SOURCE: Arnott, Peter. “The Theatre Suspected.” In The Theatres of Japan, pp. 152-74. London: Macmillan, 1969.

[In the following excerpt, Arnott argues that the structure of Kabuki is distinctly different from that of modern Western drama, as it presents a succession of individual moments in response to the Buddhist idea of impermanence; is self-conscious about the dramatic utility of its elements; reproduces the sentence-pattern of the Japanese language; and mirrors the hopes and fears of its audience through romantic stories.]

The present kabuki stage has its own permanent architectural features, though these may often be disguised with scenery. Downstage right is a grille behind which the musicians sit. Any scenery set in front of it is, almost invariably, similarly pierced, so that even in the most realistic set the musicians' place is obvious. Downstage left is the small alcove with its miniature revolve, the usual place for the joruri chanter. If the setting makes this impossible, there is another, higher alcove he can use; and when the set is really complicated, he may be driven out upon the forestage. Most of the stage space is occupied by the large revolve, and studded with trapdoors, some large enough for whole buildings or bridges to rise into sight. Stage settings are unfailingly magnificent, and utilize the full width of the stage to show several buildings, or rooms in the same building, side by side. As the subject-matter is largely domestic, interior settings are the most familiar. The rooms may be shut off by screens or blinds and successively disclosed as the action demands, thus giving the effect of a series of small stages within the larger one, not unlike the ‘simultaneous staging’ of the medieval morality plays, where all the required locations were on view at the same time and opened and used as appropriate.

By Western standards these settings show a curious combination of styles. The buildings themselves are usually solidly constructed and realistic in every detail (the time needed to erect such sets accounts for the many intermissions in a kabuki programme and contributes not a little to its length). Surrounding details tend to be realistic also—real hedges, real trees, solid fences and gates. But these may be set within a framework of other trees painted on canvas flats, like the exteriors of the mid-nineteenth-century Western theatre, and invariably cut off short below the sight-line; these in turn are backed not by a cyclorama, but by neutrally painted flats butted together at angles, like a folding screen. Most of these peripheral units must be mobile; when the revolve turns, wings slide in and out, new groundrows appear, and branches fold out of sight. This sort of kabuki scenery, in its elegant, flimsy, painted artificiality, is reminiscent of the cardboard delicacy of the Victorian toy theatre and operates in much the same way. It is as mobile as the actors—sometimes more so.

Act viii of the famous Kanadehon Chushingura (The Forty-Seven Ronin) shows the journey of a mother and her daughter to a far estate to enforce a neglected marriage contract. On their way they pass a wedding procession, which occasions mournful reflections on the contrast between their present undignified journey and the lavish ceremony which ought to have been theirs. The scenery makes the journey for them. We first see cut-out trees against a black backdrop. These fold into the wings, and the curtain drops from sight to reveal a panorama of Mount Fuji behind a groundrow of low hills. The wedding procession is shown as in the middle distance by small cut-out figures moving up the hillside. As the women come nearer to their goal, Mount Fuji is replaced by a view of clouds, distant houses and a castle, and, in the final transformation, by a handsome pavilion standing in a lake. This is scenery as the theatres of the English Restoration used it, in their first discovery of stage mechanics; it has its own life and its own moments of glory, independent of the contributions of the actors. Thanks to elaborate and flawlessly operated stage machinery, this mobility is not confined to flat pieces. Huge built settings rise and spread themselves, fold up and sink from sight. The set becomes another actor, and frequently receives its own well-justified applause. Much of the joy lies in watching these stage mechanics, which Japanese audiences have always loved. In the early days of the cinema many were more interested in the projector than in the screen.

Kabuki makes no attempt to baffle the audience. On the contrary, the mechanics are usually patent. We applaud the artifice, not the illusion. Add to this the full resources of modern stage lighting, and you have a stage which is a pictorial pastiche, in part anachronistic, but never inharmonious, a combination of elements from every period since the art began. The lighting, in fact, reveals the same inconsistencies as the set. Special effects are usually handled with the utmost realism, but the mainstage lighting is flat and unselective. The auditorium lighting is keyed to that of the stage. Normally, as in noh, the house-lights stay at least half up. For night scenes, however, when any spill from the auditorium would ruin the stage picture, the house is plunged in darkness. But kabuki prefers its actors brightly lit. Scenes of darkness are kept to a minimum, and at the first convenient pretext the lights are brought full up again. Thus a single tiny lantern brought upon the stage can have an amusingly disproportionate effect; as soon as it appears the stage is once more radiant. Properties are impeccably constructed, perfect in every detail, and often at great expense, though the budget has been curtailed in recent years. It is often these tiny details of a production that stick in the mind when the rest has faded. In Saigo to Butahime, one of the more modern kabuki plays, the action takes place in a geisha house, and involves the hopeless love of a fat and ugly geisha for a fugitive revolutionary. In mutual despair they decide on suicide. The geisha throws open the windows, the wind blows out the lantern and moonlight floods the room. They are interrupted by two of the revolutionary's followers, who run in with lamps; by their light the lantern is seen still swinging gently where the wind had caught it. It is a minute detail; no one would have missed it if it had not been there. But it is this perfection of realistic detail within the framework of a generally stylized performance that characterizes kabuki. Sometimes, as in the settings, there must be a compromise between the formal and the naturalistic. We have already seen the kyogen horse, which owes its shape solely to dramatic convention, and not at all to nature. The kabuki horse is half nature, half convention: a detailed head and body supported by four very human limbs. Act v of Kanadehon Chushingura presents a wild boar in the same manner, impersonated by a man on all fours inside a hollow body. Comparison of these conventions illuminates the aesthetic theories that produce them.

