Japanese Drama

I

Introduction

Japanese Drama, drama written and performed in Japan from about the 7th century to the present. Throughout this period Japanese drama evolved a wide variety of genres characterized generally by the fusion of dramatic, musical, and dance elements. The music and dance, as well as the subjects, settings, costumes, and acting styles, were rigidly stylized and, until recent times, offered relatively few realistic or naturalistic qualities. Some genres utilize almost exclusively a fixed repertoire of plays, often many centuries old.

The earliest known type of Japanese theatrical entertainment is gigaku, which was introduced into Japan in ad 612 from southern China; it is thought to have been ultimately of Indian or possibly even of Greek origin. Gigaku dances, performed with masks, seem to have been humorous. In the 8th century gigaku fell into disfavor because its frivolous character displeased the Japanese rulers of the period. It was supplanted largely by bugaku, an entertainment introduced from China. Bugaku dances portrayed simple situations such as the return of a general from war. The performers wore impressive robes, and their dances had exotic splendor. Japanese rulers, intent on imitating Chinese court etiquette, favored bugaku, both because of its solemnity and because of its similarity to Chinese court entertainments, and it quickly acquired a ritual character. Bugaku may now be seen only at ceremonies.

A type of acrobatic entertainment known as sangaku, transmitted similarly to Japan from the Asian continent and popular in the 8th century, also influenced Japanese drama. Typical acts included tightrope walking, juggling, and sword swallowing. A combination of these secular entertainments and the sacred dances and songs associated with the Shinto religion gradually evolved into more complex forms of drama.

Surviving documents from the 11th century describe short comic plays, and one play still performed, the ritual dance Okina, may date from this period. Plays were also performed at shrine festivals in support of prayers for harvests or to depict the history of the shrine. The actors and musicians were organized into troupes.

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II

Nō Drama

By the 14th century the theater had developed one of its foremost artistic achievements, nō drama (also spelled noh). These plays included solemn dances intended to suggest the deepest emotions of the principal character and were written in the poetic language of the Japanese classics. A program also often included kyōgen, or farces written in colloquial language.

Nō was brought to the level of great art by the genius of two dramatists, Kan’ami Kiyotsugu and his son Zeami Motokiyo. Nō was patronized by the Ashikaga shogunate after a shogun saw Zeami perform in 1374. Zeami developed nō into refined aristocratic drama, but after his death it tended to lose its creative vitality and become ritualistic. Many nō plays performed at present are by Zeami, and his books of criticism are considered the final authority on the subject. For a short period after the revolution known as the Meiji Restoration in 1868, nō was threatened with extinction because of its connections with the discredited shogunate. It survived the threat, however, and thereafter enjoyed popularity with specialized audiences.

An entire program of nō drama traditionally consists of five nō plays in poetry with music and kyogen farces in prose without music, performed alternately. Kyogen farces feature representational acting, and the actors wear neither masks nor makeup. Nō plays avoid representational accuracy in favor of a symbolic treatment of subjects concerning the worlds of the living and the dead. The principal types of nō plays are those dealing with deities, the ghosts of warriors, women with tragic destinies, mad persons, and devils or festive spirits. The actors, who often wear masks, are richly and elaborately costumed.

The nō drama is performed in a theater with a roofed stage. The audience is seated on two or, less commonly, three sides of the stage. The actors reach the stage by a passageway, called the bridge, which is marked by three pine trees. The only backdrop is a large painted pine. The scenery consists entirely of impressionistic props suggesting the outlines of a building, a boat, or any other object of importance to the play. Only male actors perform in nō dramas. When they play the roles of women or of men whose age is markedly different from their own, they wear masks, many of which are exceptionally beautiful. The nō drama also includes a chorus that sits at one side of the stage and recites for the actors when they dance, but the chorus has no identity in the drama. Full programs are seldom presented any longer, but kyogen continues to be an indispensable part of the entire performance, for it presents the humorous aspects of life with which nō is never concerned.

III

Puppet and Kabuki Theater

In the 16th and early 17th centuries two new popular forms appeared; they were the puppet theater, jōruri, also called bunraku, and a form known as kabuki. The puppet theater combines three elements: the puppets; the chanters who sing and declaim for the puppets; and the players of the shamisen, a three-stringed instrument, who provide the accompaniment. The greatest Japanese dramatist, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, wrote chiefly for the puppet theater, the artistic level of which is perhaps higher in Japan than anywhere else in the world.

The puppet theater, after attaining its greatest popularity in the 18th century, lost in public favor to the kabuki, which has continued to be the most popular traditional dramatic genre (see Japanese Music). By the mid-1980s kabuki was popular with American audiences, and troupes made annual appearances in the United States. Kabuki tends to be spectacle rather than drama. Original kabuki texts, as opposed to those adapted from the puppet theater, are of lesser importance than the remarkable acting, the music and dance, and the brilliantly colored settings. Kabuki plays are performed in large theaters, with a hanamichi, or raised platform, extending from the back of the theater to the stage.

In addition to the traditional drama, a modern theatrical repertoire consisting of original Japanese plays in a modern idiom and of translations of European plays has been active in Japan since the beginning of the 20th century. Some 20th-century playwrights have attempted to compromise between traditional Japanese forms and essentially Western idioms, either by introducing modern psychology into their treatment of the ancient tales or by making kabuki-style plays out of such European classics as English writer William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Highly successful modern presentations of traditional themes are offered in Five Modern Nō Plays (1956) by Mishima Yukio. Other plays, notably Twilight Crane (1949) by Kinoshita Junji, are derived from old folktales. Many contemporary Japanese playwrights deal with such themes as conflict in modern Japanese society and problems of social injustice; other playwrights prefer to work out Japanese equivalents of modern symbolic drama or of the American musical comedy.

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