The above-mentioned kitsuke is a difficult word to explain. It derives from the verbs kiru (to wear) and tsukeru (to attach), and the meaning is "to attach to the body with an obi."The difference between the regular kimono and the kitsuke lies in the manner of wearing the garment. The kitsuke is the top kimono, over which the obi is tied, but it is called kitsuke usually when a coat or an outer robe is worn over it, sometimes almost concealing it. The term is used in connection with both women's and men's apparel.
The karaori, listed first in the above categories of small-sleeved garments, deserves somewhat more detailed attention. It is of two types. The first, for young women, is called iro-iri (iro, color; iri, containing or put in), meaning that the colors include red. The second, for older persons, is called iro-nashi (iro, color; nashi, without), meaning that red is not among its colors. Karaori is a word employed originally, and still used, for a particular kind of material imported from China—as Alan Priest describes it in Japanese Costume, a "silk (usually twill) brocaded with colored silk floss in large 'float' patterns resembling embroidery, and usually with a separate pattern brocaded in gilt-paper strips."Because elegant robes were made from this material, the robes were also called karaori.
The original outline of the kimono was taken from the kosode, a short-sleeve undergarment worn next to the skin by people of the middle and higher classes before the Kamakura period (1185-1333). Kosode originally meant a short-sleeved or narrowly-opened-sleeved kimono contrasting with the hirosode, the kimono with large and widely opened sleeves. In the Edo period (1603-1868), kosode referred to the lined and wadded silk kimono with short sleeves worn during three seasons, excluding summer. The same type of kimono without lining was called a hitoe or plain kimono, and the hitoe, when made of hemp or ramie cloth, was called a katabira. These were summer garments. The kimono as we know it today became widely used as an outer garment for men and women from late Muromachi (1392-1573) or early Azuchi-Momoyama (1573-1603).
It is regrettable that Edo Kabuki costumes have not survived the years. Many exquisite Nō costumes of the Momoyama and Edo periods exist in private or public collections, since the No, as the formal theater of the noble and military classes, was well protected by the shōgun (military ruler) and the daimyō (feudal lords), and its refined hand-woven costumes were preserved by aristocratic collectors or by Nō masters. Kabuki costumes, made for the moment, were kept in the theater warehouses or by the actors themselves, eventually to be worn out by repeated use. We cannot, therefore, rely on any actual costumes for the study of the old Kabuki costumes. All of our information comes secondhand and somewhat sketchily from old books, from ukiyo-e or woodblock prints (in which we must allow for some poetic license as to color and design), from costumes made after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and from word-of-mouth reports handed down from generation to generation within the Kabuki world.
The Theater Museum of Waseda University in Tokyo has the largest Kabuki library in existence, but none of its collection embraces antique Kabuki costumes. Its oldest authoritative information covers costumes worn by Ichikawa Danjūrō IX during the latter part of Meiji (1868-1912). Interestingly enough, what are probably the oldest known remaining costumes—all in excellent condition—are those used by a Kabuki actress, Bandō Mitsue, who died in early Meiji, and are the property of the Tokyo National Museum. It should be explained here that in past generations only the okyōgen-shi or women's Kabuki troupe was permitted to perform Kabuki in the oku-goten, the innermost palace of a feudal lord's establish-merit and the precinct in which the wives and daughters of daimyō lived. Although Kabuki actresses were the only ones to perform in the oku-goten, they were never permitted to appear in their dramatic roles on the traditional Kabuki stage.
CHAPTER 1
Early Kabuki
No clearly defined documentation of the actual birth of Kabuki has been found. Some recognized scholars in this field believe Kabuki had its initial performance in Kyoto around the 5th year of Keichō (1600). It was about the same time, 1600 to be exact, when Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the longest reigning dynasty of shōgun (military dictators) in Japan, won the battle of Sekigahara, defeating the generals who had given their allegiance to Hideyori, son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, considered by some historians to be Japan's greatest military strategist. Hideyoshi, born of humble parentage, rose to become the military ruler prior to Ieyasu's ascendancy but never attained the rank of shōgun because of his plebeian birth. The government instituted by Ieyasu after his victory over the Toyotomi forces is known in Japanese history as the Tokugawa bakufu or Tokugawa shōgunate. It was destined to continue for more than two and a half centuries.
Other Kabuki scholars believe that Kabuki was not founded until the 8th year of Keichō (1603), which would coincide with the year that Ieyasu assumed the title of shōgun. From that time until the fall of the shōgunate in 1868, the age was called the Edo or Tokugawa period, the name Edo signifying that the Tokugawa had established their capital in Edo, the city which became Tokyo in 1869.
The Edo period, like preceding periods, was divided into a number of eras during which Kabuki blossomed from a coarse, erotic form of entertainment into that of classical theater as it is known today. Names of eras were often changed after some disastrous occurrence, such as war or loss of crops. It was a common belief that the adoption of a new era name would usher in a happy, prosperous interval. The over-all era names were not changed except by permission of the emperor. Today there are no such changes, each new era deriving its name from the succession of an emperor.
OKUNI KABUKI
Caprice has credited a woman with the origin of Kabuki, Japan's time-honored, traditionally male theater. It easily could have been otherwise, for various forms of entertainment which might have caught the fancy of the townsmen prevailed. Yet it was a woman who offered the spark that fired the success of one special form beyond all the others existing at that time.
After a turbulent age of successive wars, there was a relatively peaceful period. The populace gave vent to its long-suppressed desire for pleasure in an era of unrestrained joy. New customs and trends spontaneously erupted. These were commonly called kabuki, an abstract noun taken from the verb kabuku, which at that time literally meant a "thing leaning"—in other words, an "extraordinary thing" signifying something abnormal, queer, or not common. A person who attracted undue attention by conspicuous traits of behavior, wore gaudy, exaggerated clothing, or swaggered with great bravado was referred to as kabuki or kabuki-mono, with its nuances of emancipation, pleasure, sensuality, and perhaps lawlessness, since the Japanese are peculiarly bound to the laws of tradition and strict rules of behavior.
In the wake of this new era in public tastes, legend has it that Okuni, a priestess of the great Izumo no Ōyashiro Shrine in central Izumo Province (now Shimane Prefecture), journeyed across the mountains to notso-distant Kyoto, ostensibly to obtain contributions for the maintenance of the shrine through performances of a prayer-dance. This dance, the nembutsu-odori (literally "dance of prayer to Buddha") was an outgrowth of five centuries of teaching prior to Okuni by such priests as Kūya, Ippen, and during Okuni's time by the priest Hōsai, who believed that the principles of Buddha could be most easily understood not by difficult or tedious preaching but by plunging into ecstasy through song and dance. Later the nembutsu-odori became familiar as a folk dance.
Okuni's arrival in Kyoto about 1600 is considered a historical event in the annals of popular theater in Japan, for it presaged the beginning of various theatrical forms which gradually evolved into the present-day Kabuki.
Okuni belonged to a class of young maidens known as miko or shrine virgins, albeit of questionable virginity, who served the gods of the Shintō shrines, danced before them, and made themselves generally available for any menial task. Since people from all walks of life visited the shrines, inevitably bawdyhouses abounded in their