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Shokyokusai Tenkatsu (1886-1944)
Feb. 13th, 2026 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiShokyokusai Tenkatsu was born in 1886 in Tokyo, where her father was a pawnbroker; her birth name was Nakai Katsu. When the family business went under in 1895, she was indentured to a local tempura restaurant. The restaurant happened to be owned by the stage magician Shokyokusai Ten’ichi, who admired Katsu’s dexterity and took her on as his apprentice. Apparently he pressured her to become his mistress, and she refused him, to the point of attempting suicide once, and finally gave in upon deciding to become a serious magician herself.
Under the name Tenkatsu, she became a star of Ten’ichi’s theater, which had some seventy apprentices. Her big-boned beauty drew many admirers (and created off-the-wall legends such as “she has a diamond for a false tooth” and “she eats the flesh of mermaids”), and she led the troupe as far afield as the United States to perform; there she picked up the fast-paced American style of stage magic. Upon her return, she dazzled in Western-style sequins from head to foot.
In 1911 she founded her own troupe, with a hundred members, and married her stage manager, Noro Tatsunosuke (although it may have been a paper marriage for practical purposes). A nationwide star known as “the Queen of Magic,” she was so famous that she had her own merchandise, as well as imitators under similar names. In 1915, inspired by the performances of the actresses Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako as Salomé, Tenkatsu put on her own magic-heavy version.
In 1935 she made a retirement tour of the country, finally passing on the name Tenkatsu to her niece Kinuko in 1937 and settling down in Tokyo to run an inn with her adopted son Teruya. In 1940, at the age of fifty-four, she met and married Kanazawa Ichiro, a professor of Spanish (her first husband had died in 1927). She died in 1944 at fifty-eight, leaving a long string of former apprentices who had become famous magicians, illusionists, and actors, many of them women.
Sources
https://artexhibition.jp/topics/features/20241222-AEJ2535235/ (Japanese) Photographs and playbills from the time
https://www.tokyomagic.jp/labyrinth/tsuchiya/magicgoods-21.htm (Japanese) Contemporary postcards of Tenkatsu in performance
Under the name Tenkatsu, she became a star of Ten’ichi’s theater, which had some seventy apprentices. Her big-boned beauty drew many admirers (and created off-the-wall legends such as “she has a diamond for a false tooth” and “she eats the flesh of mermaids”), and she led the troupe as far afield as the United States to perform; there she picked up the fast-paced American style of stage magic. Upon her return, she dazzled in Western-style sequins from head to foot.
In 1911 she founded her own troupe, with a hundred members, and married her stage manager, Noro Tatsunosuke (although it may have been a paper marriage for practical purposes). A nationwide star known as “the Queen of Magic,” she was so famous that she had her own merchandise, as well as imitators under similar names. In 1915, inspired by the performances of the actresses Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako as Salomé, Tenkatsu put on her own magic-heavy version.
In 1935 she made a retirement tour of the country, finally passing on the name Tenkatsu to her niece Kinuko in 1937 and settling down in Tokyo to run an inn with her adopted son Teruya. In 1940, at the age of fifty-four, she met and married Kanazawa Ichiro, a professor of Spanish (her first husband had died in 1927). She died in 1944 at fifty-eight, leaving a long string of former apprentices who had become famous magicians, illusionists, and actors, many of them women.
Sources
https://artexhibition.jp/topics/features/20241222-AEJ2535235/ (Japanese) Photographs and playbills from the time
https://www.tokyomagic.jp/labyrinth/tsuchiya/magicgoods-21.htm (Japanese) Contemporary postcards of Tenkatsu in performance
