Kataoka Nizaemon XII
Kataoka Nizaemon XII was a Japanese kabuki actor of the Kamigata tradition; also known as Jinzaemon. His violent death at the hands of a starving writer living on the actor's property has been cited by scholars such as John Dower as an example of the chaos and "social disintegration" in the months and years immediately following Japan's defeat in World War II.
Names & Lineage
Like most kabuki actors, Nizaemon had a number of stage names over the course of his career. He debuted onstage under his birth name, Tōkichi Kataoka, and later took on the names Kataoka Tsuchinosuke II and Kataoka Gadō IV before becoming the twelfth in the line of Kataoka Nizaemon. He was the fourth actor to be known by the poetry name Roen, and bore the guild name of Matsushimaya.Born into a renowned Tokyo Kabuki family, Nizaemon XII's great-grandfather, Nakamura Karoku I was a legendary onnagata actor from the Kamigata region who was well-connected to several important kabuki theater families, such as the Hamuraya house and the Takashimaya house.
Nizaemon XII was one of two grandsons of Kataoka Nizaemon VIII, an outstanding tachiyaku actor who specialized in nimaime, jitsugotoshi, katakiyaku and oyajigata roles.
Nizaemon XII's father, Kataoka Nizaemon X was a renowned tachiyaku like his father whose specialty was katakiyaku roles.
His uncle, Kataoka Nizaemon XI was a renowned and outstanding kabuki actor known for being the most notorious Kaneru yakusha in the history of the Matsushimaya acting house.
Nizaemon XII's cousin, Kataoka Nizaemon XIII was one of the greatest and most outstanding tachiyaku actors of the Showa era, whose specialty was wagoto roles.
Like Nizaemon XII, his three sons were also kabuki actors: his eldest son, Kataoka Gadō XIII was an accomplished and skilled onnagata actor, Ichimura Yoshigorō II was a tachiyaku actor who was known for being a supporting actor, and Kataoka Roen VI was a veteran tachiyaku actor whose specialty was katakiyaku roles.
His nephew, Ichimura Kakitsu XVII is a veteran tachiyaku actor who is a member of the Tachibanaya house and who plays both aragoto and wagoto roles.
Life and career
Born into a kabuki family, the actor who would later be known as Nizaemon first took the stage in 1885, at the age of three, at the Chitose-za, under his birth name, Tōkichi Kataoka. His father, Kataoka Nizaemon X, died in 1895; young Tōkichi took on the name Tsuchinosuke the following year, becoming Kataoka Gadō IV several years later in 1901.He frequently performed alongside Matsumoto Kōshirō VII and Ichimura Uzaemon XV, among others, and took part in many premiere and revival performances. He is said to have had a somewhat cold and gloomy acting style earlier in his career, when he frequently played alongside onnagata Onoe Baikō VI, though after Baikō's death, when Nizaemon came to more frequently act alongside Uzaemon XV, his style and apparent mood onstage brightened noticeably; this cold, gloomy personality would return, and served him well, however, as it suited perfectly the mood of certain sewamono roles and plays. Gadō played a young Minamoto no Yoshitsune in the 1912 debut of the dance drama Hashi Benkei, and would play Yoshitsune again on many occasions in Kanjinchō.
He took the name Nizaemon in a shūmei ceremony in January 1936. He came to specialize in onnagata roles, i.e. female roles, and those of refined, graceful noblemen such as Yoshitsune is often portrayed. He played the courtesan Agemaki, the chief female role in Sukeroku Yukari no Edo Zakura in a March 1938 performance at the Osaka Kabuki-za.
His life and career were cut short, however, when, on 16 March 1946, he and four others in his household were murdered by Toshiaki Iida, in the actor's home. Iida was a writer who had been living in a detached house on the actor's property. Like the great majority of Japanese in the early post-war, Iida was extremely poor and starving. On this particular day, a quarrel erupted between Nizaemon and Iida who envied and resented the actor's relatively lavish lifestyle; it ended with the writer killing Nizaemon, his wife, his infant son, and two maids with a hatchet.
Iida was arrested in Miyagi Prefecture on 30 March. Feeble-mindedness was accepted in the trial and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 October 1947. He was paroled in the 1960s.