The following is a direct except from the Azuma
Odori programme from Spring 1951, graciously provided from the private
collection of Christina Matson. This has been copy-typed verbatim,
along with scans, from the original programme by Christina Matson.
April 1st – April 12th. (Curtain at 11:30 a.m.)
April 13th – April 24th (Curtain at 3:00 p.m.)
1. “AYAME” (Sweet Flags)(Nagauta
Music).
Stage Arrangement
by Motohiro Nagasaka.
Dancing
Department by Jusuke Hanayagi.
Here is a dance in honor of sweet flags, which is performed by
three women—a geisha-girl, a woman of mature age and a bourgeois
girl—at a sweet flag garden in Horikiri noted for its sweet
flags in the Yedo era.
2. “MODORI KAGO” (The Returning
Palanquin)
(Tokiwazu
Music).
Dancing
Department by Koisaburo Nishikawa.
This dance was first put on the stage more than one hundred and
sixty years ago.
The story connected with the dance goes in gist as follows:
Two palanquin-bearers with a young apprentice girl (the well-known
prostitute Oguruma-Dayu’s attendant), a resident of Shimabara,
Kyoto in their palanquin stop off at Shibano where they both as
well as the girl take a rest. While taking a short rest there,
both of the palanquin-bearers, one from Naniwa (Osaka) and the
other from Azuma (Tokyo), boast of their birthplace respectively
while the girl tells them of the red-light district at Shimabara
in dancing. In the meantime, one of the palanquin-bearers turns
out to be the notorious robber Goemon Ishikawa and the other,
the famous General Hisayoshi Mashiba and they start struggling
with each other when the curtain is expected to fall. Such a form
was a characteristic of a Kabuki pantomimic dance in those days.
3. Ukihashi Nuinosuke “TORIBE
YAMA” (Ukihashi Nuinosuke’s Double Suicide at Mt.
Toribe).
(Section
A—Kiyomoto Music).
(Section
B—Miyazono Music).
Written
and Made up by Nobuo Uno.
Stage Arrangement
and Suggestion by Hoshun Yamaguchi.
Musical
Composition in Section A—(Kiyomoto Music)
by Kiyomoto
Musician Eijiro.
Dancing
Department by Koisaburo Nishiwaka.
This dancing play is based on “Mt. Toribe” in the
old piece “Miyazono Bushi” adopted from a lengend
[sic] titled “The Double Suicide at Mt. Toribe” and
Mr. Nobuo Uno, one of the popular writers in Japan today, dramatized
its first part making Section A suitable for Kiyomoto music and
Section B suitable for Miyazono music.
The story goes in gist as follows:
Nuinosuke, a samurai (warrior) in Yedo, falls in love with Ukihashi,
a prostitute in Gion Kyoto while he is in Kyoto on official business,
argues with one of his comrades about a little thing and kills
him at last.
In the meantime, Ukihashi is expected to be ransomed by another
man. Under such circumstances both Nuinosuke and Ukihashi think
that they have no other way but to kill themselves and decide
to commit a double suicide at Toribeno where light snow is falling
early in April. This dancing play deals with their way to the
world beyond.
4. “POPULAR SONGS CONNECTED WITH
THE PRINCIPAL PLACES OF INTEREST IN WEST JAPAN.” Dancing
Department by Kikunojo Onoe.
Here is a dancing play, a combination of popular songs or folks
songs with the principal places of interest in West Japan, intermingled
with such songs as “Ume Wa Saitaka” (Are the plum-blossoms
now in bloom?), “Yakko-San” (Mr. Footman), “Tango
No Miyazubushi” (Miyazu Song in Tango Province), Utazawa
Song “Uja Wa Chadokoro” (Uji is a great producer of
tea), “Take Ni naritaya” (I wish I were a bamboo),
Gidayu Song “Sanju Sangen Do” (The Thirty-three “Ken”
Temple), “Kompira Fune” (The Lucky Vessel), “Kushimoto
Bushi” (Kushimoto Song), “Tanko Bushi” (The
Coal-Mine Popular Song), “Nagasaki No Zabon Uri” (The
Shaddock Dealer at Nagasaki), “Ohara Bushi” (Ohara
Song), etc.
April 1st—April 12th. (Curtain at 3:00 p.m.)
April 13th—April 24th. (Curtain at 11:30 a.m.)
1. A. “O-SHICHI-KICHIZA”
(O-shichi And Kichiza).
(Nagauta
Music).
Written
by Shoyo Tsubochi.
Stage Arrangement
by Motohiro Nagasaka.
Dancing
Department by Kikunojo Onoe.
This piece deals with a love story of O-shichi and Kichiza as
a dancing play.
B. “TAKASAGO TANZEN”
(Nagauta
Music and Orchestra).
Dancing
Department by Kikunojo Onoe.
This piece is one of the oldest pieces in Japan and there remains
vividly an early form of Japanese dancing in it. Speaking of “Tanzen,”
it is one of the early forms in Japanese dancing.
This is a dance performed in the “Genroku” (in 1688)
style by a man and two women.
2. “TABIYUKEBA” (The Traveling
Man).
Written
by Mantaro Kubota.
Art Effects
by Seiho Kaburagi.
Stage Arrangement
by Seikichi Torii.
Musical
Composition by Tokiwazu Musician Mojibei.
Dancing
Department by Jusuke Hanayagi.
This dancing play depicts a traveling man’s dreams. The
dance is performed with Ryogoku-bashi Bridge where Yedoites enjoy
the cool of the evening in summer and a fireworks display peculiar
to Yedo (now Tokyo) for its settings. The writer compares a man’s
travel to his life as seen in his composition.
3. “BUNYA TO KISEN” (Bunya
and Kisen)
(Kiyomoto
And Nagauta Orchestra).
Dancing
Department by Kikunojo Onoe.
This piece is one of the dancing sets which were on the boards
at the Nakamura-za Theater of Yedo in 1831. These dances are said
to be the most prominent of all the sets, so they are often performed
even nowadays.
Bunya’s dance centers about dialogues on love while Kisen’s,
about tricks on love (performed by strolling players in the Yedo
era).
Bunya dances with a court lady on the corridor of the palace while
Kisen, with a waitress in Maruyama, Kyoto, where the cherry-blossoms
are in full bloom, they both express their love respectively in
the form of dancing.
4. “POPULAR SONGS CONNECTED WITH
THE PRINCIPAL PLACES OF INTEREST IN EAST JAPAN.”
Dancing
Department by Koisaburo Nishikawa.
Running away from Hokkaido to Tokyo, a couple of elopers sing
such popular songs or folk songs as “Oiwake,” “Soran
Bushi,” “Obako Bushi,” “Karame Bushi,”
“Sanza Shigure,” “Matsushima Ondo,” “Yoneyama
Jinku,” “Niagari Shinnai,” “Kojo No Tsuki”
(The moon at the Dilapidated Castle), “Tairyo Bushi”
(The Big Catch), “Iso Bushi” (The Beach Song), “Yugure”
(Dusk), “Kiyari Kuzushi,” etc. at each place of interest.
