Kabuki

When it comes to a question of what the Japanese Theatre holds for the West, the craftsmanship of Kabuki should be of first importance.

Characteristic simplicity, taste, and style are shown by the men accustomed to handle material for stage pictures. Above all, these workers are free from a worship of things, and do not overcrowd, but concentrate on essentials. In the management of details the producer displays a finish that is near perfection. Things are not allowed to clutter up the stage for their own sake, but are necessary only as a medium to express the underlying motive of the play. In the manner, also, in which trees, flowers, birds, the sea, mountains, waterfalls, lakes, and the seasons are represented, it is apparent that Kabuki is still near to nature, and a product of a non-commercial age.

During the three hundred years of its history, Kabuki experts have been designing scenery and fashioning furniture and properties, unknown to their contemporaries in England and Europe, who were quite as much alive to the adornment and embellishment of their stage productions.

Hasegawa Kampei, the fifteenth, is the leader among Kabuki craftsmen in Tokyo. He considers himself a simple workman, and is busy designing and executing scenes in all the theatres of Tokyo, showing a surprising versatility and creativeness. He has, however, to compete with the flood of westernisation that would destroy the very foundations of the art his ancestors developed.

The first Kampei, the son of a samurai, was a skilled artisan in wood-carving and the decoration of temples, setting up stone gateways and lanterns, and the beautiful wooden gates of approach. His ability in this direction became so well known that he was called in to help in the production of plays.

In 1644, large furniture began to be used at the Ichimura-za in Yedo. And by the time of Kampei, the eleventh, the development of odogu and kodogu, or great and small furniture, was at its height, and his designs are regarded as models at the present.

The greatest improvement in the Yedo stage took place from 1780 to 1800, and the Hasegawa Kampei who presided over the destiny of the stage at that time invented new contrivances, especially in the management of ghosts; causing buildings to rise into the air, and trap-door disappearances. Finally the fashion for realistic furniture became so great that the interior of one of the great halls of the Imperial Palace, Kyoto, was reproduced on the stage. The authorities protested against the extravagance shown in this beautiful conception, and inferior materials were substituted by order.

Although the members of the Hasegawa family were skilled men, the real source of Yedo’s stage scenery progress was due to the creativeness of the Doll-theatre in Osaka. The collaborators for the dolls were fertile in ideas, and developed new stage settings in bewildering rapidity.

If there is one direction in which Kabuki shows the true craftsman more than another it is the pictorial. It is doubtful if on any other stage in the world can be viewed more charming effects achieved by such simple means. A red lacquered bridge over an iris pond, and the characters in picturesque combinations of colours; the soft greys and whites of a snowy scene, and in the centre an ancient cherry tree in full bloom; the lonely camp fire of a beggar in the mountains, a castle moat in the moonlight; a single fantastic pine by the seashore, are some of the familiar Kabuki scenes.

Brighter and more elaborate is a maple picnic under flaming foliage, the leaves falling, the feast spread on a scarlet rug, all the properties of black and gold lacquer, and the rainbow tints of Asia used plentifully in the costumes.

There is a flash of steel in the moonlight as many assailants rush upon a samurai, and the air is filled with fireflies. After the courageous hero has disposed of his enemies he wipes his sword, and to ascertain that it is quite clean lifts up a cage of imprisoned fireflies, by the glow of which he is able to see. Or again, it is old Nihonbashi, the Bridge of Japan, the centre of Yedo and from which all distances were calculated; Mount Fuji in the distance; a band of firemen returning after a conflagration, singing a characteristic song.

Much more elaborate is a cherry-viewing party, come to enjoy the cloud of pink blossoms, grouped on a hill-side, seated on a red carpet, with a gay silk curtain for background, made of stripes of black, yellow, purple, red, green, the masses of drooping flowers arranged with thick red ropes strung with brass bells, white paper lanterns in the greenery, serving-maids in pink kimono, merry masked dancers entertaining the company.

In a Nagasaki play relating to the visit of a Chinese envoy, there is seen a temple interior that could not be simpler and yet suggests grandeur—the background, a wide expanse of gold screens arranged with sliding doors on which are painted gold and black dragons, and in the foreground the actors, a group of daimyo in grey-blue, the bronze-brocade and gold-clad villain receiving the gifts that are to be presented to the emissary from China.

Not all Kabuki’s scenes are simple and serene, and nothing daunts the superior stage carpenters when once, they try their hands.

In a popular play there is a scene depicting a realistic earthquake, and a mansion collapses under repeated shocks. The building sinks down amid stage, according to some secret of the carpenters, and the hero makes his way out of the roof, ruin and desolation around him. When it comes to sensational snowstorms, typhoons, and conflagrations, Kabuki can hold its own with the Western stage.

It is, however, in architecture that the hand of the Kabuki craftsman is shown unmistakably. He has been free from the thraldom of the picture frame of the Western stage, and in following his own devices has worked with a freedom that has produced some satisfactory results.

