The art of kabuki is a style of theatrical performance, consisting of singing, dancing and music playing that originated in Japan back in the Edo period (early 1600’s). It started out as a female dance troupe, but later women became banned from performing kabuki, where men took over all the roles and continue up to today. The performances consist of heavy and elaborate makeup on the actors with glamorous costumes. They dance and act out stories set to music, often telling tales of love and loss. While I personally am aware of the history, and learned about it briefly in acting school I had never before seen a kabuki performance.
With Covid-19 having shut down all theatres in Japan, actor Kazutaro Nakamura, who is kabuki royalty due to multiple generations of his family being practitioners of the art form, set off to get the best performers and musicians to make something truly special. As we saw last year with Hamilton, there is an appetite for cinematic adaptations of live theater. The act of performing the show as intended but with a camera able to see every nuance of the performer and capture angles not attainable by staying stationary in one’s seat allows for a truly unique experience.
What followed was four distinct performances that were a visual and auditory delight for the viewer. The show opens with The Descent of the Four Gods, an ode to the four cardinal directions, North, East, South and West. Each direction had a dancer and a distinct music style that played alongside. Here we see the uniqueness that traditional Japanese instruments bring to the table. The accompanying instruments include the Tsugaru-shamisen (a banjo like instrument with two strings and played with a large rectangular pick), a flute, the taiko drum (a set of drums played with thick wooden sticks) and the koto (a twenty-five stringed instrument that looks like a slide guitar and is the national instrument of Japan). We get to see the beauty and majesty of the art of kabuki in a way that often doesn’t get noticed outside of Japan. Each dancer has their own style, pace and intensity in which they evoke each of the Gods, with the right music to echo the sentiment.
The next two performances are also very dance oriented, with Bountiful Harvests and Prayer Ritual showing all the above actors and musicians performing in harmony. We get a beautiful folk song to start out Bountiful Harvest, performed almost completely a cappella with just a subtle drum beat playing behind the singer. This morphs into an electric almost rock concert like wave length as a dueling Yasushi Yamabe on taiko drum and Sho Asano on the shamisen take over the stage. By the time Prayer Ritual gets going, we have actors making offerings to the earth and Gods dancing in a frenzy throwing hay around the stage as they pray for an excellent harvest.
The show stopping number of the film is the final piece, A Tale of a Flower, in which director and actor Kazutaro Nakamura gets to show off his talents. Nakamura specializes in onnagata, which is where a male performer plays a female role. Here Nakamura is a woman who loses her husband and young child and then loses her sanity. In an adjacent story there is a young samurai played by Onoe Ukon, who eventually gets betrayed by a fellow warrior. They eventually cross paths when the woman tends to his wounds and from there a lifetime between them happens.
The film is brimming with beauty and art as you get to see in full detail all the hard work and craftsmanship that goes into putting on a kabuki show. We can appreciate the traditional makeup used in onnagata, the sumptuous costumes used to create new characters in every sequence and the talent behind the orchestra as we get numerous shots of them throughout the performances. After every section ends, you can just imagine the crowd roaring to life and applauding the performers. Unfortunately we have to settle for a quiet black out and transition to the next scene. The show ends with an elongated bow from all the performers and a note thanking healthcare professionals and frontline workers during this intense time period.
I may have never seen a kabuki show before, but this more than made me interested in wanting to watch one in person, whether that be in Canada or if I get the chance to travel to Japan.
Art Kabuki was seen during the 2021 Fantasia Festival. Thank you to the festival for the screener. Art Kabuki does not have a North American release date at this time.
