Ichikawa Danjūrō X

As the son-in-law of Danjūrō IX

The Naritaya official site records that after graduating from Keiō Gijuku he became the son-in-law of Jitsuko, eldest daughter of Danjūrō IX. The site's Danjūrō Encyclopaedia relates that Jitsuko took the name Suisen II and her younger sister Fukiko the name Kyokubai, and that neither had a male heir.

The position of head of the Ichikawa house

The Naritaya official site states that he held throughout a will and sense of duty to protect the authority of the Ichikawa head house, and performed the offices the head house owed during an unprecedented interval with no Danjūrō.

The inheritance of the Kabuki Jūhachiban

Of the eighteen plays whose selection Danjūrō VII announced in 1832, many were by then no longer staged. The Naritaya official site singles out his successive revivals of these as the achievement most worth recording.

Reviving the buried plays of the Jūhachiban

The Naritaya official site writes that his successive revivals of buried Jūhachiban plays — Gedatsu, Fuwa, Zōhiki, Oshimodoshi, Uwanari, Nanatsumen and Jayanagi among them — are probably the achievement most deserving of note.

From a merchant family to the stage

The Naritaya official site records that he was born the second son of Inanobu Rihei, a wealthy Nihonbashi merchant, and that in 1910, after the death of Danjūrō IX, he suddenly resolved to become an actor. He sought out the Kamigata actor Nakamura Ganjirō I on tour, quietly appeared in bit parts, and in October of that year was formally presented at the Osaka Nakaza under his own name, Horikoshi Fukusaburō, at twenty-nine.

Becoming Ichikawa Sanshō V

In November 1917, the Naritaya official site records, he performed the Jūhachiban play Yanone at the Kabukiza and took the name Ichikawa Sanshō V, at thirty-six. Mimasu — the three nested measures — is also the name of the Ichikawa house crest.

Living with the limits of his craft

The Naritaya official site is candid: because he entered an actor's training as an amateur past middle age, his technique was in the end wanting, and for all his effort he was not well regarded as a performer. He nonetheless continued to discharge the duties of the head house.

The vogue for shin-kabuki, and revivals

The Japan Arts Council records that from the late Meiji era into early Shōwa, plays written by authors outside kabuki came to be staged, and that Ichikawa Sadanji II performed them energetically. Sadanji also revived pieces long unperformed, among them the Jūhachiban play Narukami.

The golden age of Tokyo kabuki

The Japan Arts Council records that a company of outstanding actors — Nakamura Utaemon V, Onoe Baikō VI, Matsumoto Kōshirō VII, Ichimura Uzaemon XV, Onoe Kikugorō VI, Nakamura Kichiemon I — gave the period the name of Tokyo kabuki's golden age, while in Kamigata, Nakamura Ganjirō I was called the face of Osaka.

Theatres burned, and plays banned under occupation

The Japan Arts Council records that the Second World War burned down almost all of kabuki's theatres and took many of its people. When performance finally resumed under the occupation, many plays — Kanadehon Chūshingura among them — were for a time banned as endorsing militarism and the old status order.

The Kabukiza rebuilt

The Japan Arts Council records that the Kabukiza was rebuilt in 1951 and that, helped by the wide response to a staging of Genji Monogatari, kabuki began to recover. He died five years later.

To the stage by way of Nakamura Ganjirō I

The Naritaya official site records that in 1910, after the death of Danjūrō IX, he suddenly resolved to act and sought out the Kamigata actor Nakamura Ganjirō I on tour. The Japan Arts Council describes Ganjirō in those same years as the actor who perfected a modern wagoto and was called the face of Osaka.

Filling the gap as head of the house

The Naritaya official site records that through an unprecedented interval with no Danjūrō he performed the offices the head house owed, and revived one buried Jūhachiban play after another — years in which the absence of the name was answered by the staging of the family art.

The name of the tenth, conferred after death

The Naritaya official site records that he died on 1 February 1956 at seventy-three, and that on the day of the funeral his successor Ebizō — later Danjūrō XI — conferred the name of Danjūrō X upon the deceased. The site's Danjūrō Encyclopaedia phrases it as being given the name posthumously. This was not a succession taken in life.