translated from Japanese

Forging His Own Path: Kabuki Actor Nakamura Kyozo

Nakamura Kyozo’s life in kabuki shows how discipline, apprenticeship, and artistic individuality can open a path even to an outsider in a world long governed by lineage.

Forging His Own Path: Kabuki Actor Nakamura Kyōzō

Nippon.com · 14 June 2026 · read the original in Japanese →

A Young Boy and Kabuki

Nakamura Kyozo, born in 1955 into an ordinary family outside the kabuki world, has built his career as an onnagata, a male actor specializing in female roles, playing everything from old women in jidaimono historical dramas to wives in sewamono domestic plays. Trained at the National Theatre’s Traditional Performing Arts Training Institute, he has now stood on the kabuki stage for more than forty years.

Looking back on his first encounters with kabuki at a very young age, Nakamura says: “Both my parents worked, and my grandmother, who loved kabuki, would take me to the theater to see plays. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to become a kabuki actor. I was too young to understand the stories, but even so, the plays moved me. I would even skip school to go and see kabuki.”

After repeatedly pleading with his parents, he began lessons in nihon buyo, classical Japanese dance, around the age of ten. In his early teens, by chance, he came to frequent the dressing room of the legendary onnagata Nakamura Utaemon VI (1917-2001). Serving as a kurogo stagehand, he assisted Utaemon, but gradually began to draw away from kabuki.

“Utaemon and the other actors were all very kind to me, but little by little I came to understand that in the kabuki world, pedigree matters above all. For an ‘outsider’ like me, it would not be an easy road, and I could not see a future for myself as an actor in that world. I resigned myself to remaining a spectator and decided to go on to university.”

Against All OddsAgainst All Odds

At university Nakamura studied modern Japanese literature, where he encountered writers such as Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) and Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), creators of new genres of popular fiction. “I was still going to kabuki performances, and I became utterly captivated by Nakamura Jakuemon IV (1920-2012). A promising tachiyaku, an actor of young adult male roles, Jakuemon was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army and spent six years fighting on distant battlefields during World War II.” After demobilization, Nakamura explains, Jakuemon began training as an onnagata at the age of twenty-seven, and later, through his outstanding performances in such roles, was designated a Living National Treasure and received the Order of Culture.

“He was simply extraordinary: he danced with such mastery while giving off a sensuous feeling. Kabuki is often described as a ‘beauty of form,’ but at its root it also requires realism. Jakuemon brought those elements together harmoniously and created a highly individual style of onnagata performance. I found that deeply moving, and became an ardent admirer.”

Around that time, Nakamura belonged to a kabuki troupe led by the theater critic and stage and film director Takechi Tetsuji (1912-88). “I was no longer satisfied simply watching kabuki; I had begun to feel regret that I had abandoned my dream of becoming a kabuki actor,” he recalls. “When I asked Takechi-sensei for advice, he said, ‘Rather than regretting that you never tried, it is better to try, and if you do not succeed, to resign yourself then.’ That was when I decided I had to aim for my dream after all.”

The National Theatre’s Traditional Performing Arts Training Institute accepts trainees only every other year, so Nakamura had to wait a year before applying. In the meantime he worked part-time, and in 1980 he applied. Of the twenty applicants, he was among the ten accepted, and began training as a member of the Institute’s sixth cohort.

“Our twenty-two months of training covered every aspect of kabuki performance. We had to learn both tachiyaku and onnagata roles, and study music and dance: nihon buyo, nagauta and other shamisen music, gidayu narrative recitation, and the small and large taiko drums, as well as the koto, a zither-like stringed instrument. We had to practice tachimawari, simulated sword fighting; learn how to apply makeup for the various roles in the kabuki repertoire; and familiarize ourselves with the tea ceremony. After the first six months there were practical examinations, and depending on our progress, we could fail. Of the ten members in our original class, only five remained after that.”

Prior knowledge or experience in any of these arts was no guarantee of success. Many trainees who began from nothing absorbed the lessons quickly and made rapid progress. Kyozo, who had studied nihon buyo since childhood, was told to forget everything he had learned and begin anew. After graduating from the Institute, he chose without hesitation to study under Nakamura Jakuemon IV.

“At the end of my interview with Jakuemon, he asked me, ‘Do you know what is most important for an actor?’ I thought he might mean mental toughness, but no. He said, ‘Actors need physical strength. You look rather slight, so you had better build yourself up.’”

