Kawakami Otojiro: A tribute

IT’S INEVITABLE that the members of each new generation will behave as if they believe the world began on the day they were born. While it’s just a stage that people pass through as they mature, it can hinder the development of a balanced perspective on the nature of continuity in human affairs. Perhaps the only remedy is historical study of a sort that allows students to realize that new ideas are as old as the hills. Every generation has people who have been there and done that, as the saying goes.

An excellent subject for this historical study would be the life of Kawakami Otojiro, who was a pioneer in more ways than one. Kawakami was born in the Tsumashoji district of Fukuoka City in 1864, just at the end of the Shogunate. In 1878, at the age of 14, he boarded a ship in the Port of Hakata, sailed to Osaka, and then walked to Tokyo (a distance of 550 kilometers, or 342 miles). He continued his education in the capital, and among his teachers was Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founder of Keio University and one of the most influential people in Japan’s modernization during the Meiji Era. (Fukuzawa’s portrait is on the 10,000 yen note, worth $US 90.00 at present.)

He soon became involved as an activist in the Freedom and Peoples’ Rights Movement, a loose association of former samurai and commoners dedicated to the introduction of Western democratic principles in government. Kawakami left Tokyo after the government began cracking down on the movement in the 1880s.

The progressive philosopher Chomin Nakae suggested that he consider performing on stage, and Kawakami took up Nakae’s recommendation by combining Japanese-style vaudeville, called yose, with anti-government political activism. His performances became quite popular, and one of the songs he developed and performed, Oppekepe-bushi, took Japan by storm. The lyrics lampooned contemporary political conditions. One of the verses went:

“I’d like to give those who hate rights and happiness
A taste of jiyuto (a pun meaning both freedom tea/ Liberal Party).
Oppekepe, oppekepe, oppekepe, peppoppo.”

In performance, he wore a jimbaori (coat worn over armor), a headband, and a hakama (a divided formal skirt for men), and held a fan adorned with the rising sun.

Kawakami married the geisha Sadayakko in 1891, and together they established the Kawakami drama troupe. They barnstormed the country with plays ostensibly based on the kabuki tradition, but which were in fact in the avant-garde for Japan at the time. His wife thus became Japan’s first actress of the modern era.

After studying drama in Paris in 1893, he returned to Japan and switched to less controversial themes. Kawakami staged patriotic plays in support of the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-95).

In 1899, his troupe sailed for the United States, where it presented the kabuki-based performances in New York, Washington D.C. (with President McKinley in attendance), and Boston. The following year, they were invited to perform at the Paris Exposition, where they were a huge success. The year after that, they toured 14 countries from Spain to Russia, performing before Czar Nicholas II, Emperor Franz Josef, and the Prince of Wales.

They created a sensation everywhere they appeared, partly due to their exoticism, but also due to their undeniable talent and enthusiasm. Sadayakko in particular captivated European audiences, who compared her to Sarah Bernhardt. Together, husband and wife made a recording of the Oppekepe-bushi, said to be the first phonograph record on which Japanese artists appeared.

Back home again, Kawakami became increasingly involved in theatrical production and became a pioneer in yet another field. He starred in his own presentations of Othello and Hamlet–the first professional Shakespearean productions in Japan.

A trouper to the end, Kawakami died during a performance on 11 November 1911. Today, on the anniversary of his death, a memorial service and other commemorative events were held at the Buddhist temple Joten-ji in Fukuoka City, the site where his remains are kept. (The temple is also famous as the point of origin for soba and udon in Japan, as well as the Gion Yamakata Festival.)

Another event commemorating Kawakami is being held in Tokyo–Osore wo Shiranu Kawakami Otojiro (The Fearless Otojiro Kawakami) is being performed as the first production at the new Theatre Creation in Tokyo’s Hibiya district from November 10 to December 30.

Kawakami Otojiro was a political activist, protest singer, Japan’s first recording star, theatrical idol, cultural ambassador to the West, and a show business entrepreneur. He was the man who brought Shakespeare to Japan on the stage, and, through his wife, created an opportunity for women to play a greater role in Japanese society. These achievements are all the more impressive because Kamawami accomplished them in a relatively short period of time—he died at the age of 47.

I don’t know if the Japanese educational system covers him in their curriculum, but he certainly wouldn’t be out of place there, or in the curriculum of any other country, for that matter. A younger generation would learn that other people already have been there, and done that—and that they could do it too.