Kabuki is one of those things in every Japanese guidebook. Everyone knows the word and might be able to connect that word to images of kabuki actors on stage. But I think few gaijin, tourist or resident, really know what kabuki is.
I got my first taste of kabuki recently when a friend of mine invited me to a performance at Shochikuza Theatre in Osaka. I was simultaneously enthralled and baffled.
I have been to the opera in New York. I thought this experience might function as a gauge for kabuki. No. It is apples and oranges. The only thing they have in common is a stage.
Kabuki began in the dry riverbeds of the Kamo River in Kyoto in the Edo period (1603-1867). The founder was a beautiful, slightly eccentric woman named Izumo no Okuni who performed oftentimes risqué dances and playlets there. The original meaning of the word kabuki was "unusual" or "unconventional", and early kabuki troupes were comprised of mostly prostitutes and other social outcasts. In an effort to halt the moral corruption of the population, in 1629 the Tokugawa shogunate banned the troupes and forbid women from appearing on stage. This lead to all-male performers, a tradition which persists today.
We went to a matinee on a scorching hot summer afternoon. The performance was divided into four parts - two shorter pieces (20-30 minutes each) followed by two longer ones (a little over an hour each) with a brief intermission between each one. These were not acts, that is, four chapters of one story. Each was its own one-act play unrelated to the others.
As the curtain opened (not up, but across the stage) I was immediately taken by the costumes and makeup of the actors. Each ensemble was like something from a Paris couture show, fantastic, gaudy even, the makeup fierce and exaggerated. An impressive and unique characteristic of kabuki is the onstage costume transformations known as hayagawari. Stagehands will suddenly appear at key moments and help the actor peel back or remove a layer of clothing to reveal another costume beneath. There is another group of stagehands called kuroko, more shadowy and stealth, that will sneak onstage and give or take props from the actors as needed.
The dialogue was fairly incomprehensible. It may be something like listening to Shakespearean English, archaic and highly nuanced. Or it could just be my poor comprehension. But what was impossible to miss was the incredible vocal range of the actors, moving up and down from a canine growl to an adolescent squeak, from a pathetic whimper to a drunken howl. Such powerfully expressive speech I have never seen or heard before in any language.
Even if you don't know the artist or actor, most people are familiar with the 18th Century ukiyo-e print of the kabuki actor Ōtani Oniji III by Tōshūsai Sharaku (above). Hands splayed as if about to strangle someone, a grim scowl on his face, eyes crossed. I always took the crossed eyes as artistic parody. So I was surprised to see one of the leads, Matsumoto-san, at a climactic moment freeze and cross his eyes. This is actually a famous pose in kabuki called mie. It is accompanied by a musician just off stage striking the floor with hyoshigi (wooden clappers), first slowly then building to a crescendo. The audience was delighted.
The audience at a kabuki performance is not entirely passive. They will from time to time shout their approval. This is known as kakegoe. This is itself almost an art form, highly structured and refined. The calls are perfectly timed and phrased and come from only seasoned veterans of kabuki theatre. There are actually kakegoe guilds. I had read about this before, but it was still somewhat startling and rather funny to hear; the theatre equivalent of shouting at your favorite player during a baseball game, "Come on Joe, knock it outta the park!"
The various aspects of kabuki are innumerable, and perhaps very subtle or obscure. It could take a lifetime of theatre-going to identify and understand them all, to become part of the kakegoe elite. It is easy to see why in 2005, UNESCO added kabuki to the list of "intangible cultural heritage". It really is intangible.
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