- NOH: 船橋 (Funabashi)
4/21/24 (Sun), Tokyo
A lesser performed but highly entertaining Romeo-and-Juliet type piece with some unusual features. Continue reading
Category Archives: Kabuki/Bunraku/Noh
Noh: Soshi Arai (草子洗い)
- NOH: 草子洗い (Soshi Arai)
3/17/24 (Sun), Tokyo
While this work is traditionally attributed to Noh’s founder Zeami, the light narrative style and large cast make it feel like a much later piece. It centers on the famed poet Ono Komachi, but here she is young and vibrant as opposed to the withered old woman longing for her youth in the other of Noh’s seven Komachi works. The piece impossibly brings together some of the Six Great Poets from different eras, making the fantasy element clear.
Bunraku: The Sake Shop, The Returning Palanquin (酒屋、戻駕)
- Bunraku: 酒屋、戻駕 (The Sake Shop, The Returning Palanquin)
2/11/24 (Sun), Tokyo
Bunraku has been homeless in Tokyo since the closure of the National Theater last October, leaving it to wander among venues. Today’s venue, a 1,249-seat theater, is way too big for puppets (the NT had around 800 seats), but I’ll take what I can get. They chose an audience-friendly three-part program of classics at just two hours or so each, a smart change from the usual two-part show of 4-5 hours each. This was the day’s second pairing. Continue reading
Noh: Basho, Mochizuki (芭蕉、望月)
- Noh: 芭蕉、望月 (Basho, Mochizuki)
9/30/23 (Sat), National Noh Theater (Tokyo)
Basho: A dialogue-heavy show by Zenchiku with an unusually beautiful text. A monk in rural China meets a woman who, overhearing him read from the Lotus Sutra, wants to discuss Buddhist precepts. He doesn’t allow her in his hut at first since women are normally prohibited, but gives in when she notes that they live in the same city and draw water from the same river, suggesting a karmic connection.
She turns out to be the spirit of a plantain tree (basho), a plant with large and particularly delicate leaves. They discuss how even non-sentient objects such as trees (“even women and heartless plants,” according to one translation) can attain salvation. Continue reading
Japan’s fumbling National Theater grasps for relevance
- January 4, 2024
Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest dailies, recently published my article on the government’s scandalous mismanagement of the nation’s soon-to-be-rebuilt National Theater, dedicated to Kabuki and other traditional performing arts. The theater’s travails have been widely noted in the Japanese press, but there has been little analysis of why the troubles have arisen or how to resolve them. I offer my view below.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20231228/p2a/00m/0op/003000c
Bunraku: Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy (菅原伝授手習鑑), Love Suicide at Sonezaki (曽根崎心中)
- Bunraku: 曽根崎心中 (Love Suicide at Sonezaki), 9/8/23 (Fri)
- Bunraku: 菅原伝授手習鑑 (Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy), Acts III-V, 9/16/23 (Sat)
This is being billed as the last Bunraku puppet drama in Tokyo’s current money-losing National Theater, which will shut down for reconstruction at the end of next month. The government plans to replace the aging theater, built in the mid 1960s as a showcase for Kabuki, Bunraku and other Japanese traditional performing arts, with a large hotel/retail/theater complex, a PFI project reportedly due to cost some ¥80 billion. However, the plan hit a big speed bump last month when it failed for a second time to attract a single bidder, i.e., private developers see no commercial prospects for a building of this type in that location. Kabuki has consistently failed to draw audiences in recent years, while Bunraku, the theater’s one bright spot, only visits from its Osaka base for 2-3 weeks each quarter, which is insufficient to sustain the property financially. The government has not explained why it thinks that rebuilding the theater in this location will attract Kabuki audiences who aren’t showing up now, and as the project is supposed to take an inordinate 6-7 years to complete, the big question for Bunraku, which will be relegated in the interim to a distant corner of the city, is whether there will be any fans left at that point. This is less death than suicide. Continue reading
Kochiyama Soshun (河内山宗俊)
- 河内山宗俊 (Kochiyama Soshun), 2/14/23 (Tues)
The 1936 jidaimono Kochiyama Soshun, given the inexplicable English title of Priest of Darkness, is the second of only three surviving films (out of around two dozen) by the prewar director Yamanaka Sadao. While generally considered the weakest of the three, that’s still a pretty high bar; it’s interestingly one of animator Miyazaki Hayao’s all-time favorites.
The film draws loosely from both the Kochiyama and Naojiro plot strands of the Meiji Era (1881) Kabuki play Kumo ni Magou Ueno no Hatsuhana (The First Flowers of Ueno), one of the all-day extravaganzas by the prolific Kawatake Mokuami. Those stories are usually performed these days as separate plays, but Yamanaka brings them together in an ingenious restructuring of the original. (He did a similar impressive overhaul of another Mokuami work in his next and final film, the supreme Humanity and Paper Balloons.)
Kabuki: The Blood Revenge at Kameyama (霊験亀山鉾)
- Kabuki: 霊験亀山鉾 (The Blood Revenge at Kameyama), Tokyo Kabukiza
One of the prolific Tsuruya Nanboku’s typical madcap stories making its Kabukiza debut. I was mainly interested in seeing Kataoka Nizaemon, a National Living Treasure, in an evil role, where he’s pretty much unequaled on the Kabuki stage.
It’s as impossible to sum up the full story as it was to follow it, with its huge cast of characters, interlocking stories, and numerous twists and turns, not to mention the double-casting of key roles. The Kameyama vendetta is a famous example of the genre (though not one of the Three Great Vendettas as the program claims), and that story lies at the heart of this complex play. Basically, the evil Mizuemon has killed a man in a surprise attack, then poisons the man’s brother in a cowardly trick without fighting the official vendetta honorably. Their adopted brother then vows to avenge their death.
Noh: Kayoi Komachi (通小町)
- Noh: 通小町 (Kayoi Komachi)
10/17/21 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater (Tokyo)
Talk about determination. Ono no Komachi, the legendary beauty, is stalked by a nobleman not just to the grave but beyond. Continue reading
Noh: Morihisa, Yamamba (盛久、山姥)
- Noh: 盛久, 山姥 (Morihisa, Yamamba)
3/20/22 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater
The shows today were both cerebral Buddhist-inflected pieces appealing more to Noh lovers than general audiences. The theater was limited to 50% capacity and didn’t even manage to fill that, a sharp contrast with the packed house at the Kanze Noh Theater a week earlier even allowing for Kanze’s more audience-friendly program. I wonder if the undue precautions at some locations actually make audiences more fearful and deter them from coming.
Noh: Ataka, Shakkyo (安宅, 石橋)
- Noh: 安宅、石橋 (Ataka, Shakkyo)
3/13/22 (Sun), Kanze Noh Theater (Ginza)
The pairing of these two lively crowd-pleasers was almost completely sold out despite the state of semi-emergency in Tokyo at present. The only reminder of the fading pandemic was the ubiquitous masks, though I noticed a lot of exposed noses, which I’m going to take as progress. Continue reading
Essay: Brief history of Kabuki theater
The year was 1603. By an historical quirk, on the very same calendar day (March 24*) that Queen Elizabeth I died and King James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne, Japan’s Tokugawa Ieyasu received the title of shogun from the Emperor after his crushing victory on the battlefield three years earlier, marking the start of an unprecedented period of political stability in Japan known as the Edo Era. In that same year, while Shakespeare was penning Othello, Cervantes was working on Don Quixote and England’s first permanent settlement in the Americas was still four years in the future, a woman named O-Kuni danced on the shores of the Kamo River in Kyoto and inadvertently planted the seeds for Kabuki theater.
sekenbanashi 