Japanese Drama

Introduction

The Japanese theater began as a combination of music, dance, and drama. Early accounts explaining the origin of these basic elements are found in ancient legends that tell of the indigenous deities who played crucial roles in developing the performing arts. For example, Kojiki (712; Records of Ancient Matters, 1882) relates the story of Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto, a young goddess who performed a spectacular dance intended to entice Amaterasu Ōmikami (the sun goddess) from a cave where she had secluded herself. The plan succeeded, and sunlight was restored to a world of darkness. This episode traditionally marks the beginning of Japanese dance and the origin of kagura, the ritualistic ceremony of Shintō, the native religion of Japan. Because dance and music dominated the early performing arts, discussing kagura and dengaku is an appropriate introduction to Japanese theater.

Kagura

From prehistoric times, through kagura, the Japanese paid homage to the native deities and offered comfort to the souls of the dead as part of the Shintō ritual. Traditionally, kagura was divided into mikagura, the performance held at the imperial palace, and satokagura at the various Shintō shrines. Satokagura has undergone significant changes during its growth and development, but mikagura has remained almost unchanged since its official formulation in the eleventh century. The members of the Imperial Court dance group perform Mikagura. Its program consists of an introductory song, dances accompanied by song and music, a shamanistic ritual, a pantomimic performance, and more songs. Although the basic form of kagura is mime with song and music, even earlier, it was affected by other performing arts. The more sophisticated masked plays in its repertory were likely borrowed from gigaku and the lion dance. Tanemaki (seed planting dance) in kagura can be traced to dengaku, a native festivity related to rice growing. In the thirteenth century, kagura included dramatic pieces anticipating the Nō theater, which developed later.

Dengaku

Along with kagura, essentially a Shintō ceremony, dengaku, another native form of drama, developed in the rural areas of Japan, where rice growing was the main activity. Dengaku (rice paddy dance) was popular among farmers, who prayed to their local deities for abundant harvests. Even today, festivals related to rice farming are found in various parts of Japan. By the time dengaku emerged as a popular form of entertainment, it had already incorporated exotic elements from gigaku and sangaku. In short, dengaku had added to its repertory the lion dance, juggling, acrobatics, and other acts, as well as Chinese gongs and drums. Although it started as primitive and rustic entertainment, dengaku developed into a highly polished theater with elaborate dances and costumes. Eventually, dengaku developed its own prototype of the Nō theater, rivaling the similar efforts of sarugaku, which rose out of the sangaku tradition. However, after the emergence of Nō theater, dengaku rapidly lost popularity and retreated to temples and shrines. By the end of the seventeenth century, it had all but disappeared as public entertainment.

Bugaku

Although kagura and dengaku were the principal forms of early native theater, Japan was also the beneficiary of imported dramatic forms, especially from China by way of Korea. Bugaku has a long, uninterrupted tradition dating back to the eighth century. When bugaku arrived in Japan, it was a ceremonial dance performed during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) at the Chinese imperial court, where it was presented in splendid surroundings, with several teams of dancers accompanied by large string and woodwind sections. On reaching Japan, bugaku was also adopted as the dance for Japan’s imperial court. With the rise of the samurai class and the decline of imperial power in the late twelfth century, bugaku lost its prestige and influence; up to the sixteenth century, only large shrines and temples could afford to subsidize its performances. During Tokugawa (1600-1867), the shogunate supported a bugaku troupe at Edo (now Tokyo) for ceremonial occasions. In 1890, more than two decades after the Meiji Restoration (1868), when Japan assumed the role of a modern nation, the imperial court was again in charge of bugaku. Today, certain temples and shrines in the ancient capital of Nara also support bugaku.

In addition to elements imported from abroad, bugaku includes conventions subsequently added in Japan. The dancers in the native bugaku pieces wear no masks and perform Japanese-style musical instruments, including the koto—an instrument with numerous strings—and the flute. The bugaku dances are mostly of foreign origin. The dance of the left includes pieces generally from China and India, while the dance of the right derives from Korea and Manchuria. In the past, these two categories of dances were always performed alternately, but now, this custom has been abandoned because of time restrictions.

Gagaku, the musical component of bugaku, is played by several different instruments at a rather slow tempo. At the imperial court, bugaku is performed on a large, raised stage, about twenty-three feet square, on a somewhat smaller platform. The orchestra consists of woodwind instruments made of bamboo, two biwa—lutelike instruments—and the koto. The percussion section includes many large and small drums and a bronze gong. Since these deliberate and graceful dances attempt to emphasize pure dance forms rather than their dramatic elements, their execution consists of many symmetrical patterns. The dancers usually wear striking masks and dress in magnificent brocaded costumes.

The musicians who perform for bugaku can trace their ancestry through many generations. In preparation for such a career, the candidate must begin his musical education around twelve and become familiar with Japanese and Western music.

Gigaku

According to early records, gigaku arrived from Korea in 612. By the mid-eighth century, it was highly popular. By the twelfth century, however, its appeal had declined significantly. Although knowledge about this ancient form is incomplete, the extant masks, numbering about 250—many still preserved in Buddhist temples—permit some speculation about its character. These comic masks suggest that gigaku performances were meant to amuse and entertain. The facial features on the masks are neither Chinese nor Japanese, and their ultimate origin may have been beyond the Silk Road, which brought Near Eastern culture to ancient China. The Kyōkunshō (1233), a highly reliable source on the history of early Japanese music, mentions that gigaku was performed within temple grounds. The performers first marched around in a circle carrying large masks to accompany flute, drums, cymbals, and a pair of small gongs. After a play with a religious message was performed, a group of mimic pieces was performed, followed by a joyous musical finale. The participants in the parade included the leader—a figure with a long-nosed mask—a company of musicians, a two-man lion dance, and a pair of performers dressed as lion cubs. While the lion is not found in Japan, the lion dance in gigaku became a familiar part of kagura, dengaku, Nō theater, Kabuki, puppet theater (Bunraku), and the Japanese dance tradition. Some musical instruments initially identified with gigaku—flute, cymbals, and drums—were later incorporated into bugaku.

