著者

Bjoerk Tove

出版者

国文学研究資料館

雑誌

国際日本文学研究集会会議録 = PROCEEDINGS OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE (ISSN:03877280)

巻号頁・発行日

no.34, pp.181-194, 2011-03-31

---

The artistic expression of the formalized kata-acting in Kabuki is a medium transmitting Japanese cultural history to the present day. As any artistic media involuntarily or voluntarily does, it distorts and confiures a past reality. Therefore, we need to understand how and when kata-acting was created in order to understand what it really shows us.In this presentation, I will focus on the diary (destroyed in fire ca 1810, copies exist) of Ichikawa Danjûrô II (1688-1757), a central figure of the Edo Kabuki world and known as the creator of many of the katas still enacted today. From this diary we know that Danjûrô II was - not, in his opinion, at all contradictory to his health and diet interests - a passionate tobacco smoker, and I will show how this habit influenced his acting and how it came to be medialized into kata by looking especially at the displays of tobacco and smoking in the Sukeroku drama.After a brief introduction on the parallel development of a socially accepted smoking culture and acting using pipes as props and smoking as artistic expression, I will analyze Danjûrô II’s diary entries on smoking and compare them to records on his acting. As few written plays remain today, the Actors Reviews (Yakusha hyôban ki) and Ukiyo-es are our prime source for understanding the process of acting and directing of the mid-18th century.By focusing on Sukeroku, probably the most famous smoking character developed by Danjûrô II, it is possible to follow up how the usage of tobacco utensils and the smoking habits of the different characters in the act developed over time and came to be standardized into the format that we know today. From this perspective, I will lastly consider the manyfold reasons for this process and the potential meanings of institutionalizing a substance such as tobacco into a cultural medium.