丼池 / Dobuike [1963 & 1968]

drawing by Kisaku Ito for the 1963 set plans

Background

Today we're going to look at three separate performances (and one film adaptation) of the same play. As I mention nearly every time I write about a stage play, it's difficult to research plays because there's usually not a wealth of visual evidence for them, and my area of interest is, of course, confined to a time before everybody had a camera in their pocket. But I'm pleasantly surprised that I was able to find a decent amount of information and images this time, so this post will run a bit longer than my other stage play posts.

What does "Dobuike" mean? I'll copy/paste Kotobank's definition, because it is as clear and concise as you're going to get: "A pond located in Minamisenba, Chuo Ward, Osaka City. It was filled in 1874. Before World War II, furniture wholesalers and textile wholesalers were crowded along Dobuike-suji, which faced the pond. Formerly known as Ashiike". 

The plays we're looking at today were written specifically for the stage; they are not adaptations of older literary works or traditional theater. The author/director of Dobuike was Kazuo Kikuta, who is so prolific and esteemed within his home country that to give a brief overview of his career in English feels almost insulting. Kikuta began as a playwright in the mid-1920s, working closely with Roppa Furukawa and his troupe, and then joined Toho in 1936. He left Roppa's troupe due to creative differences in 1943 and eventually became one of Toho's foremost stage directors in the 1950s. Kikuta was an enormously significant figure in the world of post-war Japanese stage musicals, and among many other achievements, he acquired the rights to My Fair Lady and became the first Japanese person to stage a Broadway musical. Many of his works focused on Osaka, including Dobuike.

I would encourage you to research Kikuta yourself if this sounds interesting to you - his career is far more expansive than I can cover here. Somehow, despite his domestic fame, he doesn't have an English Wikipedia page, but maybe some of you read French?

The Play (and the Movie)

The play is set in a back alley off of Dobuike-suji, where textile wholesalers do business. Masa Kanazawa, a woman with ten years of experience as a shop clerk who's just been cheated out of her life's savings, seeks a loan from Katsumi Muroi, the president of Muroi Trading, so that she might start fresh at a co-op trading center. To this end she meets with Sadahiko Kanemitsu, head clerk of the Sonoda firm. Katsumi is not in the business of giving out loans freely, and insists on carefully investigating the circumstances of her borrowers beforehand. To quote the synopsis from the booklet accompanying the Umeda Koma Stadium performance: "When we lend, we look like the Salvation Army; when the payment comes due, we look like vampires".

Chūhei Sonoda, president of the Sonoda firm, approaches Katsumi to arrange for a loan to a business in Minami-Kyūhōji. Initially Katsumi refuses, but then "Old Lady Matsuko", the firm's primary financier, steps in and asks Katsumi personally to provide the loan. This is not out of kindness, however; to quote the synopsis again, Matsuko says "You don’t necessarily have to drive them into bankruptcy; just strip them of their rights, transfer the business to someone else, and pocket the difference."

Then, a woman named Umeko Murata appears, asking for a financial consultation with Matsuko. Matsuko refuses, able to see through Umeko and recognize that she herself intends to bleed the local merchants dry, but Umeko forces the matter. Umeko is denied a loan from Katsumi, and through desperation, she winds up exploiting the weakness of Masunaga, a section chief at Iiyama Manufacturing, for women.

Katsumi, meanwhile, seeks to get out from under Matsuko's auspices by any means necessary. Finally, she comes up with an idea: Muroi Trading is to begin offering "Treasure Investment" certificates in the form of promissory notes, a scheme wherein the firm takes their customers' money and invests it in high-yield ventures that promise good returns. This would otherwise be illegal if it were not set up in the form of a "loan relationship": the customer gives money and receives a promissory note in return. The Treasure Investment concept proves enormously lucrative. Katsumi is able to break free of Matsuko, and even leaves her fiancé to focus solely on moneylending.

Although, to me, that sounds very serious and complicated, Kikuta ends his introduction in the Umeda Koma Stadium booklet by wishing his audience "an enjoyable day filled with laughter", so it's possible the actual play is more light-hearted than the synopsis makes it out to be.

In September of 1963, Toho released a film adaptation of Dobuike, which was directed by Seiji Hisamatsu, written by Giichi Fujimoto, and based off of Kikuta's original story. The main four actresses again reprised their roles, with a few new additions (notably Kenji Sahara). What's surprising to me about this movie is that, despite how detailed and colorful the sets appear to have been, the movie itself is in black-and-white.

Since we don't have any video from any of the plays, watching the movie would be our only chance to see Kikuta's original story performed with a live cast. Unfortunately, the movie is as obscure as the plays: it's been broadcast on television a few times, but never released to streaming or physical home media.

