soaked. It is worn by So

shichi in Hakata Kojoro

Nami Makura.

MIZUKI TATSUNOSUKE. Three generations of kabuki actors. Yago

Yamatoya. Tatsunosuke I (1673–1745), the only one in the line of

note, was an Osaka-born onnagata specializing in dance. He debuted

in 1681 and came to fame a decade later. He toured to Edo in 1695,

and gained very high ratings in the annual yakusha hyo

banki cri-

tique. Back in Kamigata in 1697, he gained fame for a performance

in which he played seven quick-change roles (hayagawari). A popu-

lar hat was named after him.

MOCHITSUKI SHIBAI. Kabuki’s Edo-period seasonal custom of

‘‘rice pounding theatre’’ (an allusion to making end-of-the-year rice

cakes),

which

allowed shibai jaya and front-of-the-house personnel

to offer low-priced performances by secondar y actors during the

interval between the end of the kaomise production (10th day of the

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MODERN NO

AND KYO

GEN PLAYS • 243

12th month) and the start of the hatsuharu kyo

gen offering. With

the gradual demise of kaomise in the 19th century, mochitsuki shibai

became a vital source of income. See also KO

GYO

MODERN NO

AND KYO

GEN PLAYS. The classical no

and kyo

gen

reper tories consist of plays written by the time of the early Edo

period, although plays continued to be written afterwards. The prac-

tice continued in the Meiji period and into the 20th century. Many

are based on the materials and methods of classical no

, others use

traditional materials but treat them with a modern touch, while others

take their themes and materials from modern subjects and/or foreign

sources. Some modern no

plays use methods derived from other per-

forming arts. Literary artists often write a script that is then adapted

by the actors, who add to it music, dance, and movement. A robust

number of foreign-language (especially English) no

plays also have

been written, on subjects as diverse as St. Francis of Assisi, Martin

Luther King, and the Japanese naval dead of World War II.

During the ﬁrst third of the 20th century, Takahama Kiyoko wrote

such no

plays as Sanetomo and Oku no Hosomichi, which were per-

formed by the Konparu school actor Sakurama Kyu

sen. Toki Zenma-

ro collaborated with actor Kita Minoru to create Shito Paoru.

The postwar period saw new styles of playwriting and production

introduced by Kinoshita Junji and Takamura Ko

taro

with works like

zuru and Chieko Sho

in stagings by Takechi Tetsuji (see TAKECHI

KABUKI), and performed by no

actor Kanze Hisao. Yokomichi

Mario wrote the much-performed and revised Taka no Izumi, adapted

from W.B. Yeats’s no

-inﬂuenced At the Hawk’s Well, acted ﬁrst by

Kanze Hisao and then by many other no

actors.

Tsumura

Kimiko,

the ﬁrst professional no

actress (see WOMEN

IN NO

), also wrote 10 modern no

plays, such as Kaguya-hime,

nan, about the founder of Nichiren Buddhism, and Fumigara

Komachi, about legendary poetess Ono no Komachi.

More recent works include singer Baba Akiko’s Akiko Midare-

gami and Nukada no O

kimi. Recently, there have been Ku

kai and

saka-jo

, large-scale works created by no

actor Umewaka Minoru

and others, based on Japanese historical ﬁgures and using contempo-

rary techniques. One of the most controversial works, Mumyo

no I,

is about brain death and a heart transplant. Of great interest are a

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244 • MODORI

number of no

adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, including Othello,

Macbeth, and Hamlet.

There has been similar activity in writing and producing modern

kyo

gen, which, because the technical requirements are lighter, is

somewhat easier to accomplish than creating modern no

. The earliest

attempts date from the early 20th century but the ﬁrst notable work

arrived in 1953 when Iizawa Tadasu wrote Susugigawa (The Washing

River), based on a medieval French farce, a later revised version of

which was directed by Takechi Tetsuji with Shigeyama Sengoro

the cast. This Kyoto actor’s family has remained in the forefront of

new kyo

gen presentations.

