A state-controlled city entertainment in Japan, popular from 1650 to 1850. A 4-part play in numerous acts, lasting all day, was presented in a manner which allowed great actors to ad-lib, and the audience to talk and picnic in carnival spirit. The spectacular resources of Kabuki are nowadays employed only to present selected highlights from the traditional repertoire.
Kabuki (歌舞伎, kabuki) is a form of traditional Japanese theater. Kabuki theater is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by its performers.
The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing (歌), dance (舞), and skill (伎). Kabuki is therefore sometimes translated as "the art of singing and dancing."
History
Kabuki has changed drastically since its earliest incarnations.
1603-1629: female kabuki
The history of kabuki began in 1603, when Okuni, a miko (young women in the service Shinto shrines) of Izumo Taisha, began performing a new style of dance drama in the dry river beds of Kyoto. In the wake of such success, rival troupes quickly formed, and kabuki was born as ensemble dance drama performed by women — a form very different from its modern incarnation. For this reason, kabuki was also written as "歌舞妓" (singing and dancing prostitute) during the Edo Period.
1629-1652: young male kabuki
The raucous and often violent atmosphere of kabuki performances attracted the attention of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate, and in 1629 women were banned from the stage for the stated purpose of protecting public morals. Some historians suggest that the government was also concerned by the popularity of kabuki plays that dramatized ordinary life (rather than the heroic past) and enacted recent scandals, some involving government officials.
Since kabuki was already so popular, young male actors took over after women were banned from performing.
After 1653: men's kabuki
From 1653, only mature men could perform kabuki, which developed into a sophisticated, highly stylized form called yarō kabuki (野郎歌舞伎, roughly, "men's kabuki,"). Today the "yarō" has been dropped, but until relatively recently, all roles in a kabuki play were still performed by men.
1673-1735: The Genroku period
During the Genroku era, kabuki thrived. The structure of a kabuki play was formalized during this period, as were many elements of stylization. Kabuki theater and ningyō jōruri, the elaborate form of puppet theater that later came to be known as bunraku, became closely associated with each other during this period, and each has since influenced the development of the other. The famous playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, one of the first professional playwrights of kabuki, produced several influential works, though the piece usually acknowledged as his most significant, Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki), was originally written for bunraku. Like many bunraku plays, however, it was adapted for kabuki, and it spawned many imitators — in fact, it and similar plays reportedly caused so many real-life "copycat" suicides that the government banned shinju mono (plays about lovers' double suicides) in 1723.
In the mid-18th century, kabuki fell out of favor for a time, with bunraku taking its place as the premier form of stage entertainment among the lower social classes. Little of note would occur in the development of kabuki until the end of the century, when it began to re-emerge.
Kabuki after the Meiji Restoration
The tremendous cultural changes begun in 1868 by the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the elimination of the samurai class, and the opening of Japan to the west helped to spark that re-emergence. As the culture struggled to adapt to its new lack of isolation, actors strove to increase the reputation of kabuki among the upper classes and to adapt the traditional styles to modern tastes.
Many kabuki houses were destroyed by bombing during World War II, and the occupying forces briefly banned kabuki performances after the war.
Kabuki today
In modern Japan, kabuki remains relatively popular — it is the most popular of the traditional styles of Japanese drama — and its star actors often appear in television or film roles.
Some kabuki troupes now use female actors in the onnagata roles, and the Ichikawa Kabuki-za (an all-female troupe) was formed after World War II.
Interest in kabuki has also spread in the West. Kabuki troupes regularly tour Europe and America, and there have been several kabuki-themed productions of canonical Western plays such as those of Shakespeare. Western playwrights and novelists have also experimented with kabuki themes, an example of which is Gerald Vizenor's Hiroshima Bugi (2004).
In Australia, the Za Kabuki troupe at the Australian National University has been performing a Kabuki drama each year since 1976; the single longest regular Kabuki performance outside of Japan.
Kabuki was enlisted on the UNESCO's 'Third Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity' on 24 November 2005.
Elements of kabuki
Stage design
The kabuki stage features a projection called a hanamichi (花道; Kabuki stages and theaters have steadily become more technologically sophisticated, and innovations including revolving stages and trap doors, introduced during the 18th century, added greatly to the staging of kabuki plays. A driving force has been the desire to make manifest one frequent theme of kabuki theater, that of the sudden, dramatic revelation or transformation. Some of the innovations are detailed below:
Mawari-butai: (revolving stage) Developed in the Kyōhō era (1716-1735).
Seri: Refers to the stage traps that have been commonly employed in kabuki since the middle of the eighteenth century.
Chūnori: (riding in mid-air) Is a technique, which appeared toward the middle of the nineteenth century, by which an actor’s costume is attached to wires and he is made to “fly” over the stage and/or certain parts of the auditorium.
In kabuki, as in some other Japanese performing arts, scenery changes are sometimes made mid-scene, while the actors remain on stage and the curtain stays open. A technique which originated at the beginning of the 18th century, where scenery or actors are moved on or off stage by means of a wheeled platform. Also common are stage hands rushing onto the stage adding and removing props, backdrops and other scenery;
Performance
There are three main categories of kabuki play: jidai-mono (時代物, "historical", or pre-Sengoku period stories), sewa-mono (世話物, "domestic", or post-Sengoku stories), and shosagoto (所作事, dance pieces).
Important characteristics of Kabuki theater include the mie (見得), in which the actor holds a picturesque pose to establish his character.
Famous Plays
One of the most famous of the Kabuki plays is Chushingura.
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