Kabuki actor Ichikawa Somegoro appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which aired on December 23rd. He showed off a stuffed animal given to him by his grandmother and a ring given to him by his grandfather, Matsumoto Hakuo II.
When he was two or three years old, his grandmother gave him a stuffed dog as a gift. He named it "Bonkichi" and used it as a model to draw pictures, write scripts for "Bonkichi" plays and perform puppet shows at home. He says that the dog was like a "partner." The name "Bonkichi" is a combination of the name of a dog that his grandfather, the second-generation Matsumoto Hakuo, had previously owned and the name of his first-ever role.
He will be appearing on stage in Hamlet in May or June of next year. "Hamlet is a role that both my grandfather and my father (the 10th Matsumoto Koshiro) played, and it has been played by generations, but the other day I received the ring that my grandfather wore when he played Hamlet, and I plan to wear it when I go on stage to play Hamlet," he said.
He has been painting with a brush since he was a child. "In Kabuki, you do your own makeup, so my father made me paint with a brush so that I could get used to using a brush. I painted with watercolors," he says. His hobby is drawing pictures of the characters he has played. While there are ways to preserve them through photography or video, he says, "When I leave a picture behind, I feel like it also leaves behind things like how I thought about the role and how I approached it at the time, so I always draw the roles I have played."
When she was little, there was a time when she hated wearing makeup, but she revealed, "I basically loved wearing makeup for the characters I admired, and there was a time when my father would draw half of it for me, and I would imitate him and draw the other half myself."
