Kabuki Star Kangyoku Nakamura Recalls His Unusual Start

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Nakamura Kangyoku — Born in Tokyo in 1996, he entered the tutelage of Nakamura Baigyoku at age seven and began his kabuki career as Nakamura Umemaru, a heyago apprentice attached to Baigyoku's household. In 2019, he was adopted by Baigyoku and took the name Nakamura Kangyoku I. His guild name is Takasagoya, and he is affectionately known as Maruru.

My name is Kangyoku Nakamura, and I am a 29-year-old kabuki actor. Once a month, I'll be sharing the whole story　about kabuki, as well as the many things I find myself thinking and feeling, in print, on video, and elsewhere.

From Apprentice to Adopted Son

When I look back on entering the kabuki world at the age of seven, having come from an ordinary family, I feel it happened through a series of almost miraculous encounters.

My path—beginning as a heyago (meaning "live-in apprentice"), to Nakamura Baigyoku, now a Living National Treasure, and later becoming his adopted son—partly overlaps with that of Kikuno, the protagonist played by Ryo Yoshizawa in the film National Treasure. When I read the original novel, I remember thinking, "This feels almost like my own story."

I would never call myself a "real-life National Treasure," of course. Still, I believe there was a reason why, at this point in my career, I was able to perform two of the major pieces featured in the film—Fuji Musume [The Wisteria Maiden] and Meoto Dojoji—at the New Year Asakusa Kabuki this January.

First Visit to the Kabukiza

It all began with my mother, an editor and a devoted kabuki fan. When she watched kabuki broadcasts at home, even at the age of one, I would sit glued to the television. So when I turned two, she took me to the Kabukiza Theatre.

Apparently, I was captivated from the start, bombarding her with questions like, "Who is that?" and "What kind of person is he?" Before long, "kabuki actor" had joined Ultraman on my list of things I wanted to be when I grew up. That was the beginning of many trips to the Kabukiza with my mother, usually to the third-floor seats.

Even so, she always told me, "Kabuki actors are people who are born into kabuki families."

Fate began to stir in 2003, when I was six.

At the Kabuki-za, I had seen Kataoka Nizaemon—whom I called "Uncle" Nizaemon—as Yosaburo, the dashing hero of Kirare Yosa. I thought he looked incredibly cool.

So that May, when I went to the Shinbashi Enbujo Theatre to see Azuma Odori, the annual dance performance by Shinbashi geisha, I wrapped a towel around my head and began imitating him.

Someone noticed and shouted out, "Are you supposed to be Yosaburo?"

She turned out to be a teacher of traditional Japanese dance. "If you love it that much, why don't you take lessons?" she said—and offered to teach me.

That was my first step.

A Chain of Fateful Encounters

The rehearsal studio was just behind the Kabukiza. For six-year-old me, simply being able to be near the theatre every weekend was enough to make me happy.

What happened next was almost like a scene from a drama. At a restaurant where my teacher often went for lunch, she had become acquainted with a quiet man wearing a Shochiku company badge, the entertainment company that produces kabuki. One day, she worked up the courage to tell him that one of the children at her studio wanted to become a kabuki actor and asked whether he would be willing to meet me.

By sheer chance, the man turned out to be the Kabukiza's manager at the time.

The following March, in 2004, I was accepted into Nakamura Baigyoku's household. In less than a year after meeting my dance teacher, the door to the kabuki world had opened.