As for the main cast, it's a bit difficult to break it all down thanks to Dobuike having been staged so many times, but here's my best shot:

• Mitsuko Mori plays Masa Kanazawa in both 1963 plays and the 1963 film; Yuko Hamaki plays Masa in the 1968 Imperial Theater performance.
• Isuzu Yamada plays Umeko Murata in all three plays; Michiyo Aratama plays Umeko in the film.
• Aiko Mimasu plays Matsuko Taira in every version.
• Yoko Tsukasa plays Katsumi Muroi in every version.
• Akihiko Hirata plays Sadahiko Kanemitsu in all three plays; Keiji Sada¹ plays Sadahiko in the film.
• Kenzo Tabu plays Chūhei Sonoda in the Umeda Koma Stadium performance, and Ganjiro Nakamura II plays Chūhei in the film; the casting for this role in the other two plays is unknown to me.

I gather that Dobuike is Women's Business™. In Kikuta's aforementioned introduction, he highlights the main four actresses first, and then just kind of says "oh yeah and I guess the guys are pretty good too". Hirata himself is not mentioned at all in the Umeda Koma Stadium booklet aside from once, in a review, and it's a similar "and he is also there" statement. (Reviewers also were not shy about blatant spoilers, and as such I know that the story does not end well for Katsumi.)

Anyway, we'll move on now to the plays themselves. 

The Performances

1963 / Geijutsu-za [Arts Theater]

The first stage adaptation of Dobuike opened on New Year's Day, 1963, and ran into February; exact dates elude me. I'd imagine there's a booklet for this performance floating around somewhere, but I haven't seen any copies, if so.

The Geijutsu-za was a relatively small theater (to us, anyway) with a seating capacity of 750, located on the 4th floor of Toho's headquarters in Yurakucho, Chiyoda ward, Tokyo. It was directly managed by Toho - another thing foreign to us, since in America production companies cannot own theaters due to anti-trust laws. As of 1963 the theater was only 5 years old. Mitsuko Mori, one of the stars of Dobuike, appeared frequently in plays staged at the Geijutsu-za: she made her debut at the theater in 1958, and when it closed in 2005, she starred in its final performance.

The art director for this version of the play was Kisaku Ito, whose beautiful drawings for the set design you can see here. I really would recommend taking a look at them, they are absolutely gorgeous. Kikuta both wrote and directed this performance, which was staged by Toho. Ito died just five years after staging this play; his Wikipedia page doesn't note a cause, but he was only 67.

1963 / Umeda Koma Stadium

This second performance was staged at the Umeda Koma Stadium (now the Umeda Arts Theater) in Osaka, with involvement from Toho, and ran from June 1st to June 26th. I got my hands on a pamphlet for this performance and uploaded the entire thing to Internet Archive. As usual for my scans, they're not very good, but you should still be able to read the text, if that's what you desire.

Kazuo Kikuta again directed the play, and Kisaku Ito again handled the art direction, though we have no pictures of the set design apart from what's in the booklet. 

There actually are a lot of pictures of Hirata's character Sadahiko in this booklet, which I was not expecting. I'd been assuming his role was relatively minor, but he seems to have had a lot of scenes. Considering this, it's not surprising that Hirata didn't appear in the movie adaptation; after performing the same role twice a day (there was a matinee and evening show for this run) every day for a month, twice within one year, he was probably sick of it. (His friend Motohide Katayama recalls him mentioning that he preferred to act on film rather than the stage, because he found playing the same role over and over fairly boring.)

I will now direct your attention to his funky sweater:

1968 / Imperial Theater [Teikoku Gekijō]

We have some inside information about this run of the play courtesy of Makoto Kobayashi, a Toho stage actor who I have mentioned here before and who is still active online in his 90s. (In the above picture, Kobayashi is the guy standing around looking intimidating.)

I'm sorry, I just need to reiterate that. Makoto Kobayashi is blogging. He's 92 and he's blogging. He's a Showa-era Toho-contracted stage actor who is 92 years old and he is blogging about his career with perfect clarity. Toho fans, you all should be paying attention to this guy.

Anyway, this second run of the play ran from December 2nd to December 27th with largely the same cast. Kobayashi notes that during one performance one of the actors (Kinzo Takahashi) accidentally bumped into a piece of stage equipment during the show and made a hole in it, which made Isuzu Yamada and Aiko Mimasu laugh so hard that the play came to a stop for a few moments. Kobayashi also mentions that he fell asleep on stage while performing his role as a detective hiding out in some bushes. (He says that he did get scolded, but admits sleeping on stage feels really nice.) Kobayashi also has a pamphlet from this run of the play that I've never seen for sale or auction before.

Kazuo Kikuta was still credited for the original work, but for this run of the play Junji Tsumura directed.  I can't find much out about Tsumura; he may have been under Toho's employ, as the only other credits of his that I can dig up are other plays staged at Toho-owned venues, but I don't know anything for sure.

Conclusion

At some point I am going to have to figure out how to write a proper segue into an ending.

______

1 Toho casting department: "Okay, for our character Sadahiko we need somebody with either 'Sada' or 'Hiko' in his name, no exceptions."

