Kyogen

Today was a pretty normal day on the school end of things. After class and post-class hanging out with the other students I went and picked up my alien registration card, which was painless. This evening my pre-modern class had tickets to go see Kyogen, which was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. Kyogen is a style of traditional Japanese comedy, often interspersed between Noh episodes, but also performed, as tonight, by itself. I had expected it to be over my head in terms of language, which was true, but the physical comedy and the help of short English summaries I read beforehand made it genuinely entertaining. The first piece was called ‘The Plum Blossom Hut’, which was about five ladies who go to visit a very old nun in her hut amid, you guessed it, plum trees. Once there, they write poetry and chat, and then drink a great deal of sake and start to dance. I believe that this may be the origin of karaoke. They finally get the nun to do a dance of her own, which was a good bit of physical comedy. All of the parts were played, of course, by men, and I believe that the man playing the nun was a designated living national treasure, and 88-years-old. The next piece was about a samurai and his bumbling servant trying to steal a nice sword from another samurai, which of course ended badly for them, and the third was about three gamblers who pretend to be handicapped so that they can get jobs from a man who is hiring only handicapped people. Of course, the gamblers break into the sake while their employer is out, and when he catches them at it they are so drunk they can’t remember which disability they had been pretending to have before. Unfortunately, while looking for the theatre we ran out of time to have a real, sit-down dinner, and thus wound up eating convenience store boxed dinners on the steps of the theatre itself. Very classy. While we were eating, we noticed a maiko (yes, another one) entering the theatre with a man. This was very exciting. I’m sure that the novelty of it will wear off eventually, but I have not yet reached that point. Throughout the performance all of us were keeping one eye on the action and the other on the maiko down below us. I would have asked for a photo, but she was working so I figured that that would be rude. Instead, the whole group of us followed her and her date to their taxi (actually they really just happened to be walking in front of us, but I’m sure that that’s how it felt to her).
-It appears that sometimes maiko do not wear their tall, belled clogs, but rather normal lacquered sandals (zori). This might be, in this case, because she was going to the theatre, where bells might be a problem.
-The kimono for Noh, and I believe also for Kyogen for that matter, are made with a different embroidery technique than regular kimono, which makes the patterns more textured.
-When you buy a boxed meal at the convenience store they will heat it up for you if you ask.
-They had hot tea in glass cups available for free in the lobby during intermission, which was really nice, though I’m not certain how usual this is.
-If you sit outside, essentially on the ground, you will be stared at.