OGURI Sachie is a “Renaissance woman” of kabuki, acting for nearly five decades in “jikabuki” or regional kabuki, as well as directing and providing costumes for productions for forty years.  She is a founding member and Director of the Minō Kabuki Preservation Society, and runs the Museum Nakasendo in Mizunami City, Gifu Prefecture. Active in numerous preservation efforts at rural kabuki theatres throughout the country to assist in identifying, cataloguing, and preserving historic kabuki costume collections, she also maintains over 4000 Edo Era (1602-1868) and Meiji Era (1868-1912) historic costumes for display at the Museum. Her research includes recreating lost embroidery techniques and training others to repair and recreate the elaborate patterns found on costumes.

Gifu Prefecture, where Oguri resides, has been a center of rural kabuki theatres for three centuries. Her theatre, the Aioi-za, is the home of the Mino Kabuki Preservation Society and the leading theatre in the prefecture, which boasts the greatest number (32) of active rural kabuki member groups in the country. Oguri comes from a long line of kabuki actors and officionados: her father was responsible for reviving rural kabuki in the area after WWII, and both her father and grandmother were well-known local actors. She carries on the tradition, conducting regular classes for children and adults in acting and shamisen for the past 20 years, as well as teaching all of the behind-the-scenes supporting arts, in addition to penning new works based on local lore or historic figures of the region. She maintains a kabuki costume rental and storage facility, and trains people how to repair, make, and dress others in kabuki costume.

Her awards include the Gifu Prefecture Art and Culture Award, Gifu Prefecture Lotus Award, and the Gifu Newspaper Grand Prize. Past funding received includes a Japan Arts and Cultural Promotional Grant, a JA Cultural Promotion Grant, a Tōnō Credit Union Cultural Promotion Grant. She is author of Mino’s Local Kabuki (Gifu News Press, 1999) on the history of Gifu Prefecture local kabuki traditions and the work of preservation societies within the prefecture, and Kabuki Costume (Gifu News Press 2015).

Explore Mino Kabuki Museum Aioiza (in Japanese and in English).

Oguri, pictured in 2015 at the Nakasendo Museum, holding her recently published volume on kabuki costumes.

Oguri at a costume workshop at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 2019.

Oguri standing in front of the entrance to her theatre, the Aioi-za, with a wooden sign behind her with its name in Japanese.