April 1

It was pretty hard to get out of bed today, since I had gotten fewer hours of sleep due to staying up late to finish my homework and read the kabuki skit. I wasn’t doing too badly on time until okaasan offered to make a bento for me (as she wouldn’t be home by dinner time and wouldn’t be able to make dinner). It was worth it though, because okaasan makes the best onigiri and her orange peel-flavored vegetables are delicous too. Okaasan was surprised that I was wearing a skirt (I thought it would be a good idea to dress up to watch kabuki) and when I initially came down for breakfast, she said, “ah, skaato?! mezurashii!”

At school, class wasn’t particularly interesting (though we did see the news reel from our Kakuozan project), until the second period of Japanese class. We got the option to study outside and everyone took it, so we sat on the “green area” (yellow, dead grass) under the blooming sakura and read about the Japanese closed-country policy. We got chocolate and cookies too from Tsuda sensei, so everyone was happy. At the end of it all, we had group pictures taken (which will be used for CJS propoganda later).

Afterward, I rushed to my locker to drop my bookbag (passing an airplane parked in the main street of the school that I had no time to take a picture of) and back to CJS to meet up to go to kabuki. Of course, the meeting time was exactly when my class had finished, some of the students arrived later than me, and we had to wait a while for our train, so in retrospect, I could have photographed the plane. Anyway, we (four foreigners and a Japanese girl) rode the chikatetsu to Fushimi and the kabuki house there. I’m relly glad I dressed up, because a large number of the attendants were in formal kimonos. According to okaasan, there are only two performances per year in Nagoya, and she goes to each one with her friend from the Kokusai center.

Kabuuki is really hard to explain, not because it is inexplicabe, but because there is so much to it. To start though, it’s definitely something to see once. To put it perhaps stereotypically, kabuki gives me the impression of Japanese Shakespere.

It’s a really impressive production with amazing sets (at one point, a giant, round portion of the stage revolves to change scenes) and costumes (some of which are constructed to be changed into different shapes/costumes with the pull of a string). All of the actors are, of course, men, though there were many female roles to play. The speaking is very tonal (and whynie in the case of the women’s roles). The make-up starts with a white face and, depending on the character, has red and black details. There are times when the actors seem to stop in a very dramatic scene (always in a way that taking a photograph of it would be wonderful). Throughout, there is shamisen music, drumming, and pounding of wooden rods on wooden boards to represent certain actions and moods. At times, it seems almost as if the play is a musical, with actors singing and dancing, but luckily, it lacks the annoying quality of most musicals.

The story of the play was an intricate web of people and relationships, dealing with a severe drought in Japan. The peasants begged the emporer to help, and the emporer received different suggestions from priests and advisors. There was also a plot to do with a hidden mistress, who posessed the item that would let it rain. At one point, it is found that a god is being detained at a shrine and must be freed to save Japan. The whole play ends with the fire god emerging to proclaim that there will be peace. Like I said, I didn’t really understand all of it.

At the beginning, two samurai fight off many opponents in slow motion. The opponents often do (impressive) flips when being defeated. There is a scene when a lady’s hair is supposed to stand on end, and for the effect, a stage hand sits behind her and raises a sheet of false hair, shaking it above her head. The most intersting and impressive scenes are at the end, when the god is released from the waterfall at the shrine, and a dragon slides up the back wall of the stage (the god becomes a dragon and emerges from the water). After, the fire god appears with fire behind him (projected on a waving screen) and red confetti falls from the stage. I suppose describing kabuki is really monotonous, but the truth is, the effects can seem cheesy in concept, but somehow, the Japanese made them believable.

There were two intermissions to this 5-ish hour play, in which many venders sold omiyage and foods in the multiple-story lobby. I tried salty tea (which was surprising, but good) and the popular seller; “Japanese cookies.” Two of the venders gave my friend and I a free cookie when we walked by, for reasons unknown.

When the kabuki itself was over, I was disappointed that there was not more to see. We found though, that we were relatively close to osu, and since my friend wanted to buy some things for her kimono, I went with her in search of the yen=grams store (that’s how the pricing of the clothing there works) and the cheap kimono store. Both were closed for the day, but we looked through the rest of the kimono-selling stores and found a tabehoudai chinese restaurant near the chinatown (chinastreet).

Afterward, I ate at the vending-machine ticket restaurant (udon) and went home.