The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 4: Early Modern Japan

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THE SOCIETY OF PROSTITUTES 745

One of the first descriptions of the Kyoto courtesans appears in the

kana zoshi entitled

Tsuyudono monogatari

(c. 1625). When Tsuyu ar-

rives in Kyoto, his innkeeper shows him a scroll containing descrip-

tions of thirty-two of the leading women of the Misuji-machi quarter.

This passage may be the earliest example of this genre, critiques com-

paring the talents and personalities of beauties of the quarter.

The first guide to the pleasure quarter and its inmates, known as

yujo

hydbanki,

is the illustrated Azuma

monogatari

of 1642 concerning

the old Yoshiwara quarter. It describes the higher ranking among the

75 women of tayii rank, 31 koshi, and 881

hashijoro.*

Guidebooks

produced during the next years, such as the

Togenshu

(1655) on the

Shimabara quarter, went into even greater detail in describing the

houses and women. Because of the wide range of prices charged for

women of different rank, not to mention differences among them in

artistic accomplishments and in traits of personality and beauty, infor-

mation about them could be of practical as well as vicarious interest.

Sketch maps showing the location of each house in the quarter, and a

price by the woman's name, were often included. Over two hundred

books of information on the quarters had been published by 1700.

The

Keisei iro shamisen

(1701) lists the names of the prostitutes of

the major official licensed quarters in eleven cities, reporting their

rank, fee, and house. For the three cities, the totals by rank are shown

in Table

14.1.

Guidebooks and critiques gave attention mostly to prostitutes of the

two or three highest ranks and to the best houses. It was the quarter at

its most elegant and glamorous that became the material of literature

and kabuki and puppet plays. This picture bore little relationship to

the sordid work of prostitution to which the great majority of the

inmates were subjected. But the idealized image in popular culture

presents the

tayii

as a cultivated lady living in luxury.

In addition to beauty and cultural achievements, a

tayii

was said to

have qualities of character - spirit (iki) and pride

(hart)

- that she

demonstrated in her independence, refusing suitors she did not like.

Some early tayii were held up as models of womanhood in books for

80 Jimbo et al., eds., Kana zoshi

shu,

pp. 95-104. Colored paintings from a handscroll depicting

Tsuyu's adventures are reproduced in Kinsei fuzoku zukan (Tokyo: Mainichi shimbunsha,

1973-4). vol. 2, pp. 21-36.

81 Gunji, Kabuki to Yoshiwara, p. 99; Azuma

monogatari,

in Asakura Haruhiko, ed., Kana zoshi

shusei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Tokyodo, 1980), p. 361.

82 The

ukiyo

zoshi by Ejima Kiseki (1666-1735) is included in Hakubunkan henshu kyoku, ed.,

Chimpon zenshu, pt. 1, vol. 31 of

Teikoku

bunko (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1927), pp. 174-80,

211-24,248-65; Gunji, Kabuki to Yoshiwara, p. 135; Howard Hibbett,

The

Floating

World

Japanese

Fiction

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 52-3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

746 POPULAR CULTURE

TABLE 14.1

Number and rank of prostitutes in Kyoto, Osaka,

and Edo, c. 1700

Shimabara (Kyoto) Shimmachi (Osaka) Yoshiwara (Edo)

Tayu, 13 Tayii, 37 Tayu, 5

Tenjin, 57

Tenjin,

91 'Koshi, 99

Kakoi, 54 Kakoi, 53 Sancha, 493

Hashijoro, 184 Hashijoro, 424 Umecha, 280

Gobun

joro,

over 150 Gosun

tsubone,

426

Sanzun

tsubone,

Other

tsubone,

over 400

Total: 308 Total: over 760 Total: over 1,750

the education of

girls

because of their constancy, dignity, and generos-

ity toward the less fortunate. The tayii's proprietor had her educated

and trained in deportment to qualify her as a suitable companion for

men of rank and wealth. The most thorough treatise on the quarter,

Fujimoto Kizan's Shikido okagami (The great mirror of sex, 1678)

holds up a standard of ladylike behavior for the

tayu,

admonishing that

she should never laugh out loud or open her mouth without covering it

with her sleeve. Like a great lady she should refrain from mentioning

the names of foods. She was also to be able to compose poetry. The

author adds:

It is unfortunate for anyone not to be able to write, but for a courtesan it is a

disaster. ... As long as a courtesan writes well, it does not matter if she is

incompetent at the samisen, but even for a samisen virtuoso it would be

unfortunate if people said she wrote a bad hand or that her grammar was

shaky.

