Japanese Kabuki can reflect what cultural characteristics of Japan, as well as Chinese Peking Opera can reflect what traditional Chinese culture?

Kabuki is a typical Japanese national performing art, which originated in the early Edo period of the 17th century and developed into a full-fledged theater in the 1600s, with only male actors. It has been preserved for nearly 400 years along with noh and kyogen.

Kabuki is a type of theater unique to Japan and is one of the country's traditional performing arts. Kabuki is recognized as an important intangible cultural asset in Japan, and in 2005 it was designated as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO.

Modern Kabuki is characterized by elaborate sets, complex stage machinery, gorgeous costumes and make-up, and an all-male cast.

The originator of Kabuki is Aguni, a beautiful woman known to women and children in Japan as a witch of Izumo Taisha Shrine in Shimane Prefecture (i.e., an unmarried young woman who specializes in playing music and praying at the shrine), and Aguni went around to raise funds to renovate the shrine. She set up a theater tent in the downtown area of Kyoto and performed the Nenbutsu Dance. This is the performance of religious dance, Ah Guo but a change in the old program, created a "teahouse boss lady" Ah Guo women dressed as men, dressed in black, wrapped in black head wraps, the waist girded with a red scarf, hung with an ancient musical instrument brass gongs, inserted the Japanese sword, dashing and handsome, the boss lady fell in love with at first sight, Ah Guo also improvised during the performance of the addition of real life in the witty episodes, the performance has caused a sensation. A garden innovation "Nianfo dance", and continue to enrich, improve, from the folk to the court, gradually become a unique style of performing arts.

The most widely circulated theory is that it originated from the conjugation of the word "倾く（かぶく）". In Japanese, striking movements and costumes are called "kabuki," and people who wear them are called "kabuki people. The term "kabuki" was aptly named after the three kanji characters for song (か), dance (ぶ), and prostitute (き), and the term "kabuki prostitute" was born. Soon after, the term "kabuki" was also used because men were also involved in the performances. Later, when women were banned from performing, the term "kabuki" became rare, and from the Meiji era onward, the term "kabuki" was settled upon.

The themes of Kabuki are broadly divided into two categories: one depicting the world of nobles and samurai, and the other showing the lives of the people. The repertoire can be divided into four types: "Yoshitada" rant (a Kabuki adaptation of "Ningyo Jyoruri" (now known as "Bunraku Bunraku")), and "Kabuto" (a Kabuki adaptation of "Kabuto"). The play is called "Gidayu Kyogen". "Gidayu Kyogen" is a Joruri style of singing composed by Takemoto Gidayu, who later became a general term for the artists who sang and sang "Gidayu Kyogen". In this context, "kyogen" means story. "Gitafu kyogen" means "stories sung by Gitafu (or sung with Gitafu kyogen)"). The "Times" rants are historical dramas that use the past as a metaphor for the present; the "World" rants are dramas that depict the lives of the common people and love stories; and the dance dramas known as the "Things" rants deal with the moral principles of loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, and righteousness. The dance dramas, called "Doing Things", dealt with loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, righteousness and other moral principles, and provided the general public with moral education on hard work, thrift, doing good deeds and punishing evils.

"Beauty Grandpa" Sakado Tamasaburo

If you keep walking in your pants, you can't feel the psychology of someone wearing a skirt

This reporter Kuai Lehao from Shanghai

Meet Sakado Tamasaburo and you'll know that Chen Kaige's Melancholy was really the wrong choice of actor.

He is thin, the ancient lady as slightly containing the chest, two arms slightly constrained to the side, shoulders lightly shrugged, all the way evenly broken step, such as the wind blowing across the water. The face is white and clean, can not see the wrinkles, the eyes turn, in the crowd glimpsed the old acquaintance, nodded and handed a smile.

You can't tell his age, and even his gender is ambiguous, although he is dressed as a man. He is 60 years old and has been on stage for 53 years, and Chinese fans call him "Grandpa Beauty".

Man's body, woman's form

Tamasaburo Sakado, Japan's national treasure, the "female form" in Kabuki, equivalent to the "male" in Peking Opera. Sakado's status in Japan is comparable to that of Mei Lanfang in China.

