Lost Japan (8 page)

In the play
Iriya
, there is a scene where the woman Michitose is about to meet her lover after a long separation. Her samurai is
being hunted by the police but has crept through the snow to see her. He waits in front of some
fusuma
sliding doors. Hearing of his arrival, she bursts into the room and the lovers are reunited. When Tamasaburo was once playing the part of Michitose, we were sitting together backstage, next to the
fusuma
doors and more or less on the stage itself, just prior to Michitose's dramatic entrance. Tamasaburo was chatting casually and was not the least bit feminine – very much an average man, although he was in full costume. When the time came for his entrance, he stood up, laughed, said, ‘OK, here I go!', and walked over to the
fusuma.
He adjusted his robe, flung open the
fusuma
, and in that instant was transformed into a beauty straight out of an Ukiyoe print. In a silvery voice fit to melt the audience's heart, he cried out, ‘
Aitakatta, aitakatta, aitakatta wai na!
' – ‘I've missed you, I've missed you, I've missed you so much!' A world of illusion had sprung up from one side of a
fusuma
to the other.

The illusion is achieved by Kabuki stagecraft, probably the most highly developed in the world. The
hanamichi
(‘flower path') through the audience is a particularly famous example. Actors enter and leave the stage via this walkway; separated from the action on the main stage, the actor on the
hanamichi
enters a solitary realm where he is free to reveal the inner depths of his role. For instance, the play
Kumagai Jinya
(
Kumagai's Battle Camp
) is a traditional tale of
giri-ninjo
(the conflict between love and duty): Kumagai must kill his own son and substitute the boy's severed head for the son of his lord. His ruse is successful, but in remorse Kumagai shaves off his hair to enter a life of asceticism, and exits down the
hanamichi.
When the late Kanzaburo XVIII played Kumagai, he imparted such a sense of personal desolation as he exited down the
hanamichi
that
Kumagai Jinya
seemed not a tale of
giri-ninjo
, but an antiwar play.

Kabuki stagecraft sometimes seems symbolic of life itself. An example of this is
danmari
, or pantomime scenes, in which all the lead characters come silently out onto the stage at the same time.
As though walking in pitch darkness, they move about in slow motion, oblivious to each other's existence; they run into each other or drop things which are retrieved by others. There is an eerie quality about
danmari
which has nothing to do with any specific play. Watching scenes of
danmari
, where a man picks up a letter his lover has dropped, or two people looking for each other pass by unawares, one senses the blindness of human existence. What begins as just another bit of eccentric Kabuki stagecraft ends up symbolizing a deeper truth.

Why did stagecraft develop to such a level in Japan? At the risk of oversimplification, I would say it was because Japan is a country where the exterior is more often valued over the interior. One may see the negative effects of this in many aspects of modern Japanese life. For instance, the fruits and vegetables in a Japanese supermarket are all flawless in color and shape as if made from wax, but they are flavorless. The importance of the exterior may be seen in the conflict between
tatemae
(officially stated position) and
honne
(real intent), which is a staple of books written about Japan. Listening to the debates in Japan's Diet, it is abundantly clear that
tatemae
is given precedence over
honne.
Nevertheless, this emphasis on the surface is not without its positive side, for Kabuki's unparalleled stagecraft is a direct result of such prizing of the outward.

Though I learned many things from Kabuki stagecraft, the aspect I found most fascinating was the artistry used to capture and accentuate the emotion of a single fleeting moment. The
mie
, when actors pose dramatically with eyes crossed and arms flung out, is an obvious example of this. But it may be said of many other Kabuki
kata
as well. For example, there might be a scene where two people are casually talking; then, from some detail of the conversation, the characters suddenly comprehend each other's true feelings. In that instant, action stops, actors freeze, and from stage left wooden clappers go ‘
battari!
'. The two characters resume speaking as though nothing has happened;
however, in the instant of that ‘
battari!
', everything has changed. While most forms of theater try to preserve a narrative continuity, Kabuki focuses around such crucial instants of stop and start, start and stop.