朱雀門 / Suzakumon [1967]

Researching stage plays is always fascinating to me, but also frequently very frustrating because I'm never able to turn up as much visual evidence as I'd like to. If I'm lucky, I can find promotional pictures of the cast in costume, but pictures from the actual performance are pretty much nonexistent for most of the stuff we look at here. That is unfortunately the case with Suzakumon as well, but I was able to get my hands on a booklet which has a lot of really beautiful high-quality pictures; I've scanned the entire thing and you can take a look at it for yourself here.

So, I suppose an appropriate place to start would be asking the question "what is a 'suzakumon', exactly?"

The Suzaku Gate was, historically, the southernmost gate of the Imperial Palace in the three former Japanese capitals of Fujiwara-kyō, Heijo-kyō and Heian-kyō. The gate takes its name from the Vermillion Bird (suzaku), the Guardian of the South according to traditional Chinese astronomy. No historical suzakumon remain extant, but reconstructions have been built. That all suzakumon which presently exist today are modern reconstructions of ancient structures feels like a nice segue into our play, which is itself a reconstruction: a kabuki adaptation of a story written by a British man.

Suzakumon was based off of the play Kismet, written by American-born British playwright Edward Knoblock and first performed in 1911. After several hundred performances in England, the play was eventually brought to Broadway in 1953. Kismet has been adapted to film several times; four were based directly on the Knoblock play and one, released in 1955, was based off of the 1953 Broadway musical.

Only picture I've found of Hirata during an actual performance.

Obviously, Kismet enjoyed some popularity in Japan in the middle of the 20th century, but I am not sure that this popularity still remains today. Currently neither Knoblock nor his play nor any of the subsequent adaptations of it have Japanese Wikipedia pages. A search for the author and his work in Japanese does not even bring up any subjective results (I.E. reviews that indicate everyday people in Japan are reading and enjoying him with any regular frequency), just one or two DVDs for sale and film databases. To be fair, though, I'm not even sure Kismet is that popular with English-speaking audiences anymore, either.

However, this 1967 performance was not the first time Kismet had been staged in Japan. The Takarazuka Flower Troupe performed the play in August of 1955 as directed by Shirai Tetsuzou, and this was a direct adaptation; the play's original setting was preserved. According to the Takarazuka Revue's official website, this performance was notable for being the first use of wireless microphones in Japan.

Poster for the 1955 Takarazuka performance of Kismet, subtitled "unmei" ("fate")

In the section of my Teigeki pamphlet written by author Shinichiro Nakamura, he describes why he believes that the original Arabian Nights-ish setting of Kismet is so well-suited to adaptation into a Heian-period kabuki play, and draws comparisons between the two settings, even referring to Nara as "another Baghdad" and saying that the protagonist of Kismet could "step directly into the role of the protagonist of Suzakumon without creating any sense of unnaturalness[...]".

Another interesting detail about this play that we'll never be able to hear firsthand is its score, which, if it followed the example set by other kabuki plays being staged at the Teigeki in the 1960s, was Western-style. Suzakumon is considered "Shin Kabuki", which is a form of kabuki that incorporates Western ideas and dispenses with certain conventions of more traditional kabuki while still retaining its stylistic structure.

It would appear that the impetus for Toho's decision to adapt Kismet into a kabuki play in 1967 was due to the efforts of a single person; namely Toho's producer Iwao Mori, who was personally interested enough in the play to translate it into Japanese. But, while Toho describes nearly everything about the play as its own idea, its production was not solely domestic - Suzakumon was produced in cooperation with American Play Company.

According to the New York Public Library's archival page on company records in their collection:

The American Play Company was a New York theatrical agency which represented authors and rights-holders and assisted in the negotiation of theatrical and film licensing. The company originated in the 1880s, when Elisabeth Marbury became the protégée of Daniel Frohman and began representing authors and managing their various productions on Broadway, the national tour circuit, and regional amateur productions. She became the representative of Frances Hodgson Burnett, George Bernard Shaw, Jerome Kern, Guy Bolton, and P.G. Wodehouse. She was also the sole representative of the French Society of Authors.

In 1914, Marbury merged with Selwyn and Company to form the American Play Company. By 1930, the company had also absorbed the De Mille company and the John Rumsey Company. The company continued producing and managing properties until the early 1960s, when it was purchased by Sheldon Abend.

Although the NYPL's holdings only go up to 1966, American Play Company continued to exist until last year (2025), when it was acquired by International Literary Properties. As of that time, it was owned by actor Michael Douglas, who had acquired the company in 1999.

I cannot determine how involved the American Play Company was with the production of Kismet and with Toho in general. It seems like Toho did the bulk of the work out of their own desire to stage the play, rather than APC approaching them with intent to collaborate, but then again 100% of my sources are Japanese; I would really like to be able to find a news story from an American source that mentions the play being staged in Japan, but no such thing seems to exist or be accessible to me. I would guess, from what I've read, that APC simply held the rights to the play and that Toho had to go through them to be able to stage it.

Nara's reconstructed suzakumon.

