About
The Ensemble of the Umewaka Kennōkai Foundation Tokyo is composed of the group of shit-leading actors of the Umewaka family as well as Waki supporting actors, Kyogen intermediate players and four instrumentalists each from their own player families.
The Umewaka family is one of Japan's oldest non-actor families. The genealogy of the family can be traced back to the Nara era of the 8th century.
A descendant in the 9th generation named Umezu Tomotoki 梅津友 時 is considered the first known by name actor of the family. During the Muromachi period (15th / 16th century), a descendant of the 37th generation, an actor named Kagehisa 景 久 appeared in a performance of the Nō game Ashikari at the Kaiserhof. As an award, he received permission to change the surname Umezu using the character waka 若 in "Umewaka" 梅 若. In the period of the civil wars of the late 16th century, the Umewaka family served the Prince Oda Nobunaga (1534 - 1582) and were then received with favor by Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616). Since Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-1651), the Umewaka family has been granted the right to take over the roles of the Tsure accompanist in performances of the Kanze School, the Nō-theater's main school. This privilege lasted until the end of the Edo period (1867).
In the period of change of the Meiji era (1868 - 1912) Umewaka Minoru (1828 - 1909) replaced the then leading Kanze school, which had retreated to Sunpu (to the present city of Shizuoka) in the wake of the disempowered Tokugawa prince family. the fortunes of Noh Theater. He continued playing in Tokyo and was instrumental in bringing the ancient tradition into modern times and turning it into a generally accessible stage art. He is still known today as Hōshō Kurō (1837-1917) and Sakurama Banma (1836-1917) as a "Three Nō Grand Master of the Meiji Era".
His eldest son Umewaka Manzaburō (1869 - 1946) had to leave the continuation of the family tradition to his younger brother Rokurō (1878 - 1959). He separated from the Kanze school and founded his own school branch. Through his impressive style of presentation, he was able to acquire the reputation of a no-grandmaster. A year after his fourth son Masayo had started the family inheritance, the Umewaka Kennōkai Foundation was founded in 1928 as an organization for the student body of Master Manzaburō, which organizes regular monthly noh performances, apart from an interruption caused by the Second World War.
In 1948 Masayo inherited the name of his father and was now called Umewaka Manzaburo II (1908 - 1991). In 1954, the Manzaburo branch again joined the Kanze School, but retained its independence in many artistic issues. Manzaburō II took an active part in the challenge of presenting noo abroad as well. In 1967, the first major European tour took place, in which the ensemble played in nine countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, France and England) in the unimaginably long period of two months. In 1969, a second, this time 20-day tour of France, Belgium, Austria, Holland and Switzerland followed. And again two years later, in the early summer of 1970, the ensemble of Umewaka Manzaburō II guested for the first time in Germany, u. a. in Cologne.
After another guest tour to England in 1973, the Umewaka Ensemble at the invitation of the International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation and with the support of the Japan Foundation in the late summer of 1975 reached Berlin for the first time, where two highly acclaimed performances took place in the former Free Volksbühne.
After the death of Manzaburō II in 1991, his eldest son Makio (* 1941, who now bears the name Manzaburō III) and his younger brother Masaharu (* 1945) at the head of the Umewaka Kennōkai Foundation. Both together continue to be very actively involved in the performance of Noh performances at home and abroad.