Amid all this scenic splendour the floor is usually left bare. There is no attempt to cover its naked boards with painted soil, grass or masonry. Trees, rocks and hills emerge from it abruptly, not blended with a groundcloth. In kabuki theory, as in noh, tension is assumed between the moving vertical line of the actor and the horizontal of the stage, and in both forms this contact is essential to the dance. The characteristic noh walk, with gliding step and knees slightly bent, suggests this tension; it is as if the actor were fighting a force stronger than gravity, so that he can raise his feet only with an effort, and the resulting stamp assumes particular significance. This is no less true in kabuki, though the movements are more realistically conceived. The bare plank floor emphasizes the essential artificiality of the setting; it is no illusionistic picture, but, frankly and admittedly, a stage contrivance.

Kabuki acting, at first acquaintance, seems as eclectic as its settings and to change its style not merely from play to play, but from moment to moment. It is, in fact, made up of patterned movement and based on a rigidly preserved traditional choreography. The actor receives extensive training in movement and gesture, which he then applies, guided by the interpretations of the past, to the role he is playing. This tradition is no less strong for being preserved largely without written records; there is no Japanese equivalent of Laban Notation. In consequence the actor is an imitator rather than an innovator. Improvisation is not easy, nor does the complexity of movement lend itself to experiment or free interpretation. Actors perpetuate their predecessors' styles with their names: in their way the gestures of kabuki have become as stereotyped as noh and the actors try to follow the form established as most suitable to each occasion. Like noh, too, they have their basis in the movements and gestures of everyday life, but sublimate them into dance.

Within its self-imposed limits, however, kabuki is much more flexible. In performance the technique may produce what looks like almost total naturalism, something in the manner of the D'Oyly Carte operetta style, where, though we know that the acting is rigidly traditional and every small move is prescribed, this is not always easily apparent on the stage. At the other end of the scale it may turn into highly formal pantomime and dance. The musical-comedy form, in fact, may be the best analogy. In My Fair Lady we do not take it amiss when Higgins, Pickering and Eliza suddenly break from a naturalistic scene into a dance, or when a heterogeneous collection of bystanders, without warning, forms into a line and sings. This gives some idea of the range permissible to kabuki. There is something of the ritual of noh here, and something, too, of the freedom of the street performer. Kabuki actors may suddenly freeze into an elaborate tableau at moments of high tension; they may stiffen into a fantastic pose, arms outstretched, eyes crossed (a mie); they may perform violent acrobatics to indicate a state of mind.

The costumes, even for the smallest roles, are sumptuous. More realistic than those of noh, they are still far from completely so. Masks are not worn, but the make-up is often so elaborate as to constitute a mask, and is controlled by no less rigid conventions. Young women and handsome and sympathetic young men have dead-white faces, like the ‘sympathetic female’ masks of noh, and derived from accepted social custom. In a sunbaked society, pale skin denotes the upper classes, privileged to sit at home in the shade while others go to work. In the conventions of classical Mediterranean art, women were usually shown white and men brick-red; the well-born Roman women wore white make-up, and leukos, ‘white’, is a familiar term in Greek tragedy to describe the ideal of feminine beauty. Conversely, in modern society, where the masses wear an urban pallor, the aristocracy affects an out-door look: it signifies that they are rich enough to spend their winters on the Riviera. The women of kabuki, like their feudal prototypes, paint out their eyebrows and wear new ones higher up the forehead; their wigs are faithful copies of historical exemplars. White make-up is also worn by thieves—perhaps because kabuki, with its customary perversity, conceives them as an underworld aristocracy; perhaps because, like the genuine aristocracy, they spent most of their lives hiding from the sun; perhaps for technical reasons, the white face being favoured because it showed up better by candlelight. Rustic or villainous characters are made up in various shades of red. Generally speaking, the more evil a character, the redder he becomes. (It may or may not be relevant that the Japanese turn bright red when drunk.) Kabuki make-up at its most exaggerated is seen in the aragoto style, which uses broad bands of colour to throw the muscular structure into high relief.

Kabuki speech, though closer to the vernacular than noh, is still far from colloquial. Based on old forms, it has survived as a special stage language; it is the spoken Japanese of three centuries ago, and may be hardly more comprehensible to the average member of the audience than the archaic High Court style of noh. Diction (which is, by Western standards, appalling, though this is hardly relevant: the Japanese have always preferred the visual image to the word) employs a rhythmic intonation, which at one end of the scale may approach naturalistic speech-patterns and at the other produce a highly formal sing-song chant; as with the gestures, there is a wide range of variation possible between these two extremes. ‘Women’ speak in a falsetto, which, though it may not much resemble a real woman's voice, certainly comes far closer than the women of noh, who may often be basses. Onnagata acting, in fact, reveals most clearly the distinctive features of the kabuki style. It is certainly not naturalistic acting; though here again we must enter a proviso and remember that its models, Japanese feudal womanhood, themselves owed more to art than to nature. In the studied precision of their footwork, the handling of the robe and the sinuous movements of the head and neck, the onnagata players present a convincing and highly acceptable impression of a woman, compared to which the actresses of new kabuki seem strangely limp and colourless.

