kabuki history

Shogunate (1338-1573), Kyoto was the centre of luxury and effeminate culture among the wealthy, and of increasingly licentious revelry among high and low alike. The first half of this era, known as the Muromachi Period (1338-1443), was characterized by an influx of Chinese influence, an increase of education among the priesthood, and of such gentle arts as Cha-no-yu (tea ceremony), Ko-awase (incense judging), and Ikebana (flower arrangement), among the leisured. Noh, also, during this period, was brought to its perfection and exercised a refining influence over the military class in particular. None of these apparently noble arts, however, was able to check the social evils which grew up, especially during the later years of that Shogunate (1444-1573), in part because of the strict isolation of the sexes demanded by Buddhist ethics and Buddhism's failure to bring matters of sex under the ennobling sanctions of religion.
While the upper classes found their recognized amusements in cultured ways on the one hand, and their secret delights in the practices of exclusively male society on the other, the great mass of the people were entertaining themselves upon the dry river-beds or in vacant lots within the city with popular Dengaku, Sarugaku, and other sports of rude promiscuity, wherein not infrequently men of rank also found relaxation.
Into the arena of popular sport, somewhere about the end of the sixteenth century, when England's Shakespeare was in his prime, came a dancing-girl, known to us as Okuni of Izumo. She seems to have been the daughter of an iron-worker, and a skilled Maiko in the service of the shrine at Izumo, which, though Shinto, was at the time in the charge of a Buddhist priest. Her presence in Kyoto is traditionally explained by the supposition that she may have been on a tour seeking contributions for the shrine. However that may have been, she met with such welcome in Kyoto that she remained, to be identified with a new dramatic movement rising from the midst of the common people.
Okuni's Kagura seems to have been a form of Buddhist nembutsu, a dance of worship in praise of Amida; but her reception on the Kyoto river-beds may well have been due more to her physical beauty and grace of movement than to any appeal in the interests of religion. Here, in any case, about 1596, she was seen by Sanzaburo, who from Nagoya had been sent by his family to be trained for the priesthood in the Kennin Temple, one of the then famous Five Temples, in Kyoto.
This youth of a military family had no fondness for the austerities of religion, but led a life of social freedom, and was popularly known for excellence in social arts, including the Kyogen of Noh. He was attracted by Okuni, but found her graceful dancing too restrained to satisfy his taste. Apparently without difficulty, he influenced her to greater abandon, and taught her to dance the popular songs of the day to music of his own composition. This was Kabuki, a slang designation of the time later to be dignified by the use of written characters signifying the art of song and dance.
Two trained players thus broke from the bonds of dramatic custom, and, seizing upon material nearest to the popular mind, made another beginning which is now to be traced through developing forms unto the modern legitimate drama of Japan.
A few of Okuni's Kugara are extent, and the following Tenshi Wago Mae (Dance of Heaven and Earth Affinity) is significant in its blending of Buddhist repression with nature myths from Shinto, capable of most spiritual as well as most carnal interpretation. Interpreted spiritually, we cannot but be impressed with the beauty of its conception; but in an historic study we need to remind ourselves that the carnal interpretation was the most apparent in old Japan, where, under Buddhist influence, all love meant passion of illusion