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...a perfect moment to dip into Japanese culture I thought, so we went to watch a play at the popular Kabuki-za in Ginza, a traditional enclave in the midst of all the ultra-modern department stores and flagship designer shops which characterize the area.

I used to go to the theatre quite frequently back in Europe, so I was particularly enthusiastic about seeing a performance at the Kabuki and had in fact long been waiting for an opportunity to go.

The Kabuki theatre became popular in Japan during the Edo period in the early 1600s, and unlike the older and much more serious and demanding No theatre, Kabuki has always been purely secular and was created for the mere purpose of entertainment. Reading through the programme, the topics of most plays actually sound very familiar - they strongly resemble the plot any operetta or Mozart opera, just set somewhere in Japan (be it a sushi shop or a Zen room) instead of in European surroundings.

The one we saw was "The Zen Substitute", a comic dance drama. The main character, lord Ukyo, is eager to pay a visit to his pretty mistress. The only problem is his ugly-looking, overly jealous and quite intimidating wife. As she refuses to let him go on an alleged year-long pilgrimage to pure his soul, he comes up with another very cunning plan to escape her. He claims to be practicing Zen meditation throughout the night, but orders his servant to take his place, hidden under a cape, while he heads off to see his mistress. Unfortunately the plan is not so cunning after all – as you may have guessed, the nasty wife discovers the deceit. In her fury she insists on taking the servant’s place under the cape and waits for her husband, who, arriving home completely drunk, tells the details of his love adventures to who he thinks is his servant...

Of course, the whole special thing about the Kabuki experience is not the overwhelmingly faceted and surprising plot, but the way it is performed. Of course my Japanese skills are by far not sufficient (and will probably never be) to understand any of the text, but luckily you can rent English language earphone devices at the theatre to guide you through the play. Even though we certainly did not quite get all of the ironic allusions, the performance was really amusing to watch, mainly because of the expressive, pantomime-like gestures of the actors with their white-painted faces - the famous dance scene in the end, depicting the encounter between lord Ukyo and his freaky wife after his escapade, being particularly comic.

Kabuki actors are very famous and celebrated personalities here – when the leading actor first entered the stage, a murmur went through the crowd, followed by applause before he had even started acting. Although the Kabuki theatre was once invented by women, all the actors are male; women were soon banned from the stage back in the day as their performing was considered to be vulgar and unseemly. There is a clear distinction though between the actors specialized in male and those specialized in female roles. In this performance, lord Ukyo’s wife was actually played by a male-role-specialist, underlining and making fun of her very unfeminine ugliness.

There is a lot more to say about Kabuki, of course, and this is only a very brief glimpse of it. We only watched one act out of a set of three or four performed during one session. As the afternoon/evening session consists of completely independent pieces (as opposed to parts of a continuing story), this seems like a logical thing to do if you don’t want to spend half a day in the theatre.

So to sum it up, I found the Kabuki theatre really entertaining and I am definitely planning to go back there soon to see further plays!