Koide Ichijūrō

Koide Ichijūrō (湖出市十郎, died 29 October 1800) was a Japanese kabuki composer-performer (唄方 uta-kata) of "long songs" (長唄 naga uta) of the Edo period.^[1] He was at first a student of Yoshizumi Kosaburo 1st (1699-1753) and identified himself as Yoshizumi Ichijuro. From 1747 he appeared at the Morita-za, one of the three venues of Edo. Afterwards he became a disciple of Fujita Yoshiji 1st (1714-1771）, and changed his own stagename to Fujita Okada. In 1768 he took the name Koide, and in opposition to Fujita Yoshiji's monopoly on the Ichimura-za, became active at the Nakamura-za, together with Nakamura Fujiro 1st (1719–86), receiving recognition also in Osaka.^[2] During the Meiwa-Tenmei period (1764–89) when the meriyasu genre of solo songs^[3] was in vogue he received recognition for shirotae (白妙, "white cloth cherry")^[4] and the kouta song kurokami ("black hair").^[5][6][7] The name Ichijūrō was taken up by 2nd, 3rd, (and according to one tradition a 4th) generation of performers of his songs.