Sakuragawa

The Japanese dramatist Zeami is credited with originating the bulk of the repertoire of Noh plays, among them a short piece about love and madness called Sakuragawa.
 

Sakuragawa is the name of a river famous for its cherry trees. In the play, the heroine scoops up petals of cherry blossoms out of the river, mourning the disappearance of her beloved son, whose name Sakurago associates him with cherry blossoms.
 
The first scene of the play shows a human trafficker explaining to the mother that her son has sold himself to escape poverty. The mother is driven mad, and the highlight of the play is her performing an elaborate dance of madness while accompanied by a flute and drums.
 
Because her madness renders her so eccentric, people from all around come to watch the woman attempt to scoop cherry petals from the water, even as more and more fall. After years pass, Sakurago comes to the river and sees her there. The woman does not recognize her son immediately, but eventually she understands that it is him, and the two have a touching reunion.

The piece is simple and relatively straightforward, but its depiction of motherly devotion and filial piety has made it popular for hundreds of years.

Kabuki at the Met

We're now in the Year of the Tiger, and when I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, they naturally had an exhibit on tigers in art. I was much more interested, however, in some works featuring kabuki performances in their rotating exhibition "Japan: A History of Style."

The Met owns a rare screen that shows a performance from kabuki's early days, when it was only women who performed roles on stage. Though the theatrical style of kabuki was invented by Okuni and pioneered by her fellow priestesses, men later took it over and women were banned from the stage.

In the first panel of the screen, we see audience members approaching, and a street performer is dancing on some mats on the ground. This is likely how kabuki began, with solo performances outdoors, gradually attracting larger and larger crowds. We also see a man beating a drum, providing the musical accompaniment that became crucial to kabuki performances.

The next panel of the screen shows not only people headed for the performance, but vendors selling refreshments. During the early days of kabuki, people ate, drank, and socialized while they watched the play. Food and tea have remained a part of the kabuki experience, which should not be surprising, since lots of theatrical traditions encourage the audience to eat and drink either during the show or during an intermission.

In the following panel, a group of people crowd around a gate, attempting to gain admittance to the outdoor staging area. Though kabuki later moved indoors, during the early years, it was performed outside, but there were sometimes walls erected to control who would or would not be allowed inside. A group of men on the screen seem to be fighting just outside the gate. Are they fighting to get in to see the show? Or have they been ejected from the performance?

Inside the gate, we see the audience. Most people are seated on the ground, and it appears that their focus is not solely on the stage. They eat, drink, and chat while also enjoying the performance. There is also an elevated seating area, something that can be seen in other early depictions of kabuki as well. The people higher up in these box seats appear to be of a higher class, in addition to being literally higher than everyone else. It's also interesting that other audience members are watching from the shade beneath the boxes.

Finally, we get to the stage itself, which thrusts out into the audience, and is surrounded by spectators on three sides. The stage is covered by a roof, as the traditional stage in Noh drama is. The central figure on stage is a woman impersonating a samurai. Ahead of her is a comic servant, Saruwaka, known as Young Monkey. Though the character is a man, a woman would have played this role, too, during the early 17th century. The gents in this play have come to a "tea house" that also doubled as a brothel. These early plays were quite ribald, and they mocked the samurai class, which might have been one of the reasons the government later banned women from performing.

The final panel of the screen shows the bridge leading away from the stage. In Noh drama, the bridge is known as the hashigakari, and it is likewise placed at the back of the stage. Later on, kabuki moved the bridge to the front of the stage, where it extends out over the audience and is known as the hanamichi. I find it interesting to see how the early kabuki stage more closely resembled the Noh stage than it does today. On the Met's screen, you can also see some actors preparing backstage, behind the bridge and its hangings.

If you want to see how the kabuki stage developed later on in the 18th century, the exhibition also includes a woodblock print by Okumura Masanobu showing a kabuki performance from 1748, now indoors and with the hanamichi going across the audience. There are also audience members elevated on the side, as we saw on the earlier screen.

