Onna Mono : The “Female Presence” on the Stage of the All-Male Traditional Japanese Theatre

Gabrovska, Galia Todorova

doi:10.1353/atj.2015.0027

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Wakashu kabuki is the main form of Japanese Kabuki performance after female kabuki. Wakashu, for underage men, is a form of Kabuki performance performed by beautiful underage teenagers [12]. The appearance of Wakashu kabuki, on the one hand, indicated that male actors had achieved a dominant position on the Kabuki performance stage; on the other hand, because of the combination with the art form of wild talk, kabuki performance had more complex plots.…”

Section: The Influence Of Historical Policy and Path Dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Policy, Family and Audience Experience: A Research on the Root Causes of the Unequal Status of Japanese Female Actors on the Kabuki Stage

Chen¹,

Du²,

Li³

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange（ICLACE 2022)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since World War II, with the development of the economy, more and more Japanese women have entered different work fields and played an important role. However, kabuki performance, the earliest form of performance founded by Japanese women, is mainly performed by male actors, and female actors are rarely seen. This paper discusses this phenomenon and takes the influence of public policy, the obstruction of vested interests in the cultural field and audience experience as the main reasons. At present, as more Japanese female actors appear on various performance stages and the aesthetic changes of the audience, female actors may return to the stage of Kabuki performance, although it may take a long time.

show abstract

Section: The Influence Of Historical Policy and Path Dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Policy, Family and Audience Experience: A Research on the Root Causes of the Unequal Status of Japanese Female Actors on the Kabuki Stage

Chen¹,

Du²,

Li³

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange（ICLACE 2022)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Fortunately, such tendency has recently changed to some degree. For example, Barbara Geilhorn (2015) and Galia Gabrovska (2015) examine women performers of noh and kabuki. The former's attention to the physical space of women's noh performance is shared by this paper's focus.…”

Section: Introduction To the Quest: Purview Timeframe And Cultivation...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Masculinized femininity of women characters on the Kabuki stage: Female Onnagata's “cross-gender” performance in the “all-male” theatre

Isaka

2023

Journal of Material Culture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores four-century-old “all-male” kabuki theatre of Japan as the site of logics, mechanisms, and operations of onnagata's gender performance. The term onnagata signifies actors performing women's roles in kabuki, and since the first two and a half centuries of kabuki history overlapped with the time when women were legally expelled from performance activities, male onnagata mostly developed and established the artistry and traditions of onnagata acting. Women resumed kabuki performance when it was still illegal, but that did not cancel this fact. The present article studies kabuki in this historical context in order to investigate how dynamically genders are taking shape on the kabuki stage and off. To that end, this paper uses “cultivation” (a training methodology called shugyô) as a key point of investigation, while paying special attention to female onnagata as a main subject of examination. Cultivation is the training methodology of weight that has long been used and systematized in many circles engaged in activities established in premodern times, such as Buddhism, martial arts, and performing arts, and constitutes a blanket regime for these wide-ranging areas. Cultivation is to obtain and internalize second nature to the extent that it could function as if it were natural, the process of which takes place through two stages: (1) repetitive, long-lasting, personal, and somatic training in, e.g., posture, movements, and the like, and (2) internalization of said technique as second nature. That this cultivation process is congruous with the concept of performativity in contemporary critical theory suggests that an analysis of how female kabuki actors go through cultivation in order to internalize kabuki body grammar, including gender related code can contribute not only to kabuki studies but also to gender studies.

show abstract

Cross-dressing and Homosexuality - With a Focus on English Renaissance Theatre and Japanese Edo Kabuki

Jeon¹

2018

journalofkoreantheatrestudiesassociation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Onna Mono : The “Female Presence” on the Stage of the All-Male Traditional Japanese Theatre

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Policy, Family and Audience Experience: A Research on the Root Causes of the Unequal Status of Japanese Female Actors on the Kabuki Stage

Policy, Family and Audience Experience: A Research on the Root Causes of the Unequal Status of Japanese Female Actors on the Kabuki Stage

Masculinized femininity of women characters on the Kabuki stage: Female Onnagata's “cross-gender” performance in the “all-male” theatre

Cross-dressing and Homosexuality - With a Focus on English Renaissance Theatre and Japanese Edo Kabuki

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About