Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
7
Actors and Outcasts
Courtiers, priests, and intellectuals can be seen as benefiting from the increase in freedom
that came from being outside the class system, but there were others who might well have
preferred to be inside it. These people were deliberately excluded, either because of some
personal disqualification, or on account of the trade or profession that they followed. Some
were debarred by heredity from being accepted by society; most of these formed the group
known as the eta. Some were temporarily excluded, or at least had the possibility of release
from their outcast status; these were the hinin, the “non-humans.” Some, like actors and in-
habitants of the brothel districts, were precluded because they took part in entertainment;
such people were supposed to be unacceptable only while pursuing their trade, but in prac-
tice for them admittance into respectable society was difficult, since it was to some extent
controlled by the activities of marriage-brokers and go-betweens, who would be reluctant to
accept as suitable candidates anyone tainted by relationship to an entertainer.
There were, of course, many sorts of actors. Those who entertained the warriors, and
even taught them their art, had respectability as part of their reward. This was especially
true of performers of the kōwaka dances, who performed versions of military tales in the
early part of the period, to warrior audiences, and were rewarded by being allowed to wear
two swords as if they were warriors themselves. Their status was considerably higher than
that of the performers in what had become the aristocratic drama, the plays. Actors of
were tightly organized into families, either by birth or adoption, and their status within their
profession was well defined, depending upon clearly understood precedences. The public of
the artisan and merchant classes may not have seen them very often. The Shogun, however,
sometimes admitted the townsfolk to performances given in Edo, and there was a certain
amount of interchange with kabuki actors (performers in the live popular drama) in Osaka.
Kabuki and actors had much the same public status.
Althoughgoingtothetheatre waspartoftheeverydaypleasure oftheJapanese livingin
the towns, the military government was highly suspicious of entertainers of all sorts. Their
forebears, the popular entertainers of preceding eras, had been socially unacceptable, be-
ing classed as kawara-mono , “riverbank folk,” who tended to live along the banks of rivers
in the space that was left free from permanent buildings because of the sudden flooding to
which rivers in Japan are prone. The connection between actors and river-banks persisted
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