Such new plays are based on various sources. Jyajya Uma Nara-

shi, by kyo

gen actor Izumi Motohide, was inﬂuenced by Shake-

speare, as was Hora Zamurai (The Braggart Warrior), inspired by

Falstaff, while plays like Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, and

The Taming of the Shrew have been transposed into kyo

gen style. A

folk tale inspired top modern drama (shingeki) playwright Kinoshita

Junji to write Hikoichi Banashi (Tale of Hikoichi). There have even

been sci-ﬁ kyo

gen, like Komatsu Sakyo

’s Kitsune to Uchu

jin (The

Fox and the Alien), while the stor ytelling ar t of rakugo provided

ashi Masami’s Shinigami (The Death-God) and Furoshiki (The

Cloth Carr y-all). Another well-known modern kyo

gen is Do

moto

Masaki’s Ro

nin Sakazuki (The Masterless Samurai and the Wine

Cup). Recently, there have been works by Umehara Takeshi dubbed

‘‘super’’ kyo

gen in which contemporary social and political issues

like cloning and nuclear war are lampooned.

MODORI. Scenes of ‘‘retu rn’’ or ‘‘ reversal,’’ in whi ch bu

aku and

kabuki characters previously thought to be villains are mortally

wounded and disclose that they actually are goodhearted persons

whose wicked behavior had decent but secret causes. Thus, by being

evil they have sought positive effects. Often, they purposely provoke

one of the good characters to attack them, which leads to the revela-

tion of their motives.

An outstanding example occurs in ‘‘Sushiya’’ (Yoshitsune Senbon

Zakura) when Gonta hands over to those seeking them what are

assumed to be the head of Lord Koremori and the latter’s bound and

gagged wife and child; he actually has substituted someone else’s

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MON • 245

head and his own wife and child. On the verge of death, he delivers

his modori speech. Most modori characters are male, but in ‘‘Gappo

Anjitsu’’ (Sesshu

Gappo

ga Tsuji), Tamate Gozen, in order to save

her son Shuntokumaru from a family conﬂict, behaves as though she

were potentially incestuous until, stabbed by her own father, she

reveals the truth, which includes having Shuntokumaru drink her life

blood to cure him of his ailment, after which she dies.

MOJIBARI. Translucent ﬂats and sliding doors used in kabuki and con-

structed of ‘‘thin linen’’ so that by shining light on them objects or

persons behind them become dimly visible. It suggests ghosts and

strange transformations, as when the cherry tree trunk in Seki no To

becomes weirdly translucent. Another version of mojibari is a scrim

covering the stage width; properly lit, it creates sunsets, mists, and

the feeling of evening. See also SCENERY.

MOKKIN. A bamboo, xylophone-like percussion instrument played in

the bunraku and kabuki geza. See also NARI MONO.

MOKUGYO

. A wooden percussion instrument played in the bunraku

and kabuki geza. See also NARI MONO.

MOMOHIKI. Navy-blue, tights-like pants worn as a man’s undergar-

ment in kabuki. They are bound at the front and their rear portion

consists of two buttock ﬂaps. They form a part of certain yoten cos-

tumes and clothes worn by ﬁremen, carpenters, and various other

workaday men.

MON. The traditional ‘‘crests’’ associated with Japanese families and

institutions. They are seen in all forms of traditional Japanese theatre

but play a particularly vital role in kabuki, where they ﬁgure not only

on the costumes of the many characters, or even on scenery and

properties, but where each actor’s crest is immediately recognizable

as a symbol of him or his family, which aids both in the advertising

of productions and offers an interesting touch when the actors’ crests

are used for the characters they play, rather than those of the charac-

ter itself.

