received repeated petitions from her husband's brother-in-law, Ichikawa Kudanji III, to allow him to raise the child. She initially refused these offers, but ultimately relented, and Raizō was officially adopted by Kudanji at the age of six months. Raizō was not aware of his adoption until he was 16 years old, and he did not meet his mother in person until he was 30. Kabuki Debut (1934 – May 1949) In 1934, about two years after his adoption by Ichikawa Kudanji III, Raizō moved from Kyoto to Osaka. Kudanji did not train him as a kabuki actor during his childhood, but in 1946, when he was in his third and final year at Osaka Prefectural Tennoji High School, Raizō elected to withdraw from school to pursue an acting career. In November 1946, at the age of 15, Raizō made his kabuki debut at the Osaka Kabukiza theater under the name Ichikawa Enzō III (Kudanji had previously used the name Ichikawa Enzō II). His first role was the part of Lady Ohana (Musume Ohana) in the play Nakayamashichiri. In May 1949, a little over two years after his first performance, Raizō formed a study group with two other young kabuki performers. These were Rishō Arashi (known later in his kabuki career as Arashi Kichisaburō VIII, and as Yatarō Kitagami in his acting career) and Nakamura Taro II. They called this group the , which can be translated as "exhaustive meeting," and together they focused diligently on training. However, there was one obstacle that this training could not overcome: Kudanji had been the son of a member of a minor politician in Kyoto rather than a kabuki actor, and had only been apprenticed (to an actor known as Ichikawa Sadanji II) because of Kudanji's own strong desire to enter the world of kabuki. Thus Kudanji was forever labeled as a montei agari – someone born and raised outside of the kabuki world and its "lineage" and later apprenticed into it – and doomed never to exceed a supporting role. That being the case, no matter how hard Raizō trained, he was unlikely to gain noteworthy roles as a kenmon performer as long as he remained the son of Kudanji. Adoption by Ichikawa Jūkai III (June 1949 – June 1951) In 1949, in the same period that Raizō was establishing the Tsukushikai, a kabuki theater director named Tetsuji Takechi was scouting for young,