Kabuki Theatre Research Articles

Digital Transformation in An Attempt to Revitalize Kabuki Theater Arts

Digital Transformation in An Attempt to Revitalize Kabuki Theater Arts

ИСТОРИЧЕСКАЯ ЛИЧНОСТЬ В КОНТЕКСТЕ ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНО-ОРИЕНТИРОВАННОГО ИЗУЧЕНИЯ ИНОСТРАННОГО ЯЗЫКА: ИДЗУМО НО ОКУНИ

The figure of the legendary creator of the Kabuki theater is considered in the context of a cross-cultural analysis of text and graphic documents reflecting her activities. The article focuses on culture and art studies is devoted to the pictorial and sculpture images of Okuni, her literary portrait created by novelist Ariyoshi Sawako, as well as the methodology of using Englishlanguage versions of kabuki fragments in the educational process. The approach of Okuni's art researchers is related to the reconstruction of the psychological characteristics of the actress' personality in the context of the origin and development of Kabuki theater. The method of studying historical personalities, based on the integrated approach of B. G. Ananyev and the subject-activity approach of S. L. Rubinstein, as shown by the study of publications on Okuni, is relevant for broad interdisciplinary research, the results of which are applied in the field of art and humanities education. The English-language materials presented in this article can be useful as educational texts, implemented by teachers, postgraduates and students of art and humanitarian universities, translators, literary critics, historians, psychologists, cultural researchers.

Clinical observation of genetically confirmed Kabuki syndrome type 1, with an undetermined type of inheritance, in a 7-year-old child

Kabuki syndrome is a rare hereditary disease that has a specific clinical picture: facial features, growth retardation, muscular hypotonia, skeletal abnormalities, dermatoglyphic abnormalities, mild to moderate mental retardation, and postnatal growth deficiency. Kabuki syndrome (Kabuki mask syndrome / Kabuki makeup syndrome) got its name for the specific features of the appearance of patients who have a facial expression similar to a special makeup that highlights the eyes and eyebrows of the characters of the Japanese Kabuki theater. The main reasons for the development of Kabuki syndrome in 75% are mutations in the KMT2D gene (KS type 1) and in 5% are mutations in the KDM6A gene (Kabuki syndrome type 2), the etiology of about 20% of cases remains unknown. Most mutations in type 1 Kabuki syndrome are formed de novo, and cases of autosomal dominant inheritance have also been described. Type 2 Kabuki syndrome has sex-linked (X-linked) inheritance. Because Kabuki syndrome is a low-prevalence, multisystem disease, patients require a variety of diagnostic and screening tests with multidisciplinary evaluation of outcomes at different stages of their lives. Early diagnosis of the disease is crucial for timely treatment and rehabilitation measures and improving the prognosis and quality of life of the child. The interest of the presented clinical observation of Kabuki syndrome lies in the importance of early recognition of clinical manifestations, timely surgical treatment, hearing rehabilitation and improving the prognosis of the patients life. The article describes a clinical observation, genetically confirmed type 1 Kabuki syndrome, in a child born in 2015 (type of inheritance not established). The interest of the presented clinical observation of Kabuki syndrome, manifested by characteristic facial features, skeletal anomalies, postnatal growth retardation, dermatoglyphic anomalies, intellectual retardation, lies in the need for a multidisciplinary approach to the diagnosis and treatment of the patient.

Performance Space and Stage Technologies: A Comparative Perspective on Theatre History ed. by Nawata Yuji and Hans Joachim Dethlefs

