Kabuki

Yesterday I had the opportunity to tick off one of the items on my To-do List. Kabuki is a special brand of traditional Japanese theatre in which all the roles are played by men in historical stories of intrigue and drama.

We arrived at the famous Kabuki-Za Theatre in Ginza and joined the queue for the special cheap seating for people who only want to watch half the show. Infact we watched both halves but bought two separate tickets and it still worked out cheaper (2,000 yen as opposed to the 14,000 yen paid by the people at the bottom-row).

To be honest, although we were further away and the voices were a bit faint I thought we often had a better view than the people paying the bottom-row prices. If I learned anything from today it was that Kabuki is a very 3-dimensional performance. This was especially apparent in Act I, which was entitled "The Hanamizu Bridge" (Hanamizu means snot or "nosewater"). This was a fight scene involving 10-15 swordsmen all trying to attack one person, but their combined abilities we no match for this guy who seemed to have a magical ability to dodge the attacks or to fool the swordsmen into missing him.

The players were moving all over the stage, very slowly and meticulously. It was very well choreographed and I was actually grateful for our position at the cheap top-row because we could see their use of the whole stage rather than just watching it from from left to right in 2-dimensions.

Act II was fairly good, but the speaking increased, therefore my understanding decreased. It was a humourous drama that, according to the program, had something to do with the failed attempt at poisoning a Lord and the stealing of 200 gold coins. I still found it fairly entertaining even though I couldn't understand a word.

After the interval, the last two acts were even heavier on the talking. And it was painfully slow and deliberate speech. Act III was particularly monotonous, but ended with the whole stage-set being raised to make it appear as though we were watching events underneath the floorboards. That was pretty impressive and beautifully executed.

Act IV was still a very talky one, but was somehow more dramatic and watchable. A bit of a sword fight took place ending in the death of one particular actor's character. This actor is Nakamura Kanzaburo, and is supposedly quite a big name in the Kabuki industry. His final exit was met with a huge round of applause from the audience and cries of "Nakamura-ya, Nakamura-ya".

This wasn't the only time his name was shouted out during the performance, and several of the other actors had their names shouted out as well. This practice of shouting out the actors' names is called Kakegoe. Expert members of the crowd shout out at various points to mark a good piece of acting or skill. The shouts are usually timed well so as not to disrupt the events on stage. But even so they're still bloody annoying for the non-expert. It's like going to see Die Hard at the cinema and somebody next to you keeps shouting out "WILLIS-YA, WILLIS-YA".

As I mentioned briefly earlier, the stage sets are magnificent. We had an almost fully kitted out traditional Japanese house with the tatami floors and the tracing paper on the doors. We had an elegant gold-decorated traditional office room. We had a revolving stage, upon which the entire set was built with an origami-like precision. How much space they've got behind that stage I don't know but there was an awful lot going on and it was all beautiful. Just I shame I didn't have a clue what was going on.