The kabuki actor, then, reveals himself to the audience by a code of gestures more or less abstracted from real life, and balletically conceived. They do not exactly reproduce the gestures of real life, but are usually close enough for their meaning to be apparent (as in the kabuki battles, where swords never actually touch, and a thrust aimed in the general direction of the opponent's body indicates a death-blow). But every move is important. There is no such thing as a meaningless gesture. Each must be given its full weight in time, and the more important gestures must be artificially prolonged. […] This accounts for the apparently erratic and generally slow tempo of kabuki, and for the complaint heard often from Western visitors that it is hard to tell where the climaxes are meant to be. It is a performance built around the individual actor, who in turn builds his performance around the individual movements. And this means that what we should call trivial gestures may be given as much importance, seemingly, as large ones; by the same token, small-part players from time to time may dominate the stage while the principals stand motionless to wait their turn.

Examples are essential here. The play Honcho Nijushi Ko (Twenty-four Examples of Filial Piety) is based, like so many, on family rivalry. The scene is the house of Nagao Kenshin, where Katsuyori, the son of his enemy, has contrived to get himself employed as a gardener to spy out his plans. Kenshin penetrates the disguise, but does not reveal his knowledge. To rid himself of the enemy within his gates, he sends the youth to deliver a letter, and immediately orders his warriors to follow and kill him. It is a scene we have seen many times in gangster films. As handled by a Western author and director it would probably go something like this: Kenshin gives Katsuyori the letter, with many protestations of trust and affection; Katsuyori departs; Kenshin immediately turns to his henchmen, who have been waiting sinister and impassive near by, and says, ‘Kill him’; blackout. (A close Western classical example is, in fact, the murder of Banquo in Macbeth.) The director would work for the contrast between the false amiability and the curt brutality of the last command; an elaborate discussion of how he was going to be killed, with what or by whom, would seem to be an anticlimax. The scene would end on a desirable note of tension.

This is not what happens in kabuki. Here Kenshin gives Katsuyori his instructions and sends him off down the hanamichi. He then summons his warriors. First comes a swordsman, who performs a martial dance to demonstrate his prowess, and runs down the hanamichi at accelerating speed. Then comes a spearman, who does a similar dance of exactly equal length, and departs in the same fashion. The curtain closes.

By our standards this is anticlimactic. Most Western directors would, I suspect, feel that if one were going to show the warriors at all, two are either too many or not enough. But by kabuki standards the warriors have their individual statements to make, and, like politicians on television, demand equal time. Another example is found in Sannin Katawa, which has already been briefly noted as farce derived from kyogen. A wealthy lord offers employment to the handicapped, and three applicants arrive: a cripple, a mute and a blind man. Each enters up the hanamichi, with a long and elaborate pantomime of his particular affliction. Each presents himself in the same way, in the same amount of time. A Western director would feel the compulsion to vary the pattern by bringing them on in different ways, or at least to work to a climax by increasing the tempo, with the second entrance faster than the first, and the third fastest of all. Kabuki sees them as separate ‘turns’, in which three actors, of equal importance, have their individual statements to make, which are relished by the audience each on its own merits. Each exists in its own right, not as one component of a larger whole, and responsive to the pattern of that whole. Kabuki in its traditional form has no director. This is actor-centred drama.

Kabuki is very much the drama of the individual moment. We see this first of all in the settings. The scenery is allowed its individual moments of glory. Earle Ernst insists that it is never permitted to dominate the actors. I find, on the contrary, that there are many moments when it clearly does so; the action freezes while we watch an elaborate change or a vast building rise into place, and when we have enjoyed this sufficiently, the actors' movement resumes. It would be fairer to say that the scenery interacts with the players as they interact with each other, each one being dominant in turn. The division of the stage space follows the same pattern. Although the sets are vast and lavish, they are rarely used in full for any length of time. Parts are used in isolation from the rest; rooms not required by the immediate action may be shuttered off, or, if they remain occupied, the characters in them group into a silent tableau till they are called upon to speak. This technique is seen most obviously in the ‘parallel-action’ plays (of which Yoshinogawa is only one of several examples), where the wide stage becomes to all intents and purposes two, used alternately. And the actors usually act against the setting, not within it; they resign no part of their individuality to their surroundings. Setting and action are, to this extent, independent; the setting is permitted to make its own statement, and then yields the stage to the actors. This represents a conception of the scenic function which has now largely vanished from the Western world. The modern directorial concept seeks for a unity, and sees actor, set and lighting as working together in a larger whole. One may, however, still find traces of the older attitude. I recall, in Athens, a production of Macbeth by the Greek National Theatre. The setting was exceedingly beautiful and striking: baronial Gothic seen through Greek eyes, refined to pure economy of line, with a perfect sense of period that was at the same time modern. The acting, by contrast, was Victorian. Alexis Minotis, as Macbeth, and his wife, Katina Paxinou, as his lady, virtually ignored the possibilities that the setting offered; they played firmly in front of it, obliterating it from the audience's mind, and taking centre stage as if by divine right; it was like seeing John Philip Kemble on a stage designed by Loudon Saint-hill. Kabuki has something of the same effect. Its movements and groupings are dictated by a company etiquette and a traditional conception of stage behaviour which does not necessarily arise from the logic of the play-structure.

