Word: kabuki
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...twanging accompaniment of background music that would better fit a Kabuki drama, these five bleeding hearts go the way of all flesh. En route, they converse in quaint prose poems reminiscent of haiku...
Within the lifetime that he nearly did not have, Nagare has become a cult. A robust, prolific artist, he is a perfect idol, with the handsomely chiseled features of a Kabuki actor. He is a loner who despises the city's chatter and works in an isolated village called Aji, 360 miles from Tokyo. But there is not a trace about him of the dainty refinement long associated with Japanese art. "Think of what the ancient Egyptians did or even the Romans," says the maker of monuments, regretting the current shrunken scale of sculpture...
There is nothing bitter about Broderson's vision of the world, but he is drawn to themes of sadness and is fascinated by ritual. Just as he may portray a tale of rape and murder that has been repeated century after century by the Kabuki players of Japan, as in The Nun and the Skull, so he is drawn to the bull rings, where year after year man and beast have performed their ballet with death. Then he might do a painting of a little girl listening to "the sound of flowers," or of two praying nuns...
...Japanese viewer, The Hidden Fortress must have a very archaic flavor, since Kurosawa has grafted onto it the gruff, stylized vocal tones and, sometimes the abrupt, hyperdramatic gestures of Kabuki. When the two peasants climb mountains in a completely prone position, they recall the balletic exaggeration of Japan's ancestral theatre, as do the shrieks that serve the Princess for "normal" speech. Indeed, she must remain silent throughout the journey because her voice would "reveal her identity...
Whatever their connection with Kabuki, the movements in this picture appear to have been planned with choreographic precision; a lancefight becomes a dance, and the whole story takes on the ritual overtones always associated with true epic...