Actors made special effort to enrapture their audiences by impassioned acting. In consequence, the costumes, as well as the acting for each role evolved into accepted styles or forms which were completely removed from reality. Thus the weird make-up of kumadori: nonrealistic, stylized makeup used for aragoto (vigorous, swashbuckling) roles, the costumes exaggerated to a maximum degree for the heroic aragoto plays, the supremely colorful richness of kimono for female roles, the costumes of samurai and nobles are all products of the Edo period, resulting from the demands of the nonaristocratic audiences and the sensitive, artistic creativeness of the actors.
Unlike the jidai-mono based on ancient events among samurai or court nobles, there is a general type of play, the sewa-mono, which has a lowbred offspring, the kizewa-mono, which narrates many facets of the daily lives of the lowest commoners, including bad women, thieves, gamblers, prostitutes, vagabonds, beggars, and the like. The actors' dress worn in kizewamono reflects quite accurately that of the commoners of the lowest strata.
New fashions worn by the townspeople, especially the kabuki-mono (outlaws or "free-life" people), were readily adapted to the stage, although usually dramatized for more striking effects. Kabuki-mono received their name from one early-seventeenth-century meaning of kabuki signifying free life—that is, life without respect for law. Kabuki-mono were considered outlaws, and commoners were afraid of these wayward individuals. Yet when such characters were impersonated on the stage, the people adored them—much as today's movie gangsters are esteemed.
Actors often created patterns or selected special colors for their effectiveness on the stage. These subsequently reached the height of fashion for the public at large. Not only the actors' modish kimono but also the intricate tying of the obi, the choice of accessories, and even the way of wearing the costumes were appropriated by men and women alike. For example, the use of mon or individual family crests on clothing became widespread during the eighteenth century after the actors had made such devices familiar.
In classic, or pure, Kabuki plays there are no careful recreations of Heian-period (794-1185) dress. The majority of the known Heian styles were those worn by royalty. Therefore, according to law, they could not be reproduced for stage use. Prior to the end of World War II, Bandō Mitsugorō VIII (then Bandō Minosuke VI) wished to appear in a Genji play (that is, a play based on the life and loves of the fictional Heian Prince Genji) for which he had as true reproductions as possible made of Heian clothing, but he was not allowed to appear in the costumes, since doing so was proscribed by law as an act of Use-majeste. He eventually did wear the costumes during the dance recitals of Nenchū Gyōji Emaki (nenchu, during the year; gyōji, festival customs; emaki, picture scroll), whose choreography was based on the year's seasonal festivities, but Kabuki itself was no richer in its variety of costumes.
True Heian styles were not introduced to the Kabuki stage until 1951, when two plays in the modern Japanese vernacular were produced: Nayotake (Glowing Princess of the Supple Bamboo), dramatized from the story Taketori Monogatari (Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) by Katō Michio in 1943, and Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji), dramatized from Murasaki Shikibu's famous novel of the same name by Funabashi Seiichi, one of Japan's prolific contemporary novelists.
Even though the costumes for these plays have the correct flowing, widely opened sleeve lines of Heian dress, they necessarily are modified for the electrically lighted outsized stage of modern times. Although these costumes give us a visual perception into the past, when overrefinement in wearing apparel was one of the ardent passions of the nobility, they are admittedly of much bolder theatrical design and of brighter-colored cloth than ever was seen in the ancient days, when colors were fixed according to rank.
Heian literature, including the Eiga Monogatari (Tales of Prosperity and Luxury of the Fujiwara Family), regales us with stories of noble-women who wore more than twenty layers of garments with hi-no-hakama (scarlet culottes) for formal occasions both in summer and in winter, the textiles differing only according to season. This jūni-hitoe (literally "twelve-fold costume,"although the number of layers was not fixed) was the correct formal feminine attire, but it is not used identically on the Kabuki stage for obvious reasons. Although the sumptuary laws of Edo times had permitted the wearing of such a costume, the actor, swathed in layer after layer of even the most diaphanous of materials, would have been hindered in his movements, and costuming would have been far too costly. In order not to discard the semblance of this lovely old-fashioned ensemble, the ingenious costumers sew layers of edges along the underneath border of the top garments, thereby creating the effect of many robes worn one over another.