Sangaku

In Japan, sangaku arrived at about the same time as bugaku. Although the two forms were essentially the same, in China, bugaku belonged to the courtier class while sangaku was regarded as entertainment for the commoners; hence, the dances featured in sangaku were performed on a much smaller scale. In the beginning, sangaku, like bugaku, was given support by the imperial court, but by the late eighth century, it lost this privilege and was forced to carry on as public entertainment. The differences between the two were important for the growth and development of the Japanese theater. In addition to the dance component, sangaku also included several acts such as comic sketches, mime pieces, acrobatics, juggling, magic tricks, puppetry, and trained birds and animals. Among these offerings, the dramatic elements found in the humorous pieces and pantomimes caught the immediate attention of the Japanese audience. These elements quickly found their way into bugaku and even into religious rituals held at shrines and temples. From its early arrival, the humble popular theater from China had an immediate impact in Japan and, through sarugaku, its successor, this popular theater continued to exert a powerful influence.

Sarugaku

Although the difference between bugaku and sangakuis clear, in the case of sangaku and sarugaku, the distinction appears to be the degree of emphasis on the dramatic aspect of the theater as a performing art. Furthermore, this significant shift toward greater emphasis from sangaku to sarugaku also indicated a change in public attitude toward acting, “imitative art,” as a profession. As early as the tenth century, sarugaku was a term applied to sangaku but in a pejorative sense. In this context, the “saru” in sarugaku was written with the Chinese character denoting “monkey,” a reference to the age-old belief that this animal could humorously imitate human behavior. By implication, those who acted like a monkey in front of an audience were considered less than human; hence, their performances should be called sarugaku (monkey dance). Nevertheless, by the eleventh century, the dramatic aspect of sarugaku was drawing greater public attention. In short, sarugaku performers may be regarded as the dedicated practitioners of the sangaku tradition who actively cultivated that specific area involving comedic skits and pantomime, apart from the other popular acts identified with sangaku. Sarugaku, then, represented a growing tendency in the Japanese theater to redirect its attention away from the earlier preoccupation with dance and music and to show a deeper concern for drama. From the mid-thirteenth century to the late fourteenth century, these sarugaku performers, who were attached to the shrines and temples, began organizing their own troupes and competing with one another, eventually helping to establish the Nō theater. Toward this effort, dengaku and ennen also tried to formulate their own prototypes of the Nō drama, but in the end, the sarugaku version prevailed.

Ennen Nō

By the end of the eleventh century, ennen, a ritualistic banquet held after Buddhist and Shintō services, had become popular. Dances, extemporaneous songs, and mimic performances were gradually added to this extension of a religious service, and ennen evolved into a recognized form of entertainment. By the thirteenth century, additional song and dance, humorous dialogue, and dramatized legends became part of this ever-expanding repertory. The performances took place in the gallery of a religious building, on the lawn, or a stage set up on the grounds. At such events, the performance of the ennen Nō came at the end. The players used masks for such roles as ghosts in these presentations—the rather formalized productions, which were filled with religious symbolism, used rather austere costumes. With the rise of the Nō theater, ennen declined rapidly as a theatrical activity.

Dengaku Nō

As a performing art, dengaku Nō developed slowly and did not gain public recognition until the fourteenth century. With the political rise of Shogun Ashikaga Takauji in 1338, however, dengaku Nō suddenly became the favored theater, and although it still bore a rustic quality reflecting its rural background, at one point dengaku Nō surpassed sarugaku Nō. Nevertheless, dengaku Nō could not readily discard its ritualistic pieces, such as acts on stilts, performances with binzasara (a bamboo rattle used in farm festivals), and sword-juggling acts. In comparison with Nō theater, masks were used sparingly. Dengaku Nō had a stage similar to the Nō theater, with the hashigakari, a familiar passageway leading to the stage entrance. The subject matter of dengaku Nō was drawn primarily from Japanese literature, history, and legends and stories based on Buddhist tradition. Although at one time, dengaku Nō may have rivaled sarugaku Nō, it failed to develop into a new form of drama because it was apparently unable to discard its agricultural tradition.

Sarugaku Nō

Though sarugaku performers were once treated as socially inferior to their colleagues in the other forms of theater, they finally gained public recognition through their devotion to an artistic vision. They had set the stage for the next phase in the final establishment of the Nō theater. The standard program of sarugaku Nō began with the ceremonial Okina play, beseeching the deities for abundant harvests and longevity. Several Nō plays followed this piece. By skillfully employing the well-known themes from folktales, legends, and Japanese classics and by interpolating passages from poetry and fiction into the play scripts, sarugaku Nō gained a distinct advantage over its rivals. The introduction of fresh, brilliant dance pieces also contributed to its success. By the first quarter of the fifteenth century, sarugaku Nō would achieve its goal of becoming a fully developed new theater.

From the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, culminating in the establishment of the Nō theater, sarugaku served as the basis for encouraging other genres to cultivate nō (acting skill). Yet sarugaku Nō was also influenced by the kusemai, a minor form of entertainment from the Heian period (794-1185) which featured a female performer, dressed as a male, who danced and sang currently popular songs. These women often wore a ceremonial cap, used a Japanese folding fan in their dancing, and played on a drum tied to the waist. Sarugaku Nō was also indebted to kōwaka-kusemai, which rose out of this tradition. In kōwaka-kusemai, male performers accompanied by refined temple music render a melodic recitation of war tales such as the Heike monogatari (The Heike Monogatari, 1918; also as The Tale of the Heike, 1975, 1988), a literary classic from the twelfth century. The lyric narrative style employed by the kōwaka-kusemai performers was later adopted by the Nō theater and subsequently made a strong impact on jōruri, the narrative portion accompanying the puppet theater.