Eventually, kabuki became big business. Here's a print from a bit later, around 1780, showing the theatre district in Edo on the night when the kabuki season opened with the "face-showing" known as the kaomise in which the whole company of actors would be introduced to the audience.

These are only a few of the works you'll see in the exhibition at the Met, which runs until April 24th. It's well worth checking out if you get a chance!

Okuni's Screen

The earliest known depiction of Izumo no Okuni, the founder of the theatrical form of kabuki, is on a screen currently owned by the Kyoto National Museum in Japan.

This six-paneled screen, which dates from the 17th century, utilizes gold-leafed paper to create a grand and impressive image.  The screen is nearly three feet high and close to nine feet long. You can see a reduced image of it here:

In the third panel from the left, Okuni herself appears onstage, sporting a sword over her shoulder. She appears to be acting in a scene set in a teahouse (which could also double as a brothel in Okuni's day). Dressed in men's clothes, the founder of kabuki would perform male roles to the delight (and frequently scandal) of the audience. Here's how she appears on the screen:

We have a few first-person accounts of Okuni's performance. Here's one from the early 17th century, as translated by Akemi Horie Webber:

Lately there is a thing called kabuki dance. A shamaness from Izumi province, named O-kuni, came to Kyoto and initiated it. For example, she imitated a man of unusual appearance, carrying a sword and wearing distinctly exotic costume. This man mimicked the gestures of flirtation with a woman of the teahouses. There was no one in the whole of Kyoto, high and low, why did not rave about her performance. She often went up to Fushimi castle and danced there. Soon, there sprouted numerous kabuki troupes that imitated this, and many of them traveled the provinces.

Another written account describes Okuni's character purchasing the services of a courtesan in the teahouse, but  the courtesan acts in a comical manner and is dressed with a colorful scarf over her head. Such a figure, crouching down and holding a fan in front of her face, appears on the screen not far from Okuni.

Part of the reason these performances became popular was that they reflected the uproar society in general was experiencing in Japan during the early 17th century. The country had just been through a period of civil war, which came to a head in 1600 with the Battle of Sekigahara. After that battle, the military leader Tokugawa Ieyasu was able to establish his power, and in 1603, he was named shogun, the de facto ruler of Japan.

The thing is, a lot of people were unhappy with Tokugawa's shogunate. It had risen to power only after fierce conflict, and many samurai remained resentful of the new government. Certain clans had lost power and status, and though they couldn't openly defy the new regime, they mocked the conventions of society as a way to express their displeasure. Okuni's characters reflected the formerly powerful warriors who were now left adrift in Japan.

Audiences, it seems, related to the new style of performance, which unlike Noh, did not use masks and tended to be more secular than religious. Like Noh, however, it relied on music and dance to help tell the story. The screen at the Kyoto National Museum shows musicians playing flutes and drums, though not the shamisen, a stringed instrument that later became popular in kabuki.

The audience members in the screen sit on mats on the ground, watching the performers on the elevated stage. This stage resembles a classic Noh stage more than it does a modern kabuki stage with its hanamichi bridge extending out over the audience. We can see that the audience members are paying attention to the performance, but they are also socializing with one another.

A barrier surrounds the audience, and outside that barrier, we can see what appears to be a refreshment stand, providing people with snacks.

Though we cannot know for sure what it was like to watch Okuni pioneering her new performance style, the screen at least gives us some fascinating hints.

The Measures Taken

Bertolt Brecht is known today mainly for his theory of the Verfremdungseffekt, or Alienation Effect, but he himself thought he would be remembered for a different innovation, the Lehrstücke, or teaching plays.

One of Brecht's most famous Lehrstücke is The Measures Taken, a didactic propaganda piece he wrote in collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler in 1930. Though "didactic" often has a negative connotation, for Brecht didacticism was the whole point of Lehrstücke. Everyone is supposed to learn something from The Measures Taken, the actors as well as the audience.

