This past summer, London and Rome (and a few other cities?) saw a tour of a Grand Kabuki performance of Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura, one of the most famous and popular plays in the kabuki repertoire.
Nakamura Shibajaku VII played Shizuka Gozen, the female lead.
The transformation with makeup and costume from someone who could easily pass for a salaryman into the young, beautiful Shizuka is really something.
Apparently, the embed link doesn’t want to work, so here’s a boring normal link: The Guardian: Nakamura Shibajaku VII as Shizuka Gozen
Thanks to the Guardian for producing and providing this video, and to Toshidama Gallery for pointing it out.
I do wish that the Guardian (and other Western media) wouldn’t apply certain terms, or get involved in certain discussions; there’s no need to use the word “drag” here, and I really don’t understand what they were talking about in the video in that one bit where they mentioned something about “heterosexual homosexuals.” … It’s really just another example of Orientalism or double-standards. When Western actors (e.g. Shakespearean actors) play cross-cast roles on stage, there’s nothing to it. But when it’s a traditional element of an Eastern drama form, such as kabuki, suddenly it’s bizarre and weird, exotic and unusual. A noble and beautiful tradition, really the Japanese equivalent of Shakespeare in many ways, is reduced to being compared to a drag show; and the sexuality of the actors is raised as a topic of discussion. Well, we’re getting there, slowly but surely. It’s interesting to see sometimes a reminder of just how far we have to go..
Thank you for the mention – it’s a really interesting point you make about Western media’s reductive and exploitative attitude to other cultural traditions. I’ve always thought that kabuki is most like English seventeenth century drama in its traditions…female impersonation among them! Though to be fair I’m sure that many newspapers would have a shock headline about men in drag in Shakespeare if they thought it would sell a few more copies.
You think they would? I mean, on the one hand, I totally agree that many newspapers would do anything to up sales – catchy headlines, whatever.
But, on the other hand, I feel like Shakespeare doesn’t have that aura of being weird or exotic that kabuki and other elements of Japanese culture do in the West.
I’m not saying there’s some incredible respect held up for Shakespeare necessarily – there are plenty of people who think it musty, dusty, old, hard to understand – but that there’s a fundamental, unspoken understanding that it’s part of our culture. I can’t really imagine a Western newspaper writing “oh, those silly Shakespearean actors and the weird things they do” in the way they write about “those silly Japanese and the weird things they do.”
I know what you mean…especially about the cultural imperialism. On a slight tangent, it’s interesting to wonder how seventeenth century English drama would seem if the tradition of men playing all the roles had continued, and how that would be treated as a tradition. In a sense it’s as unusual for women to play roles written for men to play as women as it is for onnagata to play them.