Nō Theater

The establishment of the Nō theater as an independent performing art can be credited largely to the brilliant leadership of Kan’ami Kiyotsugu, born in 1333, and Zeami Motokiyo born in 1363. By their joint efforts, and particularly by the achievements of Zeami, Nō theater reached its peak. As dengaku Nō had gained the support of Ashikaga Takauji, the first shogun in this line of succession, Kan’ami and Zeami were under the patronage of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1404), the third Ashikaga shogun and a devoted patron of the arts. Kan’ami incorporated elements from the kusemai tradition and also from dengaku to establish the foundation for the Nō theater. His son Zeami successfully completed the work of his father and, in addition, distinguished himself as a performer, dramatist, and brilliant thinker who wrote extensively on the dramaturgy of the Nō theater; his Kadensho (1400-1402; English translation, 1968) is regarded as a definitive treatise on this subject. Throughout the Tokugawa period, the Nō theater continued to enjoy government support as the official entertainment of the samurai class. During the Tokugawa regime, five major schools of Nō were established: Komparu, Kongō, Kanze, Hōshō, and Kita. Later, the Umekawa school, an offshoot of the Kanze school, was formed after the Meiji period (1868-1912).

One element of the Nō theater that separates it from earlier performing arts of Japan is its readily accessible written texts; most of the plays still presented can be assigned to specific authors. For example, about fifteen are known to be the work of Kan’ami, including Jinen Koji and Sotoba Komachi (English translation, 1915). Zeami’s plays number more than one hundred and include Semimaru (English translation, 1970) and Ashikari (The Reed Cutter, 1970).

Among the more than eight hundred extant plays, more than a quarter are performed regularly. The classification of these plays is commonly based on the main character of each piece: God, Man, Woman, Madman, and Devil. God plays are always presented at the start of each performance and contain words of felicitation. Man plays feature ghosts of dead warriors who seek assistance from an itinerant priest who can deliver them from spiritual torment and help them gain salvation. Women's plays often include heroines from the Japanese classics who suffer from unrequited love. Madman plays, though dealing with mentally deranged characters, also contain historical figures and themes from contemporary life. Devil plays are based on supernatural creatures from legends and literary works, malicious and benign.

The three principal roles in Nō plays are shite (main character), tsure (companion), and waki (secondary character). The tsure may also have a companion called waki-zure. The progression of a Nō play takes place according to the concept of jo (introduction), ha (main theme), and kyū (finale). In this standard form, the tempo of the play builds up to the ha. At this point, its pace slows down, and the performance takes on refinement and complexity. The final phase serves the function of releasing the audience from the tension accumulated during the development of the play—a kind of catharsis.

The Nō stage is about eighteen feet square and has large pillars at its corners to guide the performers, who often wear masks that obscure their vision. The musicians sit upstage and play the flute and the three types of drums. An old pine tree, symbolizing longevity, is painted on the backdrop. The bamboo flute carries the melody, and the drums simply mark the beat. Extending from stage right, the hashigakari, a long passageway, leads to a curtained entrance for the performers. The three pine trees planted along this corridor are of diminishing size, with the tallest planted closest to the main stage. The idea of distance is conveyed by this arrangement.

The Nō masks are broadly classified into male, female, and supernatural beings. The human masks depict a wide range of characters ranging in age from youth to old age. Others represent deities, devils, and animals. These masks, which are slightly smaller than life-size, are intended to cover up the unique features of the performers; those without masks display no emotion on the stage. The movements of the performers are strictly controlled; there are more than two hundred different patterns of movement in this highly stylized theater. The act of weeping, for example, may be suggested by a slightly bowed head with a hand raised in front of the performer’s eyes. In walking, the feet slide along the floor as the toes are raised slightly. The studied formalism of the Nō theater, reflected in the appearance of the stage, style of speech, movement, dancing, costume, and masks, suggests a theater dedicated to the reduction of dramatic experience to its purest abstraction.

Kyōgen

The dramatic element in kyōgen can be traced to sarugaku, which gained wide popularity through its comedic sketches and mimic performances. Although the history of kyōgen is still uncertain, by the time that the Nō theater was established, kyōgen was already a mature drama. Although it is true that the Nō theater is traditionally treated with greater deference than is the kyōgen, the latter has had far more impact on the later development of the Japanese theater. During the Tokugawa period, when the townspeople’s culture suddenly created the opportunity for the emergence of the Kabuki heater and the puppet theater, the Nō theater remained relatively isolated under the patronage of the samurai class. On the other hand, kyōgen helped to raise Kabuki from a coarse public entertainment to one of the greatest theatrical traditions of Japan. In this process, the minor players from kyōgen who had attached themselves to the early Kabuki troupes made an inestimable contribution. Moreover, during the formative years of Kabuki, kyōgen plays were frequently borrowed to develop the Kabuki repertory.

The main schools of kyōgen, Ōkura, Sagi, and Izumi, were established in the mid-Muromachi period (1336-1573); they were all supported by the Tokugawa government. Since the beginning of the Meiji period, the Sagi school has been inactive.

The kyōgen plays are commonly classified according to the main character in each play: Daimyō (feudal lord), Shōmyō (petty landowner), Muko (son-in-law), Oni-yamabushi (devil-mountain priest), Shukke-zatō (priest-blindman), and Atsume (miscellaneous). The authorship of these plays is unknown because they were, as a rule, performed extemporaneously. Further, the written scripts were considered secret and remained the exclusive property of the kyōgen schools. The Ōkura school recognizes 180 plays in its repertory, and the Izumi school, 254. Among the plays available in translation are Bōshibari (Pinioned, 1882), Busu (Somebody-nothing, 1921), and Utsubozaru (The Quiver Monkey, 1921). These plays can be found under slightly different titles in Selected Plays of Kyōgen (1968).