Brecht himself claimed he based The Measures Taken on an old Japanese Noh drama on religious themes. In his version of the story, though, the "religion" being espoused is Communism. A Control Chorus representing the Communist Party is interviewing four agitators who have recently returned from China. Something has gone terribly wrong, and an idealistic young comrade has died.

The solution to the mystery is revealed on the first page of the play. The agitators shot the young comrade and threw him into a lime pit. This is not a whodunit, since we know who killed the comrade from the beginning. Instead, the rest of the play explains the decision the group had to make and why they made it. This explanation is made in the form of a play within the play. Three of the agitators stand together, while the fourth stands by himself, enacting the role of the young comrade.

When we meet the young comrade, he tells us he is in favor of "the measures taken by the Communist Party which fights for the classless society." He asks the agitators if they have brought any locomotives, tractors, seed, munitions and guns, or even a letter from the Central Committee. In fact, the agitators have brought nothing, but they demand that the young comrade provide them with an automobile and a guide while they try to spread propaganda across China.

As the play proceeds, each of the agitators take on new roles in telling the story of the incident. One of them, enacting the part of the leader at a party headquarters, tells them they must blot out their own identities, which is of course what they are doing in the performance as well. "You are not Karl Schmitt from Berlin, you are not Anna Kjersk from Kazan, and you are not Peter Sawitch from Moscow," he says. "One and all of you are nameless and motherless, blank pages on which the revolution writes its instructions."

Later, one of the agitators takes on the role of an overseer, another a policeman, another a trader. Each time, the performer must blot out his own identity as one of the three agitators to take on the role of a new part. This, of course, has also been done by the actors, who must blot out their own identities in order to portray the agitators. The Control Chorus, in watching the agitators perform different roles, plays the part of an onstage audience, yet they are also performers themselves. In this way, they provide a model for the regular audience watching the play: We are all performers, and we are all observers.

As a play, The Measures Taken not only teaches a lesson about the necessity of sacrifice, but the performance of the play itself is also a part of that lesson. In the process of performing the play, the actors must do the very thing the play advocates, which is to submit the will of the individual to the greater good.

Notes on Kabuki

Around 1603 a priestess from the Izumo Grand Shrine began dancing not in the temple, but in a dry riverbed in Kyoto, Japan. This remarkable woman, Okuni, seems to have single-handedly launched a new art form, adding songs and narrative interludes to her dancing. Other women began joining Okuni, and she directed them in a new style of drama. Unlike Noh, Okuni's plays used no masks, had a whole ensemble of dancers, and aimed to please the masses rather than the elite. This new style of drama came to be known as kabuki.

Originally, female dancers performed kabuki, frequently cross-dressing to take on male roles. Though the first performers came from the temples, prostitutes from nearby brothels began to join in the performances, and kabuki gained a reputation for intense sensuality, a reputation aided by the lush costumes performers employed. By 1616, there were seven licensed kabuki theatres, usually near or connected to teahouses. These theatres were located in the entertainment district, where pleasures of all kinds were available, especially prostitution. The government was scandalized by this new art form, but kabuki was too popular to ban outright, so officials decided upon a different path of action.

In 1629, the government forbade women from appearing onstage, transforming kabuki from a female-dominated to an all-male art form. Boys provided the majority of actors, but attractive youths proved to be just as erotic and troublesome to the authorities. Especially problematic were the onnagata roles, where men dressed as women.  The government tried to ban the portrayal of women on stage, but since kabuki was now seen as inherently erotic, this just led to plays featuring male homosexuality. In 1652, the government declared that only adult men could perform kabuki, banning teenage boys from the stage. Moreover, onnagata performers had to shave the fronts of their heads to make sure they did not resemble women. Onnagata performers simply began covering the fronts of their heads with scarves, which became erotically fetishized objects.