We have spoken of the players as ‘interacting’; this term must now be severely qualified, Kabuki admits no concept of ensemble playing. Crowd scenes, for this reason, are lackadaisical affairs that would make the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen turn in his grave. Their members are still individuals; there is no unity of purpose or group sense, and important crowd lines are lost in the shuffle. Directed kabuki (as at the National Theatre) handles its crowds balletically, spacing the members with geometrical precision and letting them move, turn, and even sometimes speak as one. A crowd scene which is effective in naturalistic terms lies outside the compass of kabuki; the conditions of the art reject it.

The relationship between two actors in dialogue is the same as that between two groups of actors on the split stage: when one is busy, the other is still. Or, to put this in noh terminology, two actors playing a scene together alternate the roles of sh'te and waki. They act as ‘feeds’ for each other in turn, and do their best not to detract from the individuality of the other's performance. They stand together, but do not work together; as Ernst puts it ‘the almost complete absence of physical contact in the kabuki. … appears to be the result of the unwillingness of the actor to forfeit any part of his expressiveness to another actor’. In dialogue this may be seen by watching the actor who is not speaking (though this is difficult; the combination of sing-song recitative and stylized gesture has the same hypnotic attraction as noh). He either does not react at all, or deliberately delays his reaction until his partner's lines have finished and his own begun. Even the word ‘dialogue’ must be qualified. The lines do not truly interact, but exist as a series of separate though related statements, marked off and denying any sense of progression by the convention of dropping the voice at the end of each line. In this they closely resemble the structure of much of the stichomythia of Greek tragedy, which is not so much ‘dialogue’ in our sense of the word as two independent and alternating lines of thought.

This analogy may perhaps be taken a little further. The structure of the kabuki dance recalls Plutarch's description of its Greek counterpart as an enchainment of separate, isolated mimetic gestures, steps punctuated by attitudes. This pattern is substantially followed in the structure of Greek tragedy, conceived as a series of independent scenes, which, though they all relate to the central story line, do not necessarily relate in detail to each other. This produces certain inconsistencies, in character as in plot, which are seen even more obviously in Greek comedy, where the characterization may shift radically between the beginning of the play and its end; Greek drama, too, is responsive to the dictates of the individual moment. These inconsistencies have been seized upon by the more pedantic scholars with the same enthusiasm the Baker Street Irregulars display in proving Dr. Watson a bigamist—and with as little point. They are inconsistencies only by our standards. Greek tragedy and comedy, like kabuki, adhere to a different conception of theatrical performance. Kabuki is seen as a succession of individual moments. In this it responds, hardly less than noh, to the essential Buddhist doctrine that the world around us is impermanent, and exists only in a series of fleeting, unrelated and accidental phenomena. We see this in literary form in Japanese nature-poetry: where Wordsworth defined his art as emotion recollected in tranquillity, the haiku represents emotion taken on the wing, a fleeting moment frozen in verse like a moth in amber. The same attitude explains the modern passion for snapshot photography, and the balanced perfection of each individual frame in the Japanese film. But where noh attempts to transcend the momentary world, kabuki reproduces it. It does not try to build in time or to bring the action to a climax. On the contrary, kabuki philosophy insists that the play should be seen as a succession of impressive visual moments, and that the action could be stopped at any time to show a perfectly balanced tableau. This explains the apparent incivility of the audience. Knowing what kabuki is, and the sort of continuity they may expect, they assume that they can wander into the theatre at any point and still see something that will immediately interest them and draw them into the action. Unfortunately many carry over their kabuki habits to modern plays. The stragglers may still be arriving half-way through the first Act, as if Giraudoux constructed his plays on the same pattern as Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Western directors working with Japanese actors in modern plays have found that their greatest difficulty lies in persuading the cast to accept a concept of play structure so radically different from their own; they still insist on playing only from scene to scene, and cannot grasp the necessity of subordinating one scene to another, or sustaining a progression of interest throughout the play.

