Page 377 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

luith a Mosquito (Ka zumo) or The Battle of Fruits and Nuts (Konomi arasoi). The latter play satirizes the ruling
samurai class by staging a slapstick battle scene in which the spirit of a tangerine, wearing an usobuki
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mask, battles with his chestnut counterpart. Their desperate struggle over who gets the best spot to
view cherry blossoms is abruptly ended when a gust of wind blows both away. Such conspicuous satire
of the pomposity and frivolous contentiousness of the samurai class was rare, but we may suppose that

the utter absurdity of the plot forestalled punitive intervention from the authorities. Masks, through
playful caricature, allowed actors to put a humorous face on satire.
Occasionally kyógen masks were used to represent elderly men or comically ugly women, but
never to suggest the beauty of young women, as often seen in no. The no mask presented ideal beauty;
376 nothing in the plebeian world of kyógen skits required such refinement. Female roles were played by
unmasked men. Edo-period masks of animals, such as foxes, badgers, and monkeys, were used in trans-
cat. 220
formation plays in which characters took the form of the creatures. Monkey masks were among the Kyógen mask: Usobuki,
earliest developed, no doubt because of their resemblance to humans — a resemblance close enough to seventeenth century,
carved wood, gesso, and pigment,
make it clear that human behavior was being suggested but distant enough to provide a disguise of 19.5x12.2 (7 /8X4 /4),
5
3
Tokyo National Museum
silliness that softened the impact of satiric jabs (cats. 222, 223). It seems that as kyógen moved into the
modern period, actors of animal parts relied more on their powers of mimicry and less on masks to
create humorous effect. 6

W O M E N ' S In contrast to no, which adheres strictly to highly poeticized librettos, kabuki was an actor-centered
K A B U K I theater from early on. Kabuki as we know it today — a highly respectable "classical" theater with male
actors playing established roles in dramas with complex plots — did not begin to emerge until the late
i6oos. In its earliest manifestation it was a dance theater with female performers, as seen in Amusements
along the Riverside at Shijó (cat. 231). The showy, sexually provocative dances and skits of early kabuki
appealed to warrior and commoner alike, and often served as a front for prostitution, though spectators
of both sexes enjoyed watching the public performance. Amusements along the Riuerside at Shijó, dating
to the late 16208, captures this early history, when performers followed in the footsteps of Okuni,
the legendary founder of kabuki.
Okuni, who claimed to be a priestess from Izumo Shrine, created quite a stir when she per-
formed dances in Kyoto about 1603, at first along the banks of the Kamo River, the site shown in this
screen. Testimony to her extreme popularity, Okuni was invited to perform at Edo Castle in the pres-
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ence of the shogun in 1607. Audiences in the capital were long accustomed to the religious and folk
dances that she first presented (similar to those in itinerant Entertainers) but had never seen them
interpreted in such a provocative, sexually suggestive manner. She also began to improvise feabufei odori,
"outlandish dances," using movements and costumes associated with popular dances of the day
(füryü odori). Within a few years prostitutes began to offer dances and skits in the style established by
Okuni as a means of attracting customers. Bordello owners set up stages in the dry riverbed areas of
the Shijó district, as shown in the screen, with the names of the bordellos and courtesans indicated
at the entrances.
The carnivalesque scenes of early seventeenth-century screen paintings such as Amusements
along the Riuerside at Shijó are the direct predecessors to ukiyoe of later in the century; they set the stage
for an entire artistic movement dedicated to depicting entertainers. The detached objectivity of earlier