Early modern puppet theater, from which most kabuki historical plays (jidaimono) are derived, was largely centered on themes of war. The puppet theater constantly questioned accepted historical narratives, proposing new scenarios and new interpretations of acknowledged facts. Two good examples are the famous Yoshitsune senbon zakura (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees, 1747), which presented an alternate narrative of the deaths of emperor Antoku, Taira no Tomomori, and Noritsune; and Ichinotani futaba gunki (Chronicle of the Battle of Ichinotani, 1751), in which Kumagai Naozane does not kill Atsumori. Kabuki also made its own intervention by bringing back military figures such as Minamoto no Yoritomo or Toyotomi Hideyoshi, or reworking plays from the puppet stage in contemporary urban settings.
My paper will center on a shift that took place in early modern theater from memorializing medieval warfare to rewriting and reproducing history in new contexts, making it relevant to the contemporary moment. While influential medieval chronicles such as Heike monogatari (The Tale of the Heike) and various noh plays memorialized the past through a focus on the losing Heike side, this presentation will argue that Edo kabuki was much more interested in the Genji than the Heike, clarifying the process by which the warfare of the past and medieval military figures were adapted to the purposes of the construction of an urban present. |