Kabuki

• 1. Introduction

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  Kabuki began in the dry bed of the Kamo River in Kyoto, on a makeshift stage, in 1603. A former shrine maiden named Izumo no Okuni gathered a troupe of young female dancers and performed a simple new style of dance drama in pantomime. The art she founded would survive bans, fires, war, and four centuries of upheaval. Today it is the most popular of the traditional styles of Japanese drama. So how did a women's dance troupe become an entirely male theatrical tradition? Why were its performers chased out of the city by the shogunate? And how did a word meaning to lean or to be out of the ordinary come to describe one of Japan's most enduring stage arts?

• 2. The Crazy Ones

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  The verb kabuku, meaning to lean or to be out of the ordinary, gave the art its name. From this root, kabuki can be read as avant-garde or bizarre theatre. The expression once referred to those who were bizarrely dressed, and it is often rendered in English as strange things or the crazy ones. It described the flamboyant style worn by gangs of samurai. Another reading attaches the word to young samurai patrons, carrying the sense of being weird or offbeat.

  The individual kanji that make up the word can be read as song, dance, and skill, which is why kabuki is sometimes translated as the art of singing and dancing. These are ateji characters, chosen for their sounds rather than their meaning, and they do not reflect the true origin of the word. The kanji of skill generally points to a performer in kabuki theatre, a reminder that the actor sits at the heart of this tradition.

• 3. From Women To Men

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  In its earliest years, female performers played both men and women in comic playlets about ordinary life. Okuni's style spread fast, and she was asked to perform before the Imperial Court. Rival troupes formed in her wake, and much of the appeal came from ribald, suggestive themes. Many performers were also involved in prostitution, and after performances women would offer sexual services to those who could afford it.

  Fights regularly broke out among the young samurai patrons, and shogunal authorities, eager to keep order, banned women from the stage in 1629. Okuni replaced the women with boys, and in a culture where pederasty was pervasive among samurai, this barely dented the theatre's popularity. The third shogun, Iemitsu, took an interest and even arranged special performances. After his death in 1651, with samurai now fighting over boys rather than girls, the shogunate tightened the rules, allowing only males over 15 on stage.

  By the mid-1600s kabuki had switched to adult male actors, a style called yaro-kabuki. These men continued to play both female and male roles, and the art held its place as a key element of Edo period urban life. Three theatres rose above the rest, the Nakamura-za, the Ichimura-za, and the Kawarazaki-za, where some of the most successful performances were and still are held.

• 4. The Woman Role

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  Cross-dressing male actors known as onnagata, or oyama, took over the roles women had once played. Young adolescent men were preferred for these parts because of their less obviously masculine appearance and the higher pitch of their voices. The roles of adolescent men, called wakashu, were also filled by young men chosen for their attractiveness, often presented in an erotic context.

  The ribald nature of performances did not fade with the women. Male actors engaged in sex work for both female and male customers, and brawls sometimes broke out over the favors of a popular or handsome actor. The shogunate responded by banning first onnagata and then wakashu roles for a short time, with both bans lifted by 1652. Even so, drama began to share the stage more equally with dance, a shift that would shape the formalised plays to come.

• 5. Genroku Heights

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  During the Genroku period, kabuki thrived and its plays formalised into the structure performed today. Conventional character tropes took hold, and kabuki grew closely associated with ningyo joruri, the elaborate puppet theatre later known as bunraku. The two forms influenced each other's development. Chikamatsu Monzaemon, one of the first professional kabuki playwrights, produced several influential works in this era.

  Chikamatsu's most significant piece, Sonezaki Shinju, or The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, was originally written for bunraku and then adapted for kabuki. It grew popular enough to reportedly inspire real-life copycat suicides, which led to a government ban on shinju mono, plays about love suicides, in 1723. The same period saw the mie style of posing, credited to the actor Ichikawa Danjuro I, along with the mask-like kumadori makeup.

  Then kabuki faltered. In the mid-18th century it fell out of favor, with bunraku taking its place as the premier stage entertainment among the lower social classes. Skilled bunraku playwrights had emerged, and little of note happened in kabuki's development until the end of the century, when it began to climb back into popularity.

• 6. Fire And Exile

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  In the 1840s, repeated droughts brought fires that tore through Edo, and kabuki theatres, traditionally built of wood, burned down again and again. When the area housing the Nakamura-za was completely destroyed in 1841, the shogun refused to let it be rebuilt, citing fire code. The shogunate, which disapproved of the mingling of merchants, actors, and prostitutes, used the crisis to force the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, and Kawarazaki-za out of the city and into Asakusa, a northern suburb.

  This was part of the larger Tenpo Reforms, begun in 1842 to restrain the overindulgence of pleasures. Actors and stagehands had to move too, and the inconvenience of the distance cut attendance. The new district was called Saruwaka-cho, named after Saruwaka Kanzaburo, who had launched Edo kabuki in the Nakamura-za in 1624. The last thirty years of the Tokugawa shogunate are often called the Saruwaka-machi period, known for producing some of the most exaggerated kabuki in Japanese history.