Reviewed by: Performance Space and Stage Technologies: A Comparative Perspective on Theatre History ed. by Nawata Yuji and Hans Joachim Dethlefs Pascale Aebischer (bio) Performance Space and Stage Technologies: A Comparative Perspective on Theatre History Edited by Nawata Yuji and Hans Joachim Dethlefs. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022. Pp. 176. Nawata Yuji and Hans Joachim Dethlefs's edited collection arises from "Towards a Global History of Culture," a research project based at Chuo University in Tokyo. In March 2020, the project was forced to pivot from in-person exchanges at a symposium to the alternative format of this volume. Consequently, until the final chapter in which Nawata seeks to offer categorizations and sketch out the global circulation of "cultural techniques," the book offers a starting point for comparison rather than an overarching comparative argument. As someone trained in early modern studies, I found Ishida Yuichi's analysis of the role of central perspective in Catholic churches (with a focus on Italy) particularly illuminating: the discussion of altar pieces and how they related to theatrical set designs and the creation of a "theatrum sacrum" as a place for seeing God's miracles struck me as an important context for understanding the connection between spiritual values and perspectival set designs in secular performance spaces. This was also one of the few chapters that seemed to pick up implicitly, if not explicitly, on another contribution to the volume: preceded, as it is, by Dethlefs's chapter on the early modern German reception of Vitruvius's and Serlio's architectural tracts regarding theatre design, Ishida's argument seemed to offer a possible answer to why Walter Hermann Ryff (the subject of Dethlefs's contribution) was so suspicious of perspectival design in the theatre. That comparative connection, however, is never actually articulated within the volume and it is the reader who has to do the work of joining the dots. Other chapters open up windows into fields, periods, and cultures with which I had little prior acquaintance: Seo Tatsuiko's essay on the theatrical elements of a Chinese novel, The Tale of Li Wa, set in Tang dynasty (ninth century) Chang'an, intricately maps the urban landscape of the novel before, in a surprise twist, suggesting that there is a global "four quadrant structure of love drama" that is "universal." Mitsuma Yasuyuki's consideration of semicircular theatre in ancient Babylon springs a similar surprise in the sudden turn from a scene analysis of the presentation of Crassus's head to the reading out of letters. However, there is little in this chapter to link it either to stage technologies or the semicircularity of the theatre advertised in the title. Three chapters focused on entertainment culture leading up to and around the turn of the twentieth century are connected by little more than rough simultaneity: Hioki Takayuki's investigation of stage machinery and special effects in Kabuki theatre is fascinating in the detailed insight it affords [End Page 588] into the staging of historical shipwrecks. It is worlds apart from Itoda Soichiro's investigation of the legislation that changed what could be defined as "theatre" in Berlin between 1870 and 1890 and, consequently, the expansion and subsequent decline of the theatre industry in the German capital. The section closes with Enomoto Yosuko's exploration of the Lyceum Theatre in Shanghai and its role in "expressing to the Chinese what Western art was" (p. 125). The book's final section contains two essays alongside Nawata's conclusion. Ito Masaru's essay on the Leningrad School's approach to theatre spaces is concerned exclusively with the theoretical writing in the 1920s of A. Gvozdev, the head of the Department of Theatre History at the Institute of Art History in Leningrad. Kai Van Eikels's discussion of projection technology stretches from Piscator via Peter Brook to the more recent work of Robert Lepage, the Japanese collective Dumb Type, and Frank Castorf's staging of Erniedrigte und Beleidigte in 2001, in which video projections of actors who remained inaccessible to the audience frustrated the audience's desire to see the actors' "laboring-for-the-audience" (p. 155). The book thus offers an eclectic selection of essays that offer valuable insights into...

Otolaryngologic Manifestations of Kabuki Syndrome

Kabuki syndrome is a genetic disorder first described in Japan in the 1980s. It was so named because characteristic facial features of the disorder were thought to resemble the facial features and makeup of actors in the Kabuki Theater.

A Kabuki Pose in Sculptures of Auguste Rodin

Hanako (Ōta Hisa, 1868–1945) was an insignificant member of a small Japanese theatrical troupe when she was discovered by the well-known dancer, Loïe Fuller, who after seeing Hanako’s death scene, decided to become her impresario. Thereafter, Fuller organised each of Hanako’s European tours and wrote for her many Japanese-style dramas that always ended with the cruel but utterly expressive death of the protagonist. Hanako met Auguste Rodin, the famous sculpture, at the Marseille Colonial Exhibition in 1906. The master was fascinated by Hanako’s performance and tried to sculpt the ‘death face’ that she expressed during her death scenes. This face, with a weird expression, was most probably a nirami, which is a type of mie pose in kabuki theatre. Rodin created numerous busts and faces from different materials trying to capture the emblematic moment when Hanako saw death. The present paper examines the short but interesting period of Hanako’s Western career, focusing on her meeting with Rodin. I use their story as a unique and symbolic illustration of Japanese artists’ efforts to transform themselves and their art to ‘match’ the Western eye and of the ways in which the West was looking for verification of its preconceptions of the ‘strange’ and ‘exotic’ East in the early 1900s.

