Kawatake Mokuami

Kawatake Mokuami (河竹黙阿弥^?) (birth name Yoshimura Yoshisaburō; 吉村芳三郎) (1 March 1816 – 22 January 1893) was a Japanese dramatist of Kabuki. It has been said that "as a writer of plays of Kabuki origin, he was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Japan has ever known." He wrote 150 or so plays over the course of his fifty-year career, covering a wide variety of themes, styles, and forms, including short dance pieces, period plays (jidaimono), contemporary genre pieces (sewamono), tragedies and comedies, as well as adaptations of foreign (Western) stories, though he is perhaps most famous for his shiranamimono, plays featuring sympathetic or tragic rogues and thieves. For the greater part of his career he wrote under the professional name Kawatake Shinshichi, only taking the name Mokuami on his retirement from the stage in 1881.

Mokuami was born in the Nihonbashi district of Edo (modern-day Tokyo). He was disinherited by his father at age fourteen, and thus got work at a lending library, introducing him to the world of theatre. At the age of 20, he entered into an apprenticeship and in 1843 became the standing playwright for the Kawarazaki-za theatre. He began working with kabuki star Ichikawa Kodanji IV in 1854, producing kizewamono pieces. Most of Mokuami's works are in this form, and were written specifically for the star actors of the time, such as Onoe Kikugorō V and Ichikawa Kodanji IV. Many of his plays, such as the famous Benten Kozō, featured thieves and robbers, also known as shiranami (white waves), whom he represented somewhat sympathetically, as low-class heroes, or as tragic figures.

As Japan modernized and Westernized rapidly in the Meiji period, Mokuami moved along with new trends in theatre, becoming a pioneer of Shin-kabuki ("New Kabuki"), writing plays in new genres such as katsurekimono (realistic, historically accurate jidaimono period plays) and zangirimono (sewamono genre plays featuring Meiji era contemporary characters and setting).

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