Depending on the theme, the content of the kyōgen plays may deal with various aspects of human frailty, such as greed, hypocrisy, jealousy, arrogance, and stupidity. The plays humorously expose familiar weaknesses and ridicule those who are blissfully unaware of their shortcomings. In kyōgen, two or more characters are at odds with one another; comic situations are generated as the result of these conflicts. The dialogue in a Nō play often consists of passages from classic sources in literature, history, philosophy, or religion. In kyōgen, the lines spoken by the characters are patterned after ordinary conversation. Although a legacy from a bygone era, the content is quite comprehensible to modern audiences.

The postures assumed by the kyōgen performer are basically similar to those in the Nō theater. To provide a firm stance on the stage, the performer’s hip is thrust back from the waist and his chin is tucked in. When the performer gazes at an object or follows it with his eyes, convention dictates that the whole face must rigidly go through a similar motion. The kyōgen plays make some use of masks, but they are not regarded as having the same level of craftsmanship as the Nō masks. In kyōgen, supernatural creatures may be frequently personified. Also, animal masks with surprisingly human features often appear on the kyōgen stage. The artistic quality of the kyōgen masks is generally inferior to that of the masks in the Nō plays, but the unpretentious kyōgen masks have the warm, down-to-earth quality that characterizes this performing art. Whereas the costumes in the Nō are noted for their splendor and refinement, those used in kyōgen are simple, plain, and realistic. Kyōgen plays rarely have musical accompaniment. About half of the stage properties and costumes used in the kyōgen plays come from the Nō theater. In some Nō plays, the kyōgen performers appear as members of the cast; at no time, however, do they play the roles of individuals in high authority.

Because kyōgen remained an integral part of the Nō theater, it could neither extend its dramatic potential beyond the limits of the Nō stage nor escape the stylistic demands imposed by the nature of the Nō theater. Although kyōgen inspired other theaters to further cultivate acting skill, the most important function of kyōgen was to serve as the unobtrusive, faithful companion of the Nō theater.

Puppet Theater

The puppet theater began around the late sixteenth century with the joining of three basic elements: jōruri (narrative chanting), the samisen (three-stringed musical instrument), and the puppet. The jōruri was preceded as popular entertainment by the Heike biwa another form of narrative chanting from the thirteenth century. The Heike biwa was performed by blind musicians who recited episodes from The Tale of the Heike, the tale of the war between the Minamoto and the Taira. These musicians used the biwa, a lutelike instrument, in their performances. As a variation on this narrative tradition, jōruri included the romantic tale of Princess Jōruri and the young Ushiwakamaru, who later became Minamoto Yoshitsune, the victorious general in The Tale of the Heike. This narrative piece became so popular that the entire genre was called jōruri, the name of its beautiful heroine. At this time, the biwa was still the basic instrument for jōruri. In the mid-sixteenth century, the jamisen, the precursor of the samisen, reached Japan from the Ryūkyū islands (now Okinawa). The Japanese modified the jamisen to produce a milder, delicate sound; the combination of jōruri and the samisen was an overnight sensation. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the puppet joined jōruri and samisen to create ningyō-jōruri (puppet-jōruri play), a new performing art.

Many centuries before, the kutsugu-mawashi (puppeteer-storyteller), who manipulated simple dolls inside a boxlike stage suspended from the operator’s neck, arrived with sangaku from the Asiatic mainland. The puppet theater quickly enhanced its repertory by freely borrowing from traditional folktales, religious stories, and familiar legends. In the 1660s, another jōruri, depicting the amusing exploits of a somewhat naïve but good-hearted warrior, Kimpira, who had superhuman strength, gained popularity in Edo. Later, the celebrated story of this fearless, dashing hero was adopted by Ichikawa Danjūrō I as the aragoto (rough business), the acting style for his Kabuki performances. The aragoto became permanently identified with the illustrious line of Kabuki actors founded by Danjūrō I.

The next big stride in the development of the puppet theater was the collaboration between Takemoto Gidayū and Chikamatsu Monzaemon the great Japanese playwright. Takemoto Gidayū had created gidayū-bushi, a jōruri style that still bears his name. In 1685, he recited Shusse Kagekiyo (pr. 1686; Kagekiyo is victorious), a Chikamatsu masterpiece, which became the decisive work separating the “old” and the “new” jōruri plays. This play raised the artistic level of the puppet play to an unprecedented height. Although Chikamatsu’s early plays for the puppet theater were historical and portrayed the upper classes, in 1703, his Sonezaki shinjū (pr. 1703; The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, 1961) depicted the tragic romance between a clerk at a soy-sauce shop and a young prostitute, based on an actual occurrence in Osaka, which ended in a double suicide. This shinjūmono (love suicide play) was the forerunner of a series of plays on the same theme, focusing on the lives of the common people. The close association between Takemoto Gidayū and Chikamatsu lasted until the former’s death in 1714.

Although Chikamatsu wrote independently for the puppet theater, his successors often engaged in producing cooperative works. Among these works, the following represent outstanding examples of collaborative writing: Sugawara denju tenarai kagami (pr. 1747; The Secrets of Sugawara’s Calligraphy, 1921), Yoshitsune senbonzakura (pr. 1747; The Thousand Cherry Blossoms of Yoshitsune, 1915), and Kanadehon chūshingura (pr. 1748; The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, 1880). These plays, which were presented consecutively within a period of three years in the mid-eighteenth century, remain among the all-time favorites in the puppet and Kabuki theaters.

The major categories of puppet plays are the jidaimono (historical plays) and the sewamono (domestic plays). The historical plays are more stylized and romantic, picturing the world of the nobles and the samurai, quite removed from the experience of the common people. In contrast, the sewamono treated themes often based on everyday occurrences, including the love suicides, which the audiences knew well.

In the puppet theater, the chanter communicates the thoughts and inner feelings of the characters and provides the descriptive passages that hold the entire story together. By modulating his voice according to the roles he takes, the chanter imitates the voices of the puppets on the stage. The samisen player establishes the mood and the tempo appropriate for the various scenes and provides the necessary dramatic tension by his carefully arranged use of the samisen. According to circumstances, the number of supporting musicians and chanters may vary.

