I was happy to see the Kabuki celebrating the name succession of the 13th Ichikawa Danjuro

In November 2022, a big event happened in the history of Kabuki.

A famous Kabuki actor, Ichikawa Ebizo, succeeded to the 13th Ichikawa Danjuro, and his son succeeded to the 8th Ichikawa Shinnosuke.

A performance commemorating their successions was held at Kabukiza, Tokyo.

The performance was divided into a daytime session and a nighttime session.

Though I could get a ticket for the daytime session, the tickets for the nighttime session had already sold out.

This is because the nighttime session included special greetings from the stage by Icikawa Danjuro and Ichikawa Shinnosuke.

Now, I’d like to let you know how the daytime session was.

The first performance was “IWAU NARITA KOBIKI NO NIGIWAI”.

The performance was very lively.

Some famous Kabuki actors, who dressed up as various townspeople in the city of Edo, celebrated the name succession of the 13th Ichikawa Danjuro and the 8th Ichikawa Shinnosuke.

The highlights were their gorgeous singing and dancing. 

The second performance was “UIRO URI”. The 8th Ichikawa Shinnosuke made his first performance there.

Though he was a boy of nine, his performance was amazing.

The way he acted was like that of an adult Kabuki actor.

The third performance was “Kanjincho”.

Kanjincho is one of the representative performances of Kabuki, and it is still very popular.

The 13th Ichikawa Danjuro played the leading part “Benkei”.

His eyes were very powerful.

His acting showed that he was worthy of succeeding his father who was named the 12th Ichikawa Danjuro.

I was happy to see the Kabuki celebrating the name succession of the 13th Ichikawa Danjuro.

By the way, a special bento lunch box was sold at Kabukiza matching this special time. It was named “Syumei Bento”.

Syumei means name succession in Japanese. It was delicious.