Singing Tales of the Gishi: Naniwabushi and the Forty-seven Rōnin in Late Meiji JapanHenry D. Smith II and Hiromi Hyōdō

Excerpt

So swift has been the demise of naniwabushi 浪花節, the most popular form of mass entertainment in Japan throughout the first half of the twentieth century, that few Japanese under the age of fifty can even describe it, much less recall an actual performance, either live or recorded. Even by its current name of rōkyoku 浪曲, a more elegant term introduced in the Taishō period but established in ordinary speech only after World War II, the story-singing tradition of naniwabushi is today largely unknown and its history poorly documented. It hangs on today by a thread as a performance tradition, coming to life at a handful of seasonal concerts for graying audiences and at daily performances on the first ten days of every month at the small and dilapidated Mokubatei 木馬亭 theater in the Asakusa i浅草 district of Tokyo.

We wish here first to offer a general account of the astonishing rise of naniwabushi from the rowdy streets of Tokyo in the early Meiji period, culminating in its emergence on the big-theater stage as a phenomenally popular form of entertainment in the final years of Meiji, appealing to all classes as a truly national form of expression. The basic form of the art remained much the same throughout: a single storyteller alternating between song (known in naniwabushi as fushi 節) and ordinary speech (kotoba 詞, with both dialogue and narration), accompanied by a shamisen player who offers periodic verbal interjections for timing and encouragement. Although it resembles the gidayū 義太夫 narration of the puppet theater in these respects, naniwabushi is far more accessible to a modern audience, with more clearly defined melodic lines and easily comprehensible language. Cross-culturally, it bears similarities to Korean p’ansori, which also features a single singer, alternating song and speech, and an accompanist (a drum in the Korean case) who interjects words of encouragement.

Within this basic form, naniwabushi steadily evolved in the Meiji period in its venue (from open street performance to small-stage variety halls and on to the big city theaters), in its stage appearance, and in its repertory. The most decisive changes in all these respects were the work of a single performer, Tōchūken Kumoemon 桃中軒雲石衛門 (1873–1916; see figure 1), in a single run in June 1907 at the Hongōza 本郷座 theater in Tokyo. Our particular interest in this, the last in the “Three Hundred Years of Chūshingura” series, lies in Kumoemon’s repertory, which at the height of his career was dominated by tales of the Forty-seven Righteous Samurai of Akō (Akō Gishi 赤穂義士, most often simply “Gishi”). The popularity of these tales of the Gishi (generically known as Gishiden 義士伝) both fed on and gave new shape to the national enthusiasm for military tales in the wake of the victory over Russia, appealing to a widespread if inchoate enthusiasm for “Bushidō” 武士道, the presumptive belief system of the traditional samurai warrior. The result was a “Gishi boom” in the final years of Meiji, promoted by both naniwabushi singers and conservative ideologues—each, as we will see, with different and often conflicting agendas. In this way, the Chūshingura phenomenon progressed to a new plane, now far more widely known throughout Japan than ever before and deeply embedded in all of the leading modern media technologies, especially phonograph records and, in time, radio and television.