Kabuki Tickets: Don't Leave Home Without Them

Matsuzaki-san handed me two tickets for today's kabuki program last week. She didn't want to be responsible for remembering to tuck the tickets in her purse on the big day. I should have promptly passed the buck and tickets to Fearless, the only member of my current circle of playmates who is not afflicted with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, but I attached them to my refrigerator with a cute magnet instead.

I remembered the tickets. Unfortunately, we were already in Yokohama at the time and Matsuzaki-san was squeezing her car into the narrowest elevator in a land of narrow elevators while Fearless and I held our combined breath.

We did eventually manage to gain entrance to the theater but you're going to have to wait a day or so to join me there.  First we're going to visit the Hotel New Grand since Matsuzaki-san went to so much trouble to park her car so she could treat us to lunch before the show.

By sheer happenstance, we ran into Matsuzaki's uncle in the hotel lobby, the first time they've crossed paths in a number of years. She's sixty-four so I'd peg him as an octagenarian. I find that age group quite adorable but I managed to resist the urge to hug him.

After Fearless and I took advantage of the photo op, Matsuzaki-san introduced us to Mr. Seto, a hotel employee of twenty years' standing who doesn't look a day over thirty.  Mr. Seto had quite a treat in store for the gaijin ladies.

He led us down a long corridor, past a fancy Gump's gift shop decked out for the holidays, into the original hotel which was erected in the late 1920s. The grand staircase had an "Art Deco meets the Arts and Crafts Movement" look to my admittedly less than discerning eye. We followed Mr. Seto up the stairs and into a small elevator that groaned as it lifted us to the third floor where (drum roll, please) we walked down a plushly carpeted hallway to a corner room.

Mr. Seto has the key to MacArthur's Suite!

Fearless and Peevish admire General MacArthur's desk

Photographs of General MacArthur decorate the suite nowadays

Back on the first floor, Mr. Seto let us peek into the room where Matsuzaki's wedding took place. This was as thrilling as seeing MacArthur's Suite, at least for me.

As we left Mr. Seto to check out the gift shop and return to the new part of the hotel to have lunch, he mentioned in passing that the "Imperial Couple" had visited the hotel for dinner last evening.

Fearless studies the hotel's history gallery

I believe Babe Ruth once visited the New Grand Hotel

And that's a young Emperor Hirohito, if I'm not mistaken

Maybe now you understand why it's going to take me a couple of days to get to the kabuki performance.

Backstage at Kabuki: The Luckiest Americans in Japan

Yup, that's the Ancient Mariner and me with Kataoka Takataro, backstage at Tokyo's Shimbashi Enbujo Theatre. We had an unforgettable afternoon watching Kabuki from fabulous fifth row seats with our friends, Hiroko-san and Otsuka-san. Their friend Takataro is starring in the first of the three plays on the afternoon program this month (plus two of the three evening plays) so they made arrangements for us to visit his dressing room after watching him perform in the two-act historical drama Yoritomo no Shi (Yoritomo's Death).

The Ancient Mariner might have been the only member of our quartet who wasn't a little giddy with nervousness when Takataro's congenial young assistant escorted us out the front door of the theater to the stage entrance where we traded our shoes for slippers before padding down a narrow corridor skirting the stage. I snuck a sideways peek at the stage but resisted the impulse to dance across it out of respect for our hosts.  Go, me.

Entering the dressing room we stepped up onto a tatami mat. (Writing this, I find myself wondering if we were supposed to doff the slippers at that juncture. Did everyone else?  Drat. I was so preoccupied with expanding my Kabuki knowledge last night that I forgot to brush up on tatami etiquette.)

Takataro made us feel genuinely welcome. His deep voice and general masculine aura surprised me since he specializes in female roles (onnagata). He invited us to sit beside him on the mat and mentioned that he had wanted to be a Top Gun jet pilot when he was a little boy. He has a name badge featuring the crossed flags of Japan and the United States.

Takataro in his dressing room

We returned to our seats just in time to see the second play, a one-act historical drama extracted from a longer play originally written for the Bunraku puppet theater. This play was first performed in 1730 so it was about as easy to follow as an unannotated Shakespeare play, although the Ancient Mariner and I had a very helpful lady whispering carefully timed insights into our ears thanks to the complimentary English Language Guides Takataro's assistant provided to us when we arrived at the theater. How nice was that? We had every intention of renting headsets, of course, but were truly humbled by Takataro's hospitality as well as the Otsukas'. How can we begin to return these extravagant favors? What's a gaijin to do?

The last performance of the day was incredible, and not just because we had already visited Takataro's dressing room. Renjishi is a dance number based on an old Chinese legend depicting a parent lion teaching its cub survival skills by pushing it off a cliff. Takataro's father, Kataoka Nizaemon (67), was the father lion and Takataro's son, Kataoka Sennosuke (11), was the lion cub. That old chestnut "not a dry eye in the house" sums up the audience's reaction to this historical, exuberant, athletic performance by Nizaemon XV and his young grandson. According to Otsuka-san, it was Sennosuke's idea to perform with his grandfather and he willing gave up a sixth grade class trip to spend the month of June metaphorically falling off a cliff.

Surely he will never forget performing with his grandfather. I can't imagine anyone in that audience today will soon forget the experience either. I know I won't.