A tayu was given an elegant name that evoked figures from classical

literature, like Yugiri of the

Tale

Genji,

or places of scenic beauty,

such as Yoshino and Takao. To enhance her image, she was addressed

by her maids in the language of formal deference accorded a daimyo's

consort by her ladies-in-waiting. She was treated as a celebrity in the

small world of the quarter. The

tayu

was cultivated as an increasingly

exclusive product that few could afford. The title was reserved for

only a few women in Kyoto and Osaka, and although there had been

83 Quoted by Donald Keene, "Fujimoto Kizan and the Great Mirror of Love," in his

Land-

scapes and Portraits: Appreciations of Japanese Culture (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1971), p. 246, also

245. Only fascicle 5 out of sixteen (or eighteen) of Kizan's large manuscript was published

in the Edo period. The complete work was printed by Noma Koshin,

(JCampon)

Shikido

okagami (Kyoto: Yuzan bunko, 1961).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE SOCIETY OF PROSTITUTES 747

seventy-five in Edo in 1642, the title was no longer used there by the

1750s.

Tayu

and courtesans of the second rank

(tenjin

koshi)

did not

meet their clients at their proprietors' establishments, as did the lower

orders of prostitute, but were sent a written invitation by the propri-

etor of

an ageya

such as the Sumiya. The

tayiCs

transit to the

ageya

was

a deliberate parade on which she was accompanied by two young

kamuro,

an attendant, a matron, and, in later times, a parasol bearer.

The cost of carrying on a relationship as

regular client is discussed by

Saikaku: It required the wealth of a millionaire.

It also required

preparation on the part of the client to know the proper procedures

and how to conduct himself

(showake)

in the quarter. Guidebooks and

novels provided examples of

how

to act with sophistication and how to

exhibit

savoir-faire

(sui and tsu) and, above all, how to avoid being

taken for a boor (yabd). The rules of etiquette and the rituals that

applied to the tayu and patron gave a remarkable refinement to the

business of prostitution. Indeed, the artistic emphasis on the pleasures

of social and cultural intercourse made the sex act almost incidental.

Remarkably, a "sex ceremony"

(shikido)

was created.

The quarter was a small island free of class restrictions, where a

hierarchy of services corresponded to what the customer was willing to

pay. Here, as Saikaku wrote, lineage of birth was replaced by the

pedigree of

money.

The affluent commoner could find refuge from the

humiliation of his position in the samurai world by commanding luxu-

rious surroundings and the greatest esteem that flattery and enthusias-

tic attentions could convey. The inflation of the tayu was designed to

increase the gratification of the merchant who succeeded in command-

ing her. The ordinary businessman or craftsman, seeking services and

pleasure within his means, could gain similar, but more moderate,

attentions from women of lower rank.

For the

chonin

the quarter became a refuge from restrictions, not

only of the class system, but also of family and community. Marriage

was not governed by expectations of romantic attachment or sexual

compatibility but was arranged by parents and go-betweens concerned

with finding optimal arrangements likely to ensure the family's conti-

nuity and strengthening the family trade. No particular stigma was

attached to a man's visiting the quarter as long as such dalliance did

not jeopardize the security of family and business. That is, the

chonin

was not to form a strong emotional attachment in the quarter or spend

84 Ivan Morris, trans., The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings by Ihara Saikaku (New

York: New Directions, 1963), pp. 287-8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

748 POPULAR CULTURE

too

much money there. The freedom of individual action, restricted by

family responsibilities, was qualified, too, by subordination to corpo-

rate groups - the residential quarter

(cho)

and the trade association

{nakatna

or ton'yd). Moreover, the increasing influence of Confucian

ethics,

which emphasized family obligations, loyalty, and harmony,

added to the underlying controls of Buddhism with its teaching of

forbearance, suppression of desire, and deferment of rewards until the

next world. The quarter therefore offered a brief respite from this

outside world of complex responsibilities and ethical constraints.

