Decoration in the Japanese theater

Two different tendencies share the field of the Décor in the Japanese Théâtre :

one sticks to the old traditions of the theater Kabuki ,
the other takes as a starting point the European Réalisme.

It is however not a total opposition: the decorations known as modern are in general built according to old methods.

In the repertory kabuki

The repertory kabuki comprises a majority of old parts and, to decorate those, one is satisfied to follow the models which the centuries tested and improved. Style, dimension, drawing, color, all are fixed in advance. The name of the decorator is forgotten, it does not have there a decorator strictly speaking, but only one Master technician who with the upper hand on the carpenters and the painters, to the employees with the curtain of scene. Its load is hereditary. One of the problem which arises for him is to adapt the old decorations stereotyped to the more roomy plates of the new rooms.

The origin of the decorations kabuki is obscure, because the historian cannot go up beyond the period Genroku (元禄). However the kabuki would have been born at the beginning of the 10th century. In this time, there were no yet theaters and one played open sky, in impromptu enclosures. The first rooms kabuki were built at the 18th century. Their resemblance to the rooms shakespeariennes is seizing.

The scene is equipped with several devices: the plate advances in the middle of the public which surrounds it by three sides. Protected from a green and black curtain, the hikimaku , that one draws in the horizontal direction, separates the scene from the room (this use remained). To this same time the invention goes back from the way of flowers ( hanamichi ), platform connecting the scene to the bottom of the room and being in particular used to suggest the Lointain, which advances in the middle of the public. Formerly there was hanamichi , by which the actors could return or leave. Only the principal one remains today, that of left. New decorations, more sophisticated, made their appearance and the theaters obtain a complex machinery allowing of many special Effets.

The current théâte kabuki was subject to the influence of European architecture, but especially, considering the growing number of the spectators, one is obliged to build larger. The scene was thus lengthened and it forms an oblong rectangle, in absolute contrast with rather square proscénium of the theaters to Italian.

All the mediums ravel in the theater kabuki : court and the city, the large world and demi-monde, the Samurai and the man of the people. And the forms are less varied than the subjects. One finds of all in the kabuki : the simplicity and the symbolism of the Theater No, the features borrowed from the puppet shows Bunraku , of the dance sometimes and sometimes still of the song, here a highly stylized expression, there on the contrary the daily realism. With this variety of topics and form a whole range of decorations going from the simple plain backdrop corresponds (black or light blue) to an exuberant decoration or are neighborly symbolism, realism and expressionnism. But always one endeavors to make spectacle an alive harmony of colors.

Internal bond

Japanese Theater

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