TAMAGAWA SENNOJÔ I

Existence: ???

Connection:

Disciples: Tamagawa Sennojô II, Tamagawa Sennojô III, Tamagawa Shuzen I, Tamagawa Kasen

Career:

1639: the Kamigata actor Tamagawa Sennojô I settles in Edo and performs in March at the Nakamuraza. Later on, he goes back to Kamigata.

1653: second stay in Edo; Sennojô performs at the Ichimuraza.

Summer 1654: Sennojô goes back to Kyôto.

Fall 1655: Sennojô breaks a bone while performing in Kyôto.

1661: due to the decline of Kabuki popularity in Kyôto, a group of actors, including Sennojô and Komai Shôzaemon, decide to go to Edo; Sennojô performs for 3 years at the Nakamuraza in the drama "Kawachi-ga-Yoi". He receives what must have been a huge salary for his time, one ryô a day.

1665: Sennojô performs in Nagoya at the Tachibana no Shibai in the drama "Kawachi-ga-Yoi".

5th lunar month of 1666: Sennojô achieves a big success at the Ichimuraza by performing with Tamon Shôzaemon I in the dance "Shinobi Guruma".

End of the 1660s: Sennojô retires in Ise, where he most likely dies.

Comments:

"Tamagawa Sennojô I was a 17th century Kamigata actor, who came down to Edo after training and winning fame in Kyôto. He was a pioneer in the development of the art of the onnagata. He performed in front of Lord Matsudaira Yamato-no-Kami, who wrote in his diary in 1661 that "his beauty is more than my brush can express". He was described as looking like a girl until his death.

"Tamagawa Sennojô I was mentioned in the theatre chronicles as an unrivalled onnagata; that he first went on the stage at the age of 14, and both while acting and in private life always wore the flowing robe of a woman. He broke a bone, and afterwards his dancing was less graceful; his audiences never failing in their appreciation of him." (Zoë Kincaid in "Kabuki, the Popular Stage of Japan")

"Tamagawa Sennojô, active between around 1650 and 1670, is one of the actors who is said a founder of onnagata. His charm lay in his beauty and the quality of his voice. In particular, he was known for his performance of the role of the wife in "Kawachi-ga-Yoi", a hit show that is recorded to have run for three years. "Kawachi-ga-Yoi" is a play based on an episode from the Heian period romance, "Tales of Ise". Longing for her husband who has gone off to visit another woman, his wife comes out of the bedroom where she sleeps alone and raises the bamboo blind. Then, she composes a poem of longing for her husband; paraphrased it means, "Tonight when there is a strong wind, the white waves must surely be rising in the offing. My husband must be walking alone now in the dark mountain road of Mount Tatsuta." Her husband, who is checking out the situation from the cover of a brush-wood fence, hears this poem and it restores his feelings for her. They say that the acting of Sennojô in the role of the wife, as he came out from behind the bamboo-blind, was magnificent. Probably, reciting the poem from behind the blind, at first he let only his voice be heard, and then, he revealed his beautiful figure to the spectators. It was a dazzling entrance. Moreover, Tamagawa Sennojô was seeing the feelings of jealousy that were burning repeatedly within the woman. I think he expressed these feelings of jealousy, since in Sennojô's art was the ability to express interior feelings." (Takei Kyôzô in his article "An Acting in Early Kabuki")

Tamagawa Sennojô I (center of the picture) around 1666

The Tamagawa Sennojô line of actors