One further example, and a particularly striking one, may serve to illustrate the difference between the traditional Japanese concept and our own. The dead who litter the stage after a kabuki sword-fight normally get up and walk away when the battle is over. This happens even in ‘new kabuki’, which is much closer to our naturalism. Before condemning this practice as ridiculous, we should reflect that it is, in itself, no more ridiculous than our custom of resurrecting the dead for a curtain call, or, indeed, of permitting a curtain call at all. Its apparent oddity derives from our conception of stage time. The naturalistic theatre tends to equate stage time, at least approximately, with real time (though it may be divided arbitrarily into acts, and punctuated with intermissions, to accommodate the physical needs of the spectators), just as it tends to equate stage behaviour, at least approximately, with off-stage behaviour. Thus, the play is considered in extenso, and the effect of any action is considered to remain in force until the next convenient stopping place. The Japanese theatre, which, like the Greek, is not primarily interested in the literal reproduction of actuality, considers time to be expandable or compressible according to the dramatic exigencies of the moment, divides the play into a series of momentary impressions, and sees no compulsion to prolong the effects of an action beyond their dramatic utility. Just as the ‘invisible’ stage assistant removes properties that have no further purpose, the dead may rise again when they have made their point. To keep them lying there would be untidy, superfluous and dramatically irrelevant.

It might be argued, indeed, that the structure of the kabuki play reproduces the characteristic sentence-pattern of the Japanese language. This analogy certainly holds true for Greek, where the love of parallelism, syntactical symmetry and balanced clauses is reflected in the ‘double structure’ so beloved of Greek tragedy, where two stories are balanced against each other in the manner of debate, and the play takes its point from the opposition between them. Japanese is largely paratactic. It has no subordination and little inflection; the words and phrases are strung together in an unrelieved and undifferentiated continuum, with the sentence ending denoted by the principal verb. To use a text-book illustration: Sono hito-ga motte-i-masu mono-wa handobagu-de su (What she is holding is her handbag) is really a combination of two sentences: Sono hito-ga aru mono-wa motte-i-masu; sono mono-wa handobagu-de su (She is holding a certain thing; that thing is a handbag).

The function of the words in the sentence is indicated not by their own inflections, but by the addition of the appropriate suffixes, or postpositions; thus, wa normally indicates that the preceding word or phrase is the subject of the sentence, and de denotes the predicate complement. In the same way kabuki imposes on the continuum of the action certain arbitrary devices to indicate that a certain moment is of particular importance. The climax does not evolve obviously from the action itself; it is imposed on the action by external means.

The most obvious of these devices is the clapper-board, operated at stage left by a grave, black-robed stage assistant, which not only signals the opening of the play, but underlines significant moments within it. Several sharp beats draw attention to an important gesture, and a whole crescendo accompanies a sustained passage of critical action or an exit down the hanamichi. Alternatively, the unseen off-stage orchestra may mark selected passages with music, or the actors may apply their own emphasis by freezing into a mie. Earle Ernst happily compares these violent, limb-locked posturings to the taut, musclebound ferocity of ‘temple guardians’, the effigies of minor deities that flank the gateway of a Buddhist shrine. They surely owe at least as much to the puppet actors that inspired so many of the details of kabuki. Having suddenly fallen into a mie, the actors may just as rapidly walk away from it; the continuum is resumed. In noh we saw how the stage dynamics of Western practice could be ignored, for the audience already knows where to look and what the critical moments are. In kabuki, with its wider stage and more diffuse plots, the mie and its cognate devices provide the requisite additional emphasis. Each act customarily closes with a tableau, and it is interesting to see how this practice has been retained, half unconsciously, in productions of modern Japanese and Western plays. Actors will often hold position for what seems an interminable time before the curtain finally falls.

Among the actors, efficient and ubiquitous, robed and veiled in black like the ninja of the feudal war machine, move the stage assistants. Like their counterparts in noh, they are seen but yet invisible. They belong to the mechanics of the play, and like the ropes, pulleys, trapdoors and the stage revolve are apparent if one cares to look. Their chief function is to keep the stage tidy. Any discarded property is immediately removed—even the shoes which, by Japanese custom, are taken off before entering a house and treading on the cherished tatami. For all its spectacular nature, kabuki still retains this aspect of the dramatic economy of noh. Once its utility is over, a property becomes a useless distraction and merely clutters up the stage. The assistants may also take an open part in scene changes: one may even see them stroll on with hammers, in mid-performance, to make a minor repair to the set. A traditional function was to hold candles before a leading actor's face to give him prominence at moments of high intensity—a visual equivalent of the clapper-board, and analogous to a cinematic close-up. Modern lighting has made this function redundant, but they are still called upon to assist the actor physically in other ways. They help in the tricky on-stage costume changes, when two or three may gather round an actor at the same time (Japanese television has adapted this, not unwittily, for men's tailoring commercials). In Shunkan they have a more arduous duty. At one point a ship appears on stage, and warriors pour down the gang-plank to the shore. The warriors are heavy and the gang-plank flimsy. Underneath it sits the stage assistant, doggedly supporting it with his shoulders.

