Core Ethics Vol. 5（2009）

論文

Gender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki
Galia Todorova GABROVSKA ＊(Sugi Kuhêʼs 1 advice to Sakata Tôjûrô 2)

There was a famous kashagata named Sugi Kuhê. Tôjûrô, when he had turned twenty, went to Kuhê andtold him he wanted to study how to act. Kuhê replied, “Since I am a kashagata, I have done much imitatingof women. You are a,3 so you must imitate men. When one considers present-day tachiyaku

actors, there do not seem to be many men among them. Nevertheless they are not onnagata and there is no
reason at all for their lack of masculinity. You go and study how to imitate men!” Tôjûrô said that hefollowed this advice and learned something of the actorʼs art. Shortly after the above conversation took
place, Kuhê was praised as a master actor unlikely to be equalled in the Three Cities.4

This study offers a general view on the processes and mechanisms of gender and body construction in
kabuki theatre during the early modern period: a topic not thoroughly explored yet. The paper consists of threeparts. The first one poses the main research questions and delineates the theoretical framework of the present
discussion. The second part argues that kabuki was a main site for production of gender in premodern Japanand roughly defines three periods in this process: formative, mature and modern.5 The third part outlines the
specifics of gender construction in Edo period kabuki, which, as the Edo urban popular culture per se, had twosides: traditional and carnivalesque.
This article is largely theoretical. Its aim is to contend that kabuki is essential for understanding genderconstruction in premodern Japan and to develop an approach to analysis of kabuki from the perspective ofcontemporary gender, body and performance theories. The topic of gender construction in kabuki itself is vastand could not be exhausted in a single paper. This is just the first step of a more detailed study of the ideas
introduced herein.
The underlying premise of this study is that the presentation and representation of the body is central to
all cultural processes and that performance is central to the formation of culture. The paper looks at kabuki asa multi-pronged art in early modern Japan: text, body, image, production, and performance, and searches foranswers to the following questions:•

How do cultural ideologies in society shape theatrical performance to create and enforce certain
meanings? What power do those produced meanings serve in terms of gender?

•

How were the notions of femininity and masculinity and of the female and male body constructed on thestage of kabuki?

•

What part did kabuki play in consolidating or transforming Tokugawa gender hierarchies and norms?

•

Were there any significant changes in the representation of gender and the body in kabuki culture6
during the course of the Edo and early Meiji periods and if yes, what are their implications for the

キーワード：歌舞伎、ジェンダー，身体 , 構造、江戸時代＊立命館大学大学院先端総合学術研究科

2006年度入学

表象領域

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Core Ethics Vol. 5（2009）

general picture of gender construction in Japanʼs changing society?

First, briefly outlined are the contemporary conceptualisations of the body, power, gender, and performancethat provide the theoretical approach to the present discussion. It is based on the modern understandings of the
body not as a purely biological form but as a pre-eminently socio-cultural construct7 and of power relations insociety not as a visibly repressive process but as subtle pervasive mechanisms of both discipline and resistance,
which are manifested most concretely at the level of the body.8 It is grounded as well on a perception of theatre
not as a “mirror of reality” for that implies “passivity and non-involvement,”9 but as a representation underlain
by power structures, an active ideological force for production of cultural meanings, especially in terms ofgender. Like the body, the categories of gender, sex and eroticism are not seen as innate but as constructs
formed to support or subvert the structure of the dominant cultural ideology.
Modern theories no longer regard the body as natural and ahistorical, a raw material to be further polishedby culture and civilised but rather as “a political, social, and cultural object par excellence,” interwoven withsystems of meanings and representations, “bound up in the order of desire, signification, and power.”10
Emphasised is the symbolic significance of the body, its importance in metaphorical discourse, its use as a
medium of both social control and resistance. Foucault has been the most influential with hisconceptualisations of the body as a primary site of contestation in a series of political, sexual, economic andintellectual struggles, as a surface for the operation of different forms of power. In his understanding, on which
this paper is grounded, power is not a possession of individuals nor does it demonstrate itself only under the
oppressor/oppressed model. Rather, power presents a dynamic network of subtle, elusive forms of control,
normalisation, and of resistance as part of everyday practices or cultural representation. Foucault linked thenotions of body, power, knowledge and sexuality, exploring the way in which bodies “are arbitrarily or violently
constructed in order to legitimate regimes of domination,”11 and also to destabilise them, as I seek to explore
critically in the present discussion of gender and body construction in kabuki.
Two main concepts of the body are of particular significance for the topic examined herein. The first one
pertains to the body as a surface for multiple power discourses and “the focal point for struggles over the shapeof power;”12 the second one concerns the body as a “surface of social incision,”13 an “inscribed surface of events.”14
These two notions are crucial to the understanding that the represented onstage body can be perceived as alocus of struggle for power in society. Simplistically put, in terms of gender, for instance, women ritually lost
this struggle over their own corporeal surface by being excluded from the performative space of the classicaltheatres and replaced by male actors. The two notions can be applied further to an analysis of the way in which
the body, more the female than the male one, was symbolically disciplined on the stage of kabuki, transformed
into a “docile”15 body and inscribed with the cultural and gender norms of androcentric samurai society.
Simultaneously, the focus on the body in kabuki and, particularly, its representation as erotic and defiant,subverted the dominant ideology. Consequently, I look at the construction of the body in kabuki as “a text which
could be read as a cultural statement about gender/ power relations,”16 a central object through which thoserelations are both formulated and resisted.
Next, I outline in brief major feminist performance theories as they give important insight into themechanisms of cultural representation whereby gender has been constructed on the theatre stage. Feminist
performance criticism is a relatively recent phenomenon.17 It views theatre as a “site of representation, which
has historically outlawed or silenced women within its frame”18 and claims that “the address of the traditional
representational theatre apparatus constitutes the subjectivity of male spectators and leaves women
unarticulated within its discourse.”19 It also argues that “the female body is imaged within representation only
as the site of male desire” and imagination, so woman exists solely “as a representation of her own marginality

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GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabukifrom discourse.”20 The issue of womenʼs exclusion from male discourse and the representations in which it isembodied have been generally approached in three different ways by contemporary feminist thought following
the three divergent ideologies: liberal, cultural or radical, and materialist feminism.21 The first one is based onliberal humanism and it maintains that people “should receive equal consideration with no discrimination on
the basis of sex.”22 It regards theatre as a universal form of communication and fights mainly for “female
visibility” in performance space. For this reason, it has been criticised by other feminists for simply subsuming“the female gender into the (male) generic, or universal, category.”23 On the contrary, the radical or cultural
feminist approach reifies sexual difference between genders, celebrates womanʼs nature and supremacy andaccepts theatre “as a mimesis that validates womenʼs identities.”24 In its search for a reversal of genderhierarchy by theorising female biology and values as superior to male ones, cultural feminism makes an active
use of empowered feminine archetypes, of womenʼs eroticism and female nudity. While liberal feminism
attempts to absorb “women into the male universal” and cultural feminism to overturn “the balance of power infavor of female supremacy,” the materialist approach “frames the debate over gender in more gender-neutral
terms.” It “deconstructs the mythic subject Woman to look at women as a class oppressed by material conditions
and social relations”25 and as such also sheds light on the mechanisms whereby notions of male gender havebeen constructed. It could be useful, for instance, for analysing the way in which the urban commoner culture
produced through the stage of kabuki its definitions of manhood in close relation to the domineering samurai
perception of masculinity.
The materialist feminist performance theory26 explores the ideological uses of performative space and “itsimplication in structures of power and authority.”27 This critical approach is based on the understanding that
representation or “cultural production,” as it is also defined, in all its forms such as theatre, performance, dance,
visual art, or film, and so on, functions as an active ideological means of producing cultural meanings andpreserving the established social and gender arrangements. Michelle Barrett, for instance, defines therelationship between ideology and representation is the following way:

