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Paper short abstract

Early modern Kabuki reviews were written as group discussions to present conflicting views. This presentation looks at how these groups were constructed, focusing on the gender-ratio, and the professional and social groups represented, with a focus on the female spectators.

Paper long abstract

This presentation analyses the gender ratio and social and professional groups found among the proxy speaker in Kabuki actors’ reviews from the late 17th to the mid 18th century, with the aim to discuss how the representative spectatorship was viewed by contemporary Kabuki consumers.

From 1660 onwards, theatre reviews commenting on the Kabuki actors and productions were published on a yearly basis, covering the major theatres in Kyoto, Osaka and Edo. Though several publisher tried their hand at this popular printed media, and the format of the theatre reviews varied from using waka poetry cards to Chinese poetry allusions, eventually the format used by the Hachimonjiya publishing house in the review Yakusha kuchi jamisen (役者口三味線, ‘Gossip about Actors’) in 1699, in which the review was written as a group discussion between several characters presenting sometimes contradicting opinions, became the most popular format.

The group discussion tend to present opinions of fans of different actors, each propagating their own favourite and also regional differences in taste in between Edo and the Osaka and Kyoto theatres, but in this presentation, I analyze the constellation of these proxy speakers appearing the over 130 Actors’ Reviews published from 1695 to 1772, dividing them into male and female speakers, and in each group consider the predominant professions and social groups represented. I will contrast this material to data extracted from and analysis of spectators appearing in pictures and prints depicting the inside of Kabuki theatres and also spectators described in the diaries of Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro II (1688-1758) and Kabuki fan and feudal lord Yanagisawa Nobutoki (1724-1792), to discuss how representative these proxy speakers may be, and what they tell us about the representative spectatorship from the 17th to the 19th century.