Review: Tokyo before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo

Review: <i>Tokyo before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo</i>

Serhiy Eisensteinʹs Filmmaking in the Context of Japanese Visual and Performative Practices.

The article examines creative techniques of the outstanding film director Serhiy Eisenstein in the context of Japanese visual and performative practices. In particular, a range of sources that formed Eisenstein’s idea of the Japanese artistic experience is identified. They include works of Japanese art, hieroglyphics, scientific literature, kabuki theatrical performances and communication with the bearers of Japanese theatrical tradition. A variety of borrowings of creative techniques of Japanese artists and their creative interpretation is revealed on the basis of a comparative analysis of Japanese visual and performative practices with the materials of theoretical and creative heritage of the artist and memoirs. Pre-drawn compositions of frames (so called “sketches”) reveal the techniques of Japanese engraving, samples of which were stored in the directorʹs own collection: close up compositions, sharp camera angles and perspective cuts, expressive silhouettes, shadow play, forming a second meaningful plan. Close ups in the film Ivan the Terrible contain many parallels with such techniques of Kabuki Theater as grotesque facial expressions, mimic facial wrinkles, apples of the eyes extremely slanted to the side, or brought to the bridge of the nose. The models of expression of various emotional states honed in the theatrical practice of Japan corresponded to Eisenstein’s idea of cinema “types”. The principles of using sound as one of the means of expression in the performance of kabuki prompted the director to develop the concept of editing as the main means of developing an audiovisual work. It is established that Eisensteinʹs research of various branches of Japanese art, his experience in the study of hieroglyphic writing directed the masterʹs creative experiments in search of metaphorical language, the principles of developing a clear, easy to read visual component.

Japanese Episode from The Life of Heinrich Schliemann: On The Bicentennial Anniversary

The authors refer to an interesting episode from the life of the famous German businessman and archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, known throughout the world thanks to large-scale excavations at the site of ancient Troy, as well as on the Peloponnese Peninsula. The article details Henry&amp;apos;s trip to Japan, which he undertook as part of a round-the-world trip in 1864–1866. As part of this visit, he visits the Yokohama, Hachioji and Edo (modern Tokyo) with it’s the Kabuki theaters, tea houses, shops, ikebana schools, etc. There he was witnessing the local customs that were extremely amazing to a person of European morality. At the end of his three-week stay in the Land of the Rising Sun, he departs on the English merchant steamer “Queen of Avon” across the Pacific to San Francisco.

В обход цензурных запретов: актёры под видом воинов и воины под видом актёров в гравюре укиë-э

Ukiyo-e prints, a vibrant form of mass-produced urban art of Edo period Japan were subject to official regulations. Thematic and technical control imposed by the Tokugawa government over the printed material, however, only spurred the imagination of the artists in their efforts to bypass censorship restrictions. This paper focuses on two case studies in which the theater topic, central to the art of ukiyo-e, was involved in secret conversation between the designers of prints and their viewership. In the 1840s, when the authorities were concerned with the laxity of the commoners’ morals and sought to discourage preoccupation of townspeople with the Kabuki theater, artist Utagawa Kunisada depicted famous actors as a daimyo procession. Later, in 1868, when the Tokugawa government was about to fall and theater hardly posed any threat to the regime, Toyohara Kunichika, Utagawa Kunisada’s student, portrayed the members of the anti-shogunate forces under the guise of the Kabuki theater actors. Thus, by the irony of history, the concealable elements of the politically unwanted contents in ukiyo-e prints became reversed due to the changes in political situation, and hence, in censorship requirements.

Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context by Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai

Reviewed by: Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context by Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai Satoko Shimazaki Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context. By Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021. 246 pages. ISBN: 9780367150624 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai's Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context is a welcome addition to the small library of monographs on early modern Japanese theater and, specifically, studies of bunraku. Focusing their attention on historical and political plays, the authors discuss various bunraku period pieces (jidaimono) beginning with Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Kokusen'ya kassen (The Battles of Coxinga), first staged in 1715, and ending with Igagoe dōchū sugoroku (Travel Game while Crossing Iga) by Chikamatsu Hanji, which was first staged in 1783. Along the way, they cover plays by Takeda Izumo I; collaborations between Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shōraku, and Namiki Senryū (Sōsuke); as well as earlier plays by Hanji. They trace the trajectory of the [End Page 130] puppet theater from its golden age to the beginning of its decline in Osaka as kabuki came to dominate. The study of bunraku period plays has seen renewed interest in Japan in the last decade with the publication of several monographs wholly or partially devoted to the topic, including Itō Risa's Ningyō jōruri no doramatsurugī (The Dramaturgy of Bunraku; 2012); Hara Michio's Chikamatsu jōruri no sakugekihō (Dramaturgy in Chikamatsu's Bunraku; 2013); and Han Kyoung Ja's Chikamatsu jidai jōruri no sekai (The World of Chikamatsu's Bunraku History Plays; 2019)—all of which build on Uchiyama Mikiko's seminal Jōrurishi no jūhasseiki (The Eighteenth Century in the History of Bunraku) from 1989. The focus of Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century on period plays gives sustained attention in English to works that have been taken up only now and then in translation and critical studies by authors such as Donald Keene, James Brandon, C. Andrew Gerstle, and Stanleigh H. Jones. The meanings of bunraku that the authors explore are distinct from those we might find in Chikamatsu's domestic dramas (sewamono), which still play an outsize role in shaping the image of the art in English-language contexts, perhaps partly because their concise, tightly structured, and poetic nature makes them more accessible and thus a familiar feature in surveys of early modern literature. Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century discusses well-known plays such as Kanadehon chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers; 1748), but also plays that are less familiar in English such as Ashiya Dōman ōuchi kagami (A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman; 1734) and Ōmi Genji senjin yakata (The Genji Vanguard in Ōmi Province; 1769). The authors argue that "bunraku theatre, despite its aspect as popular entertainment, was often a place for playwrights to manifest their political concerns" and a space of "reflection of the audience's expectations" (p. xvi). At first glance, this countercultural interpretation might seem to follow a well-trodden path in Tokugawa theater studies, recalling writings by Donald Shively that portrayed kabuki theater as a forum for popular resistance against censorship and governmental regulation.1 Analysis of this sort in previous English-language scholarship has tended to focus, however, on the dynamic within the administrative city of Edo as the center of political power and has never fully addressed bunraku, which saw its most dynamic developments four hundred kilometers west in Osaka. Despite drawing heavily on the world of the warriors and on contemporary political material, bunraku may have been shielded by sheer distance from the sort of scrutiny to which kabuki was subject. Odanaka and Iwai home in on this possibility and cultivate a focus on Osaka as a methodology, emphasizing the city's economic significance as an essential non-samurai center in the Tokugawa political body. The preface and introduction position "the rising economic power of the merchants" against the "sovereignty of the warriors" (p. xvi). Exploring the geographical division of Osaka into administrative spaces and areas of economic activity...

What Was the Visual Appeal of Kabuki?

By using several woodblock-printed pictures to explore the visual appeal of kabuki in the Edo period. (1) Focus on the construction of kabuki theatre and the props on stage, considering prevailing examples to interpret how the kabuki theatre acted as an adequate arena for the exercise of actors’ talents, thus entrancing the audiences. (2) Discuss the costumes, make-up and wigs of classic characters to directly capture the visual experiences of the Edo people in kabuki theatres. (3) The representative dancing and acting will be considered to analyse their visual characteristics.

