Kabuki

Introduction

Kabuki

Just step inside a kabuki theater and you will hear shouts from the audience. These shouts, called kakegoe (ka-ke-go- eh) are actually shouts of encouragement or recognition made by individual audience members calling out the names of the actors or their affiliations. Upon hearing kakegoe, most Japanese people immediately think, "Ah, that's kabuki." Looking around, you will also see the audience eating and drinking freely between the scenes or even during the performance. Spectacular and flamboyant, joyful and tearful, kabuki gives the audience the pleasure of a trip to another world. The word "kabuki" is usually written with three Chinese characters: ka (songs), bu (dance), and ki (skills). But it actually derives from the classical Japanese verb kabuki meaning "to incline." It also carries the meaning of something eccentric or deviating from the norm. The action in kabuki plays commonly revolves around Buddhist notions such as the law of retributive justice and the impermanence of things. Confucian traditions of duty, obligation, and filial piety are also expressed on stage. Historically, kabuki performances have been "off-beat," employing flamboyant costumes, elaborate makeup, and exaggerated body movements to create a sense of the spectacular. This may sound strange to those who imagine that Japanese people highly value harmony and conformity in society. It is ironic that many Japanese people take pride in kabuki as being one of Japan's cultural treasures, but similar eccentric behavior in actual life is highly disapproved of.

The History of Kabuki

According to history, kabuki was founded in 1603 by a Shinto priestess named Okuni. Deliberately provocative, she and her troupe of mostly women performed dances and comic sketches on a temporary stage set up in the dry riverbed of the Kamogawa River in Kyoto. Okuni dressed like a man and wore a cross, probably imported from Portugal, around her neck to highlight her eccentricity. Her troupe gained national recognition and their plays evolved into kabuki that would later become one of the three major classical theaters of Japan.
During the Edo period (1603-1868), when kabuki was fully established as a popular theatrical form, distinction between the samurai class and the commoners (peasants, artisans, and merchants) was more rigidly observed than at any other time in the history of Japan. Kabuki actors were social outcasts, lower than merchants, until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. They were often called kawara kojiki or "beggars of the riverbed."
The art of kabuki was cultivated mainly by the merchant class, in contrast with Noh theater that was sponsored and refined by the ruling class. Ranked lowest in the social hierarchy, merchants had become increasingly powerful economically, but had to remain socially inferior in accordance with the rigid social hierarchy. Kabuki, as the commoners' chief form of entertainment, was strictly regulated and censored by the Tokugawa shogunate for fear that kabuki should cause social disruption and possible contamination of the ruling class.