It originated in response to the demand by the public a couple of hundred years ago for something less elitist than the thousand-year old theater of Noh. To American eyes, Kabuki appears as unaffected as the Italian grand opera or the Paris ballet with scores of young ingénues traveling around the stage like a gaggle of goslings frantically trying to keep step with their mother. (The goslings, however,do not usually have their hands and fingers in highly mannered gestures and they do not strive to defy physics balancing “on point.”)
There is clearly a visual and aural vocabulary that must be learned, practiced, and perfected to be considered a master actor and a consummate patron.
In fact, at each seat there is a set of earphones for each member of the audience to be able to listen to a running commentary explaining what is happening on stage. Alas, the commentary is only in Japanese and of no help when your language skills are at the survival level and your learned vocabulary is oriented to meeting basic needs with no opportunity to use body language, hand signals, and the polite phrase requesting very slow speech. There surely is a kabuki vocabulary that Japanese aficionados know that is the equivalent of an aria in the highest lyric soprano voice and all of the musical terms necessary to intelligently follow the performance.
For the uninitiated, the kabuki has many complexities. Firstly, it had a season in Nagoya. You just can’t do it if you are not there during the season. Secondly, it is really long. You must either make a reservation and order a meal in advance at the restaurant connected to the theater lobby (the meal will already be on the table at your place at intermission), or buy your bento (Japanese box lunch) at the lobby concession stand, or bring your own meal, which is very acceptable and which we did on the advice of friends. (We actually brought Japanese potato salad and the Japanese version of Chinese fried chicken nuggets eaten properly with chop sticks—all very correctly arranged in a traditional Japanese wooden lunchbox and wrapped in a furoshiki. A furoshiki is a Japanese wrapping cloth that you would use to transport objects since carrying things around that are visible would have been unseemly.) The deal is that the kabuki is so long, you must stop in the middle and refortify yourself with a meal to get through the second half.
Another unexpected thing that occurs during the kabuki is that there are a number of designated “shouters” in the audience. There was actually one of them sitting in the row just in front of us, although there were others scattered about the audience. Although he occasionally napped, at key points in the performance like when an actor momentarily “strikes” a pose to emphasize some important event in the script or to express pride with the way that a line was delivered, the shouter would loudly call out the actor’s name or perhaps the character’s name. The shouting is abrupt and loud and usually serves as the catalyst for riotous applause from the audience. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding when, and by whom, such shouting out should occur, as if scripted. We later learned when reporting our evening to friends that the “right” to be a shouter is inherited. You just cannot suddenly decide to shout out. You can only shout out if your father was a shouter and his father before him. There were no women shouters. The poses that the actors would strike during the performance were often the subject for the Ukiyo-e prints. The prints would strive to catch a famous actor at that moment of great self-conscious drama in mannered stance dazzling the audience with his prowess.
As in Shakespeare’s day, women are not allowed to act in either Noh or kabuki. For some time now all of the actors in kabuki have been adult males. In the early days, pre-pubescent boys were often used to play the roles of females, as their voices were higher in pitch and their frames not yet developed. Because of scandals, the practice of using the young boys was outlawed early and now adult actors play all those roles. The men who play the role of women or courtesans have very high cultural status. Men who specialize in the role of women and who are able to “act” in their gestures and moves more expressively and elegantly than most women are highly valued. The actor uses a falsetto voice for the role, but the voice is not intended (or capable) to deceive but simply to be part of the character affectation. Some of these famous actors are rather pot-bellied, saggy-jouled, and well into middle-aged men playing the role of youthful, delicate, lithe young heroines. It is interesting that in our culture, a man who wears women’s clothes on stage would be considered a cross-dresser and not afforded the great respect or high wages that they receive in Japan no matter how successfully they perform their role. Well, maybe except for in Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, or Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot, or Nathan Lane in Birdcage. Oh, I guess we do admire men who perform as women when it is done well and is not just another female impersonator doing Cher. Rarely in our culture would a man playing the role of a woman in a drama receive acclaim, reward or favorable recognition.
Almost all of the kabuki plays that are routinely performed are much like our opera in that there are the standards that are done over and over for each new generation and by each new star. Just like the classics of opera such as La Boheme or Aida there are traditional favorites for the kabuki. Although the kabuki is not sung, the lines are delivered in a loud, self-conscious, singsong cadence. The kabuki play is often set in the pre-Edo period before the capital was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo and prior to the forced opening of Japan to western influence by Commodore Perry in1854. The costuming is elaborate as is the staging. The stage has a large, round, rotating central section that allows for the rapid change of scenery and action as has been used in Western-style theater like Les Misarables, but developed by the Japanese.