C. Andrew Gerstle

Kabuki Heroes is about collective participation in urban culture - on the stage, in poetry salons, in art studios and in fan clubs. Focusing on the culture of Kabuki theatre in Osaka and Kyoto, it illustrates the passionate hero worship of actors by all levels of society. Fans vigorously engaged in the creation of celebrity and fame for their idols, and thereby won their own moments of glory and glamour in the spotlight. Many of these participants are represented here - most of them ordinary townsmen, but also a few samurai and courtiers. This interactive nature of Kabuki culture is particularly intriguing: the actors themselves not only appeared on stage, but involved themselves in other cultural circles such as poetry salons. Kabuki fan clubs, on the other hand, performed formal rituals at the theatre, individual fans became amateur performers, while others created lavish colour prints and books to support favourite actors and spread their fame." "This catalogue illustrates that our obsession with celebrity is not just a modern phenomenon: in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Osaka we can rediscover many elements in common with our own times. Most importantly, after the spread of new colour-woodblock printing technology in the late 1760s, a golden age of popular Kabuki culture was promoted far and wide with beautifully coloured prints and books. The fine examples brought together here from leading public and private collections in Europe and Japan evoke a fascinating period when theatre, art and poetry were essential elements of social and cultural life.

"Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), often referred to as "Japan's Shakespeare" and a "god of writers," was arguably the most famous playwright in Japanese history and wrote more than 100 plays for the kabuki and bunraku theaters. Today the plays of this major literary figure are performed on kabuki and bunraku stages as well as in the modern theater, and forty-nine films of his plays have been made, thirty-one of them from the silent era.". "In this volume Gerstle translates five plays - four histories and one contemporary piece - never before available in English that complement other collections of Chikamatsu's work, revealing new dimensions to the work of this great Japanese playwright and artist."--BOOK JACKET.