Much more elaborate is a cherry-viewing party, come to enjoy the cloud of pink blossoms, grouped on a hill-side, seated on a red carpet, with a gay silk curtain for background, made of stripes of black, yellow, purple, red, green, the masses of drooping flowers arranged with thick red ropes strung with brass bells, white paper lanterns in the greenery, serving-maids in pink kimono, merry masked dancers entertaining the company.
In a Nagasaki play relating to the visit of a Chinese envoy, there is seen a temple interior that could not be simpler and yet suggests grandeur—the background, a wide expanse of gold screens arranged with sliding doors on which are painted gold and black dragons, and in the foreground the actors, a group of daimyo in grey-blue, the bronze-brocade and gold-clad villain receiving the gifts that are to be presented to the emissary from China.
Not all Kabuki’s scenes are simple and serene, and nothing daunts the superior stage carpenters when once, they try their hands.
In a popular play there is a scene depicting a realistic earthquake, and a mansion collapses under repeated shocks. The building sinks down amid stage, according to some secret of the carpenters, and the hero makes his way out of the roof, ruin and desolation around him. When it comes to sensational snowstorms, typhoons, and conflagrations, Kabuki can hold its own with the Western stage.
It is, however, in architecture that the hand of the Kabuki craftsman is shown unmistakably. He has been free from the thraldom of the picture frame of the Western stage, and in following his own devices has worked with a freedom that has produced some satisfactory results.
The producer has taken the main room of a Japanese dwelling for his model—a straw-matted room, sliding screens for background, a severely plain apartment; for its sole decoration, an alcove containing a hanging picture, before which stands a vase of flowers or object of art. It has not been necessary for him to knock out one side of the house in order to allow the audience a view of what is passing within. The Japanese room being open to the outside, forms an admirable setting for the action of the plays.
To this room, which is in reality a platform for the players, he has added adjoining apartments, corridors, bridge-passages, verandahs, and the sloping roof is always present, either in part or as a whole. Completing the picture are gardens and rustic gates, stone water-basins, stepping-stones, wells, bridges, ponds, fences, and stone lanterns, and he has surrounded his buildings with the favourite flowers of Kabuki, lotus, chrysanthemum, peony, iris, and azalea. With a true love of nature he has placed in his scenes cherry and plum trees in full bloom, and has used pine trees and scarlet maples, drooping willows and feathery bamboo.
With a room as scene of action, the Kabuki carpenters have created types for all classes of dwellings the plays require. The background for a room in a great mansion will show a series of sliding panels on which are painted Chinese castles and pagodas, golden clouds, and green misty hills. Silver screens may be decorated with black waves in motion, or blue water, lotus leaves and flowers. The structures to be represented vary from an elaborately constructed mansion in cream wood to the realistic interior of the middle-class home in which the white-papered windows and doors form a pleasing feature. Temples, a hermitage in the midst of a forest, the thatched cottage of a farmer, are all variations of the one theme, which gives the widest latitude for invention and decoration.
Much of the action in Kabuki plays takes place in this room, with only the screens for background, and standing lanterns at each side. But there are more elaborate architectural triumphs, such as the great red entrance gate of Nanzen-ji, a Kyoto temple, carved, decorated, ornate, two-storied, and produced in detail. The bold robber, Ishikawa Goemon, hides in the second story, and comes forth on the railed balcony to smoke. This portion of the gate is first shown, the wall behind him in gold, painted with many-coloured clouds. As he stands there in his black velvet kimono and great overcoat of gold and black, the gate begins slowly to rise until the lower part is completely in view, the chief temple building in perspective within the arch of the gate, and Goemon looking down from his lofty position at his enemy below.
At another time, the Kabuki craftsmen spare no pains in constructing the Yomei gate of the famous Nikko Shrines, one of the best pieces of architecture in Japan, and so perfectly is it reproduced that the workmanship calls for admiration. But when no longer needed, the entire structure, which towers high, slowly turns over on end, and the bottom represents the background for the following action.