Ideology is a generic term for the processes by which meaning is produced, challenged, reproduced,
transformed. Since meaning is negotiated primarily through means of communication and signification, it ispossible to suggest that cultural production provides an important site for the construction of ideologicalprocesses [gender being one of them]… Literature (read “theatre”), for instance can be usefully analysed asa paradigmatic case of ideology in particular social formation.28

Ideology, thus, is not visible and imposed from above but “a complex and contradictory system ofrepresentations through which we experience ourselves in relation to each other and to the social structures inwhich we live.”29 In other words, in the view of materialist feminist criticism, all cultural products have an
implicit ideological nature. Thus, theatre is no longer seen as a “mirror of reality” but as a mechanism for thecreation of ideologically based meanings “that have very specific, material consequences,”30 especially in termsof gender construction. By analysing gender relations as represented in performative space we can trace theway in which societies generate and enforce standards for gendered behaviour that must be followed by theirmembers: a phenomenon particularly well illustrated by kabuki. Materialist feminist discourse views thenotions of both gender and sex as constructs “enculturated” and “performed,”31 with a main function toperpetuate the dominant androcentric structure. Similarly, sexuality and the female and the male body are also
viewed as socio-cultural constructions.
It is through this theoretical prism that I analyse construction of gender and the body in kabuki in thecontext of Tokugawa Japan. I explore kabuki both as an active ideological means of preserving the established73

Core Ethics Vol. 5（2009）social and gender arrangements and also as an anti-establishment textuality, a site of commoner culture
resistance to official samurai doctrine. Simultaneously, I try to avoid an approach that would overemphasisekabuki as only ideological by nature. We should not forget that kabuki was meant to entertain, it was fun andfantasy. And all these ideological mechanisms I discuss herein were subtle and implicit, which makes them aneven more interesting and challenging subject of exploration.
I look at kabuki as a main site for production of gender throughout the early modern period from two
perspectives. Firstly, I explore the central role which kabuki played in formulating the notions of gender in thecontext of the emerging commoner urban culture, from the end of the sixteenth, throughout the seventeenth
century and up until the end of the Kyôhô era (1716-1735). This was the time when the urban cultural code wasbeing articulated. Borrowing the ideas of sekai and shukô,32 I argue that, during this formative epoch, kabuki
produced what I want to consider a ʻsekaiʼ of gender representations that was related to the conventions of thecore gender discourse of townsmen culture. The formation process found expression in the development of themain role types (yakugara) and acting styles (kata): aragoto, wagoto, and onnagata.33 It accounts for the actorsʼ
role specialisation, for example, since as the patterns had not yet been firmly established, there was still anecessity for different actors to play the different roles. By the beginning of the 1680s, the basic yakugara werecreated: male roles (tachiyaku),34 female roles (onnagata)35 and villains (katakiyaku).36 The evolvement of kabuki
into a full-fledged dramatic art during the Genroku era gave birth to the various subdivisions of these threemajor types. For example, in jidaimono (period plays) the tachiyaku incorporated aragotoshi37(male actor
performing in bravura style) and wakashûgata (youth role), in wagoto38 pieces: nimaime (romantic lead),wagotoshi (male actor specialised in gentle, refined manner), pintokona (soft, somewhat effeminate lead) andshimbôtachiyaku (silent sufferer lead). The katakiyaku included jitsuaku (power-seeking villain) and kugeaku(wicked nobleman). The onnagata included keisei (high-ranking courtesan), akahime (red princess), musume(young girl), sewanyôbô (commonerʼs wife), bukenyôbô (samuraiʼs wife), katahazushi (woman of a high-ranking
samurai household), and so on. In summary, a variety of role types were created during this period and, thus,
different presentations of masculinity and femininity were produced on the stage. Some of them had theirʻreflectionsʼ in the developing urban society, others were a mere theatrical fantasy: aragoto and akahime being
the most conspicuous examples.
Accordingly, leading actors of the époque articulated the first narratives to identify and explain the newly
founded acting styles. Similar to earlier writings on Nô theatre by Zeami, although not so numerous andconscientiously self-legitimising, some of these ʻtextsʼ functioned at the outset as secret teachings in the art ofkabuki and were published in the form of a compilation called “Actorsʼ Analects” (Yakusha rongo) much later, in
1776, when the conventions has already been sufficiently well established.39 Particularly painstaking efforts
were made by the female impersonators to create the discourse on their performance of woman-likeness inorder to achieve ʻverisimilitudeʼ and ʻauthenticityʼ onstage. In what follows, I discuss in brief this process as itpresents a model of producing a discourse both on art and on female gender construction.40
Most instrumental in defining the gender ideology of onnagata was Yoshizawa Ayame I (1673-1729), praised
as the first true onnagata, whose “talks” geidan on female role acting, Ayamegusa (“Words of Ayame”),41 were
allegedly recorded by Fukuoka Yagoshirô (active fl. 1700-1730), who himself was an actor, but interestingly, ofmale roles and a playwright. The two main injunctions given by Ayame are that an onnagata should at all times
make a point of living and behaving like a woman offstage, and must never play both female and male roles
onstage.42 Yoshizawa is known to have unsuccessfully43 attempted to switch from female to male roles, an act
significantly accompanied by a respective change of his stage name from the somewhat effeminate, Ayame,
written with hiragana,44 which suggested multiple eroticised meanings45 to the more masculine one Gonshichi,
which is a compound of the Chinese characters for “power, authority” gon 権 46 and “seven” shichi 七 . In Ayameʼs

