歌舞伎・能・文楽 — 日本三大伝統演劇の世界

Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku are the three traditional performing arts that represent Japan, and all three are inscribed on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Although they grew up in the same country, each has a completely different character: Kabuki is gorgeous and populist, Noh is serene and abstract, and Bunraku is a narrative art performed with puppets.

Kabuki traces its origins to 1603, when a woman known as Izumo no Okuni performed a "kabuki dance" on the Shijō riverbank in Kyoto. At the time the word "kabuku" referred to flashy, unconventional behavior, and Okuni's novel costumes and bold choreography sent the public into a frenzy.

The Edo shogunate, however, banned women and then young men from the stage on grounds of public morality, until kabuki settled into the form known as "yarō kabuki," performed only by adult men. This is the starting point of the all-male kabuki that continues to this day, and male actors who specialize in female roles are called onnagata. An onnagata is not simply a man in women's clothing — he is a highly trained specialist who embodies an ideal of femininity more refined than any real woman.

Kabuki stages have a hanamichi — a long runway that cuts through the audience — along which actors enter and exit. The seasoned fans who shout out the actor's family stage name ("Naritaya!" "Otowaya!") from the upper rear of the auditorium as he passes are called ōmukō. Their exquisitely timed calls heighten the performance, and the practice itself is a chic Edo-era tradition.

Today, the venues that perform full-scale kabuki every month are the Kabuki-za in Tokyo's Ginza district and the National Theatre in Hanzōmon. The Kabuki-za was founded in 1889; its current fifth-generation building was completed in 2013 and stands as a landmark blending tradition and modernity.

Noh's source lies in sarugaku, a popular performing art of the Heian period, but it was perfected in its current form in the fourteenth century by the father-and-son pair Kan'ami and Zeami. Zeami in particular established the aesthetic ideal of yūgen — "profound mystery" — through writings such as the Fūshikaden, and Noh secured its position as the ceremonial theatre of the warrior class under the patronage of the Muromachi shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.

What most defines Noh is the Noh mask. The lead role, the shite, usually wears a mask, and the small carved wooden expression carries the full range of human emotion. Famous masks include the koomote of a young woman, the hannya of a woman driven mad by jealousy, and the jō of an old man — and it is said that the same mask can appear to smile or weep when the actor merely tilts his head.

Beyond the acting itself, Noh is composed of elements such as the utai chant — sung from the side of the stage — and the shimai dance, performed with a folding fan or small props. Today, the National Noh Theatre in Tokyo's Sendagaya district is the largest hub, with regular monthly performances.

Bunraku — formally known as ningyō jōruri, "puppet narrative theatre" — is a puppet art perfected in seventeenth-century Osaka. If Edo was the town of kabuki, Osaka was the town of bunraku, a commercial city where townsperson culture blossomed and where masterpieces depicting the conflict between duty and human feeling, including double suicides, were born one after another. Chikamatsu Monzaemon's "Sonezaki Shinjū" is the representative work.

Bunraku's defining feature is the "three-person operation" by which a single principal puppet is manipulated by three people. The omozukai handles the head and right hand, the hidarizukai handles the left hand, and the ashizukai handles both feet — and the three breathe as one to bring a single puppet to life. Mastering perfect three-person operation is said to take at least thirty years — a discipline pursued over a lifetime.

Bunraku's headquarters remains the National Bunraku Theatre in Osaka's Nipponbashi district. Tokyo's National Theatre also stages several performances a year, and the company is highly regarded on its overseas tours.

What kabuki, Noh, and bunraku all share is the concept of "kata" (fixed forms) and the iemoto (grand-master) system. Kata are the patterns of movement and expression refined by predecessors over centuries, and performers drill them thoroughly into their bodies from a young age. Individuality is allowed to seep out only after the kata has been completely mastered — this is the aesthetic shared by all of Japan's traditional performing arts.

The iemoto system places at the top of each school a "grand master" — the head of the family — who confers certificates on disciples and preserves the unity of the school's art. In kabuki, hereditary stage names such as Ichikawa, Onoe, and Nakamura are passed from parent to child across generations, and stepping onto the stage from early childhood as part of this hereditary succession is taken for granted.

Many people who hear "classical performing arts" hesitate, fearing they will be too difficult or hard to understand linguistically. But each theatre now offers a simultaneous commentary service called the "earphone guide," available in both Japanese and English, that explains the plot and the meaning of costumes and music in real time. The English version is hugely popular with foreign tourists.

Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku are flowers of completely different colors that bloomed from the same Japanese soil. Kabuki answered the heat of the common people, Noh reflected the spirit of the warrior class, and Bunraku drew tears from the townspeople — each has been passed down for over four hundred years and still appears before us as a living stage. Once you experience the real thing, you will be able to see the richness of Japan from an entirely new angle.