Lost Japan by Alex Kerr Page B

about Kabuki was
not the plays themselves, but the life behind them. What is so remarkable is the tenuous line between illusion and reality which exists backstage. At the opera, the performance does not continue backstage; the actors don’t sing arias at you, and on removing their costumes they become just ordinary people, no matter how famous they are as artists. Backstage at Kabuki, however, the illusion continues. Most people wear kimono, which is rare enough in Japan today, and the kimono – all black for
kuroko
attendants, printed
yukata
(a cotton kimono) for other attendants and gowns for major actors – clearly indicate social status; the backstage kimono are sometimes as striking as anything you might see onstage.
    Occasionally, an actual play may even continue behind the scenes. For instance, during a performance of
Chushingura
, which is considered Kabuki’s supreme play, the actors and attendants maintain a particularly serious demeanor backstage. Another example is
Kagamiyama.
In this play, the court lady Onoe is humiliated by Iwafuji, who is trying to bring ruin to Onoe’s house. Onoe exits slowly down the
hanamichi
deep in thought. When Jakuemon played this part, he remained seated alone, in silence, in the small room behind the curtain at the end of the
hanamichi
, until it came time for Onoe’s next entrance; although not onstage, he was still in character. Later, when I asked Jakuemon about this, he replied that it was a
Kagamiyama
tradition, which allows the depths of Onoe’s emotional concentration to remain unbroken until she reappears the second time.
    Faubion once pointed out that Kabuki actors spend a greater percentage of their life onstage than almost any other actors. First put on the stage at age five or six, they appear in two performances a day, twenty-five days a month, month after month, year after year. In essence, the Kabuki actor spends his entire life onstage. As a result, says Faubion, older actors sometimes find it difficult to differentiate between their stage personas and their real selves.
    The actor Utaemon’s normal movements, the distinctive turn of hands or neck, bear striking resemblances to his body language onstage. After performing as the character Onoe, Jakuemon remarked to me that he felt very tired; when I asked why, he replied, ‘Onoe bears a great responsibility. I was very worried about Ohatsu.’ Ohatsu is Onoe’s protégé in the drama, and Ohatsu also happened to be played by Tamasaburo in that performance. In Jakuemon’s concern for Ohatsu/Tamasaburo (it was not clear which), the onstage and offstage worlds were so intertwined as to be inseparable.
    Kabuki’s themes provide much insight into Japanese society. For instance, many plays are about the relationship between a lord and his retainers, or that between lovers, but there are none about friends. Friendship has been a key theme of Chinese culture since ancient times. The second sentence of Confucius’s
Analects
– ‘When a friend comes from afar, is this not a joy?’ – demonstrates the Chinese attitude towards the subject. But in Japan such examples are rare. True friendship is not easy here. Long-term foreign residents complain that after ten or twenty years in the country they are lucky to know one Japanese they consider to be a true friend. Yet the problem goes deeper than the culture gap between foreigners and Japanese. The Japanese often tell me that they can’t make friends with each other; they say, ‘There are the people you knew in high school who remain bosom buddies for life. Everyone you meet after that cannot be trusted.’
    One reason for this could be that the educational system traditionally discourages the Japanese from speaking their mind. They never quite trust each other, making friendship difficult. Another reason might be that hierarchical structures of society get in the way. In the old society the master–retainer relationship was a familiar one; relationships between