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GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki

vision, save the changes of stage name47 and bodily comportment, a thorough psychological transformation fromman to woman on the part of the female impersonator is indispensable both for the plausibility of ʻherʼ own
acting and for the overall success of the entire spectacle, as the male role actor will be incapable to perform in atruly credible way, if he cannot believe “in the total femininity” of his partner.48 Intriguingly, the stage
performance of tachiyakuʼs ʻnaturalʼ49 masculinity is deemed here as dependent on onnagataʼs convincing
representation of a culturally predetermined notion of femininity. Ayame also postulated that an onnagata“should make it a principle not to depart from the conduct of a virtuous woman,”50 the highest ranking
courtesan keisei being the ultimate model for desired femininity, an embodiment of softness, sophisticatedcharm and decorum. This conflating of the ʻtrueʼ onnagata with a “virtuous woman” functioned in two ways. On
the one hand, Yoshizawa aspired to elevate and legitimise the emerging art of female impersonation in kabuki.
His purpose was to disassociate onnagata from the prevailing at the time perception of the female role
performers as prostitutes, a practice created by onna and wakashû kabuki. For this reason he advised his young
actors: “However popular a play might promise to be, he [the onnagata] should refuse to take part in it,” if therole is not compatible with “the conduct of a virtuous woman.”51 On the other hand, by instructing onnagata tofollow “the [moral] standards of a real woman,”52 Ayame was actively participating in the construction of
discourse on female gender and body which was an ongoing process in the Tokugawa society of that time.
The ideology of female impersonation was further developed in Onnagata hiden (“Secrets of the Onnagata”)
authored by another famous female role actor, Segawa Kikunojô I (1693-1749), a younger contemporary of
Ayame. This narrative presents the practical aspects of an onnagataʼs performance, describing in detail acting
techniques related to the corporeal and facial construction, to the manipulation of gestures, costumes and props,
and to the specific representation of different role types. While reiterating Ayameʼs obsession with the idea thata female impersonator must strive to be perceived by the audience solely as a ʻwoman,ʼ Kikunojô I focuses not somuch on onnagataʼs internalising of ʻfemale naturalnessʼ but on the external mechanisms whereby an actor canskillfully manipulate both the female and male spectatorsʼ gaze and sentiments. One of Kikunojôʼs advices
concerns the careful cultivation of patrons as a means to maintain and reinforce the fiction of onnagataʼsʻwomanlinessʼ on and off stage:
It is bad for an onnagata to have female fans. It would be inconvenient if one wanted to marry him. He
should have many male fans who wish there were a woman like him. If he is going to receive female
support, he should work to get them to admire the kinds of hair ornaments, combs, headdresses, and soforth, that he likes and that palace maids, prostitutes, and city girls will emulate. He should be setting his
sights on making fans of those women who see in him a woman like themselves.53

In addition to a careful crafting of the discourse on onnagata as a ʻtrueʼ woman, there are further implications
for the construction of female gender in this advice. First, there is a performance of femaleness contradictorily
presented, on the one hand, as ʻnaturalʼ to “those women who see in him a woman like themselves” and at thesame time constructed as fictional for the “many male fans who wish there were a woman like him.” This
paradox lies in the basis of the conception of onnagata as a symbol of ʻidealʼ femininity, which actual women
were encouraged to emulate but, paradoxically, never considered capable to attain in reality.54 Kikunojôʼsstatement also gives us insight into the nuances of spectatorsʼ response to the gender of onnagata. The male
reception of an onnagataʼs ʻfemininityʼ is identified as more or less unambiguous, for, as expectedly, men would
not set out to imitate it. They simply desire the female impersonator whose acting, however, should be
convincing enough so men would desire ʻhimʼ as a woman not as wakashû, which seems to be a very important
point in the formulation of onnagata discourse. Female audience reaction is presented as more complex. It is

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clear that there were women spectators who showed sexual interest in onnagata and Kikunojô regards thiskind of fan as problematic.55 Instead, he recommends a cultivation of female aficionados who could be easily
manipulated to ʻbuyʼ this constructed notion of femaleness, both in the sense to believe in and identify with it,
and to literally purchase the commodities that comprise its external decoration: “hair ornaments, combs,
headdresses and so forth.”56 This target group is symbolised by a class of women such as “palace maids,
prostitutes, and city girls,” who are supposedly lacking in sophisticated education and elevated status and,
therefore, readily prone to emulate. It could be argued that, in the Kikunojôʼs geidan, a shift in the power
relations between actors and audience is discernible. The former did not need to behave any longer as ʻnaturalʼ
women in order to convince the latter in the verisimilitude of their art. If an onnagata actor has perfected thedetails of ʻhisʼ art, he would be able to skillfully influence his audienceʼs perceptions and tastes. There is alreadya shift of emphasis from ʻbeing a femaleʼ to ʻplaying a female,ʼ which is an early expression of the play withgender constructs that would become a major kabuki feature in the periods to follow.
Nonetheless, in an early effort to achieve credibility and define their art, both Ayame and Kikunojô werevery persistent in fixing the gender of onnagata strictly and solely to the female pole of the binary opposition.57
In this formative phase of kabukiʼs female impersonation, at least the verbal discourse did not allow for any
gender blending, perhaps as a way to uphold its self-identity against the actual situation in a society
characterised by fascination with androgyny and boy-prostitutes. The visual representation of onnagata during
this early era reveals its continuing close association with nanshoku aesthetics, from which it originated andwhich remained present in onnagataʼs performance of femininity, bringing about the peculiar eroticism ofʻwomenʼ in kabuki.58
During this formative period, a set of key differences in gender construction were established: first,
between the two cultural centres, Kamigata (Osaka and Kyoto) and Edo, and, second, between the two major
forms of popular theatre – kabuki and jôruri. Kabuki developed from within a long tradition of popular female
dance performances. It emerged in the old capital of Kyoto and as such was a product of the cultural ideology of
Kamigata, itself a complex symbiosis of the long medieval tradition of storytelling and popular entertainment,
the emerging merchant class culture and the classical aristocratic tradition. The original representation ofgender and the body in kabuki reflects the pervading atmosphere of Kamigata: effeminate, soft, andsophisticated, its fascination with the brothel culture and the erotic. The basic type of skits performed in early
kabuki and believed to have been set by Okuni herself, was the so-called keiseikai, “buying a courtesan.” Itprovided “one of the most important patterns for plays during the golden age of Genroku.”59 Accordingly, thevery first gender role types that were developed onstage and which have remained persistent throughout thehistory of kabuki were those of the courtesan and the dallying dandy, the gay quarter hallmarks. At the very
outset Kamigata produced the majority of the female impersonators. At the same time the male role actors weresometimes criticised of being deficient in masculinity, as the words of Kuhê demonstrate:

When one considers present-day tachiyaku actors, there do not seem to be many men among them.
Nevertheless they are not onnagata and there is no reason at all for their lack of masculinity.60

To the ʻfeminisationʼ of Kamigata kabuki, the rising samurai culture of Edo added its substantial share ofvigorous masculinity and hence the core sekai of gender representations in early kabuki was shaped. Central
role in the formative process played leading male-role actors such as Ichikawa Danjûrô I (1660-1704) andNakamura Shichisaburô I (1662-1708) in Edo, and Sakata Tôjûrô I (1647-1709) in Kyoto, and playwrights like
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724). The distinct cultural ideologies of Kamigata and Edo societies shaped
kabuki performance to produce and reinforce different meanings in regard to the representation of male gender76

GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki

and body. These different meanings were first articulated by Sakata Tôjûrô I and Ichikawa Danjûrô I whoestablished, respectively in Kamigata and Edo, the two main styles of performing masculinity: wagoto (“soft,
gentle business”, comic-erotic acting manner, representing an effeminate and romantic lover) and aragoto(“rough business”, vigorously masculine, bravura acting style). Nonetheless, although the difference in genderconstruction between Edo and Kamigata has been carefully preserved until modern times, it would be too
simplistic to over accentuate it. Nakamura Shichisaburô I, for instance, became famous in Edo as actor ofnimaime, a romantic male lead. The practice of actors from Edo to perform in Kamigata and visa versa wasalready common in this early period and contributed to the exchange of ideas and to the merging of acting
techniques. Shichisaburô I was one of the first actors who gained fame both in Kyoto and Edo and thus “bridged
the regional performance biases” between the two cities.61 In 1694, Danjûrô I performed in Kyoto with successroles in aragoto style such as the wicked priest Narukami. Still, the nimaime actor Shichisaburô became more
popular in Kamigata than his rival Danjûrô, especially with his interpretation of the semi-legendary rônin,Nagoya Sanza, as a samurai dandy from Edo.62 Similarly, in this formative period, a variation in genderconstruction was established between the two main genres of popular theatre – kabuki, with its emphasis on
the actor and the body, on dance, eroticism and ʻcontemporaryʼ life, and ningyô jôruri, the puppet theatre
focused on text and music, grounded in the medieval narrative storytelling practices and, hence, expressing
more traditional values. Both forms, however, began to influence each other from the very beginning. Initially,
Chikamatsu introduced the pleasure quarter theme into jôruri from kabuki, writing his famous shinjûmono.63 A
decade or so later kabuki commenced to borrow intensely from the puppet theatre. A seminal adaptation was
also Chikamatsuʼs play: in May 1717, his masterpiece Kokusen'ya kassen (“The Battles of Coxinga,” originally
written in 1715 for jôruri) was produced simultaneously in the three Edo kabuki theatres - Nakamura-za,
Ichimura-za and Morita-za. The main male character of this play, Watônai, is an aragoto figure, of the scale ofand even surpassing exemplary aragoto characters in kabuki such as Narukami and Soga Gorô that, in turn,were created by Danjûrô I on the basis of earlier puppet plays about Sakata Kimpira, a violent superhero.64
In conclusion, during this early period a set of conventions in the representation of femininity andmasculinity was created on the stage of kabuki. The foundation of this sekai was formed to a great extent by thedifferences in gender construction between Kamigata and Edo kabuki, produced by the distinct cultures inthese two areas, as well as between kabuki and jôruri. Insightful for deconstructing the mechanisms of gender
production in that époque would be a detailed exploration of the following questions: What play types were
performed with biggest success and what were their gender implications? Were these plays revived afterwards?
What acting and plot elements were retained in the repertory and ʻplayed withʼ in later plays? Who were themost popular stage characters? How were the actors depicted in ukiyo-e and in what way were they evaluatedin the actorsʼ critique books, yakusha hyôbanki?
The second perspective from which the construction of gender and the body can be looked at applies towhat has been defined as “mature kabuki”, mainly from the 18th century onwards. Once a core of genderconcepts had been sufficiently well established, kabuki began to play with them, which, however, does not meanthat there was no play with gender constructs during what I have defined as formative period. Cross-dressing,for instance, was a major mechanism for construction of meaning in kabuki from its outset. Depictions of Okuni
kabuki show women clad like men and men clothed like women. Okuni and onna kabuki featured females
performing emphatically erotic dances, disguised like kabukimono, a slang term for the popular male type of theday, men who dressed too conspicuously or over-smartly, or who resorted to extraordinary acts or behaviour.
Cross-dressing remained kabukiʼs trade mark throughout the centuries as it evolved in the art of the female
impersonation. What I want to explain, however, is a more complex play with representations of femininity andmasculinity in the mature kabuki, i.e. mechanisms of innovations, shukô, that were perpetually invented in77Core Ethics Vol. 5（2009）

order to create new twists of a conventionalised sekai of gender constructs. In my view, these mechanisms had
both artistic implications, for they functioned as dramaturgic devices designed to generate novelty and titillate
audiencesʼ interest,65 and important gender implications, for the blurring distinction between femininity andmasculinity, for instance. In other words, the dynamics of gender ideology in the changing Tokugawa society
produced reformulations of gender and body construction in kabuki. The mechanisms of innovation (shukô)included, for example, the increasing practice one actor to play multiple role-types;66 tachiyaku to act in femaleroles; male actors to perform dance pieces;67 the development of new yakugara;68 and the creation of versions of
the great male roles for onnagata such as Onna Narukami and Onna Shibaraku, to name just a few.
Finally, a third phase in the construction of gender in kabuki could be identified in the late Edo and early
Meiji periods. This phase was marked, on the one hand, by deconstruction of the conventionalised gender
perceptions as seen in the plays of Kawatake Mokuami (1816-1893), which expressed the general decadence ofthe bakumatsu époque. On the other hand, Meiji kabuki witnessed a denial of its inherent eroticism under the
influence of Western sexological discourse and Japanʼs efforts for ʻmodernisation.ʼ Simultaneously, there was aʻreturnʼ to, and reinforcement of, traditional notions of gender and, particularly, of ʻidealʼ femininity, as part ofthe increasing Japanese endeavours to define and preserve their national identity ʻthreatenedʼ by the growing
westernisation of the country. This epoch is very important for the consolidation of kabukiʼs modern repertoire.
There has been little discussion about the possible changes or, rather, about the lack of significant changes in
the representation of femininity and masculinity in productions from that period. Although kabuki was a major
target of the theatre reforms during the Meiji era, all in all, it remained a true product of the popular cultural
ideology of the time that itself was slow to change.
Next, I outline in more detail the specifics of gender construction in kabuki, which, as the urban culture perse, had two sides: traditional and carnivalesque. If viewed from a narrow perspective, kabuki remained within,and even reinforced, a conventional phallogocentric representation of female and male gender as diametrically
opposite, especially by constructing ʻidealsʼ of femininity and masculinity through the yakugara of akahime (redprincess) and keisei (high-ranking courtesan), on the one hand, and of the aragoto hero, on the other. The
polarisation is literally visible at the level of the performance of the body, which exemplifies in a crystallisedmanner “the Japanese gendered body”69 by presenting females as self-regulating, self-censored, fragile, soft andimmobile, and men as dynamic and mobile. The costumes and bodily comportment of the aragoto hero as
embodiment of ʻultimateʼ masculinity and of the akahime and keisei as symbols of ʻperfectʼ femininity
strengthen further the binary opposition. Akahime is a role type developed in jôruri and jidaimono, an epitomeof loveliness, self-restraint, self-sacrifice, chastity and, sometimes, of extreme physical frailty – all features
traditionally coded desirable in a woman and highly erotic. Hatsugiku in Ehon Taikôki (“The Picture Book of
the Taiko”), for example, cannot lift heavy objects, even a helmet, but must drag them on her sleeves, a speciallydeveloped acting technique named nezumi-hiki or “dragging like a rat.”70 The yakugara of keisei, the female iconof the époque and a lead character in many sewamono,71 is of equally “fantastic disposition”72 but with different
sexual appeal. These two most admired female roles are performed in an exaggerated style, in multi-layered
kimonos and exceptionally heavy wigs, which altogether transform the ʻfemaleʼ body into an immovable,emphatically frail object of representation. In contrast, the aragoto hero radiates extreme physical, superhumanstrength; the muscular and bony structure of his face and body is conspicuously accentuated by the bold redlines of the kumadori make-up. His costume is voluminous, his voice - powerful and his onstage presence
overwhelming. Both the keisei and the aragoto hero often need support from a stage assistant to perform theirrespective femininity or masculinity. Both the akahime and the aragoto hero are culturally imagined,
fantastically exaggerated constructions of female and male gender.73
It is not only the ʻidealʼ female body that is performed in the self-restraint mode; on the whole, the bodily