Instead of the hashigakari bridge in Noh, a kabuki stage has a path known as the hanamichi, which extends out through the audience. While a hashigakari supposedly connects the Noh stage to an invisible spirit realm, the hanamichi simply connects one geographic location with another. Noh is concerned with spiritual matters, but kabuki is more likely to deal with political issues, such as wars among nations or great feuds between families. Spectacle is very important in kabuki, and Japanese theatre artists developed important stage technologies later adopted by the West. In the eighteenth century, the playwright Namiki Shozo invented a special trap door called a seri through which actors or scenery could be elevated up onto the stage. Even more importantly, he introduced a revolving stage (known as the mawari-butai) in 1758, long before such devices were available in Europe.

Unlike Noh, kabuki uses elaborate scenery, changing it (frequently by means of elevator or revolving stage) whenever the action of the play moves to a new location. Though performers do not wear masks, they use stylized make-up and frequently hold their faces in dramatic positions. During emotional moments, a leading actor will work himself into a seeming frenzy, then snap into a pose known as a mie. Actors hold the mie for several moments, during which the audience marvels at their skill. When actors exit, they might also perform a roppo, holding several mie in rapid succession.

In spite of the humble origins of the art form, kabuki actors have traditionally enjoyed a star status. Their popularity allowed them to mingle with members of the upper classes, sometimes with disastrous results. In 1714, the theatre world was rocked by a scandal known as the Ejima-Ikushima affair. Ejima, a high-ranking lady in the court of the shogun, was caught out late with the kabuki actor Ikushima Shingoro. Ejima returned home to find the gates had already been locked, yet went from gate to gate trying to gain admittance.

Ejima had met Ikushima the previous year, and the two were reputed to be lovers. Her late-night antics caused a furor, and after an investigation Ejima and Ikumisha were separately exiled. The government closed all four kabuki theatres in the capital of Edo, though all but Ikushima's were eventually reopened. Officially, kabuki actors were considered little better than thieves and prostitutes, but as the Ejima-Ikushima affair illustrates, they could rise to very high places.

Notes on Noh Drama

Like so much of Japanese culture, traditional theatre in Japan was originally borrowed from China. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, imported Chinese plays became adapted into a Japanese form called sarugaku. This form in turn split apart into two subtypes, hongei, or "principal craft," and nogei, "refined craft." The more refined plays eventually became known as Noh. The hongei, which kept the original humorous elements in sarugaku, evolved into short comic plays called kyogen.

In the fourteenth century, the actor and playwright Kanami Kiyotsugu began to codify Noh drama into the form in which it still exists today. Kanami led a sarugaku troupe for many years, eventually bringing the troupe to the Yamato province where he founded a special school dedicated to Noh performance. Kanami also introduced into Noh various dance forms, such as kusemai and dengaku, which were native to Japan. He trained his son, Zeami Motokiyo, to be a virtuoso performer. As their troupe's popularity spread, they began performing in the capital city of Kyoto, where Zeami caught the eye of the ruling shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Shogun Yoshimitsu, the most powerful man in Japan, then became the troupe's patron, giving them all the resources they needed to perfect their art.

The spectacular rise of a family of strolling players to the inner circle of the shogun might seem like a fairy tale. Medieval Japanese society was highly regimented, and the sudden ascendancy of Kanami and Zeami must have seemed surprising to the court. However, once it had risen to a courtly art form, Noh itself became regimented. Parts were passed down from father to son, and performers had to be born into great acting families in order to have a chance at success. That success, in turn, could prove fleeting, as Zeami himself was to discover.

Zeami

After Kanami's death in 1385, Zeami took over the leadership of his father's troupe. He wrote dozens of plays, which still comprise the backbone of the Noh repertoire today. Zeami's plays are saturated with the language of Zen Buddhism, the religion of the warrior class he served. In addition, he wrote more than twenty treatises on the art of Noh drama, frequently expressing his views on theatre in spiritual terms. These treatises, particularly Fushikaden and Kakyo, document medieval performance and help to guide performance of Noh today.