Tamasaburo has his own set of principles. For example, under the stage, he minimizes contact with actors playing opposite him, and he keeps a distance from his co-stars even if they have worked with him for more than 10 years. This is because he believes that the mystery on stage should not be easily broken, and if the two are too familiar in life, it will affect the sensitivity and magnetism on stage.

Although they are life-and-death lovers on stage, he didn't even meet his eyes once when he sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Yu Jiu Lin, who played Liu Mengmei, at a press conference for "Peony Pavilion".

"In the past, I have been paired with flower girls, and I have never performed with a male actor, so I always had a mentality of taking care of Mr. Yu Sanlang, taking care of the fact that he is a non-kunqu professional, taking care of the fact that he is a man. But when I got on stage and met his eyes, I couldn't feel that he was a man at all, especially when he was expressing his shyness about Du Liniang. This kind of stage feeling is very marvelous." Yu Jiu Lin, a leading scholar of Suzhou Kun Theater, said.

People who have interacted with Mr. Ban Dong say he is a man of immense purity, leading a three-point, almost isolated life of rehearsal hall, theater and home. He rehearsed during the day, performed at night, received massages from professional practitioners half an hour before bedtime in order to relax his muscles and stay in shape, had almost no personal life, did not take part in social activities, never married in his life, and did not have any scandals.

He was not only an excellent "female form", but also often played male roles, and in one play he first played a "female form", and then switched to the domineering "lion spirit" ("lion spirit"). In Kabuki, there are often characters in the guise of animals, and their performances are very rough, similar to those of the flower face in Peking Opera); he played "Kouzou-kun" in "The Tale of Genji", which completely conveyed the handsome and elegant male; and in another play he played a man disguised as a woman, a thief, all dressed up in a woman's costume, but what the audience saw was a cynical, handsome and badass with a gangster's air. But the audience still sees a cynical, handsome bad guy with a gangly demeanor, and Sakamoto's performance has completely transcended the natural gender differences between men and women.

It is said that he never married because he dedicated all his time and energy to the stage. In fact, it may be easier to understand the matter from another angle: how can a man who can be both male and female in his roles allow himself to be confused by a clearly defined gender identity in real life? How can a man who is used to performing perfect love be completely satisfied with a mundane love in real life?

I am a born Kabuki dancer

People Magazine: How does your father, who rebuked you for talking big, feel about the possibility of performing Mei Lanfang's classic play in China?

Sakamoto: Unfortunately, my father has passed away, and he would have been very happy if he had known that this day would come. The influence that Mr. Mei Lanfang had on our family and even on the Japanese Kabuki community back then continues for decades and is still there today. In fact, I myself did not think that this day would really come, it all seems like a dream.

People Magazine: Why is it that while there are fewer and fewer "male dancers" in China, the tradition of the "female form" in Japanese Kabuki has been maintained so well?

Sakado: The charm of the female form is that it is a field of art that cannot be replaced by female actors. The women played by "FEMALE FORM" do not seek the reality of women, but rather the abstraction of women from a male perspective. "The magic of the female form is not in how men play women, but in how they transform themselves into women.

It's a shame that tradition is being lost, and maybe I'm being a bit disrespectful to my fellow Chinese kunqu artists by saying this, but as I've come closer to traditional Chinese theater, I've been a little disappointed.

Chinese kunqu came first, then Peking Opera, which declined during the heyday of Peking Opera, and the kunqu after this was influenced by much of Peking Opera. In the course of my study of kunqu, I was very eager to learn about the real original kunqu, and to see the costumes and contents of kunqu before it was influenced by Peking Opera. So I went to the Suzhou Kunqu Museum, but I didn't find it, and it surprised me that there was no information left even in the museum. With such a loss, can we ever return and resurrect kunqu as it was meant to be? Perhaps traditional Chinese theater has been neglected and preserved in the march of time, and I am very eager for China to retain more of it.

People's Weekly: I noticed that your hands are very small, your feet are only about 35 yards, and your shoulders are what is known in China as "cut shoulders". You know that there are physical requirements for male actors in China, for example, they have to have cut shoulders, they can't be taller than a certain size, and their hands have to be small and soft, like a woman's, etc. Is the same thing true for the "female form" in Kabuki? The same is true for the female form in Kabuki.

