Kabuki

I went to watch my first Kabuki show last night. You asked me to write down my thoughts, otherwise I will forget them. Here they are.

The show consisted of two performances, and lasted approximately two hours. The first part, which lasted the shortest (only about half an hour), was a classic kabuki dance, which my friend Cécile described as having a somewhat modern style (indeed, it premiered in 1847 in Edo). The performance is popularly known as Kyō Ningyō, that is, “The Kyoto Doll”, or “The Courtesan Doll”. The plot goes as follows.

The famous sculptor Hidari Jingorō has fallen in love with a high-ranking courtesan from the Kyoto pleasure quarters named Oguruma-dayū. Unable to forget her, he puts his heart and soul into carving a living likeness of the courtesan. Once the work is completed he puts it to one side and begins to drink saké, but to his complete surprise the sculpture comes alive and starts to move. However, its movements are clumsy and unrefined because the carving contains Jingorō’s spirit. While Jingorō was in the pleasure quarters he picked up a mirror belonging to the real courtesan and, since a mirror is said to capture a woman’s soul, when he inserts this into the sculpture’s bosom, its movements instantly become softer and more seductive… it now moves just like a woman. For the actor performing as the sculpture, this sudden change from male to female is a great highlight. The sculpture and Jingorō dance together, but this romantic tryst is short-lived. For some time, Jingorō has been sheltering his former lord’s daughter, Lady Izutsu, who is pretending to be his daughter. This fact is discovered, and a large group of enemy men comes to attack Jingorō’s house. He fends them off as best as he can with only his left arm, his right arm having been injured, and as he brandishes various tools such as chisels and planes, the dance comes to a spectacular end.

The performance was, in fact, breath-taking. As I tried to explain to Cécile, watching the show evoked in me a feeling similar to what I felt the few times that I wandered around the antique booksellers district in Jimbocho. Skimming through the pages of an old Japanese book, with its printed illustrations and all the mysterious kanji, feels like opening a chest preserving the history of East Asia, and having a random look inside with the magnifying glass. Lacking knowledge of the language in the first place, and on top of that the cultural references that are necessary to understand all the symbols and links that pervade each story, one can easily find himself to be lost. It is not, however, necessarily a negative feeling. As in a trip with destination foreign and unknown, powerlessness can open us up to the joy of discovery. In this way, knowing that I will probably never reach the intellectual depth to understand the meaning of the pages before me, I let go of the need to grasp the text and possess its content. I let myself be carried away through the pages, with all the characters that I don’t recognize, and all the fascinating prints, like a castaway who lets himself be carried adrift by the waves. It is a magnificent feeling of lack of control. Even a simple table, or the structure of the book itself, hide in their differences with their Western counterparts the millennial history of a civilization. When I watch the kabuki dance, I do not understand the lyrics (although some basic words of archaic Japanese can easily be guessed), and I do not understand most of the context in which the story is set. How can I grasp exactly who Hidari Jingorō was? Without knowing in details the history of Japan… and of the time in which he lived. How can I understand the symbolism of the mirror? I just know that mirrors are also one of the main objects of worship inside the halls of Shinto shrines. And that a mirror was hung on a tree branch to lure Amaterasu, the Shinto goddess of light, out of the cave where she went to hide. But how can I know exactly what that object represented for the audience of Edo in 1847?

This, however, does not prevent me from recognizing the beauty of the dance, and from enjoying it at least in part. Due to the size of the theatre, and because facial expressions are a key feature of this art, many people in the audience are used to bringing along small binoculars, which allow them to zoom in on the action that is performed on stage. We did too. Watching through the lenses, one can recognize the details of the costumes and of the objects on stage. It is quite the satisfying exercise. The actors wear kimonos that bloom with different colours: blue, red, white, black. Their make-up conveys, perhaps, their social status and the personality of the character they are interpreting. And so I could enjoy the bursts of expressivity on the face of Matsumoto Hakuō (the actor interpreting Jingorō), and the bewitching coldness in the eyes of Ichikawa Somegorō (the Kyoto Doll). The switch from doll to woman, when the mirror is placed within the statue’s kimono, is indeed the most original feature of the dance. I was moved by the Doll’s eyes and by the expression on her mouth. Such beauty, and such charm, in an object that was supposed to be inanimate! Her make-up was so beautiful that I almost could not believe that the actor was in fact a man. If I could live in Edo era, maybe, I would have fallen in love more often in the course of my life so far.