Suzakumon was produced in participation with the 22nd Agency of Cultural Affairs Arts Festival, which, as per the Agency of Cultural Affairs' website, is "an art festival held every fall with the aim of providing the general public with the opportunity to appreciate excellent works of art at home and abroad, and contributing to the improvement and promotion of our culture". Performances sponsored by the Agency of Cultural Affairs include kabuki, noh, bunraku, ballet, contemporary theater, and other forms of traditional Japanese song and dance, but awards are given also to things like television dramas, documentaries, and radio plays, so this is not exclusively a festival for traditional arts, although that does seem to have been a focus. The festival is held annually ("in principle", not sure what they mean by that) from October 1st to November 30th and is still going strong in its 80th year.

I will say that it is very difficult to find out anything about this specific play because most search results are either about actual, historical suzakumon or the 1957 Daiei film starring Raizō Ichikawa by the same name (which is just straight jidaigeki as far as I'm aware; no relation to this play).

Hirata plays Karimaro no Mononobe. He is a bad guy. I can say nothing else about Karimaro because the plot synopsis does not mention him other than to compare him to his "close associate", Muromaro no Yuge (Chusha Ishikawa), who the synopsis unkindly describes as "conflat[ing] public office with private gain and engag[ing] in rampant misrule". The lack of further information is disappointing, since the costume photo of him is so interesting (if jidaigeki is to be believed, the Heian period was notable for its cool hats):

The rest of the cast is a fairly even mixture of kabuki actors and contemporary stage actors. Likely the biggest name within the cast in terms of kabuki is the 8th Koshiro Matsumoto (also sometimes known as Hakuo Matsumoto I), but we also see people who we'd recognize from well outside of the kabuki world, like Mariko Miyagi, Mitsuko Kusabue and Mie Hama, the latter of which had not previously been in a stage play with a long continuous run-time such as Suzakumon. That Hama was a first-timer in this kind of performance makes it all the more disappointing that I can find no reviews of the play from the time.

The only real external reference to Suzakumon that I've found - outside of the pamphlet and a database of plays performed at the Teigeki - is a single mention of it by name in the November 1967 issue of Toho Films magazine, within a one-paragraph bio of Hirata (the magazine was doing these for a lot of their contracted actors around this time). It is literally a mention by name; I'm sure it was cited only because it was the most recent stage play he'd appeared in. (It's cited alongside Sangokushi, the other play he was in in 1967; mayhap we'll take a look at that eventually.)

The part I've blacked out is literally just his entire home address. I don't care if he's dead, I'm not doxxing him. (He lived in Setagaya, though.)

This specific play is a perfect example of why doing research into lesser-known Showa-era stage plays is both fulfilling and frustrating; it's fulfilling because I get to learn about things I've never heard of and I come away with it with a bunch of new questions, but it's frustrating because there's virtually no material directly related to the actual play I'm researching. The booklet is 100% my sole source of information, here. (Not that it's a bad source, but I want more pictures, more reviews.)

In any case, I hope this is interesting to you as a bit of an oddity if nothing else; perhaps you didn't know there was a kabuki adaptation of Kismet. I certainly didn't, but then I also did not even know what Kismet was when I started writing this post.

Comedy - Yotsuya Kaidan / 喜劇 四谷怪談 (1969)

This post has been in the works almost continuously since I found out from my Sound of Music pamphlet that Hirata had been in some kind of Yotsuya Kaidan thing. (This is the role he was referring to when he mentioned that he sang a solo in a Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation with Norihei Miki.) I initially posted this in August of 2024, but since I managed to actually snag a pamphlet from the performance - you can imagine I was quite excited about this - in November of 2025, I've overhauled it with more information from the pamphlet.

You can take a look at the entire thing for yourself on Internet Archive here.

This adaptation of Yotsuya Kaidan ran from September 3rd to September 26th at Tokyo's Toho-owned Imperial Theater. It was a comedy, with the very talented Norihei Miki as Iemon and '60s-'70s Toho actress Masako Kyōzuka as Oiwa. It was co-directed by Miki and distinguished opera director and former noh actor Hideo Kanze, produced and supervised by Kazuo Kikuta, and scripted by Isamu Onoda, a composer of commercial music as well as songs for the stage. (I have looked into Isamu Onoda a great many times and as far as I can tell he has no relation whatsoever to our Onoda.) He may have been picked to work on this play because he was actually born in Yotsuya himself, but that's just speculation; in all likelihood, considering how prolific he was, he probably just landed the gig anyway and his birthplace was sheer coincidence.

Hirata plays a character who is original to this play named "Yoemon Kamiya". Now that I have the pamphlet, I can tell you a bit more about his character, but the thing that I want to talk about first and foremost is that apparently Hirata was never supposed to be in the play at all - he stepped in for Akira Takarada after Takarada got injured somehow:

He's the type who comes across as very serious and gentlemanly. He's been married to Yoshiko Kuga for about eight years now, and it's rare to find such a stable and harmonious celebrity couple.