Zeami composed his early treatise Fushikaden (which translates roughly as " Style and the Flower") around the year 1400. In it, he advocates going beyond mere imitation of a character, instead inhabiting a character so fully that a performance blossoms like a beautiful flower. According to Zeami, every actor should be able to express the qualities of hana and yugen. Hana is the fragile, transient essence of a human being, while yugen denote a mysterious beauty and grace. He also writes that each play must develop in three stages, which he identifies as jo-ha-kyu. Jo is the beginning stage, ha denotes an intensification, and kyu indicates a climactic ending.

In 1394, Shogun Yoshimitsu officially ceded power to his son, Ashikaga Yoshimochi. The new shogun was not as fond of Zeami, so the actor and his troupe sought patronage elsewhere. Following the example of his father, Shogun Yoshimochi ceded power to his own son, Yoshikazu, who died after ruling for only two years. Yoshimochi resumed power after the death of his son, but in 1428 he died leaving no sons and no clear heir. Eventually, his brother Yoshinori became shogun, but he was a violent man, and no friend of Zeami.

For reasons that remain unclear, in 1434 Shogun Yoshinori banished Zeami to Sado Island, and the great theatre artist remained in exile at least until after the shogun's assassination in 1441. It was on Sado Island that Zeami wrote much of his theoretical work, including Kakyo. The later treatise recounts some of Zeami's personal history and re-examines the claims of Fushikaden from a more mature, more nuanced perspective. Eventually allowed to return to the mainland of Japan, Zeami died in 1443. Whether he finally returned as permitted or died on Sado Island, Zeami was buried in Yamoto, the place where he spent his youth. The tragic latter part of his life seems to have been tinged with the same melancholy that ran through the plays he wrote throughout his career.

Noh Actors

Traditionally, all Noh actors have been male, though in the twentieth century, a number of established actors began training their daughters in Noh, and today it is not uncommon to see women on stage, though they are still a distinct minority. The leading actor is known as the shite, and he plays the protagonist. A second actor, the waki, acts as a counterpart of the shite. He is often a foil of the main character and frequently introduces the action. Each of these characters might have a companion, known as a shitetsure or wakitsure.

The shite (but not the waki) wears a mask, and any shitetsure might wear a mask as well, especially if he is representing a woman, ghost, or demon. The masks are carved out of wood and painted in such a way that when the actor moves his head and changes the angle of the mask, the expression on the face appears to change. For instance, when an actor holds his head up, the mask will appear to be smiling, while facing downward can reveal a sad or angry expression. Actors are elaborately dressed and usually hold a fan. Depending on how the fan is held, it can represent other props as well, such as a dagger or a lantern.

In addition, there is a chorus of about eight actors known as jiutai who sit on the side of the stage. Unlike a Greek chorus, the jiutai in Noh are not understood to be a group of separate characters. Rather, they sing or chant lines closely associated with the shite, often helping him with the narration and providing commentary on the action. Musicians, known as hayashi, also sit to the side of the stage. The four hayashi play a flute and three different types of drums, and their music is considered integral to Noh drama.

Types of Noh Dramas

There are five major types of Noh plays. In a typical Noh performance, one play of each type is performed in a set order, with short comic kyogen performed in between. The first play is usually the kami mono or "god play" featuring a sacred story, often set in a shrine. These plays are also known as Waki Noh, since they feature the waki, generally in the role of a priest encountering a supernatural being. The most famous kami mono is Zeami's play Takasago, sometimes known by the title Twin Pines. In the play, the waki comes across an elderly couple sweeping the ground beneath two pine trees that are joined together. Eventually, the waki learns that the harmonious old pair are actually the twin spirits of the conjoined tree.

After the kami mono, a company might perform a comic kyogen, then a shura mono, or "fighting play" featuring the death of a warrior. Another Zeami play, Atsumori, typifies the shura genre. Its title character is a young warrior so peaceful and courtly he carries a flute into battle. Long after the battle, his killer encounters Atsumori's ghost. Atsumori's story is thus recounted many years after the events took place, a technique used frequently in Noh drama.