The three-man puppet was first introduced in 1734; until then, each puppet operator manipulated a single doll. The operation of the three-man puppet is more complicated because it requires careful coordination for a smooth, effective manipulation. To create convincing, realistic movements, the specialists, who are in charge of the head and right arm, the left arm, or both feet, must act simultaneously with split-second precision. Years of dedicated training are required to develop this skill. To train for this work, the apprentice must begin with the feet, then work with the left arm, and finally become involved in the manipulation of the head and right arm.

The head, arms, legs, and torso of the puppets can be disassembled, and the parts exchanged. The height of the puppets ranges from four to four and a half feet, somewhat smaller than life-size. The puppets may carry out various movements with the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and joints of the fingers and toes. Although props are usually scaled down to match the size of the puppets, swords, smoking pipes, writing brushes, and other implements of normal size may be manipulated by the operator to highlight a crucial scene. Ordinarily, the puppet operators are dressed in black and wear hoods over their faces; they are regarded as “invisible” to the audience. Outstanding operators may perform dressed in formal costume and with their faces uncovered. The operators wear specially elevated footwear so that they can manipulate the dolls in full view of the audience while moving in trenchlike spaces built within the performance area.

In the puppet plays, the most important issue raised invariably deals with the conflict between giri (duty) and ninjo (human feelings). Whether in the relationship between master and subject, husband and wife, parent and child, or young lovers, there are always higher duties that pit the individual against the demands made by the rest of society. In the jidaimono play, a samurai may have to sacrifice his son to protect the life of his master’s son; a woman may be caught between her role as a mother and her role as a dutiful wife to a warrior husband. The same kind of choice awaits a love-smitten son who may have to disobey his parents’ wishes to marry the girl whom he desperately adores. In the sewamono play, this kind of dilemma, which required the principal characters to weigh their own personal happiness against ethical and societal obligations, often brought the performance to a tragic ending by double suicide. Modern Japanese society no longer adheres to the rigid ethical standards once established by the samurai class. In this sense, the puppet theater in the modern world is the legacy of a bygone era.

Kabuki

Although the popular account of the Kabuki heater attributes its establishment to Okuni, the legendary vestal maiden of the Izumo Shrine who danced on the dry riverbed of the Kamo River in Kyoto in 1603, its actual development appears more obscure and uncertain. Around the late sixteenth century, when Japanese society was at last emerging from centuries of political and social unrest, many groups of itinerant entertainers—male and female—were roving all over the country. Among these troupes, Okuni is said to have introduced Kabuki-odori (Kabuki dance), which quickly gained a nationwide following. The term “kabuki” meant something “outrageous,” “shocking,” “exotic,” or “quite extraordinary,” and Okuni’s instant success was apparently the result of her clever management and showmanship. The accounts of her performances suggest that the most popular aspect of her show consisted of erotic dances and scenes with nudity. In all probability, Okuni’s variety show had minimal artistic pretensions and was meant largely to attract customers for its performers, who also practiced prostitution. The public disorder resulting from their stage performances finally led the authorities to ban all women from the theater in 1629.

In the meantime, wakashu Kabuki (young boys’ Kabuki) had also attracted wide attention. These performers, who had not yet reached adulthood (which was age fifteen), were involved, like the officially banned onna Kabuki (women’s Kabuki), in using the stage show as a means of attracting customers to whom they would sell sexual favors. Thus, in 1652, wakashu Kabuki was also declared illegal. The government insisted that Kabuki become a serious theater styled after kyōgen, the realistic dialogue and acting skills of which were highly developed. The yarō Kabuki (young men’s Kabuki), which replaced wakashu Kabuki, was placed under strict government control. The young men who became Kabuki performers were obliged to cut off their forelocks to show that they were of legal age. The position of the government was uncompromising; its impact on the yarō Kabuki was soon evident. In the 1660s, the forerunner of the hanamichi, the auxiliary stage for the performers’ entrances and exits, quickly developed. In 1664, two theaters made use of the hikimaku (draw curtain), a sign that the plays were becoming longer and more complex. During this period, the onnagata (female impersonator) had assumed an important position in the further development of the Kabuki theater. Contrary to past practice, a female role was no longer meant to be only decorative, played by boys who merely displayed their youthful charms and physical beauty, dressed in feminine costumes.

The early Kabuki plays, which were simply borrowed from Nō, kyōgen, and early puppet theater, were supplemented by dramatic works written specifically for the Kabuki stage. By 1673, Ichikawa Danjūrō I ad created his aragoto plays, inspired by the jōruri style of Kimpira-bushi, popularized by Takemoto Gidayū of the puppet theater. By the time Kabuki reached its first great epoch in the Genroku period (1688-1703), it had become firmly established as a performing art. After a period of relative inactivity during the first half of the eighteenth century, caused mainly by the dominance of the puppet theater, the Kabuki theater regained its popularity through the development of its own narrative musical style and through the spectacular growth of its dance pieces. Through these efforts, Kabuki achieved its second great flowering, which lasted from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. After the mid-eighteenth century, the center of activity for the Kabuki theater shifted completely from the Kyoto-Osaka area to Edo. Of the celebrated Kabuki plays, the longer pieces have not been translated into English. Sukeroku Yukari no Edo zakura (1713; Sukeroku: Flower of Edo, 1975) and Narukami Fudo kitayama zakura (1742; Saint Narukami and the God Fudo, 1975) may be read in their generally complete form in Kabuki: Five Classic Plays (1975). These two plays belong to the aragoto style of Ichikawa Danjūrō I and belong in the category of historical plays.