Each actor has a ﬁxed crest (tei mon), main crest (omote mon), or

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246 • MONDO

regular crest (jo

mon) and—for informal use—a substitute or alter-

nate crest (kae mon). The most familiar mon in kabuki is the mimasu,

three nested square boxes representing three measures of rice, associ-

ated with the Ichikawa Danju

line.

MONDO

. The ‘‘dialogue’’ of no

plays, heard in conversational passages

between the shite and someone else, often in scenes where the shite

reveals his or her true identity. Among the most famous are those in

Sotoba Komachi and Yamanba.

MONOGATARI. In a general sense, the ‘‘story’’ or ‘‘narrative’’ of a

bunraku play. More speci ﬁcally, monogatari is the dra maturg ical

device whereby the male hero in a bunraku or kabuki jidai mono

delivers an important speech describing background events impor-

tant to the understanding of the plot. The actor demonstrates his rhe-

torical skills in time to the playing of a shamisen accompaniment,

with a good number of mie and dance-like gestures augmented with

a folding fan. A famous example is given by Kumagai in ‘‘Kumagai

Jinya’’ (Ichinotani Futaba Gunki), when he describes to Fuji no

Kata, mother of the young Heike clan warrior Atsumori, how he

killed her son. See also KUDOKI; LANGUAGE; SERIFU.

MONOGURUI MONO. ‘‘Madness plays,’’ also called kyo

ran mono,a

subdivision of the yobanme mono (‘‘fourth-group plays’’) no

cate-

gory, featuring characters with unbalanced mental faculties. Those

about women are Fuji Daiko (3), Hana Gatami (3), Hanjo (3), Hiba-

riyama (3), Hyakuman (3), Kamo Monogurui (3), Kashiwazaki (3),

Daiko (3), Sakuragawa (3), Semimaru (3), Sotoba

Komachi (3),

Sumidagawa (3),

and Ume ga E (3). Those about men are Ashikari

(2), Ko

ya Monogurui (2, 5), Tokusa (2), Tsuchiguruma (2), Uta-ura

(2), and Yoroboshi (2). Numbers in parentheses indicate other no

groupings into which these plays are sometimes placed. See also

GENZAI MONO; JUN WAKI NO

MONO; NESSHIN-YU

REI MONO;

NINJO

MONO; YU

KYO

-YU

GAKU MONO.

MONOMANE. ‘‘Imitation’’ or ‘‘mimicry,’’ rendered as ‘‘Role Playing’’

by J. Thomas Rimer and Masakazu Yamazaki (1984) to avoid too

close an association with ‘‘mimesis.’’ It is used mainly in no

acting

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MONOMANE • 247

to refer to the appropriate movements and feelings with which a role

should be played, and is meant to suggest the spirit of the role or the

symbolic presentation of actions more than the realistic replication

of speciﬁc behavior. Although no

has elements of representational

acting, it depends on highly aestheticized techniques by which real-

ism is so greatly modiﬁed that some movements have become little

more than beautiful abstractions. The tendency toward the latter

became especially strong in the time of Zeami, who felt plays should

be dominated by the aesthetic of yu

gen. Even the roles of horriﬁc

demons should, in no

aesthetics, be imbued with a degree of yu

gen.

nter Zobel and Goto

Hajime state: ‘‘The depiction of life had to

be sublimated to the level of exemplary fundamental traits and then

reproduced as molded symbols’’ (in Leiter 1997, 47).

Still, in the Kadensho, Zeami’s earliest secret writing (hiden), he

calls on the actor to play high-class characters after closely observ-

ing their behavior, and to modify the realistic elements only when

playing lower-class persons. He also says that the actor in a maskless

role (hitamen) should never try to make his facial expressions resem-

ble those of some actual person, but should ‘‘use his own natural

facial expressions.’’ Since maskless acting came to require that the

actor keep his face as immobile as a mask, this and Zeami’s other

comments on monomane suggests that—despite his emphasis on

gen—actors at the time were much more realistically expressive

than they are now. The master actor must combine monomane with

gen.