After successfully passing the practical examinations, he was given the name Kyozo, in the hope that he would build up a ‘storehouse’ of artistry, the zo in his name carrying that meaning. His mentor guided him through every step required to become an onnagata, from the way he held his body and carried himself to the application of stage makeup.

“To cultivate the supple slenderness of a woman, I was instructed to soften my knees and move from the hips. To make my shoulders slope, I had to relax them, draw my shoulder blades together, keep my arms at my sides, and bring my chest forward. I practiced those movements over and over until they came naturally.” Nakamura explains that this posture is also essential for wearing onnagata costumes properly. Onnagata must train themselves to use muscles not ordinarily engaged in order to bear the heavy costumes and wigs required by the roles, and he quickly realized that he had to strengthen his lower body.

Jakuemon often told Kyozo, “Move beneath your bones; move your internal organs,” insisting that “doing so will make you feel like a woman. That is a fundamental step.” By watching Jakuemon put on his stage makeup, Kyozo also learned how to do the same through observation.

“It is very strange, but when an actor puts on his makeup, he ends up resembling his mentor. The same is true for me. Although Jakuemon and I have different features, people often tell me that we look alike. I take that as a real compliment.”

Kyozo as Cultural AmbassadorKyōzō as Cultural Ambassador

Thanks to assiduous practice, Kyozo came to be recognized for his artistry and began receiving offers to appear in works outside the kabuki repertoire. Among other challenges, he took on roles in foreign dramas adapted for kabuki and performed alongside flamenco dancers. In 2015, he played all three witches in Ninagawa Macbeth, directed by the celebrated theater director Ninagawa Yukio (1935-2016). In 2023, he self-produced Phedre, a play based on the Greek myth of the title character’s illicit passion for her stepson, and performed the title role himself.

Since 1998, when Kyozo began serving as a cultural ambassador for the Japan Foundation and as a Japan Cultural Envoy for the Agency for Cultural Affairs, he has traveled the world introducing Japanese culture through kabuki. To date he has visited sixty cities in thirty-four countries. He has presented onnagata dances from works such as Sagimusume, popular with overseas audiences for its dramatic force; performed the lion’s mane dance in Shakkyo; and explained how onnagata convey female emotion through stylized movement.

In his spoken presentations, he says, “I explain how onnagata portray women’s emotions. For example, a young woman discreetly covers her mouth with her sleeve when she titters delicately. When she is sad, she dissolves into a flood of tears, pressing her sleeve to her eyes while restraining her sobs. I have the audience imitate my gestures, and everyone seems to enjoy it very much.”

Along with lectures that encourage active audience participation, Kyozo demonstrates how an apparently ordinary older man can transform himself, through dance, into a character expressing the emotions of a young maiden driven mad by passion. These performances invariably overwhelm foreign audiences encountering kabuki for the first time, and they answer him with thunderous applause. He says he is often approached by diplomats who saw him in one country and then invite him to give lectures and performances in other countries to which they have newly been posted.

Individuality BlossomsIndividuality Blossoms

“Long ago,” Nakamura says, “the kabuki scholar and Waseda University professor Gunji Masakatsu (1913-98) told me that ‘kabuki needs two strands: one that respects tradition, and another that moves away from it.’ Mastering the classical repertoire is essential, of course, but at the same time we must create new works using kabuki techniques. Fundamentally, we look at the art our predecessors developed, absorb it physically, and imitate them. We younger actors learned by watching, practiced diligently, and only then could we finally develop our own style, ‘breaking the mold,’ as it were. That is what allowed our individuality to emerge.”

In addition to his stage performances, Kyozo is currently a lecturer at the Training Institute, where he oversees the development of young actors. In recent years each cohort had only one or two prospective entrants, but the popularity of the film Kokuho drew six new entrants to the latest class. There are no doubt major differences between the abilities of sons born into illustrious kabuki families and those of actors who undergo training at the Institute as adults. Seen from the vantage point of his forty-year career in kabuki, one wonders what Kyozo makes of this.

With a smile on his lips, he replies without hesitation: “Yes, it is true that boys born into kabuki families and performing from earliest childhood have an advantage. But over time, the talent, diligence, and ambition of Institute trainees can certainly overcome that difference.”

Kyozo offered this parting message to people who want to enjoy kabuki: “Ask someone knowledgeable about it, and go see plays that are easy for beginners to understand. Once your interest has been kindled, study kabuki. When you understand it well, I hope you will come to appreciate it.”