Kabuki plays, like puppet plays, are divided into jidaimono (historical plays) and sewamono (domestic plays). Jidaimono plays depict the aristocratic classes of pre-Tokugawa Japan. Sewamono plays show the lives of common people living in a contemporary Tokugawa setting. Although jidaimono plays tend to be highly stylized and romantic, sewamono dramas are more down-to-earth; dialogue is closer to ordinary speech, costumes and props are taken from daily life, and the movement of the performers tends to be natural and realistic. Shosagoto (dance plays) are shorter Kabuki pieces in which music and dance are the main components.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the sewamono plays, which depicted the lives of the common people, reached the highest degree of realism. The Tōkaidō Yotsuya kaidan (the ghost story of Yotsuya), written in 1825 by Tsuruya Nanboku IV, is regarded as the greatest work in this genre. The trend toward more realistic presentation on the Kabuki stage led to the kizewamono “raw” domestic plays), which carried violence, brutality, and eroticism to shocking extremes.

After the death of Namboku IV in 1829, the only other playwright of distinction was Kawatake Mokuami, a dramatist whose career spanned the fading feudal world of the Tokugawa era and the government-backed modernism of the new Meiji era. Representative of the new era were his “cropped hair plays” (zangirimono) in which men’s long feudal locks were replaced by Western haircuts. Paradoxically, audiences preferred the more traditional Kabuki plays in which they found the comforting values of a familiar, if fading world. Although Mokuami repeatedly demonstrated his genius for incorporating the atmosphere and events of the modernizing world into his plays, Kabuki could not, finally, give expression to the reality of the new Japan. It gradually receded into the category of traditional theater, along with bugaku, Nō theater, kyōgen, and puppet theater.

Two distinctive features of the Kabuki stage deserve special mention. The hanamichi, a ramp that extends from stage right to the back of the theater through the audience, plays an essential role in creating a feeling of intimacy and involvement for the spectators. The appearance of actors on this auxiliary stage provoked audience response and helped to create a feeling of spectator involvement in the drama. The mawari-butai (revolving stage) is a Japanese invention created in the mid-eighteenth century by a Kabuki playwright. This device allows two or even three separate scenes to be staged at once by simply rotating the giant platform built into the main stage.

A familiar feature of the Kabuki theater is the hikimaku (draw curtain), which has green, tan, and black vertical stripes, once authorized to be used at only the major Kabuki theaters of the Tokugawa period. When the hikimaku is fully drawn, it can also create a special performance area in front of the curtain line. Then, the activity on the apron stage can be coordinated with that occurring on the hanamichi, resulting in a greater sense of involvement for the audience seated in the orchestra. With the main stage closed, this feeling of intimacy is heightened.

In a Kabuki performance, the elements of music, dance, and drama are often intermingled, even during scenes that are generally played in a realistic style. Certain lyric lines may be recited like an aria, with the soft melody of a samisen playing in the background. Some stylized movements in a jidaimono play approach the studied gracefulness of a dance sequence. The influence of the puppet theater after the mid-eighteenth century encouraged the use of jōruri and other vocal and musical accompaniment in the later Kabuki plays. More than half the plays in the present Kabuki repertory once belonged to the puppet theater.

The historical difference in the function of the script explains a good deal about differences between Kabuki and puppet theater. In the puppet theater, the written text formed the basis for the entire production; it clearly specified the functions of the chanter, the doll operator, musicians, including the samisen player, the chorus, and the orchestra. Because the play script for the puppet theater was so important, even in the early seventeenth century, the authorship of specific plays was given on the published play scripts. In the case of the Kabuki theater, its growth and development did not follow the relatively smooth course pursued by the puppet theater. In the beginning, the distinction between the performer and the playwright was not crucial. The pieces were short and simple; the performances could be prepared easily with little practice and given almost extemporaneously. During its early stages, Kabuki took its materials from the currently popular theaters and from oral and written traditions. The first professional Kabuki dramatist did not appear until the Genroku period. Although Chikamatsu began his career as a Kabuki playwright, none of his plays in this genre remain except in rough outlines, whereas his works for the puppet theater are readily available as complete texts.

Most writers for the Kabuki theater wrote in collaboration, making the precise authorship of any one work almost impossible to determine. The head dramatist of a Kabuki theater may have been solely responsible for any given play; authorship was quite a different issue. Because play scripts were the exclusive property of the theater where the dramatist was employed, the issue of authorship never surfaced during the two hundred years of the Tokugawa period. The question of copyright finally came up as Japan went through modernization in the early Meiji period, when Mokuami, the last playwright in the Tokugawa tradition, settled the issue in court in a successful suit against his publisher. After Mokuami, most of the plays for the Kabuki theater were written by novelists, dramatists, and journalists who had not served an apprenticeship as Kabuki writers. These newer plays are called Shin-Kabuki (New Kabuki Plays) to distinguish them from the older tradition, which quickly declined after the death of Mokuami.

Modern Theater

Kabuki was the most vibrant dramatic form at the beginning of the Meiji period as Japan began its Herculean effort to transform itself into a modern nation. The limited realism of Mokuami’s “cropped hair plays” and other sewamono plays was the most promising dramatic resource to capture the emerging new world; after two decades, however, the zangirimono failed to turn into a contemporary theater, and Kabuki came to represent the values of a fast fading feudal world. In an ironic twist of history, what had long been the theater of outcasts was, in its last years, embraced and legitimized by a government keen to maintain a “national theater” on a par with those of European nations. The essentially feudal world of Kabuki, with its Confucian morality and samurai ethics, could not support stories centered on the individual, and the well of modernism was nothing if not a font of individualism. As the government attempted to make Kabuki into something it had never been—a national literary theater—the eyes of Japanese intellectuals focused on tales of individuals struggling to be born to a larger freedom.

For the next sixty years, attempts to create a modern Japanese theater were dominated by what many critics now see as an almost schizophrenic compulsion to ingest the literary drama of the West and produce an imitative Japanese version. Needless to say, the audience for bookish experiments in this vein was limited to educated intellectuals. Group after group took up the challenge of creating a new national drama that centered on the individual. Many groups disappeared or splintered into new formations with the death of the founder.

