Book Review: Japanese Plays – Classic Noh, Kyogen And Kabuki Works

Nothing reflects the beauty of life as much as Japanese theatre!

The original Introduction gives a fairly detailed explanation of Noh, Kyōgen and Kabuki though there isn’t much in the way of explanations of each of the plays’ individual origins, historical context, or development, either in the Introduction or in the rest of the book at the beginning of each play, the intention perhaps to preserve the book in its original form. It would however perhaps have been helpful to provide some sort of reference material in say a selective bibliography, even if only for the most important plays.

Although this isn’t provided in the book’s current form research on the Internet would make it relatively easy to cross reference the plays on line to find more information even if the Internet is something that wasn’t available when the book was originally published in 1934. For example

Anjin: The Shogun & The English Samurai At Sadler’s Wells London

A magnificent 3-hour stage production set in 17th Century Japan!

Gregory Doran’s production of ANJIN: THE SHOGUN & THE ENGLISH SAMURAI, written by Mike Poulton with Sho Kawai, will play eleven performances at Sadler’s Wells Theatre from 31 January to 9 February 2013, with the press night on Thursday 31 January.

William Adams, the “blue-eyed samurai” known in Japanese as Anjin, was an English maritime pilot. Washed ashore on a strange and exotic land, Anjin soon found himself as the trusted adviser to a powerful

Tokyo Kabukiza Monthly Kabuki Review 15th February – 1st March 1930

First in a two-part series by Kabuki collector and researcher, Trevor Skingle!

Some time after acquiring the Sintomiza tsuji banzuke, I discovered two Kabuki magazines for sale by a Swiss dealer and purchased them. What followed was a long period of research and translation that revealed a wealth of information about a four month period of Kabuki performances at the Kabukiza in Tōkyō between February and May 1930. This issue, entitled the Cherry month edition, of the Tokyo Kabukiza Monthly Kabuki Review, which began publication in 1914 by Tanaka Sada, was number 62 covering the period 15th February – 1st March 1930 and was edited by Torii Kotondo (1900-1976) who was the title page editor whose real name was