I heard many things about Kabuki before and I was really excited about the Kabuki Show that I planned since some weeks already. The ticket was 14000 yen (116 euro) and the place was not amazing. The places with good views were even double price. The show started at 16:30 and at 20:30 it ended. There were two breaks, one of 35 minutes and one of 15 minutes. During the long break it’s the dinner break, some people decided to go in the restaurant that they reserved in the theater, or receive some boxes with food on the sits (also with reservation) or like me, just brought some food and had the dinner on the sit.
There were 3 different plays:
1. The Chrysanthemum Garden – from Kiichi Hogen’s book of Tactics
The story is about Kiichi who had some argument with his father, so he decided to go and work for the enemy of his father. Kiichi’s half brothers try to make the family strong again, so they distinguish as workers for Kiichi. The action happens in the Garden of Chrysanthemums. In the end, the brothers convince Kiichi to give them the Secret of Military.
2. Parent and Child Lion Dance
Very intense dance of two lions – the father and the cub. It’s describing a tale of the legendary shishi, who is a lion spirit that lives at the foot of a holy Buddhist mountain.
3. Ichimatsu Kozo’s wife
A very comical story, from the Edo period, of a girl that has noone to marry with, is very skilled in swordsmanship and “already” 24 years old. The father tries to find a husband for her to continue together the business of the family. The girl is very strong and can beat any man. She in the end finds someone 5 years younger than her, a pickpocket. They fell in love and before they marry, she asks him to not be a criminal anymore. But in the end, after years, she finds out that he stole again. He started to cry saying that he doesn’t want to, but the fingers were guilty and asks for forgiveness. To protect him from going to prison, she cuts his fingers with a knife. In the end they embrace, cry and he is asking for forgiveness.
On the stage there are ONLY men, playing also the women’s role. This was funny, because they spoke the female voice and made everything a bit unnatural. But it was also very interesting to see it.To understand the stories, I had a display on the sit in the front with the subtitles.
After the theater, I went to the Tori-no-ichi Festival. This was interesting for the culture, because it’s a festival to wish for good luck and prosperity in business. Unfortunately it was so crowded, I had to wait one hour in the queue, to find in the end that I was in the queue that went directly to the shrine for pray. And I didn’t want to actually pray.
Kuramae Jinja:
This Jinja has a very sweet inhabitant.