Kabuki Theater in Edo-Period Japan

The distinctive combination of music and drama known as kabuki was one of the major sources of entertainment in Edo-period Japan. Often flamboyant and overly exaggerated in its tone, its heroes and villains were drawn from a stock repertory of stories familiar to the audience. Actors were touted and performances advertised through the medium of prints produced by some of the greatest printmakers of the Edo period (1600-1868). These works immortalize the actors, frequently depicting them at a key moment in the action of the play to be performed. Convention called for the actor to hold his pose (mie) at such times; the measure of his acting was displayed through his execution of such tableaux.

Kabuki had its traditional beginnings in the early seventeenth century, when a Shinto dancer and prostitute and her troupe improvised mimes and dances on the bank of the Kamo River in Kyoto. These performances offended the strict Confucian morality of the ruling shogunate; they were banned in 1629 and women were forbidden to perform in public. Consequently some male actors began specializing in female roles (onnagata). As this theatrical art form developed, its repertory of plays was consolidated and became less improvisatory. Families of actors evolved who played particular stage roles; they are identified by the personal emblems or crests on their garments.

The prints on exhibition here are a highly varied selection of depictions of actors extending in date from the eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Scale, palettes of colors, the inclusion of settings all vary, but the portrayal of the exaggerated conventions of kabuki acting remains. The most outstanding example of such conventions occurs in representations of Danjuro, a name associated with the Ichikawa lineage; Danjuro was known for his dramatic entrance at a climactic moment in the play Wait a Minute (Shibaraku), when he thwarts the villain’s attack. The small portrait of him (accession no. 34.366) conveys the drama of that moment, whereas the lively and crowded street scene of the theater district (accession no. 1997.90.12a-c) expresses the continuing vitality and popularity of kabuki in the late 19th century, at the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912).