The World of the Soga Brother

In this video, we take a look at the sekai ("world") of the Soga brothers, through the main plays and dances that survive in the modern kabuki repertoire, and the actors and playwrights who shaped these characters and stories.

I've wanted to cover many different aspects of the Soga repertoire for a while, but the resulting video has been chaotic and underwhelming. I hope that at least you enjoy it to some extent, and that it serves as a starting point for a better thought out discussion of this wonderful genre in the future!

I would have liked to better explain the play Tsuwamono Kongen Soga (1697) and its connection to the existing plays better. You can find much more about this play and other related ideas in William James Lee's thesis "Genroku Kabuki: Cultural Production and Ideology in Early Modern Japan", which is publicly available online. I also would have liked to cover in more depth the play Ya no Ne (1729), but I had very little footage. There is a lovely English translation by Laurence Kominz, introduced and annotated with great detail, in the journal Monumenta Nipponica, which should also be easy to find. It is called "Ya no Ne: The Genesis of a Kabuki Aragoto Classic". Other plays that I would have liked to include if I had footage are Harukoma (1791) and the shin-kabuki Soga Monogatari (1914). Is there any other play that you think I should have included?

English translations of Kotobuki Soga no Taimen and Uirō Uri can be find in the book "Kabuki Plays on Stage Vol 1: Brilliance and Bravado", and Sukeroku in "Kabuki: Five Classic Plays".

As always, special thanks to the Patreon members who make these videos possible: C. H. White, Eric Pan, SuperGingernutz, calvin, Valerie, L Jay H, Tina Draughon, Faith, Kieran Byfield and Jonatan Alvarado!

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The music for this video is the nagauta song Ame no Gorō (残月).