However pleasurable the atmosphere of the quarter or solicitous the

attentions of its women, it was not possible to shut out entirely the

harshness of the world. The customer's partner was essentially a slave,

condemned to prostitution because her parents, unable to pay their

land taxes or burdened by other debts, had been forced to sell her, to

indenture her for ten years or more. The underlying sadness of the

quarter surfaces in the popularity of plaintive songs of homesickness

and fickle lovers. This mood predominates in scenes of the quarter in

drama.

According to regulations, there was to be no prostitution outside the

licensed quarters, but this was never the situation. Because of the

inconvenience of traveling the distance to the Yoshiwara, brothels

continued to spring up in different parts of

Edo.

Particularly popular

were the bathhouse girls (yuna) who scrubbed customers' backs,

washed their hair, and provided sexual attentions. Hundreds were

rounded up and moved to the Yoshiwara in

1665,

installed in buildings

that looked like bathhouses to carry on the familiar tradition. Yet

brothels flourished elsewhere as well - in Shinagawa, Shinjuku, Ita-

bashi, Senju, and dozens of other locations (oka

basho).

After periods

of tacit tolerance, they were closed during the great reforms of Kansei

and Tempo and their inmates sent to the Yoshiwara. Samurai wives,

caught in adultery, were also sent there to serve without pay as

yakko.

In Kyoto, brothels continued to reopen in parts of the city where they

had formerly existed: Gion, Nijo, Shichijo, and Kitano. When the

popular writer Bakin visited Kyoto in 1802, he found the Gion quarter

superior to the overly formal Shimabara. In both Kyoto and Osaka,

where the attitude of the authorities was more lenient than in Edo, a

number of the informal quarters acquired semiofficial status.

The yearly issuance of laws banning private prostitution throughout

the Edo period suggests that little progress was made in stemming this

85 Kyoto no

rekishi,

vol. 5, pp. 481-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE THEATER WORLD 749

practice. The literature also notes, routinely, the presence of accommo-

dating maids at inns, post stations, restaurants, tea shops, and bath-

houses. Indeed, the large variety and gradations among sexual practi-

tioners may best be indicated by the almost five hundred words used

to designate prostitutes.

THE THEATER WORLD

The second type of district for entertainment and pleasure seeking -

the quarter of kabuki and puppet theaters and the teahouses that

surrounded them - also flourished in the Genroku period. Kabuki is

conventionally dated in origin to 1603, when a woman called Okuni

appeared with her troupe on a stage outside Kitano Shrine to perform

dances and skits. She had appeared there before, claiming to solicit

funds for Izumo Shrine. For some decades earlier, in fact, troupes of

female dancers had been coming to Kyoto from the provinces to per-

form exuberant dances called furyu

odori

or to put on

kyogen

and noh in

a not very proper style. What distinguished Okuni's act in 1603 was

her miming and dancing the role of a dandy visiting

brothel. Her skit

caused a sensation. The word kabuki had originally meant "inclined"

or "tipped," suggesting deviant, wild behavior, and it was used first

for kabuki

mono,

gangs of young men dressed in outrageous clothes,

carrying overly long swords, who swaggered about the streets of

Kyoto causing trouble.

Okuni went on to perform at Edo Castle in 1607, and other troupes

of women were quick to imitate Okuni's skits. Brothel owners at

Misuji-machi and Fushimi set up stages on the east bank of

the

Kamo

River near Shijo in order to show their women. Painted screens record

these performances of women's kabuki

{onna

kabuki) and prostitutes'

kabuki (yujo kabuki). The most talented performers, the tayu, are

shown seated in the middle of the stage on stools covered with tiger

skins,

playing the samisen, while dancers circle them, swinging their

hips and throwing their arms about with great abandon.

In the

prostitute-accosting skits, the role of the rake was often played by a

86 Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 4, pp. 697-714; vol. 5, pp. 250-8. On early kabuki, see Donald H.

