The more media that you consume from a particular country, the more and more likely that you will begin to spot references to more obscure aspects of their culture. I’ve seen this with Henshin Heroes and I’ve seen this with admiration for Western literature. Seeing that an Osamu Tezuka manga is being adapted into Kabuki, I thought it would be worth taking a look at Kabuki and why you should know about it.
Let’s start by explaining what Kabuki is. Kabuki is written as 歌舞伎 in Japanese with the characters meaning sing, dance and skill respectively. A form of Japanese theatre, actors sing and dance in stylised performances while wearing elaborate costumes and wearing heavy makeup.
Interestingly, Kabuki is a relatively recent development in Japanese culture and has only been around for 400 years. It’s said that around 1603, a shrine maiden called Izumo no Okuni gathered women who were either misfits or prostitutes and began performing theatre where they would act, dance and sing suggestively. This and the association with prostitution led Iemitsu Tokugawa, the shogun of Japan at the time, to ban women from performing in Kabuki. Young, beautiful men ended up playing the female roles in Kabuki but this too was later banned until 1652 due to prostitution.
Since then, Kabuki has become an integral part of Japanese culture and was proclaimed in 2005 and inscribed in 2008 as being an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO. Many of the plays composed for Kabuki have gone on to have a major cultural impact on Japanese popular culture. It has also influenced other media such as Bunraku, a form of Japanese puppet theatre.
When I think of Kabuki theatre in popular culture, there are two specific examples that I think of, both relating to anime. The first is from an episode of Lupin the Third Part II in which Lupin and his gang perform some Kabuki with Inspector Zenigata. The other example I think of comes from Osamu Tezuka’s Cleopatra, one of the Animerama films, in which the assassination of Julius Caesar is carried out in the style of a Kabuki play. Of course, there are plenty of other examples of popular culture references to Kabuki but these are the first two that I think of.
Kabuki is a fascinating aspect of Japanese culture and fans of Japanese media should learn more about it. Let me know your thoughts on Kabuki and why you should know about it, how you first learned of Kabuki, other Kabuki references you’ve seen in Japanese popular culture and any additional information you might have on the topic.
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