When I foolishly asked Yoshiko Kuga, "Is your husband always like that?", she simply replied, "Not really," and then brushed it off with a laugh.

He's one year senior to Akira Takarada at Toho Studios. It was a strange twist of fate that he stepped in as a pinch hitter for Yoemon when Takarada was suddenly injured. However, he's recently been making remarkable progress in stage acting, and he's scheduled to appear in "The Wives of Tokugawa, Part 2" at the Toho Theatre in October.

In hindsight, this is actually very obvious just from looking at the pamphlet. Most of the other actors have color portraits where they're wearing makeup from their roles in the play, but for Hirata, they used his black-and-white Toho headshot that was, by my estimation, maybe five or six years old at that point. They probably didn't have time to get this pamphlet published with pictures of him in makeup. (It also makes more sense now that he himself describes how he was sweating bullets during his solo: singing onstage every night for weeks in a role that he wasn't even meant to be in does sound absolutely nerve-wracking.)

This was, in fact, the second time Hirata had ended up in a role that was originally meant for Takarada.

Will I post about Wives of Tokugawa someday? Maybe, who knows. For now, let's talk about Yoemon, who was apparently quite the rogueish, playboy type (I'm wondering if this might be the "like that" that the above quote was referring to). Pardon the wall of text while we take a look at a quick machine translation of the synopsis to this particular adaptation of a very old and storied play. Bear with me.

Samon Yotsuya, a senior retainer of the Yotsuya family in Banshu Ako, has two daughters. The older sister, Oiwa, who is very plump, is in a dreamlike state, anticipating her grand wedding ceremony with Iemon Tamiya, whom she has long yearned for... 

Iemon is a foolish, timid man, a mere low-ranking samurai with a stipend of only thirty koku, a man who has never been popular with women. Yet, he is marrying the daughter of a high-ranking official, and moreover, the matchmaker is Lord Oishi, the chief retainer of the castle... 

The wedding hall is filled with envy and jealousy from everyone. However, this marriage was a mistake, due to Samon's carelessness; he confused Iemon with Yoemon Kamiya, a close friend and neighbor with the same stipend and rank, but completely different in that he was a handsome man and the biggest playboy in the castle. This caused a huge problem. 

Iemon, feeling that the situation was too good to be true, tried to back out, but his father pleaded with him, saying, "Now that the notification has been sent to the domain office and the lord's permission has been granted, as a high-ranking official of the domain, I cannot cancel it." Thus, Oiwa became Iemon's wife. 

The younger sister, Osode, a beauty, has a fiance named Yomoshichi Sato, but his friend Naosuke is secretly in love with her. This Naosuke, in league with Yoemon, deceives the lady-in-waiting Kasane and sells off the beloved carnation incense burner of the lady of the house. Yoemon, displaying his playboy nature, takes advantage of Kasane, who is pregnant with his child and clinging to him. 

At that time, the emergency drums resound throughout the castle, and news arrives from Edo of the Hangan's attempted assassination. The lord is ordered to commit seppuku immediately. The retainers are divided between those who want to defend the castle and those who want to commit suicide, and the council meeting is again filled with clamor and discord. 

Determined to make a name for himself in Edo, Yoemon instigated Iemon to break into the treasury, and as a parting gift, they broke into the treasury, killed the guard, and escaped from the castle. By the time the search for them was underway, Yoemon encountered Kasane, who had pursued them, at the Kakogawa embankment.

"The treasury guard was my father, so who is the culprit...?"

Yoemon, realizing he had been found out, laid his hands on Kasane. 

Meanwhile, Iemon and Oiwa, a couple who were as close as two peas in a pod, helped each other along the way, and before long, true marital love blossomed between them. 

A year passed, and the peaceful Genroku era in Edo was filled with a decadent atmosphere. Today, various people are gathered at the Okuyama carpet teahouse. A woman who was once the daughter of a high-ranking official is now a popular teahouse girl, and men come to the shop looking for Osode, the number-one girl there. 

Then, a woman named Oume, the daughter of Kihei Ito, a wealthy man from the Moronao family, arrived with her maid. In modern-terms, she was a free-spirited girl. Gonzo, a playboy, brought his companions and, trying to impress Oume and extort a reward from her family, staged a play, which was a resounding success. The plan worked too well, and Oume fell head over heels in love with Iemon. 

Naosuke, who had changed his profession to an eel merchant and was living in Edo, met Osode again after a long time and, pressing the scar on his forehead that Osode had inflicted on him, said, "The wound you gave me aches, and my feelings for you ache, too..." 

And then, as expected, Yomoshichi intervened. Having received a secret letter from Shozaburo Okuda, he attempts to deliver it to Lord Ōhoshi in Yamashina, but to deceive the enemy, he switches appearances with Shozaburo. 

Meanwhile, Samon confronts his son-in-law, Iemon, on suspicion of robbing the treasury... Iemon mistakes Samon for Naosuke, and Naosuke mistakes Shozaburo for Yomoshichi... the two murderers reveal their evil smiles. 