78

GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki

movements of all types of female roles in kabuki are highly constrained. Especially the hand and arm gestures
are particularly inhibited by the kimono and its exclusively long sleeves. These sleeves were seen as anextension of the hands and at the same time functioned as a means of concealing them, as well as of covering
the face in a coquettish manner when needed. Therefore, the long sleeves symbolised an extremely important
sign of ʻfemininityʼ and were built, for example, into different dance movements to express shyness and other'female' emotions.74 Further, the hand and arm gestures are additionally performed as “small and tightly
controlled”75 for, as already stated, restraint was considered the most desirable quality in an ʻidealʼ woman. Thisis how the female body is constructed by the onnagata:

The shoulders droop, knees are bent to reduce height, and most noticeable of all, the walk becomes a tiny,
feminine gait with knees held together and toes pointed inward. Even today, young actors ... practice
walking with a sheet of paper between their legs.76

The ʻperformedʼ in this way body posture has a completely different signification; it is as if shrinking in order totake less space while the male body is always represented on the stage of kabuki as expanding in the space.
There was, of course, a practical reason for representing the female body in this way. In general, men who
assumed womenʼs roles could not always build the required illusion of femaleness from their own physical body,
beauty or grace. Therefore, in order to appear convincing on the stage they “must overdetermine their desired
look by displaying excess markers of femininity - the more stereotyped the better.”77 Thus the excessiveness isstill “within a conventional model of femininity, which is itself overdetermined.” 78 In a similar way, in Kabuki, inorder to represent a ʻconvincingʼ female image on the stage, onnagata stylised and emphasised what wasculturally deemed ʻfemaleʼ movements and gestures, turning them into pure forms to be followed then as amodel by actual women. In other words, they had to deconstruct or disembody the culturally encoded notion offemininity and the female body to its most essential traits and further underlined those in order to become anembodiment of ʻrealʼ woman, “in much the same way that puppets exaggerate human gestures to appear alive.”79
The gender polarisation is articulated largely in jidaimono, whose plots are based mostly on traditional
narratives of samurai epics, and reflects the subordinate position of women in the feudal military society.
Tokugawa culture, particularly in the shogunal centre of power, Edo, was explicitly masculine, influenced by thebushidô code and valorising self-discipline, frugality, absolute loyalty, fearlessness in the face of death, etc.80
These principles were admired and internalised by townsmen in their endeavour to be ʻelevatedʼ into the official
ideology and cultural tradition and, thus, given access to knowledge and power. Kabuki was greatly contained
within the ideological hegemony of the ruling military class both by being forcefully subjected to constantgovernmental restrictions and censorship, and by consciously drawing upon the authority of the cultural
tradition. In fact, kabuki and, to an even greater extent, jôruri, have been instrumental in the sustaining ofsamurai mythology and samurai vision of masculinity. Jidaimono are deemed an apotheosis of feudal code, andthe characters are performed within the “horizon of expectation”81 as regard to the traditional Confucian andBuddhist perceptions of male and female gender. The portrayal of women in kabuki is invariably shaped by the
patriarchal ideology that required from them “the three obediences”: obedience, while yet unmarried, to afather; obedience, when married, to a husband and that husbandʼs parents; and obedience, when widowed, to ason. Although undeniably men did have more power in Tokugawa Japan, nevertheless they were also oppressed
because of the social expectations imposed on them by the masculine military paradigm. Samuraiʼs accent on
unconditional loyalty, spiritual strength and the absolute denial of the body are inseparable part of kabuki. On
its stage the body, both the male and the female one, is being cut, mutilated, killed, and disemboweled, i.e.
readily rejected and sacrificed through death for the sake of oneʼs lord. From this perspective, perhaps of79

Core Ethics Vol. 5（2009）

importance here is not so much the polarisation of gender construction, which is not surprising in an all-maletheatre and predictable in such an androcentric society, but rather the issues of status and class. For in kabuki
both men and women of the lower social strata, with which the audience would identify, are implicitly
represented as victims of the feudal system and explicitly represented as equal to and, often, even moreennobled than their ʻbetters.ʼ
Concurrently, the emerging townsmen culture was highly carnivalesque and hedonistic, particularly at theend of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century but overall throughout the entire Tokugawa
period. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, Japan was unified for the first time after a century and a half of
exhausting civil wars. This brought a general “explosion of lust for life and extravagance,”82 which foundexpression in an emphasis on the corporeal and sexuality, in cross-dressing and cross-gender play that were themost distinctive features of early kabuki. Townsmenʼs resistance to the rigid social structure imposed by the
dictatorial regime was played out within the pleasure quarters and theatre districts, on the very stage ofkabuki – through the body – the tangible, sensual, eroticised, idolised [male] body. Being a major form of
popular entertainment, kabuki functioned as a main site of the carnivalesque culture where the struggle forpower in society was played out through the means of cultural representation. Multiple manifestations oftownsmenʼs defiance were produced on its stage.
In terms of gender, the fluidity and ambiguity of this notion in Japanese popular culture, which “manifested
little concern with the maintenance of rigid gender roles”83 is also best demonstrated by kabuki. As was alreadyasserted, a major mechanism for construing new meanings (shukô) with regard to both content (plots) and form
(acting techniques) was the constant play with gender constructs. It was applied, in the first place, as a meansof producing novel scripts by adding new twists to old narratives, by combining male and female charactersfrom different dramatic worlds (a technique known as naimaze),84 by creating ʻfemaleʼ versions of male roles,85
and so forth. Secondly, gender performance is in the foundation of kabuki acting techniques: the so-called kataor, in other words, “patterns” or “forms” present a repertoire (what I have defined as sekai) of stylised gendermarkers that are culturally coded feminine or masculine. Further, an important device of shukô86 is to playwith, and sometimes even to parody, the conventionalised set of stylised forms. This was achieved, for example,
by acting aragoto roles in wagoto style and visa versa,87 by one actor performing multiple role types in thecourse of one play and thus deconstructing the ʻnaturalnessʼ of the distinct kata, and by the frequently utilised
technique of cross-dressing whereby usually a male role actor performs disguised as a ʻwoman.ʼ88 The mostrepresentative example for the ambiguity of gender and body construction in kabuki, however, is onnagata.89
While producing the impression of ʻidealʼ femininity for the audience, the female impersonator inevitably
retains traces of his male sex.90 The fragility of the ʻfeminineʼ body, for instance, is paradoxically achieved byextraordinary physical effort:[Onnagata] use the muscles around the shoulder blade to pull the shoulders back and create a sloping line,
which they emphasize by wearing robes slung low over the shoulders... The softness and delicacy of theactorʼs movements are counterbalanced by the extreme muscular tension that is necessary to maintainthese positions.91

