• Kabuki: 瞼の母、楊貴妃 (Memories of Mother, Yang Guifei)

12/8/17 (Fri), 歌舞伎座

The first piece, Memories of Mother (the best of the numerous English titles of this show), is Hasegawa Shin’s semi-autobiographical Shin (New) Kabuki from 1931 about a man in search of his mother. On the run from a murder of a gang boss, the man, Chutaro, kills gangsters who are threatening his partner in crime. He is moved by the love that the partner’s mother shows for her son despite his misdeeds and, being illiterate, asks her help in drafting a letter confessing to the killings. Her touch as she guides his hand over the letter makes him long to see his own mother, who he has not seen since childhood. He goes off in pursuit, hearing that she is somewhere in Edo. He eventually tracks her down. However, having become owner of a successful restaurant, she brushes him off in fear that he will taint her daughter’s chances of marriage, saying that her son is dead to her. Chutaro, crushed, leaves in despair. When the daughter learns of this, she is incensed, and the mother has second thoughts. They run to catch him but are unable to find him. After they give up and return, he emerges from the shadows. He no longer wants a real mother, content instead to cherish the ideal mother in his mind.

The show is more melodrama than drama but very effective at that. The lead character is a gambler and murderer but nonetheless attractive in his pure desire to find the mother he never really knew. It’s a strong story with credible characters, and the ending is unexpected. Chusha continues to surprise with another heartfelt performance in the lead role. He’s still working on his Kabuki, where he’s a relative newcomer, but this Shin Kabuki genre seems to fit his style well. His timing was spot on, keeping the show just this side of sappy. Tamasaburo was masterful as always as the no-nonsense mother who coolly rejects her son, giving an unfussy, natural portrayal that is perfect for this material. He has few peers on the Japanese stage in any genre. Manjiro was also memorable as Hanjiro’s mother in an all-around good cast. The only downer was the uncomfortably long set changes, which left the audience in the dark for several minutes at a time. Surely they can figure this out by now. The program noted that the author supposedly met his own long-lost mother after a break of nearly four decades thanks to this show, a very nice happy ending.

Yang Guifei (Japanese: Yokihi) is a 1991 dance piece commissioned by Tamasaburo about the famed Chinese concubine. A sorcerer (Chusha) has been sent by the grieving Emperor Xuan Zong (Japanese: Genso) to find the spirit of the late legendary beauty Yang Guifei in Horai Palace in the land of the immortals. The beautiful lyrics concentrate mainly on the ephemeral nature of life in a text taken largely from the Noh drama of same name. Tamasaburo was apparently inspired by Chinese opera and borrowed certain elements from the art, including the costume, certain dance movements and most notably the music with around ten Chinese koto and kokyu players. The show was closer to nontraditional Super Kabuki in spirit in its use of modern staging effects, including generous use of stage lighting and the layers of lace-like curtains opening in succession to reveal the former concubine, who then comes through another layer of bamboo blinds. I’m not sure they needed the electronics when they have Tamasaburo, who was in his element. He’s not the beauty he was in his youth, but he’s lost nothing as far as technique and control. Chusha was competent but seemed to be going through the motions; dance is clearly not his thing. Still, the show was a beautiful rendering overall and an interesting interpretation of both Noh and Chinese culture.