The first such group was the Shimpa (New Wave Theater), begun by political activists. Shimpa was a mutant form that preserved the energy of Kabuki as it appealed to nationalist sentiments. Some of the plays celebrated Japanese military victories in the years around the turn of the twentieth century. Early plays were thinly disguised propaganda in dramatic form. In some ways Shimpa was no more than an amateurish attempt to escape from the Kabuki tradition; it gained popularity with its realistic fight scenes, which went beyond the carefully choreographed action taking place on the Kabuki stage. The most important historical figure behind the Shimpa movement was Kawakami Otojiro born in 1864. He and his wife, the actress Sada Yakko, went abroad with the Shimpa troupe and pleased audiences in Europe and the United States with the energy of Shimpa’s spectacle. Kawakami adapted several European plays for the Japanese stage.

Tsubouchi Shōyō was preeminent among the Meiji literary scholars who were engaged in the problem of transforming the Japanese theater into something resembling that of the Europeans. He hoped that elements of Japanese and Western traditions might be combined in a new theater for Japan. Tsubouchi spans the drama of two eras. He was the author of a Kabuki play, Kirihitoha (pr. 1904; a paulownia leaf) and the translator of the complete works of . In 1906, he established the Bungei Kyōkai (literature and arts society), an acting school that accepted only amateurs with no previous training in Kabuki or Shimpa. Its students staged plays by Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, among other Western playwrights. Tsubouchi worked closely with Shimamura Hōgetsu, his former student and colleague at Waseda University in Tokyo. Later, Tsubouchi and Shimamura parted company, and the latter formed the Geijutsuka arts theater) and performed plays in translation by , , , and others. In 1918, with the death of Shimamura, the group disbanded after six years of activity. The theater troupes founded by Tsubouchi and Shimamura, as well as the other groups discussed below, were part of Shingeki, Japanese for “modern theater.”

Osanai Kaoru was another key figure in the early twentieth-century development of Shingeki. He and Ichikawa Sadanji II, a Kabuki actor, founded the Jiyūgeki Kyōkai (free drama society), a study group emphasizing performers' training in Western acting techniques. Most of the members were Kabuki actors, and the group also included some actresses trained in the Kabuki tradition. They tended to perform translations of works by Western dramatists such as Chekhov, Ibsen, and August Strindberg. This group, which was most active before World War I, dissolved after ten years. Osanai then collaborated with Hijikata Yoshi, another of the key founders of the Shingeki movement, to establish the Tsukiji Shōgekijō (Tsukiji Little Theater). This playhouse, with a capacity of about five hundred, was built specially for the performance of modern plays; its architecture conformed to the Western theatrical tradition. Osanai surprised playwrights before the theater's opening in 1924 by declaring that no Japanese dramatist could live up to the artistic standards he had established, so for the time being, no Japanese drama would be performed on the boards at Tsukiji. In his first forty-four consecutive programs, Osanai revealed his broad taste in Western drama by presenting some playwrights—Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg, Georg Kaiser, Eugene O’Neill, and Luigi Pirandello. Later, Osanai chose to stage plays written by Japanese novelists as well as plays written by himself. Besides directing plays, Hijikata managed the financial affairs of the new playhouse. This theater’s most vital contribution to the development of modern theater in Japan was its legacy of experienced performers and competent technical theater personnel. The sudden death of Osanai in December 1928 led to the dispersal of the company.

After the dissolution of the Tsukiji Shōgekijō, Hijikata, who had leftist leanings, founded the Shin-Tsukiji Gekidan (New Tsukiji Theater Group), which served the proletarian movement by attracting the intelligentsia and members of the labor unions. The remaining members of the older company called themselves Gekidan Tsukiji Shōgekijō (Theater Group/Little Tsukiji Theater) but disbanded two years later; in 1937, these members founded the Bungakuza Literary Theater), which still performs today. In the meantime, the proletarian theater of Hijikata came increasingly under attack by the militarists and was forced to disband in 1940. During World War II, modern theaters were often required to mobilize their members to present propaganda plays. They suffered professionally under the harsh wartime conditions.

After September 1945, most forms of artistic oppression disappeared, although the Americans, with their distrust of Kabuki’s feudalistic powers, were not completely objective in their support of the theater arts. The proletarian theater movement, however, whose members were often imprisoned and harassed during the prewar years, enjoyed the sudden freedom. Hijikata had spent four years in jail before being released at the end of the war.

The rising power of the militarists in the 1930s resulted in stricter censorship of newspapers, motion pictures, and theaters. In this period, the government did not readily tolerate the free statement of ideas and the exercise of artistic creativity, especially along Western lines. Since travel abroad was still slow and costly, serious performers or dramatists could live or study abroad and attend performances of foreign plays, which was quite limited. There were exceptional cases, such as that of Kishida Kunio, who studied in France and tried to apply Western dramaturgy to Japanese needs. Still, despite much tireless effort, the results were not widely appreciated outside his circle.

Shingeki enjoyed a boom in popularity after the war, and Japan again turned its eyes to the new drama of the West. ’s A Streetcar Named Desire (pr. 1947) was performed in translation in 1953. Works by , , , and became as familiar as those written by contemporary Japanese authors. Postwar dramatists of note include Michio Kato, the author of Nayotake (pr. 1946), a work based on an old Japanese legend; Junji Kinoshita, whose Yūzuru (pr. 1949; Twilight Crane, 1956) was performed internationally; and Yukio Mishima, the internationally famous novelist and right-wing activist. During his brief but prolific career, Mishima wrote Kabuki plays in a classical style and modern Nōplays, which managed to capture the mysterious, otherworldly mood of the Nō drama in the contemporary idiom.