This body posture creates the unique gender aesthetics of kabukiʼs female impersonators, the blending ofidealized ʻfemaleʼ and hidden ʻmaleʼ characteristics,92 of superficial or external ʻfeminineʼ delicacy and lying
behind it or internal ʻmasculineʼ strength.93 It is because of this androgynous nature that onnagata was said tobe more erotic than a ʻrealʼ woman for their performance underlined and elaborated the elements that men
thought quintessentially ʻfeminine,ʼ such as frailty, shyness, coquetry and gentleness, while retaining at the80

GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki

same time “the inner steel that we traditionally (and chauvinistically) think of as masculine.”94 Due to thispeculiar androgynous eroticism the female impersonation in kabuki has been viewed as transcending any
bipolar and fixed gender roles.
Pertinent here is a brief discussion of the nature of cross-dressing as conceptualised by the feminist anddeconstructivist thought, since it gives insight into the essence of onnagata and kabuki. In Judith Butlerʼs view,
cross-dressing brings forward the fundamental performativity of all gender identity and drag, in particular,“reveals the imitative structure of gender itself – as well as its contingency.”95 Marjorie Garber similarly argues
that cross-dressing draws attention to the manner in which every person is constructed within culturalparadigms.96 Viewed from this perspective, the drag performance of onnagata underlines the performativity andconstructivity of female gender as culturally preconditioned. Nonetheless, since these cultural paradigms havebeen established within the phallogocentric discourse, feminists like Butler and bell hooks perceive maleappropriation of female clothing and gender as essentially misogynistic. It perpetuates and, thus, reinforces “anutterly conventional feminine appearance,”97 because that is precisely what men select to reproduce, as isevident in onnagataʼs representation of the female body and gender. Even so, if we put aside the question
whether it is liberating or stigmatising for women, cross-dressing still undermines the rigid gender distinction.
It correlates with transgression of established order and traditional hierarchies, evokes eroticism and play, andas such is a persistent part of the carnivalesque kabuki culture.
In this paper I have delineated a general pattern of the development and the ʻnatureʼ of gender and body
construction in kabuki in the context of premodern urban commoner culture. I have argued that kabuki was amain site for performance of the notions of femininity and masculinity during the Edo period. It played acentral part in consolidating Tokugawa gender notions and hierarchies, on the one hand, and in disrupting
them, on the other, by constantly playing with conventionalised gender constructs and destabilising any fixed
meanings. A detailed exploration of the ways in which the dynamics of gender in the changing Tokugawa society
were both represented on and produced by the stage of kabuki could help us understand the mechanisms
whereby the concepts of gender, eroticism and the body were constructed in early modern Japan.
Simultaneously, it will also demonstrate the empowering nature of popular theatre as a main site for
production of cultural representations with important social implications, its potential in orchestrating theconstruction and regulation of gender, sexuality and the body, and in literally staging the enactment of genderroles in society.

Notes
１

Kuhê was considered the founder of kashagata, the role type of old or middle-aged women. The term came from the technicalvocabulary of the brothels. Cf. Charles J. Dunn and Torigoe Bunzô, The Actorʼs Analects, New York: Columbia University Press, 1969:
166.

２

Sakata Tôjûrô I (1646 – 1709), a male-role actor in Kyoto and Ôsaka, founder of the wagoto style.

３

Male-role specialist.

４

Edo, Osaka and Kyoto. ITEM XLV in “Dust in the Ears,” written by the playwright Kaneko Kichizaemon. In Dunn & Torigoe, 104.

Emphasis added.
５

Sharp distinction between the three periods, however, would be artificial.

６

Includes all cultural production related with kabuki. C. Andrew Gerstle, 18th Century Japan: Culture and Society, Richmond,
Surrey: Curzon, 2000.

７

As discussed in Susan Bordo, “Feminism, Foucault and the Politics of the Body,” in Up Against Foucault: Exploration of Some

Tensions in Feminism, C. Ramazanoglu, ed., London: Routledge, 1993: 179-202; Elizabeth Grosz, “Refiguring Bodies,” in Elizabeth
Grosz, Volative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Theories of Representation and Difference), Bloomington: Indiana University

81Core Ethics Vol. 5（2009）
Press, 1994: 3-24; Kathy Davis, “Embody-ing Theory: Beyond Modernist and Postmodernist Readings of the Body,” in Kathy Davis,ed., Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives on the Body, London: Sage Publications, 1997: 1-19.
８

On the normalisation of and disciplinary power over the body see Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, New York: Pantheon,
1978; also “The Eye of Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, New York: Pantheon, 1977;

Discipline and Punishment, New York: Vintage Books, 1979; “The Subject and Power,” in H.L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, eds., Michel
Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983; Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight.
Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Kathy Davis, 1997.
９

Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991: 10. Also Presence and Desire. Essays

on Gender, Sexuality, Performance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
10

Grosz, 18-20.

11Davis, 3. She refers to Foucault, 1978, 1979.

12

Ideas of Foucault discussed in Don Johnson, “The Body: which one? Whose?,” in The Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1989: 6. See
also Bordo, 1993.

13

An idea of Nietzsche as referred to in Elizabeth Grosz, “The Body as Inscriptive Surface,” in Grosz, 1994: 138-159.

14

Michel Foucault, “Niets che, Genealogy, History,” in Donald E. Bouchard, ed., Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays

and Interviews. 1977: 148. As quoted in Grosz, 146.
15

Again a term of Foucault. Cf. Grosz, 1994.

16

In the words of Grosz. Ibid.

17

Dolan, 1993: 6. Dolan points out that feminist performance criticism appeared in the beginning of the 1980s. For more details on

the relationship between feminist theatre and performance criticism refer to pp. 85-87.
18

Ibid., 88.

19

Dolan, 1991: 99.

20

Ibid., 99.

21

Dolan, 1991: 1-19. She admits that there are different subdivisions as socialist, spiritualist, or lesbian feminism, for example, but
in her view the liberal, cultural and materialist trends are the three “most inclusive.” Ibid., 3. A sharp distinction between those
three trends, however, is rather artificial and arguable.

22

Alison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983: 355-58.

23

Dolan, 1991: 4-6.

24

Dolan, 1993: 86.

25

Dolan, 1991: 10.

26

It is based on British materialism and its focus on ideology formation in representation, and borrows as well variously frompsychoanalysis, post-structuralism, Marxism, and especially the Brechtian theory. Cf. Dolan, 1993: 85-87. On the Brechtian theory,ch. 6: 99-119. More on materialist criticism in general in Terry Eagleton, The Function of Criticism: From the Spectator to PostStructuralism, London: New Left Books, 1984.

27

Dolan, 1993: 1.