Shively, "Bakufu versus Kabuki," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 18 (1955): 326-56,

reprinted in John Whitney Hall and Marius B. Jansen, eds., Studies in

the Institutional History

of Early Modern Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 231-61;

Keene,

World

Within Walls, pp. 230-43; Benito Ortolani, Das Kabukitheater:

Kulturgeschichle

der Anfdnge, Monumenta Nipponica Monographs no. 19 (Tokyo: Sophia University Press,

1964);

Gunji Masakatsu, "Kabuki no rekishi to honshitsu," in Gunji Masakatsu, Kabuki

ronso (Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 1979), pp. 12-26; Hattori Yukio, Kabuki seiritsu no

kenkyu

(Tokyo: Kazama shobo, 1968), pp. 168-82, 214-34.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

75° POPULAR CULTURE

woman sporting a man's name, and the prostitute's part was played by

a man, providing the opportunity for a great deal of confused and

indecent pantomime. The shogun's scholar, the Confucian Hayashi

Razan, reports:

The men wear women's clothing; the women wear men's clothing, cut their

hair, and wear

man's topknot, have swords at their

sides,

and carry purses.

They sing base songs and dance vulgar dances; their lewd voices are

clamorous, like the buzzing of

flies

and the crying of

cicadas.

The men and

women sing and dance together. This is the kabuki of today.

An earlier diary entry of 1608 notes: "I saw women's kabuki at Shijo.

Several thousands of people flocked there. It was something that as-

tounded the eyes."

We even have an Englishman's testimony about the female kabuki

players. Richard Cocks, head of the English trading post at Hirado

from 1615 to 1622, referred in his diary to the local variety of per-

former as

"caboques

or Japan players (or whores)." He mentions being

entertained by a Japanese merchant who "provided

caboques,

women plears, who danced and songe; and when we returned home,

he sent eavery one one of them."

In the first decades, the star performers of

the

Kyoto and Edo stages

were the first

tayu

prostitutes described in the preceding section of this

chapter. Kabuki troupes of women performed from time to time be-

tween 1612 to 1615 at the imperial court, and Yoshiwara women per-

formed kabuki at Nihombashi and Nakabashi.

Troupes also toured

the provinces and were even engaged by the daimyo of Kumamoto and

Sendai.

The first kabuki "theaters" to be licensed in

1617

in Kyoto resembled

noh stages surrounded by

simple fence. Most were in the Shijo river-

side amusement district which sprang up across the Kamo River on

undeveloped land just outside the formal boundaries of the city as

defined by Hideyoshi's wall. This area, close to the business district,

along the extension of Shijo that led to Gion Shrine, became a lively

quarter and

favorite theme of paintings on screens and handscrolls. In

addition to kabuki, puppet and noh stages, they show arenas for sumo

wrestlers, and a large variety of

sideshows.

There are performances of

87 Razan sensei bunshu, quoted in Dai Nihon shiryo, series 12 (Tokyo: Tokyo teikoku daigaku,

1901),

vol. 1, pp.

260-1.

88 Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 4, p. 708.

89 Edward M. Thompson, ed., Diary of Richard Cocks (London: Hakluyt Society, 1933), vol. 1,

pp.

156, 177, 180, 193, 211, vol. 2, p. 27.

90 Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 5, pp.

250-1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE THEATER WORLD 751

dance and music, storytellers, reciters of military epics, fortunetellers,

magicians, jugglers, acrobats, tightrope walkers, and freaks - the fe-

male giant and the armless woman

archer.

Exhibitions of exotic animals

such as tigers, bears, porcupines, eagles, and peacocks appear in the

paintings, as do performing monkeys and dancing dogs. Barkers in

outlandish costumes - Portuguese hats and pantaloons - call to the

passing throngs; samurai, ronin, and town gallants parade about.

Among the stalls offering food and drink saunter women from the

nearby unlicensed houses of Gion and the riverbank to the south. Men

and women in colorful summer kimono dance in a circle on the river-

bed, and swimmers splash in the stream.

Excitement over the kabuki women sometimes ignited brawls and

duels among hot-blooded bushi, and daimyo's retainers were killed.

To avoid such volatile incidents, the government banned women from

the stage permanently in 1629. The Misuji-machi prostitutes were

confined to their quarter and in 1640 were moved to the Shimabara on

the opposite side of the city from the theaters.

Prostitutes and actors

were separated in other cities as well. The removal of Edo's Yoshiwara

in 1657 left kabuki, limited to four playhouses, in the business district

at Sakai-cho and Kobiki-cho. In Osaka the authorities designated a

separate theater district at Dotombori.