  Far away, European artists were noticing Japanese theatre and artwork. Claude Monet was among those inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, and this Western interest pushed Japanese artists to depict daily life, including theatres and main streets. Utagawa Hiroshige produced a series of prints based on Saruwaka. The actor Ichikawa Kodanji IV, deemed unattractive, became one of the period's most successful figures by performing buyo, or dancing, in dramas written by Kawatake Mokuami, who introduced seven-and-five syllable meter dialogue.

• 7. Restoration And Survival

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  In 1868 the Tokugawa shogunate ceased to exist, and Emperor Meiji was restored to power, moving from Kyoto to the new capital of Tokyo. Kabuki returned to the pleasure quarters and grew steadily more radical, as playwrights experimented with new genres and twists on traditional stories. The fall of the shogunate, the elimination of the samurai class, and the opening of Japan to the West all helped spark its re-emergence. Actors and playwrights worked to lift kabuki's reputation among the upper classes, and the Emperor sponsored a performance on the 21st of April 1887.

  After World War II, the occupying forces briefly banned kabuki, which had built a strong base of support for Japan's war efforts since 1931. The ban was part of broader restrictions on media and art, and by 1947 it was rescinded, though censorship lingered. Some schools of thought rejected the styles of pre-war Japan, kabuki among them. Director Tetsuji Takechi's innovative productions of kabuki classics are credited with sparking new interest in the Kansai region. Nakamura Ganjiro III, born in 1931, was the leading young figure, and this Osaka era became known as the Age of Senjaku in his honor.

  In November 2002, a statue was erected to honor Izumo no Okuni and to mark 400 years of kabuki. It stands at the east end of the Shijo Ohashi bridge crossing the Kamo River in Kyoto, diagonally across from the Minami-za, the last remaining kabuki theatre in the city. Earphone guides arrived in 1975, with an English version in 1982, and in 1991 the Kabuki-za began year-round performances.

• 8. Tricks Of The Stage

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  The hanamichi, a walkway that extends into the audience, lets actors make dramatic entrances and exits, and Okuni herself performed on one with her entourage. Important scenes are played there too. Kabuki stages grew technologically sophisticated, with revolving stages and trap doors introduced during the 18th century, driven by a love of the sudden, dramatic revelation. The mawari-butai, or revolving stage, developed in the Kyoho era between 1716 and 1735, first turned by stagehands pushing a wheeled platform.

  Seri, the stage traps that raise and lower actors and sets, have been common since the middle of the 18th century. Chunori, riding in mid-air, appeared toward the middle of the 19th century, attaching an actor's costume to wires so he could fly over the stage. It remains one of the most popular keren, or visual tricks, and major theatres such as the National Theatre, the Kabuki-za, and the Minami-za are all equipped for it.

  Costumes carry their own theatre of transformation. Hikinuki and bukkaeri layer one costume over another so a stagehand can pull the outer one off in front of the audience when a character's true nature is revealed. Stagehands dressed entirely in black are traditionally considered invisible, and they assist with quick costume changes called hayagawari. The makeup tells its own story, with rice powder forming the white oshiroi base and kumadori exaggerating facial lines. Red lines indicate passion and heroism, blue or black mark villainy, green the supernatural, and purple nobility.

  Kanadehon Chushingura, one of the most famous plays in the repertoire, is ostensibly set in the 1330s but actually depicts the 18th-century revenge of the 47 ronin. Led by Oishi Kuranosuke, they avenge their master, Lord Takuminokami of the Asano clan, before committing suicide. This kind of work belongs to jidaimono, the history plays, which were forced by strict Edo censorship to disguise contemporary events behind older settings like the Genpei War of the 1180s.

  Sewamono, the domestic plays, turned instead to commoners, townspeople and peasants, with themes of family drama and romance. The most famous are the love suicide plays adapted from Chikamatsu, centered on couples who cannot be together in life and so choose death. Shosagoto pieces place their emphasis on dance, which can convey emotion, character, and plot, as in Musume Dojoji and Renjishi. In shosagoto, the long voluminous sleeves communicate a wide range of feelings, and rhythmic stamping marks emotions such as anger.

  Every kabuki actor carries a stage name, usually that of a father, grandfather, or teacher, passed down between generations and held in great honor. The new bearer must live up to the name, almost embodying the spirit and skill of each actor who held it before. Grand naming ceremonies called shumei are held in the theatre before the audience, marking an actor's passage into a new chapter. Super Kabuki, with its first production in 1986, later brought anime-based works like Naruto and One Piece to the stage from 2014, and a New Kabuki Final Fantasy X was scheduled at the IHI Stage Around Tokyo from March 4 to the 12th of April 2023.