28

Michelle Barrett, “Ideology and the Cultural Production of Gender,” in Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt, eds., Feminist

Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class, and Race in Literature and Culture, New York: Methuen, 1985: 73. As cited in Dolan, 1991:
15. Text in brackets () added by Dolan. Text in brackets [ ] added by me. Emphasis in bold added by me.
29

Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt, “Towards a Materialist Feminist Criticism,” in Newton & Rosenfelt, 1985: xix. This

perception of ideology is very similar to Foucaultʼs understanding of power, as was previously discussed.
30
31

Dolan, 1991: 2.
The notion of the performance of gender is central to the contemporary feminist thought. It has been conceptualised by Judith
Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York and London: Routledge, 1990; and Teresa de Lauretis,

Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
32

Sekai and shukô are the two major concepts of the theory of composition developed by kabuki playwrights in the late eighteenth
century. Sekai means “world” and presents the context of some familiar narrative from the past, i.e. a well known constellation ofcharacters and situations. Shukô denotes “plan, idea, contrivance, design, scheme;” applied to the plot construction in kabuki shukômeans “innovation” or “twist.” Hence, if sekai is the diachronic, vertical aspect of familiar worlds of subject matter, shukô is thesynchronic, horizontal aspect of playwriting. As explained in Andrew Gerstle, “Performance Literature: the Traditional Japanese82

GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki

Theatre as Model,” in Comparative Criticism, 22 (2000): 39-62. And in James Brandon and Samuel Leiter, eds., Kabuki Plays on
Stage. 1 vol. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2002: 365-66.
33

Onnagata is regarded both as a generic yakugara vs. tachiyaku, and as an acting technique, kata, of performing femininity.

34

The first male role type was that of the urban dandy, of samurai or merchant status, dallying with a courtesan.

35

The first female role type was that of the courtesan.

36

Gunji Masakatsu, Kabuki, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985: 24, 38. Gunji points out that katakiyaku developed later than theformer two, when the plots became more complicated and based on an opposition between good and evil. Gunji identifies as the very
first three role types: tachiyaku (the dandy), onnagata (the courtesan) and dôke (a comic role, the master of the house).

37

The expression aragoto is an abbreviation of aramushagoto, which means literally “the reckless warrior matter.” This is abombastic style exaggerating all the aspects of the role (acting, wig, make-up: kumadori, costumes, dialogues, oversized swords) toportray valiant warriors, fierce gods or demons. This style was created in Edo by Ichikawa Danjûrô I and is considered a family art
for this line of actors. It is the opposite style of the soft wagoto created by Sakata Tôjûrô I in Kamigata.
38

The “gentle style.” The typical wagoto hero is a young, soft, romantic, refined gallant, the heir of a rich family of merchants anddeeply in love with the most beautiful courtesan of the Ôsaka pleasure quarter. He has spent all the family fortune in the pleasurequarter or does not have enough money to buy back the contract of his lover. At the end of the play, he often has to run away withhis beloved and commit double suicide in order to live happy together in the afterlife. Or he is pardoned by his parents who ransom
his lover and both live happily ever after. The speech and gestures in wagoto are considered more ʻrealisticʼ and delicate than in thearagoto style. Two famous wagoto roles are Fujiya Izaemon and Hiranoya Tokubei in the plays Kuruwa Bunshô and Sonezaki
Shinjû.
39

Lim Beng Choo identifies a similar development in the treatise writing on Nô drama. Cf. Lim Beng Choo, “They Came to Party:
an Examination of the Social Status of the Medieval Nô Theatre,” in Japan Forum, vol. 16, no. 1, 2004: 123.

40

For exhaustive analyses of onnagata gender construction see Katherine Mezur, Beautiful Boys/Outlaw Bodies: Devising Kabuki

Female-likeness, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, and Maki Morinaga, “The Gender of Onnagata As the Imitating Imitated: Its
Historicity, Performativity, and Involvement in the Circulation of Femininity,” in Positions: East Asia cultures critique, 10.2 (2002):
245-284. Both authors apply postmodern gender theory to the analyses of female impersonation in kabuki and offer interestingalthough differing perspectives. A more detailed discussion of the two works would shift the focus of this paper too much in the
direction of onnagata and requires a separate article, therefore it could not be included herein.
41

Included in Dunn and Torigoe.

42

Ibid., 49-67.

43

There exists, however, another contemporary comment, in a critique written in 1704, that declares Ayame as so good both in maleand female roles that one cannot understand “what is under his loincloth!” As cited in G. P. Leupp, Male Colors: the Construction of

Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 177. Nonetheless, perhaps this critique meant
simply to praise the actor, as Ayame himself gave up playing male roles and advised onnagata to stick to female parts.
44

Associated traditionally with the feminine mode of writing.

45

Ayame means both “a design, pattern” and “an iris,” flower that has strong connotations with the nanshoku discourse. In addition

me is a reading of the character for “woman” onna.
46

Cf. Andrew Nelson, The Modern Readerʼs Japanese-English Character Dictionary, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1962: 511.

47

Ayame advised another female role actor, Karyû to change the characters of his name from “perfumed dragon” 香竜 to “songstream” 歌流 as the character “dragon” is “too strong for the name of an onnagata.” Cf. Dunn and Torigoe, 50.
48

Samuel Leiter, Frozen Moments: Writings on Kabuki, 1966-2001, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 2002: 153.

49

In quote to underline the constructed nature of masculinity.

50

Dunn and Torigoe, 56.

51

Ibid.

52

Ibid.

53

Suwa Haruo, Kabuki no densho, Tokyo: Senninsha, 1979: 36, as translated in Leiter, 153.

54

Nor to represent it themselves on the stage in the same ʻpersuasiveʼ way as men did. I cannot restrain from a feminist critique of
this postulate. This ʻidealʼ femininity is indeed unattainable, however, not because of the inferior nature of women but merely
because it is a male imagining of womanliness, socially and culturally pre-conditioned by androcentric norms or, in the words ofLuce Irigaray, a simple projection of male fantasmatic nature. Cf. Luce Irigaray, “The Female Gender,” in Sexes and Genealogies,

83Core Ethics Vol. 5（2009）trans. by Gillian C. Gill, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993: 105-123.
55

Interpolation can be made that they probably ʻremindedʼ the actors of their biological male sex or androgynous appearance and in
this way threatened to deconstruct onnagataʼs painstakingly created image of ʻfemininity.ʼ

56

It is not clear what came first: the admiration for the ornaments or the emulation. At any rate, Kikunojôʼs statement also hints atthe commencing commodification of onnagata and of the kabuki actors in general in the increasingly commercialising economy.
Kikunojô himself owned a prosperous oil shop in Edo.
57

Morinaga also discusses this process in her work. Cf. Morinaga, 2002: 255-265.

58

Cf. Mezur, 2005.

59

Gunji, 24.

60

Dunn and Torigoe, 104.

61

Holly Blummer, “Nakamura Shichisaburô I and the Creation of Edo-Style Wagoto,” in Samuel Leiter, ed., A Kabuki Reader:
History and Performance, New York: M.E.Sharpe, 2002: 60-75 (60).

62

Ibid., 71.

63

The first one, Sonezaki shinjû, was created in 1703.

