The Yarai Kanze family (矢来観世家)
The Yarai Kanze family is one of the occupational branch families of Kanze school of Nohgaku theatre shite-kata (main roles). They preside over the Kanze Kyukokai. The family is a branch family of Tetsunojo KANZE's branch families. They have the status and scale ranked after Soke (the head family or house), branch family and UMEWAKA family in the school.
Origin
In the Meiji period, the second son of Kiyoyuki KANZE (the fourth Tetsunojo KANZE), Genjiro married a daughter of the first Minoru UMEWAKA and succeeded to the name of the 53rd Rokuro UMEWAKA. Then, Minoru had two biological children (Manzaburo UMEWAKA, the first and Minoru UMEWAKA, the second). Genjiro returned to the Kanze family and started a new branch family.
After creating a branch family, Genjiro gave his name as Kiyoshi KANZE, prepared a stage in Ushigomeyarai-cho, and started the activity as Kyukokai.
(The foundation was in 1908. The monthly performance started in 1911.)
Although their performance style belonged to the Umewaka school due to the above mentioned circumstances, they supported the Soke school and remained in the Kanze school to the last when Umewaka school separated (According to one theory, there was an emotional disagreement with Umewaka family).
Moreover, in 1907, in cooperation with Kanji Maruoka's Publishing Association of the Kanze-School Revised Editions (the present Nohgakushorin), they published their own revised Utai-bon (chant book), which was clearly different from the previous books. Since the Edo period, copyright of Utai-bon of the school was customarily considered to belong exclusively to the Soke. Therefore, it became an issue among Nohgaku theater community at that time. The Soke and Kiyoshi KANZE fought in court. Daishin-in (Predecessor of the Supreme Court of Japan) found in favor of Kiyoshi KANZE. Since then, the family has had close relationship with Nohgakushorin. To this day, they still use original Utai-bon published by Nohgakushorin.