Their role may sometimes be more active. In a later scene of Honcho Nijushi Ko, Kenshin's daughter, who loves Katsuyori, although he is her father's sworn enemy, steals a sacred heirloom from her home on his behalf. It is a magnificent battle helmet, draped in fox fur. She intends to row secretly across the lake to meet her lover, but remembers, too late, that it is winter; the lake is covered by a sheet of ice, too thin to walk across, too solid to row through. As she stands in this Eliza-like predicament, irresolute on a bridge in her garden, she chances to glance into the pool beneath and sees the reflection of a fox beside her own. She is terrified, but after several experiments realizes that it comes from the fox-fur helmet in her hand. Remembering that the fox is an emissary of the gods, she assumes it came in answer to her prayers. According to an old legend, the fox was the first to cross the early winter ice, finding a safe path across the treacherous crust. If she follows the fox, she will be safe. At this point, as the helmet and the fox-divinity are identified in her mind, the heirloom with its swinging mane takes on a life of its own. Supported by a property man on a long pole, it moves ahead, inviting her to follow; it is operated by the korumbo, or ‘black man’, as kabuki calls the stage assistant, as though it were a puppet. As she runs after it she is encouraged by further signs of vulpine favour—‘fox fires’, will-o'-the-wisps, floating in the darkness to reveal a supernatural agency at work. These too are held by the assistants, on long poles like fishing rods.

We have called the korumbo conventionally invisible, as in noh, but the convention is a different and in certain ways an uneasy one. A stage convention works only when both sides understand the rules and abide by them. As long as the audience accepts that a man in black, as in kabuki, or in an unobtrusive uniform, as in noh, is meant to be invisible, he is; his presence is neither disturbing nor embarrassing. The kabuki assistant, however, often seems reluctant to accept the convention himself. To begin with, his costume makes a greater attempt at real concealment. In addition, he appears self-conscious. His movements are furtive; he tries to be really invisible. He enters at a run, bent double, and makes himself as inconspicuous as he can behind the scenery. Sometimes he will spend a whole scene lying on the floor behind a bench, to be in position to remove when it is no longer needed. And, paradoxically, the more he tries to hide himself, the more obvious he is. To pretend that a man is invisible, as noh does, is the easiest thing in the world. But there is no way of making him really invisible, except by removing him from the stage altogether. The harder kabuki tries, the more distracting its failure becomes. In some plays the korumbo changes colour for more effective camouflage. In snow-bound scenes (one of the rare occasions when the stage is covered with a floor-cloth) he wears white, to blend into the scenery. The National Theatre production of Shunkan offers a new variation. Here the scene represents a barren island set against a background of stylized waves. At one point, several characters have discarded their sandals and left them lying by a rock. The stage assistant enters to remove them in the customary fashion. But he is not wearing black. His robe is decorated with a swirling pattern of blue and white, the sea-motif of the background against which he is seen. In isolation the effect is strangely beautiful; it is as if a stray wave had come in and washed the sandals out to sea. In context, however, it rings false. The disguise is so nearly successful that it attracts the wrong sort of attention. This may be a historical problem; there is not enough material for us to judge. The self-consciousness of the modern korumbo may stem from the insidious intrusions of more recent theatre concepts, in the light of which he is an anachronism. It is more likely, however, that the difference between the wholly successful noh convention and its only partially successful kabuki counterpart has always existed. Kabuki, as we have seen, in many ways effects a compromise between the formal and the naturalistic styles. This seems to be one compromise that did not completely succeed. In noh the stage assistant is of a piece with his formal surroundings; against the more elaborate stage pictures of kabuki he is occasionally incongruous.

The world of kabuki is that of its audience. It mirrors the hopes and fears, pleasures and privations, hard facts and fantasies, of a class which admitted and resented its inferiority and sought romance and temporary escape in the theatre. Its attitude towards the samurai is ambivalent, a love-hate relationship, cherishing what it affects to mock. With one half of its being it fawns upon the aristocracy and builds its plays around their lives and their philosophy. This offered material of great dramatic value. The samurai imposed upon himself a code no less strict than he enforced on others, and one which has been popularized under the later name of bushido ‘the way of the warrior’. His life was dedicated to his immediate lord; the feudal system with its hierarchical structure and restriction of allegiance only made this loyalty fiercer. The samurai was pledged to preserve his lord's honour and his own. To this all else—his life, his family, his possessions—was subordinate. Insults could be wiped out only in blood. The vendetta was not merely tolerated but recognized by law, which with characteristic bureaucratic caution demanded notice in writing of attempted revenge-murder. For the defeated samurai there was only one way out: seppuku, suicide by disembowelment. Capture was the ultimate ignominy; warriors were trained and expected to fight to the death. This attitude has been held to explain, though not to condone, the inhumane treatment meted out to prisoners in the Second World War: an army conditioned to give their lives without question had no sympathy for opponents who surrendered.

Kabuki played fruitfully with these examples. The samurai code was one of the chief themes of popular literature. Romantic-historical fiction in cheap editions depicted the exploits of the samurai in war and familiarized the lower orders with the spirit that motivated their masters. This influence was not confined to art. Some tried to emulate the samurai, if not in their lives, at least in their deaths, and appropriated the forbidden privilege of seppuku. The plays capitalized on this popular interest. Jidaimono, or ‘historical pieces’, ransack the remote and recent past. The famous vendetta of the Soga brothers, who sought vengeance for their father's death, inspired a whole series of plays and dances; one of them was traditionally included in every New Year's programme. Tengajaya no Katakiuchi traces, through five long acts, the ramifications of a family feud in Osaka, based on an actual incident of 1609, and shows the picaresque adventures of a pair of brothers on their way to seek revenge. There are elaborate turns of fortune and comic as well as serious villains.