A small number of plays, especially those in the genzai mono cat-

egory, emphasize monomane more than yu

gen. Monomane may also

be considered the opposite of mai although dance may have elements

of the former in it. Kyo

gen acting, however, despite its formalization,

may be said to be monomane-based, but Zeami also credited kyo

gen

with the ability to express yu

gen so long as it avoided crudeness.

Finally, monomane cannot be understood apart from its relation to

the two basic arts of song and dance (nikyoku), and santai, the three

essential role types whose mastery allows the actor to play any other

role, always with regard to their vocal and movement needs.

Naturally, monomane is important beyond no

and kyo

gen;i

kabuki

, it represents the foundation of realistic physical and vocal

behavior. Kabuki emerged from dance, so when it began to develop

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248 • MONOMANE KYO

GEN ZUKUSHI

non-dance, ‘‘imitative’’ acting, monomane was applied to it. See also

MONOMANE KYO

GEN ZUKUSHI.

MONOMANE KYO

GEN ZUKUSHI. In 1652, kabuki, forced by gov-

ernment decree to abandon the sensual dance foundation of wakashu

kabuki in favor of the more dramatically based yaro

kabuki

approach, publicly referred to itself as kyo

gen zukushi to suggest that

its new works were in accord with the principles of no

and kyo

gen.

(In 1687, the term was lengthened to monomane kyo

gen zukushi.)

The government preferred that kabuki use the new name rather than

kabuki. Actors from the older forms actually helped kabuki make the

transition to greater realism.

MONO-URI MONO. A group of kabuki shosagoto centering on Edo-

period ‘‘street vendors.’’ Such characters had been seen in more real-

istic plays from early on, but dances featuring them arrived in the

mid-18th centur y, and became important elements in the henge

mono of the early 19th centur y. Characters who appeared as fern

sellers (shinobu-uri), wine sellers (shirozake-uri), or medicine (uiro

uri) might actually be important persons in disguise (yatsushi). Thus,

the medicine peddler in Uiro

-uri is actually Soga Goro

of the famous

Goro

brothers (see MITATE). The goods sold in mono-uri mono

cover a wide assortment, such as fans, ﬁrecrackers, earthenware,

china, insects, water, dumplings, edibles, ﬂowers, etc. See also

BUYO

MONSHITA. The leading artist in a bunraku company. The term usu-

ally is used in reference to the principal chanter, but on rare occa-

sions has been e xtended to the leading puppeteer or shamisen

player.

The artist receives this title of ‘‘under the crest’’ because his

name

was listed in thick letters beneath the company’s mon in the

banzuke. An alternate term is yagurashita, which derives from the

days when the name was printed on kanban outside the theatres

beneath the yagura that symbolized their right to produce. The mon-

shita convention ended in 1959 with the retirement of Toyotake

Yamashiro no Sho

MONTSUKI. Acrest(mon)-adorned kimono worn beneath formal

kamishimo by males in kabuki and bunraku.Theyarealsooften

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MORITA-ZA • 249

worn by puppeteers, no

musicians and choruses (jiutai), and other

onstage personnel. The more formal version has crests on the back

center, each sleeve, and each breast, while the informal one has three

crests. Montsuki are still worn on formal occasions in daily life. See

also COSTUMES: BUNRAKU;COSTUMES:KABUKI;COS-

TUMES: NO

MORITA KANYA. Fourteen generations of kabuki actors and produc-

ers (see ZAMOTO). Yago

Kinojiya (Kanya VI–XIV). Kanya I (?–

1679) founded the line of producers who ran the Morita-za from

1661.

