Kabuki Dancer [Hardcover]

Sawako Ariyoshi (Author), James R. Brandon (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1994

To be kabuki in Japan once meant to be outrageous, daring, flaunting convention. It was in sixteenth-century Japan, as Shakespeare was writing his masterworks half a world away, that the spirit of Kabuki theater was born out of a single woman's passions and dedication to her art. In Kabuki Dancer, the popular Japanese novelist Sawako Ariyoshi (The Doctor's Wife, The River Ki, The Twilight Years) retells the story of Okuni, the legendary temple dancer who first performed among jugglers and freak shows on a stage along the riverbank in the heart of the Imperial city of Kyoto. Blending the rhythms and movements of religious festivals with the words of popular love songs she and her troupe became sensations. Their affairs and rivalries, infatuations and jealousies, were transformed into the very fabric of their performance, as it began its evolution into the classic drama of today. Against a backdrop of civil war, dynastic conflict, and social turmoil, Okuni and her companions and lovers, together with their audience of artisans, merchants, and aristocrats, struggled to survive the birth pangs of a glorious - yet sometimes deadly - new age. Based on fact, transmuted into powerful and moving artistic expression, Kabuki Dancer is at once a turbulent love story, a re-creation of an exotic and colorful historical period, and an almost mythic representation of the miraculous moment in which an immortal artform appears.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this overlong and underwhelming history lesson disguised as a romance, Ariyoshi takes for her protagonist Okuni, the 17th-century inventor of Kabuki theater. From humble origins in a provincial village, Okuni ends up running a dance troupe in Kyoto, performing and choreographing with such innovative genius that she comes to be known as "Best in the World." But despite her fame, Okuni's life is troubled: she falls for men who are too inept or villainous to remain with her for long, and her reputation and theater are eventually destroyed by a suitor she spurned 20 years before. Passages throughout detail contemporary political affairs in a didactic fashion, and the descriptions of Okuni's experiments in kabuki, while earnest, remain inert. The novel first appeared in serial form in a Japanese woman's magazine during the late 1960s, and it shows (the meaning of the word "kabuki," for example, is repeated every 30 pages or so). Moreover, Ariyoshi's vision of Japan seems to admit only two possible motives for people's actions: love and long-simmering resentment. And that's a shame, because she has obviously done a great deal of research and knows her subject thoroughly.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Ariyoshi was a very popular writer in Japan who characteristically dealt with historical themes and was not often translated into English. This novel, originally serialized in Japan in Women's Topics (Fujin Koron) from 1967 to 1969, is a depiction of the life of Okuni, a historical figure generally credited with giving birth to Kabuki, the popular Japanese theater form. The work is interesting in that it pays deserved homage to Okuni, who has been a somewhat neglected figure since women performers were eliminated from Kabuki early in its development. While the historical milieu of late 16th-and early 17th-century Japan is carefully depicted, the prose is somewhat flat, the characters are unconvincing, and events proceed matter-of-factly, leaving the reader with a bland impression of what history suggests were complex, passionate people living in an exhilarating and eventful time. This might find a place in large collections having an insatiable audience for historical fiction; otherwise, it is not recommended.
Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib.,
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc; 1st edition (February 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770017839
• ISBN-13: 978-4770017833
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #688,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kabuki Dancer, December 28, 2007

By 

B. Rackley "Sierras Creative World" (Over the Rainbow .. far away) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kabuki Dancer: A Novel of the Woman Who Founded Kabuki (Comic)

Lovely book for inside information of a Kabuki Dancer, from her side of the room. Delightful and mind opening. I believe this is a book that is
one from the heart. I liked it, it was an aid in my research of expressions of culture.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kabuki's Founder, May 26, 2008

By 

L. Frankel (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kabuki Dancer: A Novel of the Woman Who Founded Kabuki (Comic)

This novel is about the woman who transformed theatre in Japan and founded Kabuki. I was amazed to learn that "kabuki" originally meant strange and unconventional. Ironically, women were later forbidden to perform on stage in Japan. Centuries later, Sadayakko would have to reclaim the place of women in Japanese theatre by becoming popular in the West first. But it all started with one courageous and defiant woman named Okuni portrayed so movingly by Sawako Ariyoshi.