Even before the women were banned, at least as early as 1612, there

emerged troupes made up entirely of boys performing

wakashu

kabuki

(youths' kabuki). Following the tradition of young noh actors of the

Ashikaga period, they too were available as sexual partners. Homo-

sexuality, long associated with monasteries, became prevalent among

the upper bushi during the military campaigns of the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries. In the early Edo period, some shogun and daimyo

and Buddhist clergy continued to show a preference for their beautiful

pages,

and even

chonin

emulated their betters who had bestowed on

pederasty a certain prestige. There is an extensive literature in the Edo

period, in addition to guides to actors, which debates the relative

romantic and sexual merits of "the two ways of love."

The playlets performed in youths' kabuki were designed to display

the beauty and allure of the young

actors:

The skits featured homosex-

ual love

(shudo goto)

and the accosting of prostitutes. Assignations of

91 For late-seventeenth-century paintings of the amusement quarter by the Kamo River, see the

two handscrolls, "Shijo-gawara zukan," in Kinsei fuzoku zukan, vol. 2, pp. 73-122; Shijo-

gawara, vol. 5, and Kabuki, vol. io, of Kinsei fuzoku zufu (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1982-4);

Ichitaro Kondo, Japanese Genre Painting: The Lively Art of

Renaissance

Japan, trans. R. A.

Miller (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1961), plates 4,66-71, pp. 22, 24.

92 Kyoto

rekishi,

vol. 5, pp. 167-72, 271-73.

752 POPULAR CULTURE

bushi with actors and quarrels over them repeated the experience with

the tayu. Although even the shogun Iemitsu patronized kabuki, sum-

moning troupes to Edo castle to divert him during the last months of

his fatal illness, directly after his death the bakufu banned all kabuki

in 1652.

Following repeated entreaties by theater operators, an agreement

was reached that permitted kabuki performances to be staged again.

Thereafter, laws required female impersonators to dress their hair in

the masculine fashion, shaving the forelock. At first prohibited from

covering the bald area, which diminished their appeal, they were later

permitted to cover it with a small patch of purple silk. By late in the

century, they wore wigs on

stage.

The effect of government repression,

which banned women from the stage and placed restrictions on boys,

was to force kabuki to turn from burlesque skits toward more substan-

tial plays and to replace (to some extent) the parade of youths with

mature male actors - men

who,

necessity,

developed technique and

skill in dramatic acting. The beneficial results of the reforms of 1652

were felt only gradually. Drawing material from noh plays, military

epics,

and puppet texts, longer dramas with more plot began to ap-

pear. In 1664 the prevalent "Shimabara plays" about accosting prosti-

tutes were banned, and "continuous plays" (tsuzuki

kyogeri)

of four

short acts strung together were introduced.

In spite of the reforms, the first guides to actors

(yard

hydbanki)

found their model in books on prostitutes. The earliest extant guide,

the

Yard

mushi (1660), is an illustrated work that describes forty-one

young actors. Like other early books in this genre, it gives more

attention to their erotic appeal than to their talent for the stage. Writ-

ten by men of education who were aficionados, such works bore liter-

ary pretensions and, like the books on prostitutes, were embellished

with witty poems in Chinese and Japanese appropriate to each individ-

ual under discussion. Toward the end of the century, books on actors

(then called yakusha

hydbanki)

gave more attention to dramatic ability

and critiqued performances in plays. They usually rated the

kaomise

performance offered in the eleventh month and the program of the

seventh month, and some included introductory material on the

theaters, their locations, and managerial personnel. The system of

rating performers was modeled on the prostitute booklets. The earliest

guide to rate actors, dating from 1687, employed only three grades,

but by 1702 six were in use - from "medium"

(chu)

up to "superior-

93 Shively, "Bakufu

versus

kabuki," pp. 338-44.

THE THEATER WORLD 753

superior-excellent"

(jojokichi).

The

Yakusha nicho jamisen

of that year

listed 302 actors in the three cities, placing 26 in the highest category

and 135 in the lowest. Variations on this scheme were used for some

years,

but in time the schedule of ratings was devalued by overuse of

the higher grades.

Kabuki gained greatly in popularity in the last two decades of the

seventeenth century with the appearance of actors of great ability, it

seems, who pioneered roles that shaped kabuki. The style of the great

lover

{wagoto,

or tender business) was developed in Kyoto and Osaka

by Sakata Tojuro. He was called the "original master of love scenes"

and "the first in the line of engagers of prostitutes." In Edo, Ichikawa

Danjuro developed the

aragoto

(rough business) style to enact the great

feats of strength of rash heroes. His bravado suited the impetuous

temperament of the Edo plebs in the pit.

