Kuromori Kabuki

Kuromori is a tiny place to the south of Sakata.  For most of the year its claim to fame is a natto factory.  However, every year on the 15th and 17th of February the village of Kuromori to the south of Sakata, puts on a performance of Kabuki.  Kabuki is a type of traditional theatre in Japan.  Other than that I know very little about it.  The plays were written about 400 years ago, making them roughly contemporary with Shakespeare.  Therefore, the language of the plays is difficult to understand.  Still, they're worth braving the cold to see because they are impressive from a visual point of view.  And also because you get to join in some small scale festivities, which is always fun.

Our fun started before we'd even arrived.  Because we didn't really know where we were going, we stopped off in a kouban police box, which was a first for me.  The policeman was very friendly and told us all sorts of useful information.  However, I didn't ask the one thing I really wanted to know: why, in a place like Kuromori, did he keep a riot shield in his office?  I'm still imagining the villagers going on the rampage over the price of rice!

Anyway, we made it there and we were immediately grabbed by a bunch of men sitting in a garage (or it might have been one of those mini fire stations) and given sake and konnyaku on a stick.  Then we wandered off to watch some theatre.  I was also able to get a vague idea of what was going on because a teacher from my school lives in Kuromori and explained what was going on.  They didn't perform whole plays, but instead just did some famous scenes.  An entire play takes a very long time, plus the actors are just amateurs who live in the village.

Apparently it snows every year on kabuki day and this year was no different, despite the milder than usual winter.  So it was freezing.  At one point they had to carry out running repairs to the roof of the stage because a gust of wind nearly took it away.  Still, the plays are performed at the local shinto shrine and we were able to go inside to warm up.  This is the first time I've seen inside in a shrine when people were actually there.  It seemed more like a community centre.  There was a fire on a hearth as well as various kerosene heaters, lots of people drinking sake and a some women making bento.  There were also all the actors getting ready there because the inside of the shrine was the backstage area for the theatre.  After warming up a bit and chatting to some of the people there, we headed back outside to watch some more theatre, until it got too cold.  Then me and Christine headed off to Mikawa to get some coffee while Christian and Jasmin accepted an invitation to eat soba with some of the local residents somewhere in the village.

I found out later that if we'd stuck it out in the cold for a another hour and a half, they'd been looking for us to play extras in the climax of the day, when the stage got invaded by 47 people for some reason that I don't understand.  It would've been fun, but it was very very cold...

By Tom Telford