cover image The Kabuki Dancer: A Novel of the Beginnings of Kabuki

The Kabuki Dancer: A Novel of the Beginnings of Kabuki

Sawako Ariyoshi. Kodansha International (JPN), $25 (0pp) ISBN 978-4-7700-1783-3

In this overlong and underwhelming history lesson disguised as a romance, Ariyoshi takes for her protagonist Okuni, the 17th-century inventor of Kabuki theater. From humble origins in a provincial village, Okuni ends up running a dance troupe in Kyoto, performing and choreographing with such innovative genius that she comes to be known as ``Best in the World.'' But despite her fame, Okuni's life is troubled: she falls for men who are too inept or villainous to remain with her for long, and her reputation and theater are eventually destroyed by a suitor she spurned 20 years before. Passages throughout detail contemporary political affairs in a didactic fashion, and the descriptions of Okuni's experiments in kabuki, while earnest, remain inert. The novel first appeared in serial form in a Japanese woman's magazine during the late 1960s, and it shows (the meaning of the word ``kabuki,'' for example, is repeated every 30 pages or so). Moreover, Ariyoshi's vision of Japan seems to admit only two possible motives for people's actions: love and long-simmering resentment. And that's a shame, because she has obviously done a great deal of research and knows her subject thoroughly. (May)