Kabuki Dancer

Ariyoshi, Sawako

4

224 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 4770027354 ISBN 13: 9784770027351

Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc, 2001

To be kabuki in Japan once meant to be outrageous, daring, flaunting convention. It was in sixteenth-century Japan, as Shakespeare was writing his masterworks half a world away, that the spirit of Kabuki theater was born out of a single woman's passions and dedication to her art. In Kabuki Dancer, the popular Japanese novelist Sawako Ariyoshi (The Doctor's Wife, The River Ki, The Twilight Years) retells the story of Okuni, the legendary temple dancer who first performed among jugglers and freak shows on a stage along the riverbank in the heart of the imperial city of Kyoto. Blending the rhythms and movements of religious festivals with the words of popular love songs, she and her troupe became sensations. Their affairs and rivalries, infatuations and jealousies, were transformed into the very fabric of their performance, as it began its evolution into the classic drama of today. Against a backdrop of civil war, dynastic conflict, and social turmoil, Okuni and her companions and lovers, together with their audience of artisans, merchants, and aristocrats, struggled to survive the birth pangs of a glorious--yet sometimes deadly--new age. Based on fact, transmuted into powerful and moving artistic expression, Kabuki Dancer is at once a turbulent love story, a recreation of an exotic and colorful historical period, and an almost mythic representation of the miraculous moment in which an immortal art form appears.

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About the Author:

Sawako Ariyoshi was born in 1931 in Wakayama, Japan. As a student she developed a deep interest in the theater, both modern drama and traditional Kabuki, and her own plays are widely performed in Japan. She first rose to prominence as a writer of short stories, but went on to build an impressive reputation as a novelist dealing with crucial social issues (among her works are The River Ki, The Doctor's Wife, and The Twilight Years). She died in 1984.

James R. Brandon was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1927, and received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin. Professor Brandon saw his first Kabuki play in Tokyo in 1951, and subsequently has seen perhaps a thousand plays on the Kabuki stage. He has written or edited thirteen books on Asian theater, including Chushingura: Studies in Kabuki and the Puppet Theater and Kabuki: Five Classic Plays, and is currently Professor of Asian Theater at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Okuni plunged into the churning mass of men and women as if she were leaping into the sea. Okuni was large for a woman, but she was nearly swept off her feet by the waves of people pushing and shoving. As she was jostled, she became excited. The regular booming of the shrine drum reached her ears and she was possessed by an urge to dance. She closed her eyes and let her body meld into the mass of people pressing against her. She felt hands grope inside her kimono and touch her breasts. Instinctively she pulled away, and then was startled when she realized it gave her pleasure. Okuni's breasts were large, and some men, when they felt her smooth, soft flesh, tried to probe more deeply. Okuni did not encourage the exploring hands, but she didn't consider the men's playfulness to be obscene or disgusting. As she was jostled, hands touched every part of her body, brushing her breasts and searching inside her clothes. She was reminded of the first time a man had touched her, the day Kyuzo had made love to her amid the flowers on Hono Mountain in Izumo. She remembered that his rough touch had been distasteful and that he had aroused no feeling in her at all. Now, her whole body seemed intoxicated by the spirit of the crowd. She had no desire to stop. She abandoned herself to the sound of the drum and to the rhythm of her body. She felt glorious.

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