64

The comparison of gender construction in kabuki and jôruri is a key element, since both genres influenced each other andespecially because jôruri plays became key works in the kabuki repertoire. Also, bunraku tends to represent stronger female
characters. For these reasons the topic needs to be examined in detail in a separate article.

65

A device especially typical for the nineteenth century kabuki; sometimes disparagingly dismissed as a way of simply breathing
new life in old scripts.

66This practice began in the mid eighteenth century and became common in the nineteenth century, accompanied with a break
down of the distinction between the acting styles for female and male roles.

67

The original convention was that dance was a prerogative of onnagata, a means for display of onnagataʼs eroticism.

68

As onnabudô (woman-warrior), and later in the nineteenth century: akuba (wicked woman), shiranami (romanticised bandit),iroaku (erotic villain), and many more.
69

A term I found in Peter Eskersallʼs article “Body of Light: The Way of the Butô Performer,” in Stanca Scholz-Cionca and Samuel
Leiter, eds., Japanese Theatre and the International Stage, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000: 313-328 (325).

70

At the same time, there are strong female figures both in kabuki and jôruri.

71

But not limited only to sewamono, keisei appears in jidaimono as well whereas akahime is a jidaimono character. Of course, a lotof plays combine sewamono and jidaimono plots.

72

Dunn and Torigoe, 34. ITEM VI of the text “One Hundred Items on the Stage”, attributed to Sugi Kuhê.

73

I make a distinction here between akahime and keisei in the sense that the former is a fantastic ʻhistoricalʼ construct as theaudience of the time would have imagined ʻher,ʼ while the latter was a ʻrealʼ contemporaneous part of the floating world. However, adichotomy between ʻhistoricalʼ akahime and ʻcontemporaneousʼ keisei is not definitive, as their representation was more complex.
Akahime was also considered ʻidealʼ of contemporary samurai woman, whereas ʻidealʼ female characters in jidaimono were often
represented as courtesans, like Tora and Shôshô, the famous lovers of the two Soga brothers, for instance. Nonetheless, bothakahime and keisei were equally distant for average theatregoer and idealised to extreme.
74

Benito Ortolani, The Japanese Theatre. From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990: 159.

75

Ronald Cavaye, Kabuki, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1993: 41.

76 Ibid. Emphasis in bold added.
77 Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka. Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998: 38.
78

Ibid. Robertson refers to JoAnna Roberts, Art and Illusion: A Guide to Crossdressing, King of Prussia, Pa.: Creative Design

Services, 1988: 26-7.
79

Donald Shively, “The Social Environment of Tokugawa Kabuki,” in James Brandon, William Malm and Donald Shively, Studies in

Kabuki: Its Acting, Music, and Historical Context, Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978: 40.
80

Or rather, attempting to valorise those values and thereby maintain the dominant status of samurai class.

81

A literary term used in reader-response criticism, derived from phenomenology and hermeneutics. Defines the set of expectations
determined by cultural norms and conventions that influence how a reader comprehend and assess a literary work at any given

84

GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabukitime. As explained in Joseph Childers and Gary Hentzi, eds., Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995: 139-140. Cf. also Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. by Garrett Barden andJohn Cumming, New York: Continuum Pres, 1975. Hans Robert Jauss, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, trans. by
Michael Show, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
82

Ortolani, 163.

83

Leupp, 177.

84

As in Sukeroku, for instance.

85

This innovation concerns both plot and acting technique as in some plays the female role actor imitates masculine kata.

86

Particularly at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth centuries.

87

One extremely funny and parodying example is when Sukeroku aka Soga Gôrô teaches his wagoto brother how to behave as anaragoto hero.

88

As in the famous Hamamatsuya scene from the play Benten musume meono shiranami (translated as “Miss Benten, The Male/
Female Bandit” in Samuel Leiter, The Art of Kabuki: Famous Plays in Performance, California UP, 1979), written in 1862 by

Kawatake Mokuami, in which the main character, Benten Kozô, disguises himself as a musume, a young samurai daughter of rank.
Or Ojô Kichisa, one of the three bandits Kichisa, who plays an itinerant actor posing as a greengrocerʼs daughter. As expected, it ismore rare female role actors to perform disguised as men.
89

I need to acknowledge here that there are different interpretations of the female impersonation in kabuki in terms of genderconstruction. Earl Jackson, for example, argues that the onnagata maintains dominant conceptions of masculinity and reviles
kabuki for demanding “detailed mimicry of specific stereotypes of women” in contrast with the all-male Nô theatre that represents
female figures as “highly symbolic and abstract.” Cf. “Kabuki Narratives of Male Homoerotic Desire in Saikaku and Mishima,” in
Educational Theatre Journal (ETJ), 41/4 (1989): 459-477, as referred to in Leupp, 268, n. 28. Leupp, in his turn, contends that

onnagata is “pernicious” more towards the established “neo-Confucian construction of gender” than to women.
90

Which itself is culturally defined. Cf. Mark Oshima, “The Keisei as a Meeting Point of Different Worlds: Courtesan and the
Kabuki Onnagata,” in Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton, ed., The Women of the Pleasure Quarter: Japanese Paintings and Prints of the

Floating World, New York : Hudson Hills, 1995: 93.
91

Ibid., 92-93.

92

Both notions are not natural but culturally defined.

93

The performance, of course, depends on the idiosyncratic abilities of the individual actor. Some onnagata may look more ʻfeminineʼthan others.
94

Lenard Pronko, “Elizabethan and Kabuki Female Representation,” in Crosscurrents in the Drama: East and West, Tuscaloosa, AL:
Southeastern Theatre Conference: University of Alabama Press, 1998: 47-48. Pronko reveals more clearly than Oshima theconstructed nature of onnagataʼs visible traces of masculinity.

95

Butler, 1990.

96

Marjorie Garber, Vested Interest. Cross-dressing & Cultural Anxiety, New York & London: Routledge, 1992: 93.

97

Cf. Sara Gamble, ed., Feminism and Postfeminism, London: Routledge, 2001: 209.

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GABROVSKAGender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki

Gender and Body Construction in Edo Period Kabuki
Galia Todorova GABROVSKA
Abstract:
This article delineates a general pattern in the development and the characteristics of gender and body
construction in kabuki theatre in the context of Japanese premodern urban commoner culture. The paper
consists of three parts. The first part poses the main research questions and outlines the contemporary
conceptualisations of gender, body, power and performance which provide the theoretical approach to thepresent discussion. The second part examines kabuki as a main site for performance of the notions of femininity
and masculinity during the Edo and early Meiji periods and roughly defines three stages in this process:formative, mature and modern. It is argued that kabuki played a central part in consolidating Tokugawa gender
notions and hierarchies, on the one hand, by producing a “world” of conventionalised gender representations,and in disrupting them, on the other, by constantly playing with those conventionalised gender constructs anddestabilising any fixed meanings. The third part of the paper outlines the specifics of gender construction in
Edo period kabuki, which, as the Edo urban popular culture per se, had two sides: traditional andcarnivalesque. This article contributes to the further study of kabuki from a gender perspective, an aspect not
thoroughly explored yet.

Keywords: kabuki, gender, body, construction, Edo period87