Kōbō Abe, like Mishima, is better known for his novels than his plays. Abe grew up in Manchuria and returned to Japan as an adolescent in 1941. This is perhaps partially responsible for his startling objectivity in dealing with the social fabric of Japanese society. His play Tomodachi (pr. 1967; Friends, 1969) employs a surface realism to deconstruct the contemporary Japanese understanding of democracy. A young salaried worker’s apartment is invaded by a family of strangers who insist that privacy and the single life are not good for him. Abe’s use of realism is in stark contrast to that of decades of Shingeki dramatists who emulated the work of European dramatists. Another Abe play, Omae ni mo tsumi ga aru (pr. 1978; You, Too, Are Guilty 1979), addresses issues of social responsibility through a confrontation between a young professional and a temporarily abandoned corpse.

For more than seventy years, Japanese theater had served as a vehicle for and a reflection of the modernization and Westernization of Japanese society. The neo-mysticism of the Nō theater and the celebratory spectacle of Kabuki had been abandoned in favor of the rational realism of late-nineteenth-century European drama. In the late 1960s, however, social unrest surrounding the renewal of the Mutual Security Treaty with the United States cracked open the conservative middle-class values that had solidified during the postwar “economic miracle.” In the chaotic atmosphere of the student movement, some young Japanese intellectuals saw the need to shed the constraints of logic-bound realism and reopen Japan’s windows to the gods and spirits of the past. The movement that resulted was called the post-Shingeki or Angura (underground) movement. This movement was characterized by its greater spontaneity, its rejection of proscenium arch realism, an emphasis on performance rather than script, and an embrace of Japan’s mythic past.

Among those in the Angura movement, Minoru Betsuyaku is an important figure. He began writing for the Waseda Shōgekijō (Waseda Little Theatre), which performed his iconoclastic Zo (pr. 1962; The Elephant, 1986). Betsuyaku not only detonated the hegemony of Shingeki orthodox realism but also took on the Japanese language itself, exploring the possibilities of a new idiom. Like Abe, Betsuyaku deals with the absurd, anxiety-ridden quality of life in the postmodern metropolis, and his language has the power to draw the audience into a dark, unfriendly world full of anxiety and mystery. Presented in 1973, his Idō (1971; The Move 1979) sends a family on a desperate journey to nowhere; at the end of the play, a half-crazed woman with a dead baby on her back urges the husband to keep moving, although they have lost most of their family and personal possessions.

Other important writers of the post-Shingeki movement are Shuji Terayama, Makoto Sato, and Juro Kara. As is almost always the case in Japan’s theatrical world, where a system of independent artists and producers has only recently begun to appear, these dramatists have been affiliated with their own theatrical organization. Terayama founded the Tenjo Sajiki(“Children of Heaven”) group and managed to shock his middle-class audiences with great regularity. In a world dominated by the importance of one’s academic career, he urged Japanese youth, in the title of a collection of dramatic readings, to “dump your books and get into the street” (Sho wo Stueyō! Machi e Deyō!,1969).

Sato was one of the influential figures behind the founding of the Kuro Tento black tent) troupe in 1968. Sato’s creation of a mythic, Robin Hood-like character in Nezumi Kozō Jirokichi (pr. 1969; Nezumi Kozō: The Rat, 1986) displayed his rejection of the modernist tradition. Sato’s career in the last decades of the twentieth century was a barometer of the changing tastes in Japan’s theater world. One thing that Shingeki and post-Shingeki drama had in common was the seriousness of their themes. Dramatists in the late 1970s began to take a lighter tone and shy away from plays with political agendas. In 1976 the Kuro Tento group reorganized itself and proclaimed its intention to engage in lighter entertainment. In 1996, the group dissolved. Sato himself has turned in recent years away from drama and toward opera direction.

A member of the same generation, and an important innovator of performance technique, is Tadashi Suzuki the internationally acclaimed director who pioneered the use of training exercises from Nō and Kabuki drama. Suzuki was one of the founders of the Waseda Sho-Gekijo; he started off directing plays by Betsuyaku and other post-Shingeki playwrights. He then turned to American drama but eventually tapped the kind of universality he was searching for in the pre-modern world of classical Greek drama. Suzuki finds ways to question the hegemony of modern common sense by emphasizing the physicality of the actors’ stylized movement and by reopening and fusing the mystical spaces of ancient Greek and classical Nō drama.

Post-Shingeki plays mark a return to pre-modern drama not only in their openness to Japanese myth and their rejection of the conventions of realism; with hardly an exception, post-Shingeki dramatists also emphasized the primacy of performance over fidelity to the script. Some eighty years after the Meiji government’s determined efforts to tame the spontaneity of Kabuki and turn it into a national literary theater, the plays of the post-Shingeki dramatists went into the streets and parks of Tokyo unfettered by concern over the written word.

The twentieth century was a time of immense social upheaval in Japan. Japan’s understanding of and response to modernism is at the heart of these changes. Kabuki—which began with the dance of an outcast on a dry riverbed in Kyoto in the early seventeenth century and flourished for more than three hundred years—was eclipsed by the onslaught of modernism in the late nineteenth century. More than seventy years later, the post-Shingeki dramatists rejected that same modernism as being ossified and fruitless and tried to reopen the sacred spaces of earlier Japanese drama. In the last few decades of the twentieth century, dramatists turned to lighter themes as theater became more commercialized, and young people lost their taste for political movements and avant-garde philosophy.

The traditional forms of drama continue to flourish in the twenty-first century, subsidized by the government. The post-Shingeki movement has splintered into the myriad troupes of the shogekijo (little theater) movement, which aim to amuse their young followers with light, topical themes. Many of these dramatists gained global recognition for their contribution to drama. Playwright and director Koike Hiroshi created the Hiroshi Koike Bridge Project (HKBP) in 2012 to help preserve, progress, and widely distribute Japanese dramas and their unique style. The works of Hideki Noda, another important twenty-first-century Japanese playwright, gained popularity with global audiences, earning the 2023 Distinguished Artist Award from the International Society for the Performing Arts.

Bibliography

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Leiter, Samuel L., editor. A Kabuki Reader: History and Performance. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

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Parker, Helen. Progressive Traditions: An Illustrated Study of Plot Repetition in Traditional Japanese Theatre, vol. 22. Brill, 2021.

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