Kabuki Theater: A Treasured Art

Japanese theater also known as Kabuki is an ancient form of Japanese art. It was created early in the 1600’s by a shrine maiden, Okuni, who brought her unique,beautiful,and expressive dance style to the ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto, and for the next 3 centuries it evolved into one of the most respected and the most beautiful forms of theater.

Even though Kabuki was created by a woman, since the very beginning all parts have been played by men. Men who act out the roles of women are called "onnagata" meaning female role specialists. Ichimura Manjiro, an infamous actor who actively participates in Kabuki is an "onnagata".Onnagatas all wear elaborate costumes including padding to make them look more like women.They also have magnificent wigs in many complicated styles along with complete makeup as a woman would wear.After dressing for their part onnagatas are unrecognizable from their original persona. The onnagatas can not have facial hair of any sort and must have trimmed eyebrows as a

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In the joruri theater, all the action is sung by a narrator, but kabuki theater switches singing narrative with spoken words. The central type of narrative music is called gidayu, since it was invented by a puppet theater shamisen performer named Takemoto Gidayu (1651-1714).

Kabuki theater is musical theater; it’s filled with dance, various oriental music based mostly on percussion. This type of music dates from the late 1600’s, and was very simple, with flowing lyrical style up until the nineteenth century. The shamisen is a three-stringed instrument that developed from the classical Japanese stringed instrument, the biwa.

On-stage shamisen music became a major feature of the kabuki stage from the middle of the seventeenth century. Kabuki plays are performed in large theaters, with a hanamichi, or raised platform, extending from the back of the theater to the stage. For every play, the original sets, music, costumes and the roles themselves all help to create the highly enjoyable experience of going to Kabuki theater. When a shamisen player in kabuki theater plays in both nagauta and joruri styles, this mixture is called kake ai performance. But on the right side of the stage is a platform, the “choba yuka” on which the tayu (the narrator)and the onstage music group(debayashi). This group has singers, hand drums (ko tsuzumi and o tsuzumi), a taiko stick drum, a Noh flute (nokan) or bamboo flute (takebue, which is the main instrument),and the shamisen. This music was meant to complement and harmonize with the narrator (tayu ) as he sung the story of the play.

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. But it grew into a more complex style in the late nineteenth century. By the 1980s kabuki was popular with American audiences, and made annual appearances in the United States.

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