Other plays were based upon the great clan wars and the period of anarchy recorded in the Heike Monogatari and similar works; kabuki, like noh, found much material in epic. More recent political events were also treated, though with greater caution. The government prohibited the undisguised dramatization of contemporary events and the use of the real names of persons in authority, to prevent scandal. In consequence the plays were often moved back to an earlier period (as Verdi, after the initial fiasco of La Traviata, transposed it to a century before) and the names of the characters were slightly changed: the historical Mitsuhide Akechi became Mitsuhide Takechi, and Kenshin Uesugi became Kenshin Nagao.

The most famous vendetta play of all was Kanadehon Chushingura (The Alphabet Book of the Forty-seven Exemplary Loyal Subjects, but more familiar as The Forty-seven Ronin), based on a historical event of 1702. Dramatized in 1748 by three writers in collaboration (a familiar practice in kabuki, as in the Elizabethan theatre) it was one of over a hundred plays on a subject which continues to inspire a spate of films. Its principal interest here lies in the fact that it is a perfect illustration of the samurai code; its chief characters are loyal retainers who take upon themselves a vendetta bequeathed them by their master. He had died as a result of an insult and a quarrel, leaving them as ronin, masterless men. Forming an elaborate conspiracy, they took it on themselves to kill his enemy and offer his head on the grave of their lord. The law, as we have seen, demanded notice of such attempts in writing: this the ronin deliberately failed to give, as it would have warned the enemy of their intentions. Having accomplished their revenge, they notified the government of what they had done and calmly awaited the consequences. It was a cause célèbre, and dragged on for some time. Enormous public sympathy had been aroused, and the authorities were forced to proceed with discretion. The ronin were treated more like honoured guests than prisoners, and, when the verdict was inevitably given against them, were permitted the honour of seppuku, as samurai, rather than a common beheading. They were buried beside the lord they had avenged.

Kanadehon Chushingura, though its modern fame is partly factitious (it was banned by the American Occupation as embodying dangerous aspects of the Japanese feudal spirit, and the protests lasted for years), well illustrates both the rigours of the samurai code and the emulation it inspired in others. The audience, no less than the ronin, sought to identify themselves with their masters. This attitude manifests itself in kabuki in other ways. Even those plays, such as Sukeroku, which construct their own popular heroes and are apparently anti-samurai, transfer to the bourgeoisie the qualities which the aristocracy found admirable. Sukeroku's braggadocio is motivated by family honour. He is prepared to face all odds and hazard his life to recover the treasured sword. Kabuki portrays an aristocracy of its own, drawn from the stratum of society in which it had its being, that has its own code, dignity and traditions no less importunate than those of the samurai. Both classical and modern novelists, exploring the sociology of the sub-world, have revealed a hierarchy within a hierarchy, and a meticulous code of social observance. Sukeroku's female counterpart is his mistress, Agekami. Like the geisha in so many plays she is no common prostitute, but an Edo Marie Duplessis, a high courtesan with a will and character of her own. She distributes her favours not haphazardly, but to men that she respects; she is loving, devoted and loyal. The husband-wife relationships of jidaimono, the fated marriages and doomed betrothals, and the conflicts of interest that they provoke, have their parallel in the liaisons between townsman and courtesan. Kabuki transfers to its world and its characters the standards of the other.

The ultimate extension of this attitude is the creation of plays dealing with an underworld aristocracy, thieves, highwaymen and other criminals who inhabit a realm outside the law, but still embody the samurai code. They are Macheaths without the surrounding squalor—or Mack the Knife with a samurai sword; robust, swaggering figures whose derring-do wins admiration, and whose peculations are on an enormous scale. In these plays kabuki's ambivalent social attitude is most clearly revealed. While glorifying an anarchic demi-monde in which characters win wealth and prestige by crimes against society, it still upholds that society's supreme virtues; fantasy-escape from repression is, at the same time, a reaffirmation of faith. The values are the same, though the personnel and milieu have changed. Ishikawa Goemon, ‘the best thief in Japan’, an actual personage who flourished at the end of the sixteenth century, inspired more than ten kabuki scripts. Boiled to death in a cauldron, he left his own poetic epitaph: ‘Even if the time should come when there is no more sand left on the beach, the world will have its complement of thieves.’ One of the longest plays about him, Sanmon Gosan no Hiri, was the first produced in Osaka in 1778; the gorgeous showmanship of the opening scenes reveals the admiration with which such characters were regarded. Goemon has come from China to help a plot to overthrow the government. The play opens with a balletic duel between his followers and the army, in which the latter are robbed of the huge sum of 7000 ryo. An inner curtain falls to show one of kabuki's most breathtaking scenic effects, a view of the upper story of the great gate (sanmon) of the Nanzenji Shrine in Kyoto. It towers above the blossoming cherry-trees, brilliantly lacquered in vermilion and gold. Goemon is a brilliant spectacle himself, with gold pipe and gold-embroidered Chinese coat. In spite of his perilous situation—he has taken this high refuge to avoid his enemies—his opening words are magnificently casual: ‘What a lovely view!’ As he struts and postures on the balcony, the cherry-trees are pulled away and the building rises, so that we now see the full height of the gate and the courtyard in front. The technical feat is even more impressive when one realizes that the supporting machinery was first built in the Edo period, without benefit of electricity or steel ropes. Goemon's enemy enters and spies his reflection in a pool of water. They challenge each other in poetic dialogue. Goemon hurls a dagger, which his opponent neatly parries on a water-dipper. The curtain closes on a defiant mie. This is the sort of entertainment that the kabuki audiences loved, thrilling to Goemon and his kind as other audiences have done to Robin Hood, Dick Turpin and Robert Macaire. They found in them a colourful individuality that refreshed the regulated drabness of their own lives and could appease their consciences and the censorious authorities by pointing out that Goemon paid his dues to society in the end.