Undermining the gendered genre: Kabuki in manga

According to Jaqueline Berndt, Thomas LaMarre, and other critics, manga is a highly participatory media form. Narratives with vibrant characters and creative inconsistences in the plotline encourage the reader to recontextualise the text, create new contents and unfold activities which go beyond reading (such as fan art and CosPlay). Recent popularity of manga about Japanese traditional arts – for example, Kabuki – further expanded the potential interaction with manga and other popular media to include (re)discovering traditional Japanese culture. Examples, such as Kabukumon by Tanaka Akio and David Miyahara (Morning 2008-2011), or Kunisaki Izumo no jijō by Hirakawa Aya (Weekly Shōnen Sunday 2010-2014) and a variety of other manga, anime and light novels exemplify this tendency. Consequently, influential franchises, such as Naruto and One Piece boast adaptations as Super Kabuki stage-plays. Furthermore, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto observes how thematic and stylistic overreaching in contemporary manga further distort the notions of the gendered genre that lays at the foundation of the manga industry. In this case, Kabuki theatre as a theme employs a variety of gender fluid characters and situations. For this purpose, Kabuki manga utilise cross-genre narrative and stylistic tropes, from overtly parodying borrowed tropes, to homage, and covert inclusions. On the example of Kabuki-manga I will explore a larger trend in manga to employ elements of female genres in male narratives, thus expanding the target readership. My paper explores specific mechanism that facilitates reading manga cross-genre, I also inquire what novel critical potential thematic and stylistic exchange between audiences may entail.

SCENOGRAPHY AND COSTUME IN JAPANESE KABUKI THEATER: TRADITIONS AND MODERNITY

Abstract. The article explores the history of traditional Japanese Kabuki theater, the stages of its formation and the basic principles of dramaturgy in retrospective and in modern times, the role and symbolic value of costumes, as well as the general features of theater performances. The modern trends of the theater were analyzed and issues of the space of its scene were investigated. Obvious conservatism of kabuki and its fundamental dissimilarity to the theater of the European model were noted. The process of evolution of the Kabuki theater was studied, which responding to the challenges of modernity, acquires new elements and features, together give rise to the fundamentally new phenomenon in the theatrical art. It has been determined that the logic of construction and development of the theater and stage space in Japanese traditional Kabuki theater derived from the need for specific interaction between the performer and the audience. With the formation of the theater, its audience expanded at the same time, in particular due to the privileged strata. The premises of theater and its stage also evolved. Eventually, the design features of Kabuki theater space became not only a prominent element in the interaction between the performers and spectators, but also an important factor that predominantly determined the characteristics of dramaturgy. In Japanese Kabuki theater, such methods as makeup, hair pieces and costumes are simultaneously those means of expression that are necessarily included in the process of staging a performance, and determine its content and storyline, as well as determine the nature of the performer’s acting. These means are kind of sign and symbolic system, which has to be read by the spectator in order to fully understand the nature of performance. The peculiarities of the costume allow us to read in advance nature of the character in performance, to guess his or her actions, etc. The peculiarity of Kabuki is that the play script is dictated by the performers themselves, but not by the scriptwriter. The director as an independent figure in Kabuki theater comes to the first plan only in the modern era, and it is mostly characteristic of innovative and experimental theaters. It is worth noting that given the challenges of modernity, Kabuki still acquires new elements and features, together generating a fundamentally new phenomenon in the art of theater, and in general, Kabuki remains a traditional theater.

Eden in Sin City: Adapting for the Musical Theater Body in Takarazuka Revue’s Ocean’s 11

The Japanese all-female musical theater company, Takarazuka Revue, uses stylized performance patterns (kata) to depict gender and character onstage. This artificial method, descended from Japan’s all-male Kabuki theater, differs from the assumed realism of contemporary Broadway method acting. Through a study of Takarazuka Revue’s adaptation of the Hollywood film Ocean’s 11, this article argues that Takarazuka Revue’s performance method complements the inherent artificiality of musical theater song and dance and encourages the creation of new works that expand the traditions of the early to mid-twentieth-century Broadway musical. This points toward a broader understanding of global musical theater performance practices.

Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Dueling Pocket Monsters

Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Dueling Pocket Monsters

The Case of the Congenital Cataract Development in a Child with Kabuki’s Makeup Syndrome

