CRAFTSMANSHIP OF 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.
[Illustration: Crest of Onoe Kikugoro (Two fans).]
[Illustration: Crest of Onoe Tamizo (Stork and plum combined).]
[Illustration: Crest of Arashi Kichisaburo (Combination three
characters).]