A third type of play is the katsura mono or "wig play" featuring a female protagonist. A Kanami play (which Zeami considerably rewrote, turning it into a masterpiece) is Matsukaze. The story of the heroine--whose name means "wind in the pine"--is taken from The Tale of Genji, the 11th-century classic by Lady Murasaki that is often described as the world's first novel. Like Takasago, it begins with a visiting priest coming across a sacred pine tree, in this case a memorial to two dead sisters. The ghosts of the sisters rise to tell their stories, then disappear, leaving only the wind in the pine.

The fourth Noh play to be performed in the sequence is of a miscellaneous type. These can be "madness plays" or kyoran mono such as Zeami's Lady Han. They also can be plays featuring vengeful ghosts, onryo mono, such as Dojo Temple, a play possibly written by Kanami about the spirit of a spurned woman who must be exorcised from a temple. A third type of play, the genzai mono, takes place in the present day. These are also known as "bare face plays" because the shite does not wear a mask. Other miscellaneous plays, such as Zeami's Nakamitsu, might not fit into any category.

At the end of a Noh performance, the company will usually present the fifth type of Noh play, the oni mono, which deals with demons or other supernatural spirits. One of the most popular oni mono is Shojo, about a spirit that gets drunk on the goods of a wine merchant. The shojo performs an impressive dance, and while he drinks the merchant's wine, he leaves him with a gift far more valuable: a cask from which wine will flow continually, never running dry. Oni mono often feature special masks, and the shojo mask is an important part of that play's performance. Other oni mono have even more elaborate masks.

Kyogen

Just as trilogies of Athenian tragedies were followed by a comedic satyr play, dramatic Noh plays are alternated with comic kyogen. These plays are typically composed anonymously and then passed down from generation to generation, sometimes with significant variations. The most popular kyogen character is probably the taro kaja or "first servant." In taro kaja plays, the shite plays the servant, sometimes with only one other actor who plays the master or shu, providing a "straight man" for the shite's antics. In other cases, such as the taro kaja play The Delicious Poison, there might be additional characters, such as the jiro kaja, or "second servant."

Another character in kyogen is the warrior priest, or yamabushi. One yamabushi play is The Snail, in which an ignorant servant through a series of misunderstandings mistakes a warrior priest for a giant snail. The good-natured yamabushi plays along, singing and dancing a special snail song with the taro kaja. Other kyogen characters include the lord, known as the daimyo, and the son-in-law, called the muko.

Unlike Noh actors, kyogen actors rarely wear masks, and they traditionally do not wear make-up, either. Other than fans, the use few props, though their costumes can be quite elaborate. In the kyogen play Mushrooms, for instance, actors dressed as exotic mushrooms pop up all over the stage. Since kyogen are performed together with Noh plays, they are presented on the same stage, and these stages have a number of unique characteristics.

Noh Theatres

Originally, Noh was performed outside. Though the oldest Noh stages are outdoors, plays are more frequently done inside today. However, the Noh stage, known as the butai, retains elements of its outdoor past. A pillar-supported roof covers the stage, and the back wall is painted with a pine tree. According to legend, it was down a pine tree that the spirit of Noh passed from the heavens down to the earth.

At the back of the stage is a bridge known as the hashigakari, which leads off to the side to the actors' dressing room. During the play, ghosts and spirits might cross the hashigakari, making both a literal and figurative journey to the world presented on the stage. Three stylized representations of pine trees mark different places on the hashigakari where the actor might pause. Less dramatic entrances and exits can be made through a small "hurry door" or kirido located at the back of the stage. Three steps known as the kizahashi descend from the front of the stage, but they are not used during performance.

The butai is divided into distinct sections, and where an actor stands is often strictly codified by tradition. The audience sits on two sides of the butai experiencing different views of the performance. Traditionally, aristocratic audiences watched Noh throughout the day, taking lunch during a break in the performance. Today, performances are much shorter, and anyone can attend, not just aristocrats. However, Noh remains a relatively elitist entertainment.