The most crucial development of the kabuki theater centered on

defining techniques that men could use to play women's roles, the

onnagata

parts. Almost all of

the onnagata

had, of course, been kabuki

youths, but as they grew older, they needed to develop a more subtle

and abstract way to play women. They singled out the essential ele-

ments of a woman's gestures and speech and gave to these a special

emphasis, in much the same way that puppets exaggerate human ges-

tures so as to appear alive. A distinctive cracked vocal style was also

cultivated. The stylized manner of playing women became so well

established as an integral characteristic of kabuki, particularly in the

interplay between the

onnagata

and the male lead

(tachiyaku),

that

attempts in modern times by women to take the female roles have not

been accepted by the audience. The beauty of

onnagata

acting lies in

its formalized

grace.

Women, placed in these roles, appear too natural,

too realistic. Furthermore, because the male roles are played in a

strong, somewhat exaggerated manner, women often lack the physical

stature to project an equal stage presence. And again, women do not

exude the peculiar eroticism with its homosexual overtones that is

inherent in kabuki. Actresses thus become suitable for kabuki roles

only if they play their parts not by miming women but by imitating

onnagata.

On the stage, the

onnagata

portrayed the fidelity, modesty, and

forbearance of the ideal woman. As models of etiquette in their bows,

their elegant gestures, and deferential attitudes, the

onnagata

were

94 Iizuka Tomoichiro, Kabuki

gairon

(Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1928), p. 238; Shively, "The Social

Environment of Tokugawa Kabuki," pp. 49-50.

754 POPULAR CULTURE

emulated by women of the audience. It was common for

onnagata

lead feminine lives off the stage as well, that is, to live their art. They

continued to practice the motor habits of women in hand gestures,

walking, and sitting and to use women's language and intonation.

Some wore only women's clothes and dressed their hair in feminine

coiffures. Some, indeed, are said to have entered the women's side of

public bathhouses, and "no one thought this strange."

The famous

actor Yoshizawa Ayame said that an

onnagata

should continue to experi-

ence the feelings of an

onnagata

even in the dressing room, eating only

the kind of food appropriate to women, and modestly turning away

from the leading man while eating.

The popularity of players of

male

roles was enhanced by accounts of

their lives off the stage. Scandal was good publicity. Critical booklets

cultivated their notoriety as lovers. It was said of the Osaka actor

Arashi San'emon (1635-90): "There is not a prostitute with whom he

is not intimate." The details of actors' lives, the astonishingly high

salaries that the most popular reputedly received, and their extrava-

gance were matters of endless anecdotes. The craze for actors reached

extremes among fans in Edo. A delicious scandal occurred in 1714

when a love affair was uncovered between the handsome Ikushima

Shingoro (1671-1743), who played love scenes "realistically and pro-

vocatively," and Ejima (1681-1741), a ranking lady official in the

service of the shogun's mother. The authorities reacted with another

attempt to reform kabuki; among other steps they demolished the

Yamamura-za theater and limited the number of licensed kabuki play-

houses in Edo to three for the remainder of the Edo period.

From its beginnings, leading players dominated kabuki. Material

was selected and speeches blocked out to give an actor the best oppor-

tunity to display his talents. Even when playwrights replaced actors as

writers, toward the end of the seventeenth century, the actors them-

selves filled in the chief speeches and action. Hence complete scripts

of a play were not made, and the sketchy scenarios, which date from

about 1685, have little literary merit. Talented writers, notably Chika-

matsu, therefore turned to writing more for the puppet theater than

for kabuki. As kabuki developed into a more serious dramatic form, it

drew increasingly on puppet plays for its material, for both plot struc-

ture and literary language.

95 Ihara Toshiro, "Kabuki no fuzoku," in Nihon fuzokushi koza, Vol. 11 (Tokyo: Yuzankaku,

1929),

p.17; Shively, "The Social Environment of Tokugawa Kabuki," pp. 34-42.

96 In Ayame gusa, translated by Charles J. Dunn and Bunzo Torigoe, The Actors' Analects

(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1969), pp. 61-2.

97 Shively, "The Social Environment of Tokugawa Kabuki," pp. 29-45.