江戸三座

The Edo sanza are the three playhouses licensed to stage kabuki in Edo: the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, and Morita-za. In the Genroku era there had been four, but after the Ejima-Ikushima affair of 1714 led to the abolition of the Yamamura-za, performance rights are said to have been restricted to these three until the Meiji era.

Under the Tenpō Reforms, and following the fire of 1841, the three theatres were ordered out and relocated in 1842-43 to Shōtenchō in Asakusa, renamed Saruwaka-machi. There, until the Meiji era, the district remained the capital of Edo kabuki, and playgoing an indispensable pleasure of Edo life.

Saruwaka-machi, the town to which the three theatres moved, preserves the memory of Edo kabuki in its very name: it honors Saruwaka (Nakamura) Kanzaburō I, said to have raised Edo's first theatre tower in 1624, and the three houses were also called the Saruwaka sanza. Lined with theatre teahouses and actors' homes, the district is said to have been among the liveliest sights in Edo.

It was on the stages of these three theatres that successive Ichikawa Danjūrō, from the first onward, made their names. The aragoto style of Edo itself was nurtured beneath the sanza's towers, together with their audiences—the history of the Edo sanza and that of the Ichikawa Sōke's art are inseparably entwined.