Japanese Performing Arts

Traditional Japanese theatre is a colorful and mesmerizing combination of dance, drama and
musical accompaniment. The roots of these performing arts go back centuries and have been recognized
by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization with their inclusion on the list of
Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Hundreds of theaters across the country still put on
performances to this day.

In 2008, kabuki, nohgaku (noh and kyogen), and bunraku puppet theater became the first
Japanese performing arts to be inscribed in the UNESCO list, underlining their importance to the nation's
performing heritage and history.

What is Kabuki?

Kabuki is arguably the most famous form of Japanese theater and began in the early 17th
century in Kyoto, where legend has it that a shrine maiden in the city's Izumo no Okuni Grand Shrine
began performing a new style of dance drama. Those presentations caught the attention of the imperial
court, where she was invited to perform.
With that royal seal of approval, rival troupes quickly emerged and kabuki evolved into a performance
by women that brought together dance and drama. Kabuki soon spread to Edo, modern-day Tokyo, and
kabuki theaters became the place to be seen as they featured the latest fashions and styles, as well as
entertainment.

Before the end of the century, however, women were banned from performing and all the roles
were assumed by men, with males who took on women's roles known as “onnagata.”

The ‘Golden age' of kabuki

The structure and style of Kabuki have become formalized and character types have become
more established starting from the early Edo period (1600s) to the present day.
Kabuki plotlines draw on historical events for their inspiration, as well as moral conflicts in relationships.
Actors — some of whom have the same sort of following as pop stars in the West — speak in a
monotone, accompanied by musical instruments.

There are a number of specialized kabuki venues in Japan's major cities, such as
the Kabukiza and the National Theater in Tokyo and the Minamiza Theater in the ancient capital of
Kyoto. The main venues provide monitors or information devices that explain plots and commentaries in
English.

Performing puppets

Bunraku, or Japanese puppet theater, is considered one of the most sophisticated types of
performing art in the world, with three puppeteers manipulating a single character.
The subtlety of the puppet's movements, the lifelike gait, the perfect harmony between the actions of
the doll, the storyteller's narration and the music have taken generations to perfect.
Bunraku was first performed in Osaka in 1684. In these performances, the main character was animated
by one puppeteer moving the legs, another moving the left hand and the lead puppeteer controlling the
head, face and right hand. In the world of bunraku, fifteen years of intense practice is required to make
the movements of the feet appear truly human and another fifteen years to skillfully operate the left
hand. Only then can a puppeteer consider moving on to the head.

The puppet-masters, who often appear on stage masked in black, are assisted by the “tayu,”
who performs the voices of all the characters in the play as well as serving as the narrator. The music is
the final — but just as important — component of the performance, with a “shamisen” lute player
accompanied by a full orchestra of “shakuhachi” flutes, the “koto” stringed instrument and, on
occasions, “taiko” drums.

The National Bunraku Theater in Osaka and Tokyo's National Theater are easily accessible
venues for foreign visitors, with audio guides provided to translate the dialogue and lyrics into a number
of languages for select performances.

Noh and kyogen

The performing arts of noh and kyogen complement each other.

Noh can be traced back to the 8th century but developed into its present-day form in the 14th
century, driven by performer and play-writer Kannami and his son, Zeami. Many of the plays they wrote
are still important parts of approximately 250 stories that make up the noh performing repertoire.
Noh flourished before and during the Edo period (1603 to 1867) with feudal lords across the country
supporting their own troupes and studying the art form themselves. Noh fell from grace at the outset of
the subsequent Meiji period (1868-1912) but enough performers had private patrons to keep the art
form alive. Today, it thrives once more and is recognized as an important part of the nation's heritage.
There are five categories of noh play, featuring gods, warriors, beautiful women, miscellaneous beings
and demons. Traditionally, a full day's Noh program would start with the ritual Okina-Sanbaso tale,
followed by a play from each of the categories with a kyogen performance between each play.
Noh performances are typically very long, and are sometimes staged outdoors during the summer
months. Tokyo's National Noh Theater and similar institutions in Nagoya and Osaka put on regular
performances, a number of which include translations, while different noh schools have their own
permanent venues, including in Kyoto and Nara. Similarly, prefectural and municipal theaters put on
performances across the country, although few will provide interpretation facilities for non-Japanese
speakers.

