Performances and Stage Effects

It is said that Kabuki is stylized theatre. However, looking into details, it has been performed in various ways, and its variety appears in everything from costumes and make-up, to stage effects such as sound and lighting. Depending on the situation, special stage settings and large props were used, or actors themselves would elaborate their performance. Thus, kabuki has created various special stage techniques which distinguish kabuki from other theatrical genres.

Please look at the half circle in the middle of the floor. It is a kabuki-specific stage conversion that cuts the stage into a circle and rotates it with a mandrel, decorating the stage equipment back to back in the center, and rotating it 180 degrees to change the scene. This mechanism has also affected foreign countries since the Meiji era. The mandrel prevented the rotating orbit from shaking and helped to hide the operation from the audience seats. This mechanism wasn't just for accelerating the transition of the scene. This mechanism enables a "go and come" stage effect, which alternately shows different situations in two scenes to audiences by turning the devices to display the front and back.

This picture described how the stage setting called "suppon" worked at the very moment when an actor appeared from a stage trap, by depicting the inside of it from the audience side. Suppon was a stage elevator installed in the middle of the hanamichi (elevated passageway) continued from the stage. Suppon was a common name for seri (lifting up), because the actor's face coming out from the hall looked like a snapping turtle (suppon). Suppon was often used when a supernatural character appears or a character uses black magic or ninja arts in the story, and this picture is also the scene when Ogata Rikimaru, using ninja arts, appears on the stage with smoke screen.

Hayagawari used in the Onbobori-no-ba scene in the masterpiece of a ghost story Tokaidou Yotsuya Kaidan. This is a scene in whcih Iemon is fishing at Onbobori, and the shutter that the dead bodies of Oiwa and Kohei, who were killed by Iemon, are attached to on both sides comes floating down the river. The costumes of Oiwa and Kohei were attached to the shutter beforehand so that one actor could act double roles in the same scene by turning over the panel and just putting out his face from the hole.

This program is commonly called the "Seven Roles of Osome" which means an onnagata (male actor who plays female roles) who plays the heroine Osome (a town girl) also acts seven roles through hayagawari (quick change). The two main characters of this story are Osome (female role) and Hisamatsu (leading male role). On an actual stage, the actor transforms from the female role of Osome into the leading part of Hisamatsu in a moment when passing each other on the hanamichi (actors' pathway). In this way, “hayagawari” or quick change is a technique in which an actor quickly changes from one role to another. To change roles quickly, there are some devices used, such as sewing obi onto kimono.