市川宗家

Kabuki has many families, each inheriting its own art, forms, repertoire and stage names. Among them, Naritaya — the Ichikawa Danjūrō family — has long been called the Ichikawa Sōke.

Ichikawa Danjūrō I is held to have created aragoto, the style that came to symbolise Edo kabuki, in the Genroku era. From then on the family led kabuki through that style and came to be seen as the leading house of Edo kabuki. In 1832 Danjūrō VII chose eighteen plays from those handed down in the family, and the set later became known as the Kabuki Jūhachiban. Naming not merely an inheritance but a repertoire is one of the strongest grounds on which the name rests.

In the traditional arts, the house transmitting the orthodox line is called the iemoto, and sometimes the sōke. Kabuki has no iemoto: the house of Danjūrō has been called the Ichikawa Sōke. In the Meiji era, Danjūrō IX raised the social standing of kabuki actors through work attuned to the new age and through his associations with the upper classes, and the standing of the Sōke is recorded as having been established in both name and substance. From then on, actors of other houses performing the Jūhachiban plays came to say they did so 'with the permission of the Ichikawa Sōke.'

Sōke is not a ranking above other kabuki families, nor does the Sōke institutionally govern productions or performers. It is a name particular to Naritaya — the Ichikawa Danjūrō house — that took hold through its history, its family art and the inheritance of its stage names, and has been carried on as respect for that art.

What the Ichikawa Sōke inherits is more than the name Danjūrō: the forms of aragoto, the Kabuki Jūhachiban, the mimasu crest, the spirit of Naritaya, and the responsibility of carrying them into the next era. In November 2022 Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII, Hakuen, took the name, and on the same stage his eldest son became Ichikawa Shinnosuke VIII. The 13 in this site's name, D-13, refers to that thirteenth generation.