The producer has taken the main room of a Japanese dwelling for his model—a straw-matted room, sliding screens for background, a severely plain apartment; for its sole decoration, an alcove containing a hanging picture, before which stands a vase of flowers or object of art. It has not been necessary for him to knock out one side of the house in order to allow the audience a view of what is passing within. The Japanese room being open to the outside, forms an admirable setting for the action of the plays.

To this room, which is in reality a platform for the players, he has added adjoining apartments, corridors, bridge-passages, verandahs, and the sloping roof is always present, either in part or as a whole. Completing the picture are gardens and rustic gates, stone water-basins, stepping-stones, wells, bridges, ponds, fences, and stone lanterns, and he has surrounded his buildings with the favourite flowers of Kabuki, lotus, chrysanthemum, peony, iris, and azalea. With a true love of nature he has placed in his scenes cherry and plum trees in full bloom, and has used pine trees and scarlet maples, drooping willows and feathery bamboo.

With a room as scene of action, the Kabuki carpenters have created types for all classes of dwellings the plays require. The background for a room in a great mansion will show a series of sliding panels on which are painted Chinese castles and pagodas, golden clouds, and green misty hills. Silver screens may be decorated with black waves in motion, or blue water, lotus leaves and flowers. The structures to be represented vary from an elaborately constructed mansion in cream wood to the realistic interior of the middle-class home in which the white-papered windows and doors form a pleasing feature. Temples, a hermitage in the midst of a forest, the thatched cottage of a farmer, are all variations of the one theme, which gives the widest latitude for invention and decoration.

Much of the action in Kabuki plays takes place in this room, with only the screens for background, and standing lanterns at each side. But there are more elaborate architectural triumphs, such as the great red entrance gate of Nanzen-ji, a Kyoto temple, carved, decorated, ornate, two-storied, and produced in detail. The bold robber, Ishikawa Goemon, hides in the second story, and comes forth on the railed balcony to smoke. This portion of the gate is first shown, the wall behind him in gold, painted with many-coloured clouds. As he stands there in his black velvet kimono and great overcoat of gold and black, the gate begins slowly to rise until the lower part is completely in view, the chief temple building in perspective within the arch of the gate, and Goemon looking down from his lofty position at his enemy below.

At another time, the Kabuki craftsmen spare no pains in constructing the Yomei gate of the famous Nikko Shrines, one of the best pieces of architecture in Japan, and so perfectly is it reproduced that the workmanship calls for admiration. But when no longer needed, the entire structure, which towers high, slowly turns over on end, and the bottom represents the background for the following action.

From grey dilapidated temples where apparitions make their appearance, or the nobility partaking of ceremonial tea in some landscape garden, the Kabuki craftsman passes to the fashioning of a red pagoda, the under-eaves showing many brilliant colours. He places two stories of the structure in a snowy scene. Warrior-priests in grey with white head coverings rush on the scene armed with long spears. An old dignitary wearing gold armour, over which there is a thin, black, priest’s robe, stands at one side with a torch in his hand. Another figure, in silver brocade and white, poses on the steps leading to the pagoda. The hero in armour—red, green, and gold—appears on the upper gallery. Then ensues a big fight in the whirling snow, the deep boom of a temple bell sounding through the fray.

The revolving stage that plays such an important part in the scenery of Kabuki has a complicated technique of its own. It allows of three, and sometimes four sets of scenes, that may be in the course of preparation while the actors are engaged in front. But as a general rule the carpenters are busy with but one full set, while the play proceeds.

For an extension of the stage picture, the stage is turned to right and left, or revolves half way for some new scene. In addition to the surprises in store for the playgoer in the changes effected by the revolving stage, there are the strange appearances of characters forced up through a large opening in the floor of the stage, like groups of statuary, and devices for the sudden disappearance of characters through walls and steps, the elaborate apparatus for ghosts that emerge through lanterns or vanish into thin air, and for chunori, or air-riding feats, when a character suspended in mid-air moves across the stage.

The kodogu, or small properties of Kabuki, are a study in themselves,—the lantern in all its shapes and sizes, the oil-paper umbrella, vases, and hanging pictures. The articles in use are not made to look beautiful at a distance, but are genuinely so: tall candle-sticks in brass or lacquer, chests, sword-rests, cups, swords, helmets, lacquered tables, tobacco-boxes, bronze utensils for a temple altar, or Buddhist images, they all represent the arts and crafts of the country.

Keen to adopt and adapt new things, Kabuki is now sensitive to European stage influences, and with a characteristic lack of confidence in its own creations, appears to be opening the door too wide in welcoming the ideas of the West.

The thought can hardly be avoided, however, that the achievements of the Kabuki craftsmen are a contribution to the world’s theatre. But what the place and value of their work in comparison with the stage of the West remain for the judgement of the future.