also known as was a
Japanese Buddhist monk of the early
Muromachi period of Japanese history, noted as the blind itinerant lute player (''
biwa hōshi'')
who gave the epic ''
Heike Monogatari'' its present form.
Life
Little is known about his early life, but Kakuichi may have originally been a monk of
Enkyō-ji near
Himeji in
Harima Province
or Banshū (播州) was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is the southwestern part of present-day Hyōgo Prefecture. Harima bordered on Tajima, Tanba, Settsu, Bizen, and Mimasaka Provinces. Its capital was Himeji.
During the ...
and may have been a nephew of
Ashikaga Takauji. After losing his sight in his 30s, he is said to have come to
Kyoto and joined the
Tōdōza, a ''biwa hōshi'' guild, performing versions of the ''Heike Monogatari'' as entertainment for members of the aristocracy. Kakuichi was a student of Jōichi (城一), the most famous Heike reciter in Kyoto, but soon surpassed his master and 1363 had the attained the highest rank (検校, ''Kengyō'') within the guild. On his death, he was posthumous awarded the rank of Grand Master (総検校, ''Sōkengyō'').
Work
Kakuichi's version of the ''Heike Monogatari'', known as the Kakuichi-bon, was developed over several decades beginning in the 1330s or 1340s, and was written down only a few months before his death as he recited it to his pupil Teiichi. The Tōdōza split over whether or not to accept Kakuichi's new version, with the ''Yasaka-ryu'' rejecting it, and the ''Ichikata-ryu'' accepting it. The Yasaka-ryu declined after the
Onin War, leaving the tradition in the hands of the ''Ichikata-ryu''. The ''Kakuichi-bon'' is currently the most popular version, and is the version used for most scholarly studies.
[ pp 42]
References
* pp 500–543
*
McCullough, Helen Craig. (1988). ''The Tale of the Heike''. Stanford:
Stanford University Press
Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It was among the presses officially ...
.
OCLC 16472263
Notes
1299 births
1371 deaths
14th-century Japanese people
14th-century storytellers
Blind musicians
Japanese Buddhist clergy
Japanese lutenists
People of Muromachi-period Japan
Blind people from Japan
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