Meanwhile, Oiwa gives birth to a baby, and the accumulated fatigue from childbirth and faily life overwhelms her, confining her to her sickbed. Yet, she tries her best to serve her beloved husband, Iemon. Then, Oku, a maid from the Ito family, comes with medicine for Oiwa, saying, "I would like to offer you a drink as a token of gratitude for the other day, please come." At the Ito family's house, Iemon recieves the best hospitality, and the gold coins he is given as a thank you gift, along with Oume's seductive advances, are all part of Kihei's scheme to investigate the movements of the Yotsuya ronin. 

Unaware of this, Iemon is overjoyed by Oume's proposal. He initially refuses, saying "I am a married man", but then Kihei says, "The medicine I gave your wife earlier, which I said was a miracle cure for postpartum illness, is actually a poison that will disfigure her face." Hearing Kihei's words, Iemon considers how to separate from Oiwa. 

Gonzo's brother-in-law, Takuetsu, a masseur, is asked to house-sit, and is astonished to see Oiwa's face beginning to disfigure. While he is wondering what to do, he encounters Iemon, who, to create an excuse to leave Oiwa, tempts him with money to act as her lover. The greedy Takuetsu, despite his fear, took the money and ended up approaching Oiwa. As Oiwa's appearance deteriorated rapidly, however, he confessed all of Iemon's schemes. Iemon, who had also arrived on the scene, was so terrified that he tried to distance himself from Oiwa, but Oiwa stabbed herself in the throat with a blade stuck in a pillar. Iemon then killed Takuetsu, who was trying to escape in a panic, with a single stroke of his sword. It was Naosuke, ever-cunning, who then devices the plan to frame Oiwa and Takuetsu as lovers who committed suicide together, nailing them to a wooden plank and setting them adrift in the river. Kihei and Oume, who had come to peek into Iemon's house to see if he had successfully gotten rid of Oiwa, were then were then successively killed by Iemon, who was acting as if he were possessed by Oiwa's ghost and had gone mad. 

Now, in Edo, living the life of a ronin, as was common in those times, even the exceptionally handsome Yoemon completely fell in love with a town girl he had only just met. His face turned pale, he became emaciated, and he wasted away. Every night, Otsuyu, the girl in question, would come with the sound of her clogs clattering, but in reality, she was possessed by the vengeful spirit of Kasane, whom he himself had killed at the Kakogawa embankment. Eventually, due to the mischief of the vengeful spirit, Yoemon went mad and died. 

Osode, who began to suspect Naosuke of killing Yomoshichi, approached Naosuke herself and began living with him. Naosuke, an eel fisher, was working at the Sunamura Inbo-bori when he picked up a tortoiseshell comb tangled with hair and gave it to Osode. This comb was a memento from her sister Oiwa's mother, and Osode's suspicious deepened, thinking, "Could it be that my sister also...?" 

Eventually, Yomoshichi, who had delivered the secret message to Yamashina and returned to Edo, encounters Osode, who had believed him to be dead. Osode learns the whole truth and heads to Honjo Jazan to avenge her father and sister. In the hermitage at Honjo Jazan, Iemon, who is hiding there, is tormented body and soul by the ghost of Oiwa, who appears every night, and lives each day in a state of illness. The ghosts call to other ghosts, and a parade of ghosts - led by Oiwa, and including Takuetsu, Samon, Shozaburo, Gonzo, Yoemon, Kasane, Oume and Kihei - torments Iemon, until he finally falls to Osode's avenging blade. As Iemon dies, the gentle Oiwa in heaven beckons him with her hand. Cleansing away his many wicked deed with the falling snow, Iemon ascends to heaven to be with Oiwa. On earth, the battle drums of the loyal retainers of Yotsuya resound loudly.

Well, that sounds like just about the coolest thing ever. What a tragedy that I haven't yet been able to find decent pictures of Hirata in this role. I would absolutely love to see him when he's being haunted by Kasane, probably made up kabuki-style in greasepaint to look all ghoulish. I think it's probably worth keeping my saved search to see if any other editions of this pamphlet ever come up for auction. Which brings me to my next point...

Although I was absolutely psyched to get my hands on the pamphlet, one thing remains a mystery: whether or not this is Hirata as Yoemon in the below picture (top of the left-hand page) from an auction listing. My pamphlet seems to have been a first edition, because there are others that I've seen that include actual pictures from the play.

I still think it's him. It's not a clear photo at all but I'm confident.

So, even though I have a pamphlet now, there's not much else I can talk about aside from the story outline and the cast and crew. What I'd really like to do is show some pictures from the play, or hear from people who had seen it or been in it, but considering how long ago this performance took place, I'm wanting in the "personal anecdotes" category. I do have one, however:

It's a story from long ago, but in the "Yotsuya Kaidan Comedy" performed at the Imperial Theater, there was a scene where Norihei Miki, playing the role of Iemon Tamiya, appeared singing carefreely, "In the case of Francine..." I remember it not only because it was popular at the time, but also because of the darkly comical feel to it, which seemed to foreshadow the twisted position of Yotsuya the Ronin and the tragedy that awaited him afterwards.