This can also be said of Kabuki audiences' expressions of appreciation. At a Western play or concert, the audience waits politely until the very end before applauding; nothing could be more ill-mannered than to clap between movements of a symphony. In contrast, during highlights of a Kabuki play, audience members will show their appreciation by shouting out the
yago
(house names) of the actors. When the play is over, they just get up and leave.

The shouting of
yago
is an art in itself. One doesn't shout at any time, but only at certain moments of dramatic tension. You can recognise the amateurs in the audience by their poorly timed shouts. There is a group of knowledgeable old men, called the
omuko
(literally, ‘men in the back'), who are the masters of this art form; they frequent the upper rafters, where I sat at my first
kaomise.
From there, they shout
yago
such as ‘
Yamatoya!
' for Tamasaburo or ‘
Nakamuraya!
' for Kanzaburo. Or they will vary their repertoire with ‘
Godaime!
' (‘Fifth generation!'), ‘
Goryonin!
' (‘The pair of you!') or ‘
Mattemashita!
' (‘I've been waiting for this!'). I remember watching the legendary
onnagata
Utaemon, then aged seventy, appearing as the grand courtesan Yatsuhashi. At the climactic moment, when Yatsuhashi turns to the peasant following her and bestows upon him the smile which is going to destroy his life, there was a shout from the
omuko
: ‘
Hyakuman doru!
' – ‘A million dollars!'

I have only shouted once in my life; it was in the early days, for Kunitaro. His yago was
Yamazakiya.
I practiced and practiced, and then at the right moment I shouted ‘
Yamazakiya!
' from the rafters as best as I could. It wasn't easy. The timing is so important that the actors depend on the shouts to sustain the rhythm of the performance. I once saw Tamasaburo in rehearsal pause at a
critical moment, whisper ‘
Yamatoya!
', and then glide into the next movement of the dance.

Focus on the ‘instant' is characteristic of Japanese culture as a whole. In Chinese poetry, the poet's imagination might begin with flowers and rivers, and then suddenly leap up into the Nine Heavens to ride a dragon to Mt K'un-lun and frolic with the immortals. Japanese haiku focus on the mundane moment, as in Basho's well-known poem: ‘The old pond; a frog leaps in – the sound of water'. The frog leaps into the pond, not up to heaven. There are no immortals, just ‘the sound of water'. In the concision of haiku and
waka
, Japan created unparalleled literary forms. On the other hand, long poems of narrative or ideas are almost completely absent from the history of Japanese literature. Long verse was created by stringing pearls together into longer chains, as in
renga
(linked
waka
poems).

This ‘instantaneous culture' is something I also noticed in the real-estate world, where I was later to work in Tokyo. There are innumerable detailed building codes, but the overall design of a building and its aesthetic relation to street and skyline are ignored; the result is careless, disjointed, ugly. The sorry state of the highway system is also the result of
renga
thinking: there is no master plan, just a stringing together of annual budgets to build highways piecemeal.

Kabuki is no exception. The arrangement of a play's elements are ambiguous, and sudden narrative leaps are often made. For anyone expecting dramatic unity, Kabuki seems weak. My friends who value logic invariably dislike Kabuki. However, with its emphasis on the depth of a single instant, Kabuki creates an atmosphere of intense excitement which is rare in other theater. Tamasaburo once told me, ‘In ordinary drama, the story proceeds step by step. What a bore! Kabuki's fascination lies in its outrageous leaps of logic.'

Kabuki, like everything else in Japan, is torn between the poles of refinement and hedonism – hedonism being represented by
keren
(acrobatic tricks), refinement by the actors' measured grace. These days, plays featuring multiple costume changes, actors attached to cables flying through the air, and waterfalls onstage are all the rage. The popularity of
keren
is a sign of the sickness currently plaguing the traditional Japanese arts in general. When one looks at Japan's wilderness breathing its dying gasps, the traditional arts seem comparatively healthy. Kabuki has actually experienced a box-office resurgence over the last twenty years, and the theaters are often sold out. But trouble is brewing because of Kabuki's irrelevance to any life a modern audience can now experience. There is hardly a single object on the Kabuki stage recognizable to young people today. When stage chanters sing of fireflies or autumn maples, such things are now almost mythical subjects in this land of vast cedar plantations.

