A theatre built for the crowd
Kabuki is the most flamboyant of Japan’s traditional stage arts. It is known for dramatic makeup, large costumes, sweeping gestures, and stories ranging from historical epics to scenes of everyday town life. The name is usually linked to a verb meaning to tilt or act in an unconventional way, and early performers were seen as fashionable rebels. Over time the art settled into a refined tradition, but it has kept its taste for striking visual effect.
How it began
Accounts of kabuki’s start point to a performer called Okuni in the early seventeenth century, who is said to have performed dances in Kyoto that drew crowds. Troupes followed, and performances of this kind became popular in the cities. Many early troupes were made up of women. Because the shows could attract disorderly crowds, the authorities restricted them, and women were barred from the stage in the 1620s. A later phase featuring young male performers was also banned.
The art survived by changing. Under rules that required adult male performers and more developed plays, kabuki turned toward drama and technique, and the practice of men playing women’s roles became central. These changes were mostly in place by the middle of the seventeenth century. The cities of the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo), Osaka and Kyoto, each had their own styles and audiences, and merchants and artisans formed a large share of spectators. This townspeople culture, the same world that produced woodblock prints and popular fiction, is a large part of why kabuki favors drama about ordinary people’s loyalties and sorrows alongside the stories of warriors.
Stagecraft
Kabuki theatres developed inventive equipment, many of which have become symbols of the art:
- The hanamichi, or “flower path,” is a raised walkway that runs through the audience from the back of the hall to the stage. Actors make entrances and exits along it, bringing the drama close to spectators.
- The revolving stage lets scenes change quickly, as a turntable carries one set away and brings another into view.
- Trapdoors allow figures to rise or vanish, which suits stories involving ghosts or spirits.
- Stagehands in black, called kurogo, move props and assist actors. The convention asks the audience to treat them as invisible.
Music is live. Singers and shamisen players sit on stage or in an offstage space, and wooden clappers mark the beginning of scenes and heighten key moments. The sound of the clappers is a distinctive feature.
Costume and makeup
Costumes are layered, richly dyed and often padded to exaggerate presence. The garments for a courtesan or noble differ greatly from those for a villager or a warrior, and a trained viewer can read social position and temperament from them. Many designs draw on the same textile traditions as everyday clothing, enlarged for the stage. The costume of a female role, for example, relates to the kimono and obi sash of the period, while a warrior role may wear padded, exaggerated outfits.
Makeup includes a white base for many characters, and the best-known style is kumadori, the bold painted lines used for heroes, villains and supernatural beings. Colors are widely understood to carry meaning, with red often suggesting strength or righteousness and blue suggesting villainy or ghosts. Such readings are conventions that can vary with the play and the character.
Role types
Actors in kabuki specialize in categories of roles, and a family line often passes down specific parts and techniques.
Tachiyaku are male roles. They include gentle, romantic leads, whose acting style is known as wagoto and linked with Kyoto and Osaka, and the heroic, larger-than-life style known as aragoto, which is associated with Edo and with a famous acting family there.
Onnagata are performers, all men, who play female roles. The art is not an imitation of ordinary womanhood but a stylized ideal built through posture, voice and movement. Many onnagata train for decades.
Katakiyaku are villains, and dokeyaku are comic roles. Child roles and supporting parts round out the cast.
A famous convention is the mie, a moment when the actor freezes in a strong pose with a rolled glance to mark the emotional high point of a scene. Wooden clappers accentuate it, and audiences often call out the actor’s name or family title at that moment.
Kabuki and its neighbors
Kabuki has drawn heavily on other forms. Many of its plays were adapted from puppet drama, and a few were drawn from noh, with a look to simplify the pacing and add color. Its dance pieces borrow from a long performance tradition; the shaping of Japanese dance owes much to its stage. Kabuki also shares with geisha entertainment a musical world built on the shamisen.
Where noh is known for restraint, kabuki is known for display. The two are different responses to the same question of how to move an audience.
Watching kabuki
A full kabuki program is long, often lasting several hours with intermissions, and viewers can choose to see a single act. Many theatres offer subtitles, audio guides or synopses in several languages. Following the plot is easier when you know the basic role types, and the visual vocabulary of costume and makeup does a lot of the work. Kabuki has also been recognized internationally as a significant living art, and it continues to evolve, with new plays and experiments alongside the classics.