Kabuki

Kabuki is a Japanese theatre form combining stylized acting, music, dance, and elaborate stagecraft. Its conventions include dramatic makeup, richly patterned costumes, and dynamic stage effects.

Mie: A kabuki pose in which an actor freezes in an expressive stance, often crossing the eyes. The climactic held pose makes a character’s emotion and dramatic importance visible.
Izumo no Okuni: A performer traditionally credited with initiating kabuki in Kyoto in the early seventeenth century. Her performances are associated with the form’s beginnings.
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki: A 1703 Japanese play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon about two lovers driven to suicide. Its contemporary subject helped establish the emotional force of kabuki’s domestic dramas.
Ichikawa Danjūrō I: A Japanese kabuki actor who established the aragoto acting style in late seventeenth-century Edo. His forceful acting conventions became a defining strand of kabuki performance.
National Theatre of Japan: A Tokyo performing-arts institution founded in 1966 to present and preserve traditional Japanese theatre. It supports kabuki performances, training, and documentation.
Kumadori: A kabuki makeup style using bold lines to signify character traits and dramatic roles. Its painted patterns make moral and temperamental qualities immediately recognizable.
Edo period: The period of Japanese history from 1603 to 1868, when the Tokugawa shogunate governed Japan. Kabuki developed into a major urban entertainment during this era.
Kanadehon Chūshingura: An eighteenth-century Japanese play dramatizing the vendetta of the forty-seven rōnin. Its historical revenge story became one of kabuki’s best-known works.
Sakata Tōjūrō I: A Japanese kabuki actor who developed the wagoto style in late seventeenth-century Kyoto and Osaka. His refined, naturalistic manner contrasted with Edo’s forceful aragoto style.
Living National Treasure: An informal English name for holders of Japan’s designation as Preservers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties. Several kabuki performers receive the designation for sustaining performance traditions.

Linked from 35 pages