JAPAN, UNLIKE most other countries, retains most of its earlier dramatic forms. The Noh, the Kyogen, Bunraku and Kabuki, stretching from the sixteenth century on, are still regularly performed, each in its individual type of theater. Bugaku, a ninth century dance-drama and Shimpa a late nineteenth-century type of melodrama, are still to be seen. In the larger cities of Japan one may, in one week, see almost all the forms which drama has taken, all in their original states, a series of theatrical structures, each quite separate—dramatic strata comparable to the layers of a giant geological specimen, a ringed cross-section of the tree of Japanese drama.
Each stratum petrifies, retaining its own characteristics, frozen apparently forever yet still alive since each style is studied, performed, and retains its audience. It is as though one went to Rome and found there theaters specializing in Plautus done in Latin in the original style, playhouses where the commedia dell’ arte was retained in its perfection, and halls where Pirandello is performed in the manner of 1925.
One may also watch this dramatic solidification at work. Since World War II, Shingeki—the most recent of Japanese theatrical forms—has slowly petrified, a process quite visible and one which ensures the longevity which so distinguishes the J apanese drama as a whole.
Just as Shimpa (with real actresses and contemporary plots) originally saw itself as a rebellion against the rigidities of the Kabuki, so the new Shingeki (literally, new theater) saw itself in rebellion against what it called the artificialities of all prior Japanese drama. Beginning early in this century, spurred by the example of the modern Western stage, Shingeki wanted to create a free, vital, meaningful and above all contemporary drama, directly relevant, realistic—even naturalistic—in style.
Now, not seventy-five years after its inception, the Shingeki has become as stylized, as mannered if you will, as the Shimp a it hoped to supplant. Though new plays continue to be written for the Shingeki they in turn are influenced by the form which the theater has taken. Shingeki actors are taught a special naturalistic way of speaking but since this is not, by its nature, natural, this too becomes a convention. The playwrights, admiring and emulating the well-tailored Western play of the mid-twentieth century, now create inside a system of unities as rigid as, if different from, those of the Noh.
In recent years one has seen the same phenomenon occur in the dramatic form which succeeded the Shingeki—variously named avant-garde theater, underground theater—the drama of which Shuji Terayama, Juro Kara, Makoto Sato and Tadashi Suzuki are the leading playwrights and directors.
Originally, in the 1960s, Japanese avant-garde drama was in full rebellion against the rigidity and unnaturalness of the Shingeki. The new theater was supposed to be spontaneous, free, and above all personal. At the same time, it was supposed to be political; society was to be criticized, indicted if possible, and freedom of the individual was to be respected and even celebrated.
Now, not twenty years later, the drama of Juro Kara, though still performed in the alfresco surroundings of his famous tent, is as rigid in its way as the Bunraku, and its very structure has become predetermined. The plays of Makoto Sato have become doctrinaire down into its basic elements. The result, the kata as it were, is then taken as emblematic of the thing it represents. In other words, reality is once removed, the signifier becomes the signified; manner becomes mannerism and reality becomes gesture.
This results in instant style. In the theater, as we have seen, the style becomes the drama itself, content becomes form. Such forms are self-sufficient; perfected, they last forever. It is for this reason, among others, that the strata of Japanese drama remain.
Much can be said in defense of the kat a and its products. Though it makes spontaneous, realistic, democratic drama (and thinking) impossible, it also provides that necessary step away from reality which is the prerequisite of all art, and it imposes those limitations without which true artistic freedom is impossible. Also, and almost incidentally, it allows us to see—in Japan alone—the entire and mighty vista of a national drama, a whole stratum of theatrical history.
—1981