Ichikawa Danjūrō VII (七代目市川團十郎: 11/1800 to 2/1832) (actor 1791 – 1859)
Hakuen (poetry name - 白猿)Jukai (poetry name - 寿海)
Sanshō (poetry name - 三升)
Ichikawa Ebizō V (五代目市川海老蔵: 11/1797 to 10/1800 and again 3/1832 to 3/1859)
Ichikawa Hakuen II (二代目市川白猿)
Shichidaime Sanjū (poetry name)
Ichikawa Shinnosuke I (初代市川新之助: 8/1794 to 10/1797)
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Biography:
This actor held this name from 11/1800 to 2/1832. Danjūrō VII was directly descended from the founder of this line Danjūrō I (1660-1704), who was his great, great, great, grandfather. Among his sons were Danjūrō VIII with about 19 prints in the Lyon Collection and Danjūrō IX with about 19 more, including one photograph.
"With Ichikawa Danjūrō VII, the lines prestige and authority were revived to a degree rivaled only in the days of Danjūrōs I and II. He was the son of a lower samurai retainer - later a musician, and then a theatre teahouse (shibai jaya) proprietor - and the second daughter of Danjūrō V. Danjūrō VI adopted him and he debuted at four. Born the same year that his adoptive father took the name Danjūrō VI, he had only a short time to wait before being designated Danjūrō VII. This was in 1800, when he was nine. The ceremony honoring the occasion was concerned with making his right to the assumption clear to the contemporary theatre world, for he did not publicly take the name until 1807."
Quoted from: The New Kabuki Encyclopedia by Samuel L. Leiter, p. 186.
Ichikawa Danjūrō VII performed under this name until 1832 when he took the name Ichikawa Ebizō V, which he used until his death in 1859. As mention above he was the great, great, great grandson of Ichikawa Danjūrō I, the great, great grandson of Ebizō II (aka Danjūrō II - 1688-1758).
Danjūrō VII's crest was the peony.
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Samuel L. Leiter wrote in "Edo Kabuki: The Actor's World" in Impressions in 2010, p. 117: "If an entire theater district could be banished, one can imagine how easily the same could be said of actors. Actors were often in trouble - including being placed in shackles - for living beyond their status and breaking the sumptuary laws. They often snubbed their noses at antiluxury laws by wearing forbidden fabrics on- and offstage, living outside the theater districts (even keeping vacation villas) or using prohibited props. The most notable punishment for such infractions fell on Edo's top actor, Ichikawa Danjūrō VII (1791-1859) in 1842, when he was banished from the city for seven years for his excessive lifestyle, and, especially, for using real armor and weapons onstage, equipment he had received as gifts from samurai patrons." [The choice of bold type is ours.]
In footnote 7 Dr. Leiter added: "At the time, Danjūrō VII was known as Ebizō VI, having given the name of Danjūrō VIII to his son in 1832."
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