Kabuki

I had started my stay in Japan with a visit to Bunraku puppet theater, so it seemed only appropriate to end it with a visit to Kabuki. Kabuki and Bunraku are quite similar in some respects - there are even some plays that have been adapted from one to the other. The main difference is that instead of the puppets in Bunraku, the parts in Kabuki are played by actors.

Shinbashi Enbujō theater (the main Kabuki theater in Tokyo is currently under renovation and therefore closed)

As with the Bunraku performance I visited, the Kabuki performance consisted of three plays: Oedo Miyage, Ichijo Okura Monogatari, and Fuin Kiri (from Koibikyaku yamato orai). The total duration was about four and half hours, including a 30 minute break after the first play and a 20 minute break after the second. I already expected this and came prepared with plenty of food and drink - during the Bunraku performance I didn't have anything with me and was pretty hungry at the end.

Again, there was an excellent audio commentary available. The introduction summed it up very nicely:

Kabuki is presentational theater, aiming at the senses, and through them at emotions. Western theater is representational, aiming at the mind, and through it at emotions.

The problem with presentational theater is that the presentation is hard to see from the cheaper seats. So in case you don't have binoculars with you, you miss out on much of the performance.

In my case, the result was that apparently my mind seemed to be not occupied enough, so it went to sleep for parts of the second and third plays. The food (and lack of coffee) after the first play might have contributed to the sleepiness, in addition to the stage being far away and the plays somewhat lacking in action. My consolation was that a large part of the audience seemed to have similar problems. Every time I looked, I saw plenty of people sleeping...

Inside the theater (sorry for the blurry picture... it's the only one I've got): the stage is on the lowest level to the right, so you can gauge how far away it was from my seat (which was a few meters to the left of  the viewpoint)

Anyway, back to my Kabuki experience before the sleepiness set in: a unique feature of Kabuki is that the audience interacts with the actors to some degree. Often when an actor left the stage, people in the audience shouted his name to indicate that they liked his performance.

Note that I wrote "his name". There are no female actors in Kabuki, another unique feature. Of course, there are many female characters in Kabuki plays, but all of them are played by men. As a result, the skill of acting a female role as a male actor is very important and goes by the name onnagata.

Another feature of Kabuki is the amount of make-up used for all characters. Take a look at this page to see the amount of make-up, and how it is applied. The cool thing is that this essentially allows young characters to be played by older actors who may be able to contribute much to the role because of their acting experience.

So, how did Kabuki fare in comparison with Bunraku? Hard to say, in my opinion. What I liked very much about Bunraku is that both the narrator and the shamisen player are visible and very interesting to watch. In comparison, Kabuki seems much more lively, mainly because there is more action on stage - and more characters. In any case, I'm very happy that I could experience both Kabuki and Bunraku in Japan!