Sakata: (Laughs) Yes, it's almost exactly the same. So maybe I was born to be a Kabuki artist. I naturally have all these conditions and naturally love to perform on stage in kimono. I knew exactly what I needed from an early age, and I've always maintained a regular, quiet life in my "female form," with basically no private life, no family, no children, no thoughts of ordinary household chores, and no idea of how to spend my money.

People's Weekly: Does a too-simple lifestyle affect your life experience and your understanding and expression of the complexity of your characters' inner feelings?

Bandon: I think the key is how one sees and understands what life has to offer. Sometimes life becomes rich and complicated, but the mind is poor and depleted. For example, when I was at the Kun Theater in Suzhou, there was only one tap for hot water, and everyone would line up to get hot water, so I was able to appreciate the significance of hot water. In Japan, on the other hand, hot water is available at every faucet, so people ignore the difference between cold water and hot water, and the meaning of hot water is shallow.

People's Weekly: The male and female roles were originally created by men because women couldn't show their faces in the theater and there was a need for female roles on the stage. Today, female performers are no longer a problem, so what is the significance of the role?

Sakdon: It seems like a boring thing to me for an actress to just play a woman in her daughter's body. It's the same as cooking. If the food is nothing more than the natural original state of the ingredients, it would be too simple and tasteless. What is difficult is to change the ingredients in their original state and combine them into another dish. This is difficult, but much more interesting. Male and female actors are the same in nature, but a male actor playing a female character is denying his natural self once and then reinventing it. To look more like a woman artistically is like painting with a man's body, so the man's body needs to be worked out into an aesthetically pleasing woman's body.

People Magazine: How do you exercise and do that?

Bandon: Observe women, with your head and your heart. For example, a woman's eyes when she looks at a man, Du Liniang is a lady of the world, when she sees a man, she certainly will not be this kind of eyes (as a straight hook), she must be evasive, wanting to see and wanting to hide (as a shyness). Du Liniang in the disease, there is a push window action, I found in the ancient town of Jiangnan, China's wooden windows are very heavy, so I increased the force of the push, simulating her push can not look. And as soon as the window was pushed open, I immediately added a hint of rocking motion to show that she was already too sick and weak at this point.

This is the accumulation of observation, women in life, women in the text of previous albums, observe their demeanor, movement, and then combined. The art of the female form is often that the form produces the thought. When you put on makeup and a classical dress, you become the person in the play, but if you walk in pants all the time, you can't feel the psychology of the person in the dress.

People Magazine: What is the biggest difficulty of kunqu for you?

Sakamoto: The most difficult thing is still the language. In Japanese, the verb is placed at the end of the statement, whereas in Chinese, the verb is in the middle, so in terms of emotional expression, everything is different.

People's Weekly: You said you tried to understand Du Liniang from the standpoint of Tang Xianzu.

Bandon: Mr. Tang was already old when he wrote the play, having experienced the vicissitudes of the world and realized life. Although his Du Liniang is a young girl, during her illness she realizes that she has become haggard overnight and wants to make a painting to preserve her appearance at this moment. These are not the psyche of a young girl, this is the psyche of an old person close to death. As I mulled over the character, I often realized that behind the character, there was another voice speaking.

People Magazine: Does this other voice refer to fate? As is often philosophized in Japanese culture: that life is short and impermanent?

Santo: Perhaps, but I'm talking about the voice of the original author, Tang Xianzu speaking through Du Liniang. One of the things that strikes me most about The Peony Pavilion is that men and women can't meet and love each other under normal circumstances, but only in dreams or across life and death, which coincides with certain things in Japanese culture. But in the end, Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei's true love touched heaven, and God brought Du Liniang back to life. This (happy) ending is typical of Chinese culture and would not be found in Japanese culture.

People's Weekly: In terms of spirituality, some people say that Mr. Mei Lanfang's beauty is "earthly", while your beauty has a sense of "transparency" that is close to the realm of the unconscious, which is also due to the difference between Chinese and Japanese cultures, don't you think so?

Santo: I think that in all classical art forms, there is a beauty of moderation. Their forms have been highly programmed over time, but the audience can still experience very unique and subtle details in the seemingly programmed performances of different performers.