The above quote is from a user named BANYUU, posting in 2013 on a thread discussing the song The Case of Francine, written by Goro Gō and Akira Imaizumi and sung by Yoko Shintani, about Francine Leconte, a woman who self-immolated in an act of anti-war protest. Not what I expected, but an incredibly valuable glimpse of what was going on during the actual play.

As always, if I find anything more, I will update this post.

Incredibly rare newspaper ad for the play. Credit to @takagi-mania on ameblo.

The Human Condition [人間の条件] (1958 Stage Play)

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, because it's something I consider to be a pretty big deal, but I've been slow to obtain materials I feel like I need to flesh out the post. When I talk about Hirata's filmography I tend to say that he had "two and a half" lead roles: one is Tetsuwan namida ari, the "half" is when he dubbed the lead role in Man from Vera Cruz, and the third is this, the lead role in a 1958 stage adaptation of The Human Condition, which ran from roughly September to November or possibly December. Not only did he play the lead role, this was also his first time acting for the stage in this capacity.¹

from my personal collection

I'm not really going to be talking about The Human Condition in general here, because the much more famous film adaptation starring Tatsuya Nakadai is widely acclaimed as one of the masterpieces of Japanese cinema, so enough has been said about that and probably about the novel that it's based on as well. I'm focusing solely on this particular stage adaptation. Like most of the plays I've written about, there doesn't seem to be any pictures taken while the play was being performed, so most if not all of the visual evidence related to The Human Condition comes from promotional pamphlets for it.

The play was co-directed by two people. One was Kazuo Kikuta, a very respected playwright of the post-war era. He worked for Toho to produce, among other things, Japanese adaptations of English-language plays such as My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof. Kikuta was even well-known enough outside of Japan to have received an obituary in the New York Times after his death in 1973. The other director was Shozaburo Kubo, who I unfortunately cannot find much information about. He seems to have perhaps been involved in the artistic side of the production. The script was written by Kinji Obata, a playwright of some note who was not terribly prolific but was sometimes said to be "a successor" to Kazuo Kikuta.

I own a pamphlet from this performance. Inside is a brief blurb intended to sell potential viewers on it. Roughly translated, it reads:

Highly praised by all critics!

"A powerful work that makes the most of the original" (Asahi Shimbun)

This four-hour epic dramatizes the first and second parts of the original, said to be the biggest postwar bestseller.

The anguish of Kaji, a man of conscience and humanism, is depicted with a raw, breathtaking sense of tension.

It's worth a look.

"Pursues the stupidity of war" (Tokyo Shimbun)

For Geijutsu-za, which has mostly run mid-season plays up until now, this is a rare work that is almost a fully new drama. It is not just a digest of the original work, it is interesting, and there are many thought-provoking issues. This dramatization of four acts, thirteen scenes, and four hours is a success.

"A popular structure" (Sankei Shinkai)

In addition to being a timely project, the script (by Kinji Obata) and direction (by Kazuo Kikuta), overflow with humanism within a popular structure, making it a perfect performance for Geijutsu-za. [Akihiko] Hirata's excellent performance is also noteworthy.  

From the home to the workplace, The Human Condition receives wide-ranging recommendations: National Workers' Cultural Association, Mother & Housewife Association, Tokyo Regional Women's Organizations Federation, Manchu Association, Repatriates' Organizations Federation, Tetsudo Manchuria-Mongolia Compatriots Support Association, Tokyo Teachers' Union, Kaimenkai, National Film and Theater Workers' Union.

Before we move on, I just want to point something out about that pamphlet. See this?

They misspelled his name. That says "Teruhiko".

I have some further information on the process of adapting the original work to the stage. All of the writers and producers had some familiarity with each other prior to the play being staged: Obata was commissioned by the company that Kubo worked for to adapt the book, and Obata had also met the author of The Human Condition, Junpei Gomikawa. Obata was paid ¥10,000 for the script (about $70 in today's USD). This happened early in Obata's career, and because of the success of this endeavor, he went on to become a writer and director for Toho.

not from my personal collection, but maybe someday it will be. top: Yoko Tsukasa, bottom: Aiko Mimasu

The Human Condition was performed at the Geijutsu-za, a theater operated directly by Toho. How directly? Well, it was literally inside what was their headquarters building at the time. By modern standards this theater was fairly small, seating only 750 people. The Geijutsu-za has now closed, but it is still a theater, just under a different name (Theater Creation) and new ownership. Photos from the inside of the Geijutsu-za while it was operating under that name are surprisingly scarce, but we can get a general idea of the space from photos of Theater Creation:

While I was doing research into this play, I ran across something that I don't see often. Shortly after Yoshiko Kuga passed away last year, Makoto Kobayashi, a former Toho actor who is currently 90 years old and still blogging, wrote a post about her, Hirata, and this play. Kobayashi says that he did not work with Kuga often but did work with Hirata on many occasions as part of the drama club, and that he was a very nice person with a "strict and slightly serious" personality who was a good fit to be Kuga's husband.