Kabuki makeup syndrome is a rare genetic disease. The features of the child’s face resemble the mask of the actors of the Japanese Kabuki theater. Accompanied by multiple anomalies of various organs and systems. Cases of congenital cataract (CC) are not described. Purpose: to describe a clinical case of diagnosis and treatment of congenital cataracts in a child with Kabuki syndrome. Material and methods. Child M.,15 years old with syndrome Kabuki make-up. At OD — zonular congenital cataract in 1-degree of turbidity, OS — zonular congenital cataract 3rd degree of turbidity Conducted a survey and phacoaspiration with IOL implantation HOYA 24,0 D at OS. Results. Visual acuity: OD = 0.6 s –1.0 D = 0.8–0.9; OS before surgery = 0.02 n/c, after surgery = 0.05 n/c (amblyopia obscuration). Lens OD-opacity disc, through which the Central parts of the fundus can be investiture with Ophthalmoscope. Lens OS-atypical disk with uneven opacity in the form of dark and light bands, the Central parts of the fundus can’t be investigated with ophthalmoscope, viewed only peripheral vessels. Ultrasound examination OU: single floating opacities in vitreous body, APA of eye = 22.7 mm. Electrophysiological examination-reduction of a number of indicators OS. Resume. 1. In children with the syndrome Kabuki make-up can be congenital zonular cataracts. 2. Taking into account the progressive nature of lens opacity, a dynamic examination with a wide pupil is necessary for timely referral to surgical treatment. 3. There is a risk of developing exudative proliferative reactions in the early postoperative period.

小山内薫「文芸講座 新ロシアの演劇と我が歌舞伎」 （昭和三年二月一八日ＪＯＡＫ放送要旨、同日『読売新聞』朝刊掲載）

小山内薫「文芸講座 新ロシアの演劇と我が歌舞伎」 （昭和三年二月一八日ＪＯＡＫ放送要旨、同日『読売新聞』朝刊掲載）

Edo Kabuki in Transition: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost by Satoko Shimazaki

Reviewed by: Edo Kabuki in Transition: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost by Satoko Shimazaki William Lee (bio) Edo Kabuki in Transition: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost. By Satoko Shimazaki. Columbia University Press, New York, 2016. xiii, 372 pages. $60.00, cloth; $59.99, E-book. This fascinating book on historical kabuki is a must-read for students of that theatrical form and is recommended to anyone interested in the popular culture of Japan's Edo period (1603–1867). Using a variety of historical sources, Satoko Shimazaki contextualizes the production of the play at the center of the book's argument, Tōkaidō Yotsuya kaidan (Ghost story of Yotsuya on the Tōkaidō Highway), written by Tsuruya Nanboku IV (1755–1829) and first staged at the Nakamura-za in Edo in 1825. The date of this production places it squarely in the Kasei period (1804–30), a cultural epoch that saw the return of a thriving urban culture including publishing houses and kabuki theaters. Unlike that of the earlier Genroku era (1688–1704), the culture of this new golden age was centered in Edo, the seat of the shogun's government and the realm's largest metropolis, which also had usurped Kyoto's position as the country's cultural capital. By locating the genesis of the play in this context, and in an interconnected web of narratives and images, of kabuki conventions, acting traditions, and commercial pressures, Shimazaki strives not only to give the [End Page 222] reader a sense of how Nanboku's famous play might have appeared in its original performance but also to demonstrate that this performance was only a momentary event in an ongoing process. All kabuki plays have been subject to modification and revision over time. New plays, in particular, were inherently unstable. Although a plan for the whole was usually constructed in advance, often only a part of the play was presented on opening day. Over the course of the production, additional acts and scenes would be gradually added, while unsuccessful scenes might be reworked or abandoned. In the case of Yotsuya kaidan, it is uncertain which parts of the play were performed during its successful initial run (p. 5). This state of affairs Shimazaki contrasts with modern readings of the play based on the assumption of a complete and stable text. Only by acknowledging the gap between kabuki as a historical cultural practice and its modern reification in texts, she argues, "can we undertake a new exploration of the play and the broader history of Edo kabuki" (p. 275). While much of the book is thus devoted to an in-depth exploration of the play as a particular performance produced in a particular historical context, Shimazaki is also concerned, as her subtitle indicates, with the broader history. Following the introduction, the book is divided into three parts bearing the titles "The Birth of Edo Kabuki," "The Beginning of the End of Edo Kabuki," and "The Modern Rebirth of Kabuki," suggesting a dialectical historical process. The single chapter in part 1 shows how kabuki producers created "a cultural space in which the past, particularly the samurai past, could be infused into the present, instilling in audience members from all levels of society an awareness of the past as something that remained implicated in the here and now" (p. 41). This was largely achieved by employing the complementary structural devices of sekai ("world"; a familiar narrative drawn from history, legend, or literature together with its particular cast of characters) and shukō (new characters or twists in the plot), which allowed for the narrative to be brought into the present and into the world of the Edo theater audience. This explains why the presumably plebeian entertainment of kabuki served to glorify and transmit samurai values and ideology. Related to this is the function of government censorship. The popular conception, held also by many scholars, is that kabuki has always been "a sort of oppositional theater of the common people that subverted the interests of the ruling class" (p. 86). Shimazaki shows that the theater audience was more stratified than is commonly thought, and she examines...

