Bandō Tamasaburō V

Bandō Tamasaburō V (born April 25, 1950, Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese Kabuki actor who made a name for himself as an onnagata, a man who plays female roles (in Kabuki all roles are traditionally played by men). Somewhat atypically of the Kabuki world, he later gained international acclaim in film and non-Kabuki forms of drama as well.

Although Nirehara Shin’ichi was not born into a performing family, he began studying performance arts at a young age as a form of rehabilitation from polio. At age six he was adopted into the family of Kabuki actor Morita Kan’ya XIV, who had no sons of his own and was looking for a successor. He made his stage debut under the name Bandō Kinoji in 1957, playing the role of Kotarō in the drama Terakoya (“The Temple School”). In 1964 he inherited the prestigious stage name Bandō Tamasaburō, becoming the fifth actor to perform under that moniker. The following year his adoptive father and he performed together as mother and daughter in an adaptation of Chūshingura (“The Treasury of the Loyal Retainers”). In 1969 Tamasaburō won the role of Princess Shiranui in Mishima Yukio’s new Kabuki play Chinsetsu yumiharizuki (“The Moon like a Drawn Bow”). Other notable roles from that period included Princess Taema in Narukami (1970; “The Thunder God”) and Princess Nowake in Sumidagawa gonichi no omokage (1971; “Memories of the Sumida River”).

His adoptive father forbade Tamasaburō to perform outside Kabuki, but after Kan’ya’s death in 1975, Tamasaburō began to make a name for himself in other genres. He acted in shimpa (“new school”) productions such as Keiko ōgi (1975; “The Practice Fan”) and dabbled in Shakespeare, appearing as Lady Macbeth and Desdemona. In the late 1970s he also began acting in films, and he went on to star in Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s Nastasja (1994), in which he played both a male and a female role. In the early 1990s he began directing films, and his 1992 effort Yume no onna (“Dream Woman”) was screened at the 1993 Berlinale film festival.

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In addition to his wide range of non-Kabuki projects, Tamasaburō continued to perform Kabuki throughout his career, both in Japan and abroad. In 1996 he collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, performing Kabuki dance to the music of J.S. Bach, and in 1998 he danced alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov. He also brought his Kabuki sensibility to traditional Chinese kunqu theatre, directing and starring in a production of Mudanting (“The Peony Pavilion”) at the Shanghai International Arts Festival in 2009. The opera was widely praised, and it played in Tokyo the following year. During his lengthy career, Tamasaburō was honoured with many awards, including the prestigious Kyoto Prize (2011) for his contributions to the arts and the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale (2019) for theatre/film.