The Ichikawa family has presided over kabuki theatre since the 17th century. Next year Ebizo will be inaugurated as its 13th patriarch
EBIZO ICHIKAWA was three years old when his father asked him if he wanted to be on the stage. It wasn’t really a question. His father was Danjuro Ichikawa XII, the head of an acting clan that has dominatedtheatre in Japan since the 17th century; boys in the family are taught from birth to keep up the tradition. Before he even began school, Ebizo knew that he would one day become Danjuro Ichikawa XIII, a thespian aristocrat. “I said yes,” he recalls, smiling.Now aged 41, his time has come.
Little Shinnosuke made his first stage appearance when he was two years old. “Tradition dictates that boys are supposed to start training aged six years, six months and six days but that’s now considered too late,” Ebizo explains.is a blend of singing, dancing and acting, and performers must be proficient in all three; its roots lie in a bawdy, rebellious musical theatre once performed by women.
He is familiar with tragedy as well as drama, losing his young wife, a television host, to breast cancer in 2017. Ebizo says he still finds it hard to discuss her death. In 2010 he outraged’s conservative guardians with a drunken punch-up in a Tokyo nightclub that might have ended his career.
’s profile. He won a Best Actor award at the Japanese equivalent of the Oscars five years ago for his role in the movie “Ask This of Rikyu”, in which he starred with his late father. He has takenabroad, performing in London, Paris and New York, of which there will be more to come, he promises. Ebizo says he briefly squirmed under the weight of expectation in his teenage years. Now he must guide his own offspring through the gruelling apprenticeship and the challenges the artform faces. His son is more sure-footed than he was, he says, though being born into the Ichikawa family is no guarantee of success. Even so, Ebizo reckons that having your life and career mapped out early has its advantages. “I learned to look at this as my destiny,” he says.
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