History

The history of Japanese Theater developed with the centers of entertainment districts of floating world(ukiyo-e). Influenced by the traditional Noh/Kyogen plays, Kabuki and Bunraku (puppet theater) were formed in the Edo or Tokugawa Period (1603-1867) for the lower classes.

Many important elements of the dramatic art in Japan are similar to those developed by the Chinese. In many cases the story material is obviously the same, and there is great similarity in the methods of producing and acting. There were two periods of brilliance in Japan (the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries), and two distinct types of theater: the aristocratic and the popular. The former is associated with the famous No plays, which reached their period of perfection during the fourteenth century.

As among the Chinese, the governing group in Japan looked upon the drama as a means of instructing the lower classes in loyalty and self-sacrifice. A very strict set of regulations crystallized about the stage. Every play was produced with elaborate exactness and precision. Much of the beauty of the pieces depended upon the skillful use of parallelism in language, and in the employment of pivot or root words around which the author could display his verbal dexterity. The "invisible" property man was always on the stage, and realistic details abounded. Grief and passion were expressed by violent contortions. The hero would grimace, roll his eyeballs, bare his teeth, and go through every possible variation of distress, while the property man held a lighted candle near his face in order that nothing should be lost to the audience. When a man was killed, he turned a somersault before depicting the final agony. For many decades the most brutal crimes were performed before the eyes of the spectators,--scenes of torture and crucifixion, hara-kiri, and bloody scenes of every description.

After its period of brilliance in the seventeenth century, the popular stage became overloaded with conventions and began to decline. Doubtless the absence of the nobility from the theaters contributed greatly to this result. Genshiro, a native dramatist and critic of the nineteenth century, wrote that "the theater in Japan had reached the lowest depth of vulgarity, and so continued until the last year of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1867."

Along with this mechanical development there appeared, also in the seventeenth century, Chikamatsu monzaemon (or Monzayamon) (born about 1653), one of the most important figures in the whole history of the Japanese drama, and completely identified with the marionette theater. His most famous play is said to be The Battles of Kokusenya, the hero of which was a celebrated pirate. The scenes are laid in Nanking and Japan at the time of the last Ming emperor. It contains one of the characteristic situations in oriental drama: namely, the conqueror asking the defeated enemy for the gift of his favorite wife as a tribute of war. In this play are also the treacherous general, the substitution of another child in order to save the heir to the throne, much bloodshed, suicide, and fighting. Spectators have testified to the vividness and force of these representations, to the tenseness of the dramatic situations, and to the impressiveness of the dialogue. Chikamatsu had the gift of diverting the attention from improbabilities and of making his characters bear themselves like tragic heroes. Moreover, he had the great virtue of never being dull.

About the beginning of the eighteenth century the marionette theater began to decline, and writers ceased to produce plays suited for puppets. In the late nineteenth century vigorous attempts were made by both noblemen and scholars to improve the stage. One of the first features to be condemned was the presentation of scenes of violence and cruelty. Many of the restrictions as to attendance have been removed; women are allowed to appear as actors; and the tendency towards excessive realism has been offset by the practical application of aesthetic principles.