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The world’s leading professors explain the latest thinking in the humanities and social sciences in just 10 minutes.
Hello, my name is Andrew Gerstle. Today I'll be talking about Kabuki theatre and audience interactions.
Theatre anywhere around the world is magical. Actors challenge us to be charmed by illusion. Collectively, we make a leap of imagination and the stage action and emotions come alive. We become part of the show. Japan has an extremely rich and actor-centered and fascinating living theatrical tradition.
Let's explore some intriguing aspects of how audiences interact with actors. There are three major traditions: Noh drama dates from the 14th century, patronized by the samurai aristocracy. Kabuki and Bunraku, puppet theatre, in contrast, began at the dawn of the 1600s as popular commercial theatre.
Let's look at one stream of Kabuki theatre, the all-male popular commercial theatre. My aim is to give you a taste of a captivating experience. In contrast to Kabuki, Noh and Bunraku, both regularly published complete texts of performance with full musical notation for voice. These were called shōhon, aimed at amateurs who took up arts as hobbies.
Here are three texts with notation for voice: a modern Noh text, a Bunraku text from 1721, and a Bunraku text from 1911.
Kabuki, however, never published full play text, even though the troupes could have made money this way. The choice was deliberate. The only text is the performance itself, which dissipates into thin air at the close of the curtain. The actor’s body is the text.
Kabuki theatres employed staff playwrights to write plays to fit the particular ensemble of actors. But these playscripts were not published. The consequences were stark. Audiences craved the means to capture the magic of performance, long before we had digital technologies.
The publishing industry filled part of this gap with detailed actor critiques for all major performances in Kyoto, Osaka and Edo (modern Tokyo), issued with a volume for each city regularly twice a year from the late 17th century to the late 19th century. These book-length critiques are a tremendously detailed treasure trove of commentary on performances.
The other essential element for fans was true to life woodblock, full-colour actor prints, which are large, a little less than 40 by 30cm in size, sometimes in multiple sheets depicting the stage action. This 1828 Osaka diptych print has the actors’ names and roles listed, as well as a snippet of a dialogue from the play. In the huge city of Edo, with a population of at least a million in 1800, a few professional ukiyo-e artists dominated the market. In smaller Osaka, instead, we find a very large group of amateur fans, as many as 300 over a span of 50 years, who designed and published actor prints in order to support their favourites.
In this way, fans became an essential element of Kabuki theatre. This actor-centered theatre spawned powerful actor worship, which in Osaka developed into well-organised fan clubs of mostly businessmen who created rituals to support their favourite actors.
This next print shows the Sakura Fan Club welcoming the actor Seki Sanjūrō to Osaka from Edo in 1826. The club members are fully decked out from head to toe with their matching outfits. The two on the stage wield wooden clappers to lead the chants.
This next print is not of an actor, but depicts an Osaka businessman in 1823, his pen name was Rojū, a leader of another Kabuki fan club. He wears his club's signature hat and holds two clappers. The print gave him a moment of fame, all decked out with a colourful kimono embroidered with images of two camels, which had earlier in the year come to Osaka through Nagasaki port. Rojū was also an amateur haiku poet and musician. We have no idea how well his business ran, but he was certainly a passionate Kabuki fan.
It was common at the time for poetry circles to be a means for socialising, especially among those at different status. Kabuki actors, in particular, were officially considered beneath the class system, beyond the pale, even if they were very popular and wealthy. Cultural circles enabled the crossing of status boundaries. Participants, including women, joined under a pen name. Actors also had pen names. Records of such gatherings survive today in considerable numbers. These are known as surimono.
This example from around 1806 has an interesting ensemble. Three Kabuki actors, three women, one Kyoto courtier and a Kyoto businessman, and another unidentified man. Each contributes a haiku.
Another practice of audience interaction in Kabuki is the ‘ōmukō’, which is the custom of individuals yelling out various phrases at critical moments, such as entrances or climactic poses.
Actors have clan names called yagō, which is one of the yells we can hear echo from the third balcony. There is a semi-official union of ōmukō, and if you are good enough to be voted in, then you get free tickets to the top balcony. Performances come alive when there is a cacophony of voices crying out in unison at the entrance of a star actor.
The yagō of Ichikawa Danjūrō is “Naritaya!”, whereas the yagō of Nakamura Utaemon is “Narikomaya!” Or, at climactic moments, when an actor strikes a mie pose:
“Mattemashita!” meaning we’re all waiting for that moment. The timing and voice have to be just right, or it provokes laughter from the audience.
Another way to interact with the stage was through taking lessons in dance or chanting from a professional. When I began studying Kabuki and Bunraku in Tokyo as a student, in order to understand the plays better, I took lessons in chanting from two Bunraku performers: Tsuruzawa Jūzō and Takemoto Sumitayū. I was a terrible, useless pupil but it was a great opportunity to delve into the performance world.
Another hobby of fans was to imitate the particular declamatory style of Kabuki actors called ‘kowa-iro’. Sometimes bits of dialogue also appeared on actor prints. In the play depicted here, the pair were formally working in a samurai residence, but had an affair and were kicked out. They're now struggling to make ends meet. The woman, Oroku, is worried, but Kihei seems unconcerned, enjoying a cup of sake after returning from the bathhouse. He says if they're really desperate, he can always borrow money from his old samurai mates.
Oroku berates him for his lazy, decadent lifestyle. Oroku says “that may be so, but lately I hear you've been spending money on courtesans, drinking a lot and gambling. You've always been a gambler, but it's no good if you gamble too much. It'll get you in the end”. Kihei responds, “but if I stick just to a proper job, I won't be able to drink the best sake”. Kihei’s words seem a little off the point but it means, I think, that he can enjoy going out and mooching off others instead of getting the proper job.
Now I'm out of practice, but let me read the Japanese, giving it a little extra flavour. Oroku says: それはそふと、此ころはおめへは、買に呑むにうつに、聞き やゑてきちもやるそふナ、ようねいよ、あいつにかけては、 おしめいだよ
Then Kihei answers: まじめナしよばい（商売）計りでは、うまい酒は、のめねい
This kind of fooling around long ago was both fun and embarrassing, as it is now.
Kabuki is supposed to be flamboyant and flippant, a good laugh. I hope you have a chance to see a live, professional performance in Japan. Thank you.