Kanya XII (1846–97), the major ﬁgure in the line, was adopted by

the Morita family in 1863, and became Kanya XII in 1864. He was a

progressive force who sought to thrust kabuki into the modern world,

such as by moving the Morita-za in 1872 from Tokyo’s outskirts to

the central city, in Tsukiji’s Shintomi-cho

. Changed to the Shintomi-

za in 1875, this theatre was the pioneer in introducing Western ideas

of theatre architecture and production, including the katsureki mono

and zangiri mono genres. Kanya also helped arrange for kabuki to be

seen by the imperial family (see TENRAN GEKI). As a playwriting

disciple of Kawatake Mokuami, he called himself Furukawa Shin-

sui. His policies often led to ﬁnancial problems, and he died in debt.

Kanya XIII (1885 –1932), son of Kanya XII, took his name in

1901. The ﬁrst non-manager in the line, he played nimaime roles

such as Izaemon in Kuruwa Bunsho

, and, from 1915, took an active

part in the Bungei-za troupe.

Kanya XIV (1907–75), nephew of Kanya XIII, who adopted him,

took the name in 1935. A specialist in romantic roles (nimaime), he

was the adoptive father of Bando

Tamasaburo

MORITA-ZA. One of the edo sanza, this theatre was founded in Kob-

iki-cho

in 1660 by Morita Taro

bei and run for 12 generations from

1661 by the Morita Kanya line. Financial difﬁculties beginning

around 1725 led to the closing of the theatre from 1734 to 1744,

when its license was assumed by the hikae yagura theatre, the Kaw-

arasaki-za, a relati onsh ip mainta ined duri ng 17 89–98, 1800–0 8,

1815

–17,

1819–22, 1823–33, and 1837–56. In 1843, the Edo sanza

were moved by the Tenpo

reforms to Saruwaka-cho

on the city’s

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250 • MUGEN NO

outskirts. Because this happened during a period of Morita-za inac-

tivity, its ﬁrst actual production there was in 1856.

Early in the Meiji period, Morita Kanya XII decided to move the

theatre back into the heart of Tokyo, and the other theatres followed

not long after. He opened his up-to-date new playhouse in the Shin-

tomi-cho

section of the Tsukiji district in October 1872, and sought

to use it to move kabuki into the new age of Western ideas. Money

issues caused him to make the theatre a joint-stock corporation in

1875. He renamed it the Shintomi-za, but it burned down in 1876. It

was reopened in April 1878 and became the most impor tant and

advanced theatre of its day, leading to what was dubbed the ‘‘Shin-

tomi-za age.’’ Economic difﬁculties, however, required his leaving

the management in 1894. Sho

chiku acquired the theatre in 1909, and

it was lost forever in the Great Kanto

Earthquake of 1923.

MUGEN NO

. Sometimes translated as ‘‘phantasmal’’ or ‘‘dream’’ no

plays in which the shite appears in the second act (nochiba)asa

ghost or spirit. To many, these works epitomize the essential nature

of no

as an otherworldly drama. Typically, the shite appears to a trav-

eling monk (a living person) in the ﬁrst act (maeba), discusses some

local legend, and then vanishes, only to reappear in the nochiba in

his or her true guise as the subject of the legend previously discussed.

In a sense, all no

plays can be divided into two groups, mugen no

and

genzai mono, in which all the characters are living persons. See also

DRAMATIC STRUCTURE: NO

MUKIMI GUMA. A kabuki kumadori-style makeup invented by Ichi-

kawa Danju

II. A soft black line is drawn from the eye’s inside

corner and swept upwards at the outside corner to the outside tip of

the eyebrow. Its shape supposedly resembles t hat of a ‘‘shucked

trough shell’’ (bakagai no mukimi), giving it its name. It is worn by

bold, young men like Sukeroku in Sukeroku Yukari no Edo Zakura.

MUKUWARENU KOI. ‘‘Unrequited love,’’ a bunraku and kabuki

theme whereby a young woman must confront a love rival for the

affections of a man she wishes to marry, but can do nothing to gain

his favor. In ‘‘Nozaki Mura’’ (Shinpan Utazaimon), for example, the

country girl Omitsu is in love with Hisamatsu, but he is in love with

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