So, first semester of studying japanese I had to take a class in japanese history and I can honestly say that I'm pretty bad with history, western or japanese so when it started, what I knew about old Japan was most likely that samurais are japanese warriors.
*sound of echoing silence*
Yeah, probably just that (like I said, I barely know any history, and funny thing is that today japanese history is the one history I know the best).
Because it was so different from western history I was quite amazed, and when we then had a lecture in old culture, as in entertainment, I was hooked.
Our teacher showed us short videos of the 3 main traditional theaterforms from Japan; Noh (no idea why we spell it like that when the kanji is read Nou, but whatever), Kabuki and Bunraku, and I was so fascinated by all 3, but most of all Kabuki.
I know that among westerners...okey, among everyone, japanese or not, the main audience is middleaged to old, and people who are into popular culture (of today) is very rarely into this (that is probably why most people laugh at me when I say I like visual kei and Kabuki, very strange combination). But I couldn't help but to see some serious recemblances between Kabuki and visual kei culture a week ago when I went to Asakusa Public Hall.
Posters of this month's program
This is not some groundshaking, new information, as a matter of fact people have compared Kabuki and visual kei for a long time, but I don't agree with that kind of resemblence because some people are trying so hard to make it sound like visual kei has Kabuki as some sort of rolemodel which is obviously wrong since most people who are into visual kei, including the performers, are not fans of Kabuki since they usually want to represent something "new" and not old culture.
So here's some basic information about Kabuki, in case someone would like to know more about it or just isn't familiar with this form of theater.
It was first performed in the 1600's, by a woman! She and some other females began performing dances (dances usually tells a story in Japan) and the women danced as males aswell! The thing was that these women were involved in prostitution so the government didn't aprove of this and banned them from performing. Instead young boys began to do it, but later it turned out the same way. They did prostitution on the side and was banned so left were only older men and since the tradition has kept going. Certain families perform, and all parts are played by men no matter what age! So, a young boy by the age of 10 could make his first appearance playing the part of a 30 year old samurai. It's not common, mostly kids has kids parts, but for a first performance the family might want to introduce their new star in a ravishing role. The more common it is to see a 70-year old man playing the part of a young woman. It might feel a bit weird, but if you have a seat in the back you wont notice the difference (hehe). Well, seriously speaking, the art of Kabuki is to capture the character completly, bodylanguage etc, so it should not matter if a 70-year old plays a young girl.
The thing people love to compare with visual kei, except for men dressing up as women, is the "kata". Kata in Kabuki is basically steps, but it is way more fixed than western theater or dances! There's certain ways certain characters are supposed to walk, stand, talk, fight, etc, and it doesn't change, EVER! Among those kata, there's especially one that fascinates me, it's called "mie" and that is performed whenever the story reaches some sort of climax, when something important happens and what's happening is that the actor, or several depending on the scene, will just paus and place himself in a pose and at the same time role his head slightly and then just fix his position and head until he's completly still! This might sound weird so if you want to see how this might look you can see it in this video (0:21)
There's also "kata" for the audience, at least if you want to. I was very suprised the first time I went to see Kabuki because all of a sudden some man just shouted something out. Weird, I thought, I didn't think the actors made one of those weird public entrances from the audience seat you can see sometimes in western theater. But of course it wasn't. By the end of that performance I had heard so many people all over the venue who shouted that I understood it was the audience. The thing is that you just don't shout randomly, you usually shout the performers name and also during some special moment, like a mie or when the character enters. That's usually what people like to connect to visual kei since many bands has the same thing, like I mentioned before you're supposed to do different hand movements, sing a long in certain parts or even dance.
What I did realise and found funny this time at the Kabuki theater was that the fanculture is very similar! Kabuki really is the middleaged woman's visual kei scene. They didn't just sell the progam which was full of nice pictures of these young boys both in make up and without, they also had a 2015 calendar with them, and of course the traditional photos from the play (I find them to be almost like the cheki's you can get at concerts, just bigger and better quality...for the same price grrrrr).
For the first time I acctually bought 2 of these photos being sold.
When I walked out from the theater there were groups of people taking pictures infront of the building togheter with the pictures which are supposed to look like old ukiyo-e (woodblock prints made of geisha's, kabuki actors etc). Not that different from exiting a club in Shinjuku after a visual kei performance I thought.
The posters meant to look like ukiyo-e.
