also known as was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Buddhist monk of the early

Muromachi period The , also known as the , is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ...

of Japanese history, noted as the blind itinerant lute player (''

biwa hōshi , also known as "lute priests", were travelling performers in the era of Japanese history preceding the Meiji period. They earned their income by reciting vocal literature to the accompaniment of music. were mostly blind, and adopted the shaved ...

'') who gave the epic ''

Heike Monogatari is an epic account compiled prior to 1330 of the struggle between the Taira clan and Minamoto clan for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century in the Genpei War (1180–1185). It has been translated into English at least five times. ...

'' its present form.

Life

Little is known about his early life, but Kakuichi may have originally been a monk of Enkyō-ji near

Himeji 260px, Himeji City Hall is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 525,682 in 227,099 households and a population density of 980 persons per km2. The total area of the city is ...

Harima Province or Banshū (播州) was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is the southwestern part of present-day Hyōgo Prefecture. Harima bordered on Tajima, Tanba, Settsu, Bizen, and Mimasaka Provinces. Its capital was Himeji. During th ...

and may have been a nephew of

Ashikaga Takauji also known as Minamoto no Takauji was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Ashikaga shogunate."Ashikaga Takauji" in ''Encyclopædia Britannica, The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th edn., 1992, Vol. ...

. After losing his sight in his 30s, he is said to have come to

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

and joined the

Tōdōza The was a Japanese guild for Visual impairment, blind men, established in the 14th century by the biwa hōshi . Members performed a variety of roles, as itinerant musicians, massage, masseurs, and acupuncture, acupuncturists. It received the pa ...

, a ''biwa hōshi'' guild, performing versions of the ''Heike Monogatari'' as entertainment for members of the aristocracy. Kakuichi was a student of Jōichi (城一), the most famous Heike reciter in Kyoto, but soon surpassed his master and 1363 had the attained the highest rank (検校, ''Kengyō'') within the guild. On his death, he was posthumous awarded the rank of Grand Master (総検校, ''Sōkengyō'').

Work

Kakuichi's version of the ''Heike Monogatari'', known as the Kakuichi-bon, was developed over several decades beginning in the 1330s or 1340s, and was written down only a few months before his death as he recited it to his pupil Teiichi. The Tōdōza split over whether or not to accept Kakuichi's new version, with the ''Yasaka-ryu'' rejecting it, and the ''Ichikata-ryu'' accepting it. The Yasaka-ryu declined after the

Onin War Onin may refer to: * Ōnin, a Japanese era ** Ōnin War * Onin peninsula, on the Bomberai Peninsula of Indonesian Papua * Onin language, an Austronesian language spoken on the peninsula {{Disambiguation ...

, leaving the tradition in the hands of the ''Ichikata-ryu''. The ''Kakuichi-bon'' is currently the most popular version, and is the version used for most scholarly studies. pp 42

References

* pp 500–543 * McCullough, Helen Craig. (1988). ''The Tale of the Heike''. Stanford:

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It is currently a member of the Ass ...

.
OCLC 16472263

Notes

1299 births 1371 deaths 14th-century Japanese people 14th-century Buddhist monks Japanese blind musicians Japanese Buddhist clergy Japanese lutenists Buddhist clergy of Muromachi-period Japan Blind clergy {{Buddhist-clergy-stub