He was born the second son of Yoshimura Kanbei, a wealthy merchant of Nihonbashi in Edo. His real name was Yoshimura Yoshisaburō. As a child he loved reading storybooks and play scripts and was absorbed in writing senryū and kyōka verse. This love of reading laid the foundation for his later great career as a kabuki playwright.
In his mid-teens he was disowned by his parents for excessive pleasure-seeking and left home. He worked as a clerk at a lending library, but he is said to have spent his days reading from morning to night rather than working. In this way he absorbed a vast knowledge of Edo fiction and theater; the range of his later works is said to have grown from this reading.
Having made a name in kyōka, haiku and dance, he finally became a disciple of the kabuki playwright Tsuruya Nanboku V. He had an outstanding memory and is said to have won recognition by knowing all the lines of Kanjinchō and prompting Ichikawa Danjūrō VII from behind the stage.
He took the name Kawatake Shinshichi II and became tate-sakusha, the chief playwright of a theater. Even after that, however, he had no big hits for a while, and a hard period continued. Still, he kept writing many scripts and gradually honed his stagecraft.
Meeting the actor Ichikawa Kodanji IV was a great turning point. Miyakodori Nagare no Shiranami, which he wrote for Kodanji, was a big hit and his breakthrough work. Kodanji's art, which brought lines to life, suited his scripts well, and the pair went on to produce one popular play after another.
He wrote Sannin Kichisa Kuruwa no Hatsugai, whose heroes are three thieves sharing the same name. Ojō Kichisa's speech beginning with a hazy moon and whitebait fishing fires is known for its beautiful seven-five rhythm and is still loved as a famous speech. Such pleasing delivery came to be called the Mokuami style.
He wrote Aoto Zōshi Hana no Nishiki-e (the Five Shiranami Thieves) about a band of five robbers, and Benten Kozō's line, if you don't know, I'll tell you, became a sensation. Mokuami's plays with thieves as heroes became a genre called shiranami-mono. His villains were portrayed as somehow weak people tossed about by fate.
Kodanji, his longtime partner, died. Yet Mokuami's pen did not weaken, and in the Meiji era he wrote one masterpiece after another, such as Kōchiyama and Sakanaya Sōgorō, for the Dan-Kiku-Sa trio of Ichikawa Danjūrō IX, Onoe Kikugorō V and Ichikawa Sadanji I. He also wrote zangiri-mono plays depicting Westernized customs.
On completing Shima Chidori Tsuki no Shiranami, a major zangiri-mono play, he announced his retirement with it as his last great work and changed his name to Mokuami. In practice, however, he kept writing scripts under the label of suke, helper, and remained in effect the chief playwright. There was no writer who could replace him.
Government officials and scholars formed the Theater Reform Society to make kabuki refined and historically accurate like Western drama. Mokuami wrote plays in the new style on request but is said not to have fully agreed with its ideas. His name Mokuami is often interpreted as meaning to keep silent and say nothing.
With a play for the Kabuki-za as his final work, he died at his home in Honjo, Tokyo. He wrote over three hundred works in his life, and Tsubouchi Shōyō praised him as the Chikamatsu of Meiji. Kawatake Shigetoshi, adopted by his daughter, passed Mokuami's work on to later generations as a theater scholar.
Tsubouchi ShōyōTsuruya Nanboku IV
Sakuma ShōzanIi NaosukeNabeshima Naomasa (Kansō)Yoshida TōyōShimazu HisamitsuIwase TadanariAbe MasahiroKatsu Kaishū
People of the Edo period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.