Despite being a bit cliché, a soldier making his appearance on stage in full arms fits very well as the narrative solution for a romantic scene. The statue and her “lover” are at the peak of involvement in their dance, when reality suddenly kicks back in. It is, once again, a beautiful representation of life, and of the impermanence of its moments of grace. Just as in a desert, where the few water springs are sorrounded by countless dunes of sand, which seem to disappear, endless at the horizon, and would take years and years to go across, in the same way in life, sparks of true joy and gratitude are squeezed between wide chunks of bleakness and boredom. One cannot seem to grasp the warmth of a single, beautiful instant, that soon the troubles of daily existence make their way in to spoil it. And so Jingorō and his creation are interrupted by the violence of a soldier bursting into their house: the dance is over, the statue is placed back into her closet, never to appear again, and before you realize what’s happening the artist and his wife are bowing pitifully before the power of the State, asking for forgiveness. Music, in all its delicate elegance, is soon replaced by the raging screams of an armed villain at the front door. A beautiful turn of events, in less than sixty seconds.

The second part of the show turned out to be regular theatre. It was a short drama on the story of a Buddhist monk, named Nichiren, enacted on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of his birth. It was an interesting contrast with the previous performance. The show truly felt like a TV-drama, with bad Japanese acting, as pointed out by Cécile. I think we could not hide that we were both a bit disappointed that the second show was not kabuki. I mean, I didn’t care. I was there for her, on top of the kabuki itself. But I’m glad I went before leaving Japan, because I imagine never watching a show like the one of the first kind would have felt like a huge regret in the future. After the performance ended, we left the theatre and went to look for a place to have dinner. Even in this times, the heart of Tokyo on a Friday night can be extremely crowded, and it is impossible to find a seat for two anywhere in Ginza, without having to wait in line for more than one hour. After walking around, lost, for more than thirty minutes, we went to the subway station and went our respective ways. An extremely underwhelming end for a quite special day.

I too, like the sculptor Hidari Jingorō, have recreated on paper the object of my desire in her likeness. I did it on a boring Sunday afternoon, because I felt alone. Of course, my drawing cannot move, or dance. But now I see it on my desk every day. In a way, it reminds me that I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. Investing time and energy into the sort of bond I created with this person, when we are both one month away from leaving this country. Just like everything else, it feels worthy and pointless at the same time. But I just can’t stop myself from living this way. Maybe I still need to grow up to realize that life needs at least the sketch of a plan, if you want it to have something resembling a successful outcome. So how does this fit into any plan? I am really scared at the idea of leaving, because I really have no idea of what’s coming afterwards. My internship ends in a week, and I highly doubt I will be offered a position, since I spent the last month and a half travelling through Tokyo and living a bit of a bohémien life, eating, drinking and laughing every day. All rather than working. Even if I were offered the opportunity to stay, I am not sure I would accept it. Do I really see myself living in this city for the rest of my life? With these strange people whose language I cannot recognise or speak? Plus, I have a feeling that my career prospects are better in Europe, where I can partially leverage on the good reputation of my university (which, here, almost no one knows). I am thinking of finding a way to move to China, but everything has started to feel impossible since last year. The toll of this pandemic is not only measured in deaths: a lot of hopes, I’m sure, have been crushed as well.

I hope I get to enjoy my last weeks in Tokyo with a light heart. I wonder if the story of my brief friendship with Cécile will turn out to resemble that kabuki night. A great ouvertoure, followed by a mediocre plot. As she recognized herself, it seems to be going nowhere, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Of course, all my complaints are a bit hypocritical in nature, since all my infatuation has not stopped me from seeing other people. It really seems that my personality has changed a lot, starting from the end of last year. I am gradually getting rid of my pure heart, while I get colder and lose my patience much more easily. I am not afraid to cheat anymore, because I simply don’t care. I have made debts that I tried not to pay back. And I have started to ignore other people’s feelings. I have also stepped over people that I considered my friends, for my personal interest. It feels secretly nice to be selfish, but it is also dirty, and my innocence is lost.