2.2

stresses the individual facial contortions of the actor, rather than the play, scenes, action, or messages imparted. Drawing a simile from early Shakespearan casting, Kabuki troupes are exclusively male. The female is considered too frail and inept to portray the gymnastics of this active drama. This custom has persisted to the present, and is akin to our female impersonators. The majority of Kabuki plays denote a crisis of feudalistic origin a war lord's imperial love for his abducted serf, a verbal and physical battle between rivals, or the winning of a paramour from filial confines. The

makeup is intense and grotesque, somewhat suggestive of the twin historic masks of comedy and tragedy. The ebony hair is straight and uptwined, the face as white as snow, the mask like a clown, the costume usually a long and flowing kimono. The female impersonators are called "Oyama" and are so trained in the detailed functions of the feminine contingent from childhood that the whole life of the male becomes that of the female. "The women that these 'Oyama' enact on the stage are considered to be even more feminine than the real women themselves."'*

From The Guide 1955. Published by English-speaking Manichi Newspapers, Inc. Tokyo, Japan.

17