Itoku school (威徳流)
The Itoku school is an extinct school of otsuzumi-kata (large hand drum players) in Nohgaku (the art of Noh). This school was also called Ko school.
Description
It is said Shiro Jiro KANZE, who was from Ise Province, is the origin of this school. "Rinchu Kenmonshu" (The Collection of Noh Anecdotes), which was issued in the middle of the 18th century, lists some performer names such as 'Jinzaemon, Genshiro, Genzaburo, and the current Jinzaemon,' and it also insists that the school was named after their brilliant drumbeats made along with the passage 'the itoku (virtue and influence) of Mii-dera Temple is satisfactory' in the Noh play titled "Mii-dera Temple." However, it is not certain whether this story is true or not.
Although it is said they played exclusively for the Hosho school during the Edo period, Gozaemon ITOKU, who was the head of this school of the early Edo period, lost his father when he was still young and he learned drum play from a kotsuzumi (small hand drum) player of the Hosho school named Gorohisayoshi KO.
(Until the middle of early-modern times, it had been not unusual that kotsuzumi players taught otsuzumi players how to play drums.)
It is believed that this made this school lose their own characteristics, and subsequently, they had been just playing ashirai tsuzumi (accompanying hand drum) for the Ko school. They were called 'Ko-ryu otsuzumi' (literally, "large hand drum of the Ko school") from the later early-modern period onwards.
The Hakugoku family who served in the Sendai Domain was one of famous families of this school, but they became extinct after the Meiji Restoration.