The Brad Pitt of kabuki

He makes teenage girls go weak at the knees, has dated an A-list of glamorous women, and is poised to bring his formidable acting talent to Britain. Enter Ebizo Ichikawa XI, the greatest hope for Japan's kabuki theatre. Benjamin Secher meets him.

Born into kabuki: Ebizo Ichikawa XI, Japan's thespian heart throb

'Everybody thinks that we kabuki actors are lucky, having our careers mapped out for us from a very young age," says Ebizo Ichikawa XI, drawing a big gulp of green tea up a pink plastic straw. "But at times it's felt more like a curse."

Ever since he was born, 28 years ago, into the greatest kabuki dynasty in Japan, Ebizo has been destined to become a renowned actor in the mould of his father and his father's father and a continuous line of Ichikawa sons that stretches back over three centuries to Danjuro I, who was murdered by a rival actor as he stepped off the stage in 1704. These days, the kabuki scene is rather more sedate; perhaps too sedate, judging by the ageing audiences it attracts, for a young generation brought up on movies and video games. Or so it seemed until

Ebizo arrived, inspiring a new boom for this old art.

His apprenticeship began almost as soon as he could walk: the arduous training needed to master the extraordinary vocal techniques of kabuki - a haunting, reverberating wail that falls somewhere between speech and song; the back-breaking business of honing the body for the graceful movements and poses unique to this traditional form of theatre; and the mental challenge of memorising swathes of formal verse.

Sitting today in a Japanese country hotel, yards from the hilltop theatre where only hours before he enacted a dramatic suicide on stage, Ebizo recalls his earliest memory, a trip to see his father perform in Tokyo. "I remember my mother holding my hand all the way to the theatre," he says, "and the sight of my father in make-up. But I was too young to realise that soon I would be expected to do what he was doing that night." Two years later, Ebizo found himself on stage for the first time, in a non-speaking role as his father's son. Only two years after that came his full debut, aged seven.

A documentary made at the time for Japanese television depicted an anguished little boy struggling to master the comic hayakuchikotoba (tongue-twisters) that this first role demanded. He was shown being drilled by his mother every day on the way to school, and again by an exasperated father when he returned. The experience looked about as enjoyable for him as a poke in the eye with a chopstick. Nevertheless, when the big day arrived, Ebizo gave a performance accomplished enough to suggest that a successful career in kabuki lay well within his grasp. Subsequent appearances seemed to prove this, his confidence and popularity growing with each year.

Then puberty struck. "My voice began to break, my height was changing rapidly; physically I was neither a child nor an adult. I suddenly found that there were very few roles available to me at that stage of life," says the now statuesque, shaven-headed Ebizo. "I started not to care, to question why I should have to become an actor anyway, why my future should be decided by other people. I found myself wanting to rebel."

Ebizo says that, for a while during his adolescence, he stopped speaking to his father altogether. "I was very worried about myself and about my future," he says, "but I didn't know how to express those feelings." Not for the first time in his life, a solution was more or less imposed upon him. The actor's 16th birthday coincided with the 30th anniversary of his grandfather's death, an occasion that was to be marked by a lavish kabuki production - with Ebizo cast in a lead role as a female dancer.

For any rising kabuki actor, the chance to take a female role (or onnagata) is a tempting prospect. Even mid-rebellion, he knew that this was too good an opportunity to turn down. "That is when I really began to work hard," he says, "spending more and more time training each day. It became a way to digest my frustration. Kabuki went from being the problem to being the solution."

His exquisite performance put his career firmly back on track. "It was the role that cemented my reputation," he says. "It was also by that role that I was inspired to take the decision, deep in my heart, to devote my future to kabuki."

A decade on, Ebizo is acknowledged as the most exciting kabuki actor of his generation. Earlier in the day, at the theatre across the road, he had certainly lived up to that reputation - sweeping across the stage with compelling gusto, his expressive eyes glowering from a white-daubed face. Even more remarkable was his turn the day before as the cold-blooded villain in the chilling ghost story Kasane, one of two plays that Ebizo will perform in London at the end of this month. Every time he set out along the hanamichi - the twin runways that cut through the audience, bridging the gap between the stage and the back of the auditorium - a swoon of excitement would ripple through the sell-out crowd.

Ebizo's fame extends far beyond the rarefied kabuki world; he boasts hordes of fans even among the Japanese youth, for whom this and other traditional arts are usually considered spectacularly uncool. In part, his exceptional popularity is due to a parallel high-profile screen career: in 2004 he starred as a hunky samurai in a hit drama series on national television; this autumn he has top-billing in a feature film. But it also helps that, in between training, Ebizo lives the full-blown superstar lifestyle. He drives a Hummer, appears on TV commercials and has been romantically linked to a number of famous women. On occasion, he has even had his private life splashed across the gossip pages of the weekly magazines. In 2003, Sankei Sport revealed that a baby born to a popular singer was in fact his illegitimate daughter. Ebizo, who was dating his well-known television co-star when the story broke, weathered the "scandal" with typical insouciance, and as a result his celebrity stock soared.

Shucho Bando, a 60-year-old actor whom I find drinking in a local bar later in the evening, believes that the Ebizo effect, while hardly conventional, is just what kabuki needs. "He was the reason the theatre was full today," he says. "Just by showing his face on TV or on adverts, Ebizo attracts a crowd. You simply have to use the media to survive."

With more modern forms of entertainment now dominating the cultural marketplace, kabuki faces an ever tougher struggle to persuade young people in particular that it is more than a curious anachronism. Shucho, who also belongs to a long-standing kabuki dynasty, has experienced the fall-out from that struggle in his own home: his son spurned kabuki in favour of a career in computing. "It was disappointing," he says. "But it's his choice."

Only time will tell whether Ebizo has what it takes to save kabuki. The actor himself is adamant that he has plenty yet to prove. "I really think I am still just a beginner," he says. "I have so much left to learn, from the older actors who are still alive, but also from all those past generations." And what about the future? Were he to have a son, would Ebizo encourage him to continue the Ichikawa acting tradition? "Well," he says, breaking into a rare smile. "I guess that decision would be up to his mother."