Although I can only experience it through machine translation, I cannot overstate how valuable Kobayashi's blog is to anyone like myself who has a fascination with Toho's "golden age". Although he worked mostly for stage, not screen, Kobayashi acted alongside many of the actors who I frequently mention on this blog and he is still very much alive and writing about his recollections of his experiences. Here he is as an extra in an NHK drama. He states that this photo was taken where the famous Godzilla statue in Shinjuku is today.

I wish there was more I could give you, because to me it's really unexpected that Hirata would even be in something like this. I think it speaks to a lot of confidence to be able to act the lead role in a four-hour play that ran for over three months - and not just any play but an adaptation of The Human Condition, of all things. I'm going to try to dig up contemporary reviews or mentions, because there has to have been some in film periodicals from the time, but I'm not sure how much luck I'll have on that front. In any case, there may be updates to this post or further, separate posts on the topic in the future.

^_____

1 I have a vague notion that he may have done some stage acting at a May Day festival at some point around the late 1940s or early 1950s, but I haven't looked deep enough into that to be able to say for certain. The Human Condition was, in any case, probably his first "real" stage acting gig.

サウンド・オブ・ミュージック / The Sound of Music (1975)

20th-century photo of the Imperial Theater

Stage shows are not something I've done a ton of research into, because any research I do tends to be unsatisfying; by their nature, stage plays are ephemeral and don't leave a lot of visual evidence unless somebody happens to record them (which wasn't being done too often in the era we're talking about here). But you're telling me Akihiko Hirata was in a production of The Sound of Music? Like, lonely goatherd, singing von Trapps, all that? We need to know more about this immediately.

Well, there's really not that much to be known, actually. This production was put on by Toho at the Imperial Theater [Teigeki] in Tokyo, which they own. It ran from July 5th to July 30th, 1975. Translation of the original lyrics was handled by Sumiko Takeuchi and Kotaro Taki, and the play was directed by Sadao Hirobe or possibly Koube, I'm not sure how his surname is read. I can find no information on either of the translators, but Hirobe/Koube seems to have directed one other play that is on record; this was a Toho adaptation of Yasunori Kawabata's Snow Country put on in 1970 at the Geijutsuza.

As for the cast: Kaoru Yodo played Maria, Tetsuro Sagawa was Captain von Trapp, and the rest of the roles were filled out by Yuki Okazaki, Maki Sawada, Asao Koike, Shinko Jō and others. Akihiko Hirata plays von Schreiber, the German naval admiral who attempts to summon George von Trapp to his new post in Bremmerhavn. In the 1965 film with Julie Andrews, von Schreiber is mentioned, but not seen; in stage shows, as far as I know, he has one scene, where he comes to the von Trapps' mansion to ask why Georg hasn't shown up to his post. Unfortunately he does not sing.

As soon as I found out about this performance, I did extensive internet scouring for any record of it at all, and I didn't find a whole lot, but I did find an online listing for some kind of booklet related to this specific show. The listing had no pictures, and I couldn't find any from other sources, so I really had no idea what it was exactly. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I bought it sight unseen.

I did not expect any actual photos from the performance, because I figured that a booklet like this would be something that was published prior to the show, for people to familiarize themselves with the lyrics and the story and whatnot. That's pretty much what it is, but there are pictures of the cast in full costume...

...as well as short interviews with the cast about the musical. This is the Yotsuya Kaidan production he mentions in the paragraph below; I have sunk many futile hours into trying to find out what the hell he was talking about when he said he "sang jazz with Kaoru Yodo and Teruo Hata" but I just can't find any record of it. (I will continue trying.)

I've saved the best for last. The thing that really cinched my decision to buy this booklet was that the listing mentioned a ticket stub. At the risk of sounding like a freak and a half... somebody probably had this on their person while they were sitting in the theater watching the play. That's, uh. That sure is something, isn't it.

The Teigeki has been renovated since 1975, but here's what it looks like now.

I'm not gonna lie to ya looking at this picture for too long and thinking about where my ticket stub has been makes me start sweating

If anybody else is interested in researching stage plays, the resources I've found to be most useful are, for the Teigeki specifically, this webpage which lists the bare facts of all performances held there from 1911-2011. For Japanese theater in general, I would swear on archive.waseda.jp in a court of law, I think it's one of the best resources I've found for this kind of thing, but the UI is not terribly friendly to non-Japanese speakers; essentially all you need to do is enter a name (in kanji) of the play, performer or crewmember you're looking for and it will bring up all records relating to your keyword. It gives you a wonderful amount of data on basically every play ever, including kana for pronunciation.

That's all for now. Hope this was of some interest to somebody besides myself.