Elsewhere
Elsewhere
✭✭✭✭✭
by anon. Japanese
163rd Kamogawa Odori, Pontocho Kaburenjo
May 1-24, 2000
Kyoto is noted for its variety of temples, castles and gardens but not for its theatre. Kyoto is home to several schools of noh, but as is their custom, they give only one or two performances per month. Nearby Osaka, is home to bunraku and most major commercial theatre in the Kansai (southern) area of Honshu (the main island of Japan). Luckily, however, May is one of only two months in the year (along with December) when one can see geisha performances in Kyoto. This event called the Kamogawa Odori (this being the 163rd edition) is held at the Pontocho Kaburenjo in one of the few remaining older streets downtown. An elderly woman with excellent English is posted there to help foreigners buy tickets for one of the three daily shows. I had not known about this in advance and couldn’t believe my luck that this should be on during my visit. I had expected to see a kind of advanced “folkloric” evening with a collection of various dances, songs and musical selections displaying the classical arts in which geisha are rigorously trained.
Much to my surprise, the first hour of the 90-minute programme was taken up with an elaborately produced play, an adaptation of the FUSEHIME section of the epic novel “Nansō Satomi Hakkenden” (“The Story of Satomi and the Eight Dogs”) By Kyokutei Bakin (1767-1848). The performance style was exactly the same as in kabuki, using all of its devices--a “hanamichi” (a runway from the back of the auditorium to the stage), appearances and disappearances through trap doors, “hikinuki” (instantaneous costume changes), “tachimawari” (stylized fight scenes), “mié” (poses frozen in the midst of action), “tsuke” (wooden blocks rapped on the floor to heighten the effect of the ‘mié’ and ‘tachimawari’) and so forth. The prime difference was that unlike kabuki, bunraku or noh where all performers, including musicians and assistants, are male, here all were female. As offstage singers chanted the text, the onstage actors mimed the sung action, speaking only when a character had lines in the text. The spoken style was the highly stylized mode of kabuki where each syllable is given equal weight except when the de-emphasized vowels “i” or “u” allow a violent clash of consonants.
None of my group of four realized there was an English summary in the programme until after the show, so that we each had made up our own explanation for the strange events we saw involving a goddess of spring, an animal changed into a human being and a double suicide. As we later learned, a warlord promises that he will give his daughter to whoever brings him the head of his enemy. As it turns out the loyal dog of the maiden Fusehime brings back the head and the goddess Mawara Sen-nyo changes the dog into a human being. When the dog-human is killed, Fusehime kills herself and their blood mingles and coats her juzu (rosary) beads, eight of which fly off in all directions later to give power to eight swordsmen who will bring peace to the world. This is quite some story, and within the limits of the Kaburenjo was given quite an elaborate production.
After intermission, the programme took up the visual theme of spheres and presented five contrasting dances, more in line with what I had expected. Yet while some of the dances, accompanied by a complete (female) kabuki group of musicians and singers, dealt with flirting and game-playing, one dealt with the spirit of a famous courtesan recalling her life and expressing her fear for the dark that lies beyond. The integrity of both the play and the dances was enough to dispel any Westerner’s trivialized view of what geisha are or can accomplish. If anyone has plans to visit Kyoto, I would suggest choosing May or December just to take in the Kamogawa Odori since there is really no other authentic way for Westerners to see the talent of the geisha.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in the TheatreWorld (UK) 2000-05-28.
Photo: Curtain call of the Kamogawa Odori.
2000-05-28
Kyoto, JPN: Fusehime