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  • Beautiful Boys / Outlaw Bodies: Devising Kabuki Female Likeness
  • Loren Edelson
Beautiful Boys / Outlaw Bodies: Devising Kabuki Female Likeness. By Katherine Mezur . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; pp. xiii + 319. $55.00 cloth.

Of all the performative aspects of the kabuki theatre, none has generated more attention and fascination than the onnagata, the male player of female roles. Writing in 1888, the political theorist Fukuzawa Yukichi deemed the onnagata a national treasure of Japan, and, to this day, critics and one-time spectators alike have responded with awe and rapture at the virtuosity of these transformative artistic geniuses.

For much too long, commentators have made blanket statements about how the onnagata is "the essence of femininity" (24) or, more troubling, "more feminine than a real woman" (27). In her much-anticipated Beautiful Boys / Outlaw Bodies, Katherine Mezur courageously counters these claims, showing how the onnagata is a construction of a male fantasy of female likeness. Her provocative discussion of the history and aesthetics of the onnagata opens up important ways for thinking about gender on the kabuki stage.

Mezur's study, a revision of her 1998 dissertation, can be roughly divided into two parts: a theorized rereading of the history of the onnagata and a meticulous examination of the aesthetics of onnagata in performance. Complete with her numerous firsthand, eye-witness accounts, corroborated by her own training in nihon buyô dance, Mezur offers a compelling critique and synthesis of onnagata studies produced by scholars based in and out of Japan. Informing her analysis is a clear grasp of Western feminist theory; many of the ideas and questions posed by Judith Butler, Sue-Ellen Case, Jill Dolan, and Jennifer Robertson shape Mezur's inquiry into her subject: How does the onnagata perform gender? In what way does the onnagata destabilize the naturalized categories of identity and desire? How does the onnagata transcend the conventional gender system? The author searches for answers to these questions not only by calling attention to the choices of language and terminology previous scholars have used to categorize the onnagata, but also by documenting how the onnagata goes about his transformational work. She further demonstrates an uncanny ability to analyze the ephemeral moments of performance in her close readings of several productions.

Her historical inquiry into the origins of onnagata performance reveals that such players evolved not from trying to imitate a woman's body, but from the ideal body of a teenage boy (bishônen). While this section draws largely from prominent Japanese kabuki historians, it would have been further enhanced by responding to Maki Morinaga's article, "The Gender of Onnagata as the Imitating Imitated," which appeared in positions in 2002—years after Mezur published her dissertation, but well before the book was published. Both scholars argue that the onnagata may have evolved from the male same-sex (nanshoku) tradition, yet Mezur still gives considerable weight to Izumo no Okuni, a woman whom she and many scholars have claimed as the "initiator" of kabuki. Given the paltry evidence of the role that Okuni actually played in the development of kabuki (let alone all the apocrypha concerning her life), it remains unclear how much is factual and how much is spurious. No matter how much a feminist scholar might hope to substantiate Okuni's role in the development of kabuki, additional evidence is needed.

More persuasive is Mezur's theory of female likeness. She demonstrates that onnagata should not be thought of as women, or even female characters. Rather, they subvert the male–female binary as liminal creations that enact wholly new and incredible genders. The onnagata do not express any preconceived gender identity; they perform a carefully constructed role. Therefore, even defining onnagata as male players of female roles is problematic. [End Page 141] Mezur reminds us that the onnagata are not playing women, but rather fictions of femininity: "On the kabuki stage, I do not see 'women' at all. I see onnagata" (240).

However, just as Mezur opens up a useful critique for viewing the onnagata, she forecloses the possibility of women performing this role, since she advocates that "a male body beneath" is requisite for the onnagata:

The only valid reason a...

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