Not so Authentic Kabuki: An Interview with Brooke O'Harra

Not so Authentic KabukiAn Interview with Brooke O'Harra Brooke O'Harra (bio) and Katherine Brewer Ball (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Brooke O'Harra. Photograph by Katherine Endy. I first saw brooke o'harra's work in 2008 with Room for Cream, the hilarious and shame-filled lesbian serial that she directed and co-wrote with the Dyke Division of the Two-headed Calf (founded by o'harra, jess barbagallo, laryssa husiak, and laura berlin stinger). Set in a coffee shop in Sappho, Massachusetts, RFC was a collaborative work that pulled from the queer, feminist, and avant-garde downtown performance crowd. I remember lea robinson and jibz cameron as dirty agro lezzie cops, faye driscoll as a hypersexed vampire with crotchy dance moves, and sacha yanow with her perfectly aligned bangs and giant [End Page 29] circular glasses. Room for Cream felt simultaneously fresh and anachronistic. And while there was a theatrical precedent for the serial theater form—with works by jeff weiss and others—the serial, like a TV program, struck my twenty-something brain as so unusual and delicious. RFC was like a homosexual Cheers, a place where everyone knows your name. But this was the collaborative, broken-down, queer version of Cheers where things rarely, if ever, find resolution.However, the irreverent humor and exposed quick-change styles that characterized Room for Cream were not new for o'harra. In fact, o'harra's production of the 1707 kabuki play Drum of the Waves of Horikawa, written by chikamatsu monzaemon, which o'harra had developed and directed the year before, used similar tactics, only this time they were focused on the traditional Japanese form. Drum featured American actors performing an English translation of the Japanese play. Yet, instead of reproducing the movements and styles of kabuki masters, as is traditional in kabuki, o'harra and the company chose to study and repeat the gestural vocabulary of punk rock masters such as iggy pop, darby crash, nina hagen, and the slits. Accompanied by the music of her Theater of a Two-headed Calf cofounder brendan connelly, o'harra's production maintained the highly dramatic kabuki form even as the English and American punk style yanked on kabuki's structural integrity. Drum premiered in 2007 at HERE Arts Center and won an Obie Award for acting. For the occasion of this interview, I sat down with o'harra to discuss Japanese performing arts, American fantasies of adaptation, and embodied practice. —Katherine Brewer Ball [End Page 30] katherine brewer ball/ You were saying that the reason you like theater is because you like Japanese theater? brooke o'harra/ I played sports before college. I wasn't a theater kid. But I did have the opportunity to study Japanese language and culture at my public high school in Oregon. I continued studying Japanese in college; that's when I was introduced to Japanese theater. I also started studying Western theater around that time and directed a production in college that was deeply influenced by formal structures of Japanese theater. It was an American play by Jules Feiffer called Little Murders. My production had extra performers that functioned like a version of Japanese stagehands [kuroko]. The play was performed like a typical Western dramatic comedy—except these kuroko would enter the stage at emotional or dramatic moments and manipulate the actors to alter the stage picture. They would do things like literally flip the actor completely upside down. The current Broadway play Harry Potter and The Cursed Child actually uses a similar technique for some of their stage magic—but their stagehands are well concealed. So, I had been planning to move to New York City and pursue theater after college, but then I thought, I should go to Japan. So I went to Japan with a job for the Japanese Ministry of Education and studied kyogen and aikido, and joined a butoh company. I also attended kabuki theater and experimental Japanese theater regularly. That was the true beginning of my theater training. In Japan, I was so stimulated by the theater—both the experimental forms and traditional. Before being introduced to Japanese theater (and some experimental...