With the death of the feudal system and the growth of a democratic spirit, the later drama, in turning back to historical sources, looked more critically upon the samurai. It tried to show the human being behind the social mask and to demonstrate that the aristocracy too had its mortal frailties. In classical kabuki, however, the critical spirit is confined within strict limits. Though the samurai may be parodied, there is no attack on the basis of their rule. The system is inflexible and impervious to assault. The effete and decadent samurai who sometimes mince and twitter across the stage are no more symptoms of a popular uprising than the commoners who abuse their lords in kyogen—or, for that matter, the slaves who abuse their masters in Roman comedy, or the precocious servants of Victorian novelists. A closed system begets a closed mind. Revolution was inconceivable—on both sides. The Shogunate was built into the Japanese way of life, and solid enough to tolerate occasional impertinences. The end came, not so much by a gradual process of disintegration from within, but by a strong blast from without; with a bang, and not a whimper.

Against this wall the individual passions beat in vain. Kanadehon Chushingura demonstrates, as well as the virtues of the samurai, the obduracy of the law that they upheld. The action of the ronin was admirable, but illegal. They were applauded as popular heroes, but all admitted the inevitability and the justice of their punishment. In all its manifestations the central issue of kabuki is essentially the same: the individual against the system, in which the system inevitably triumphs. Kabuki itself had come into being as an act of artistic revolt, distrusted by the Shogunate because it championed a world of individual passion contrary to social order. The subsequent position of the art, and the themes of its plays, show how the ‘off-beat’ impulse was tamed and confined.

The system, as represented in the plays, may appear in its legal or its moral aspects; there is no effective difference. Although the individual may assert himself against it, he ends by admitting its tabus and accepting its punishment. Kabuki distinguishes between jidaimono (historical) and sewamono (domestic) plays; but in a sense most plays are sewamono, illustrating the conflict between individual desires and passions and the rules laid down by society. The sense of duty—to lord, honour, father or family—is paramount and transcends personal inclination. Kabuki moves in a world which is, in its way, as ritualistic as that of noh. The conflicts are all essentially identical and the end is pre-ordained. It is a world with which we are more familiar in the French neoclassical theatre, where individual interests are subjugated to the demands of gloire and decorum; the rare individual who struggles and wins (like le Cid) does so only by divine or royal intervention, which itself embodies and transcends the system.

Sewamono plays therefore end, more often than not, unhappily; the protagonist acquiesces in the impossibility of change. Discussing Japanese food with a companion, I once remarked how much I disliked tofu, the bean-curd cake with the appearance and consistency of foam rubber. She replied, quite seriously, ‘But how can you dislike it? It's quite tasteless.’ It was the prototypical answer of a people who have traditionally preferred the negative to the positive virtues. It is the submissive hero, not the revolutionary, who is cherished. The samurai accepts his suicide. Lovers kill themselves rather than attempt illicit happiness. If sewamono, in synopsis, reads like the more lugubrious outpourings of the women's magazines, the impression is not far wrong. One of the more romantic Japanese festivals, the Tanabata Matsuri (Feast of the Weaver), on 7 July, typically celebrates two thwarted lovers turned into stars and condemned to see each other only one day each year across the Milky Way. The plays, similarly, prefer blighted to consummated love and a sad ending to a happy one.

One example will suffice here: a particularly interesting one, as it involves a couple who come into conflict with the code and go voluntarily to their deaths, although the youth is blameless and the woman guilty only in intention. This is Yari no Gonza Kasana Katabira (Gonza the Spearman) by the great Chikamatsu Monzaemon, based on a contemporary scandal. The wife of a master of the tea-ceremony is trapped by an unsuccessful admirer in an apparently adulterous situation with one of her husband's disciples. Although she is secretly in love with the youth, she has not revealed it; her guilt lies only in the mind. When the rival accuses them on manufactured evidence, they run away together, in the knowledge that they are doomed. The husband is bound by the social code to avenge his honour; they know their respite can be only temporary, and confront him in the end of their own volition. In the last scene of the play they go to meet their executioners. It is a summer evening in Osaka by the waterside. Music is playing, and a gay procession of dancers winds up the hanamichi. The avengers are watching the ferryboat, but miss the runaways; it would still be possible for them to escape. But they do not try. Leaving the boat, they wait for the inevitable on the shore. The avengers return; one engages the youth in a vicious duel, while the other pursues the wife, who hides herself among the dancers on the bridge. But when the youth is killed, she comes running to his side and is there struck down. The code has been fulfilled. …