21/11 Kabuki

Only a couple of weeks left until most of us JLSPers head home, and so the last school activity also came. This time we were going to see a Kabuki performance at the Kabukiza in Ginza. Unless you're a fan of Kabuki, even Japanese have trouble understanding what a performance was all about, so we all read up on the plays before to be able to follow the plots.

Ginza is where all these exclusive high class brand stores are located, which the buildings seemed to reflect as well. Tall, finely designed skyscrapers covered in glass, neat store fronts and sophisticated people walking the streets. Very different from Shibuya and Harajuku, which also are areas which are highly fashion oriented. The sidewalks in Ginza were so wide that you didn't have to worry about bumping into other people. A was saying how it was so much like Toronto, and I think it kind of reminded me of Stockholm as well, although everything here seemed a bit... grandier.

After an hour of free time we headed for the Kabukiza.

It was kind of surrealistic seeing a traditional building among all the glassy ones.

Now, onto the Kabuki. Ahem, first of all, I'm sorry Mom and Dad, I fell asleep a couple of times and slept through a lot of the acts. I know I should be there appreciating the fine art of this acting style that has survived for so many hundreds of years, but... I just couldn't. It's not like I can't appreciate it, but somehow it all seemed pretty sleep-inducing... I feel so unsophisticated now. And you know what? Even Japanese people fall asleep too! And we were actually told it was okay to sleep a little! (What the...) So... It's alright! I didn't embarass myself. That much.

Anyway. We sat on the second floor and so had some distance to the stage. Apparently, the second floor is where all the regulars sit. They shout out the actors' (Kabuki only has male actors, some of them specializing in female roles, so called onnagata) names during certain times, which seemed pretty random to me. Some of the name shouting made sense (when a character appears or had said something cool) but others just seemed random. Also, although around half of the audience was female all the name shouting were done by old men. Hmm. Moving on. Watching kabuki felt a lot like looking into a dollhouse, both in atmosphere and the way they act. Kind of plasticky in a good way. Some people really hated the obvious staged feeling to it, but I think Kabuki is just supposed to be that way, what with all the different make up styles for different character types and all, it's so stylized. Not saying I understand the depthness at all though, because I don't. I do wish I hadn't fallen asleep so much though, I would've really liked to see the performances in full (I only stayed awake fully for the second performance out of three...) so I could write down my impressions on the plot and such. But four hours of sitting still proved to be a bit too much after all.