Other performing arts

Geisha and maiko — apprentice geisha — also put on performances of music and dance at tea
houses or in specialist venues such as Gion Hatanaka in Kyoto's Gion district, as well as at public events
at different times of the year. Similarly, performances of “gagaku” court music can be seen at the
National Theater in Tokyo or during ceremonies at temples and shrines.
 Modern Japanese drama became popular in the early 1900s, including the “shingeki”
experimental interpretation of Western theater, while plays became more complex after the war,
incorporating many of the tenets of classical noh or kabuki with contemporary foreign forms.

Japanese art

The Japanese art is consists of a wide range of art styles and media that includes ancient
pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock
prints, ceramics, origami, bonsai, and more recently manga and anime. It has a long history, ranging
from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in the 10th millennium BCE, to the present
day.

Japan has alternated between periods of exposure to new ideas, and long periods of minimal
contact with the outside world. Over time the country absorbed, imitated, and finally assimilated
elements of foreign culture that complemented already-existing aesthetic preferences. The earliest
complex art in Japan was produced in the 7th and 8th centuries in connection with Buddhism. In the 9th
century, as the Japanese began to turn away from China and develop indigenous forms of expression,
the secular arts became increasingly important; until the late 15th century, both religious and secular
arts flourished. After the Ōnin War (1467–1477), Japan entered a period of political, social, and
economic turmoil that lasted for over a century. In the state that emerged under the leadership of
the Tokugawa shogunate, organized religion played a much less important role in people's lives, and the
arts that survived were primarily secular. The Meiji Period (1868–1912) saw an abrupt influx of Western
styles, which have continued to be important.

Painting is the preferred artistic expression in Japan, practiced by amateurs and professionals
alike. Until modern times, the Japanese wrote with a brush rather than a pen, and their familiarity with
brush techniques has made them particularly sensitive to the values and aesthetics of painting. With the
rise of popular culture in the Edo period, ukiyo-e, a style of woodblock prints, became a major form and
its techniques were fine-tuned to create mass-produced, colorful pictures; in spite of painting's
traditional pride of place, these prints proved to be instrumental in the Western world's 19th-century
dialogue with Japanese art. The Japanese, in this period, found sculpture a much less sympathetic
medium for artistic expression: most large Japanese sculpture is associated with religion, and the
medium's use declined with the lessening importance of traditional Buddhism.

Japanese pottery is among the finest in the world and includes the earliest known Japanese
artifacts; Japanese export porcelain has been a major industry at various points. Japanese lacquerware is
also one of the world's leading arts and crafts, and works gorgeously decorated with maki-e were
exported to Europe and China, remaining important exports until the 19th century. In architecture,
Japanese preferences for natural materials and an interaction of interior and exterior space are clearly
expressed.

Clothing

There are typically two types of clothing worn in Japan: traditional clothing known as Japanese
clothing (和服, wafuku), including the national dress of Japan, the kimono, and Western clothing (洋
服, yōfuku), which encompasses all else not recognised as either national dress or the dress of another
country.
 Traditional Japanese fashion represents a long-standing history of traditional culture,
encompassing colour palettes developed in the Heian period, silhouettes adopted from Tang
dynasty clothing and cultural traditions, motifs taken from Japanese culture, nature and traditional
literature, the use of types of silk for some clothing, and styles of wearing primarily fully-developed by
the end of the Edo period. The most well-known form of traditional Japanese fashion is the kimono, with
the term kimono translating literally as "something to wear" or "thing worn on the shoulders". Other
types of traditional fashion include the clothing of the Ainu people (known as the attus) and the clothes
of the Ryukyuan people which is known as ryūsō (琉装), most notably including the traditional fabrics
of bingata and bashōfu produced on the Ryukyu Islands.

Modern Japanese fashion mostly encompasses yōfuku (Western clothes), though many well-known
Japanese fashion designers – such as Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo – have taken
inspiration from and at times designed clothes taking influence from traditional fashion. Their works
represent a combined impact on the global fashion industry, with many pieces displayed at fashion
shows all over the world, as well as having had an impact within the Japanese fashion industry itself,
with many designers either drawing from or contributing to Japanese street fashion.