The many-layered effect is also used in a most fanciful voluminous costume for the onnagata—the female impersonator also known as oyama (a less polite term which in the past had some implication of prostitution)—in the role of an of ran, the renowned courtesan of Edo days. In appearing as an of ran, the onnagata never wears more than two uchikake, the elaborate outer robe originally worn for formal occasions by well-born women, yet it appears that he could peel off several of these ornately brocaded robes with large rolled and wadded hems and long, trailing sleeves. Again the costumers have deceived the playgoers by their ingenuity.
With relation to sleeves, it should be noted here that "long" or "short,""wide" or "narrow" refers not to the length of the sleeve as measured against the outstretched arm's length but to the length as it falls along the sideseam of the kimono (from shoulder to hem). The conventional kimono sleeve is terminated at the wristbone, which it should normally touch. Certain theatrical roles call for outsized sleeves—sometimes double the width of the material—so that the hands are completely lost in their volume. These garments and their accompanying pieces usually go to extremes. By trailing along the floor, they give the wearer the comic (or terrifying) appearance of an awkward giant.
Unlike Kabuki, the Nō employs certain types of costumes which possibly may have been based on the classic dress of the Heian and Kamakura periods (794—1392). These generally are called hirosode-mono or ō-sode-mono, the extra wide-open or big-sleeve apparel. Belonging in this class are the kariginu, the nōshi, and the chōken. The kariginu (kari, hunting; kinu— ginu in compounds—clothes), a brilliant brocaded outer robe worn in male roles, was used by court nobles in real life as a sporty outdoor dress in the Heian age. After the Kamakura period it became a ceremonial costume among the warrior classes. The nōshi was the court gentleman's long silk coat. The chōken, an outer robe made of woven silk gauze, is used in both male and female roles that call for a somewhat long and important dance part in the drama, since the large and light long sleeves work effectively for dancing.
Among male costumes of the No, the foremost in elegance is exemplified by the nōshi and, next to it, the kariginu. There is another costume in this category: the maiginu, a robe which is a substitute for the chōken, made of the same material but somewhat shorter and used in mai (dance numbers) by actors portraying women, but never for men's roles.
The happi (short coat), worn for men's roles only, comes to just above knee length and has tucked-up sleeves. It represents or symbolizes armor. The character Tomomori wears such a coat in Funa Benkei (Benkei in the Boat). The mizugoromo, an unlined topcoat, not necessarily elegant, was used by priests, yurei (ghosts), and sometimes by common people as a simple outer garment. In reality, since the happi did not exist during the Heian period, it was in all probability devised by the costumers as apparel for the Nō stage.
There are two kinds of happi and kariginu used in the No: for robust characters the costumes are made of elegant gold brocade with lining, and those for refined characters are sewn with exquisite patterns brocaded on gauze without lining, representing the ultimate in splendor, next only to the nōshi. The unlined kariginu is known as hitoe-kariginu, the lined as awase-kariginu.
The kosode-mono, or tsume-sode-mono, are little-sleeve or narrowly-opened-sleeve garments, including the following: the karaori, the sumptuous brocaded outer robe worn mostly by upper-class women, sometimes by their attendants, and rarely by aristocratic young boys; the atsuita, a kind of kitsuke (kimono; see below) for men's roles only, resembling the karaori but having a more masculine or a checkered pattern; the nuihaku, a kimono imprinted with gold or silver leaf and patterned with embroidery, worn only for women's roles; and the surihaku, a kind of kitsuke (kimono) of satin, seigo, or other silk with imprint patterns