Otojirō Kawakami

Otojirō Kawakami (川上 音二郎, Kawakami Otojirō^?, 8 February 1864 – 11 November 1911) was a Japanese actor and comedian.

Kawakami was born in present-day Hakata-ku, Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu, "the second son of a second son" of a merchant family. At age eleven his mother died, and when he didn't get along with his stepmother he stowed away on a cargo ship to Osaka.

Taking odd jobs to support himself, at eighteen he became a policeman in Kyoto. "Shortly after that, fired by the political turmoil and the strident calls for democracy, he had joined Itagaki Taisuke's Liberal party (Liberal Party of Japan (1881)) as a radical, rabble-rousing soshi agitator.....Soon his scurrilous tongue and subversive speeches were getting him into trouble. He was arrested time and time again- a hundred and eighty times in all, he bragged. At nineteen he was banned from speaking in public in Kyoto for a year and from using the name Liberty Kid. He also went to prison six times."

Kawakami was inspired to start his own acting troupe after receiving acting training under a rakugo master and after seeing the shosei shibai ("student theater" or "amateur theater") of fellow activist Sadanori Sudo, which "aimed at being realistic, just like in the West, and thus could claim to be following government directives to be as Western as possible in every possible way. … Far from being career-driven professionals, like the kabuki actors, they portrayed themselves as romantic, devil-may-care bohemians. Their amateur status freed them from all the constraints and conventions of the traditional theater." Under the influence of philosopher Chomin Nakae, Kawakami began staging theatre productions as an outlet for his political views.

...
Wikipedia