Kidō Okamoto

was a Japanese author and playwright. His real name was . His best known work is the Shin Kabuki play '' Bancho Sarayashiki''.

Kido was born in the district of Shiba Takanawa, a neighbourhood in Minato Ward, Tokyo.

Family

Kido's father, , later , was a samurai who, after the Meiji Restoration, left the service of the Tokugawa Shōgunate and went to work for the British Legation as an interpreter. He was good friends with , , and , who together formed the to promote the modernisation of Kabuki based on the doctrine of the . He was also friends with , the owner-manager of the Shintomiza Theatre, and an employee of the British Legation; avid Kabuki fan Thomas Russell Hillier McClatchie; and Austro-Hungarian diplomat Heinrich von Siebold.

Life

With the relocation of the British Legation to Kōjimachi District in 1873, Kido's father moved there with his wife and daughter. Kido was born at , , Kōjimachi. Later they moved , also in Kōjimachi. Kido learnt from the daughter of a local hairdresser and by listening to his older sister's lessons. Early on, when he was too young to go the Kabuki, he was left at home in the care of two maids and would listen to the gossip of his mother and older sister about the performances when they returned home. As he got older, he went to the Kabuki with his family when the family would socialise at the tea house in the Shintomiza Theatre's enclosure. During his early attendances at the Kabuki, he took a dislike to Danjūrō IX after witnessing what he described as childish behaviour during an incident backstage. Later, however, Kido became an ardent fan.

He would listen to foreign ghost stories told to him by his uncle who brought them back from his overseas travels. He was especially enamoured by ''Windsor Castle'' by William Harrison Ainsworth, which he mistook for Hamlet. At the age of 16 he knew William George Aston, the Secretary of the British Legation, whose children he babysat and from whom he was taught about Shakespeare, a process which Kido said taught him some of the techniques of playwriting. Much to Kido's delight Aston later helped him find the scripts for Kawatake Mokuami's plays ''Nakamitsu'', ''Shisenryō Koban Umenoha'', and ''Kagatobi'', which had been published by the Ginza-based Kabuki Shinpō (Kabuki News) Company. He learnt Chinese poetry from his father, and English from his uncle and students at the British Legation. He attended and graduated from Tokyo First Junior High School afterwards attempting to become a playwright but when that failed from 1890 he wrote stage reviews for the newspaper , now the Mainichi Shimbun, when he used the pseudonym Kyokido, which he later changed to Kido. He went to work for Chūō Shimbun, spending 24 years as a newspaper reporter, including a period in Manchuria. He bought the contract of and married a Yoshiwara Geisha from the Uwajima feudal domain called .

Success eluded him until in 1911, his popular play premiered at the Meijiza. In 1916 his Shin (new) Kabuki play was staged at the . Between 1917 and 1937 was serialised. His series on the theatre of the Meiji period, a valuable resource, the first half of which was serialised in the Monthly Kabuki Review Magazine in the late 1920s, early 1930s as , then again as a series in 1935 and finally in full as by Iwanami Shoten in 1993.

In 1918 he visited the US and Europe. His home and library in Kōjimachi were destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1923. He was taken in by his disciple , from where he moved to Azabu, Minato. The following year he moved to , a street in north Shinjuku. From 1935 his articles were occasionally published in . His last novel was the controversial , published in 1937, about two brothers running a freak show which is in trouble who hit the jackpot when they get a Tiger cub. He continued to publish plays in the magazine from 1930 until 1938. In 1939 he died of pneumonia and is buried with his wife in Aoyama cemetery in Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo.

After his death one of his students and adoptive heir, his son , founded the Okamoto Kido Journal which printed much of Kido's work. Kido's grandson is the current president. The Okamoto Kido Literary Prize, was established but was only awarded twice between 1943 and 1944 during the period leading up to the end of the Second World War.

References

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* (French)
* (French)

External links

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e-texts of Kido's works
at Aozora bunko

{{DEFAULTSORT:Okamoto, Kido
1872 births
1939 deaths
Japanese mystery writers
People from Minato, Tokyo
Writers from Tokyo
War correspondents of the Russo-Japanese War
Deaths from pneumonia in Japan
Burials at Aoyama Cemetery
Kabuki playwrights