Actors such as Jakuemon or Tamasaburo spend hours with the kimono dyers discussing the precise shade of purple a certain kimono should be, what color the actor Kikugoro VI (‘the Great Sixth') used, what is chic or not chic by standards of the Edo period. Certain older attendants, who came in from outside and therefore can never achieve major roles, have amassed incredible knowledge about such Kabuki arcana. In many cases, these men, not the actors you see onstage, are the true standard-bearers of the tradition; they know by heart not only what Kikugoro VI used, but what was used before him.

An example is Tamasaburo's old retainer Yagoro, now in his eighties, whom Tamasaburo inherited from his adoptive father Kanya. Yagoro performed major roles in his youth as a member of the small troupes that used to travel the countryside. As the tide of Westernization swept Japan after World War II, these smaller troupes disappeared or were gradually absorbed into one large troupe. The ‘Grand Kabuki' we see today consists of several hundred actors (and their assistants), all based in Tokyo. ‘Grand' though it is called, it is actually the shrunken remnant of a larger Kabuki world which once numbered thousands of
performers spread throughout the provinces. Yagoro belongs to the last generation who knew that larger Kabuki world.

Yagoro will come into the room backstage after a show and sit there with a smile on his face. Then Tamasaburo will say, ‘What do you think, Father?' (actors address each other as ‘elder brother', ‘uncle', ‘father'). Yagoro will say, ‘The Great Sixth used a silver fan, but that was because he was short and it accentuated his height. For you it would be inappropriate. Use gold, like the former Baiko did.' This is how their knowledge is passed down.

But what use are all these refinements when you are performing to an audience whose familiarity with the kimono is about on a par with that of Americans? Fine details tend to be lost, and the audience goes for the obvious crowd-pleasers, like
keren.

Another problem is the generation gap. The training of actors, including those of Tamasaburo's generation, used to be fierce. Intense dedication was required. Jakuemon told me how he used to memorize
nagauta
(long narrative lyrics) by chanting them on the train on his way to the theater; one day, the train suddenly stopped and he found all the other passengers staring at him as he chanted loudly in the ensuing silence. In those days, Kabuki was more of a popular form, and less of a formalized ‘traditional art', so audiences were more knowledgeable and demanding. A bad actor would find the
omuko
shouting, ‘
Daikon!
' (‘big radish!'), to his everlasting humiliation. Now there are no calls of
Daikon!
, and audiences sit reverently with their hands in their laps, no matter how good or bad the actor might be. The younger actors, born into privilege because of their family names, have it easy. Tamasaburo once said, ‘Communism in Russia was a terrible thing, but it produced great ballet dancers. In order to be great you need a Moscow in your background.'

After I began watching Kabuki, I discovered Nihon Buyo (Japanese dance) and Shinpa (Meiji-style drama) as well. I realized that ‘Grand Kabuki' is just the tip of the iceberg – the arts connected to Kabuki are vigorously active in their own right. There
is a constant round of recitals, called
kai
(gatherings), of Nihon Buyo, flute,
nagauta
(long lyrics),
kouta
(short lyrics),
samisen
, and more.

While one invariably sees foreigners at Kabuki theater, I have found it extremely rare to see another foreigner at any of these recitals. But given the diversity of Nihon Buyo, which includes dozens of styles, tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students, it is a broader world than Kabuki. Many of the finest dancers are women, which is a return to Kabuki's pre-
onnagata
roots. Some of them are legends such as Takehara Han, who began as a geisha in Osaka and ended up as the premier master of Zashiki-mai (sitting-room dance), a subtle form of dance which originated in the intimate quarters of the geisha house. If you included classical Kabuki dance styles such as Fujima-ryu, as well as the numerous varieties of Zashiki-mai, Kyo-mai (Kyoto dance) and even
enka
(modern pop dancing), you could spend your life watching Nihon Buyo.