Onnagata: A Labyrinth of Gendering in Kabuki Theater by Maki Isaka (review)

As the title indicates, this book examines complex, and at times confusing, issues raised by the process of constructing femininity by onnagata—male actors who specialize in playing female roles—in Kabuki theater. Kabuki is one of the four classical genres of Japanese theater, with a history going back more than four hundred years. The author ultimately aims to demonstrate the elusiveness and precariousness of gender construction through the example of the changes in onnagata artistry and the assumptions concerning gender in the course of these years. The book is a well-researched and thorough historical study of the artificial and artistic construction of femininity by onnagata that provides a great deal of information as well as many thought-provoking insights.

Kabuki, an all-male theater for much of its history, was established by a woman: at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Okuni, from the Izumo area, formed an all-female troupe, dancing and performing along the Kamo River in Kyoto. During this early period, then, female players would have played male roles. The word "kabuki" derives from "kabuku," which means to deviate from the norm. The word itself illustrates how performances of the Okuni kabuki were regarded as eccentric, in embodying sexual inversion. Such inversion might have eventually incited some kind of rebellion against the social regime at the time, but unfortunately so few records relating to this female kabuki have survived that we do not know what kind of acting and dancing these female players presented. In 1629 the Tokugawa Shogunate banned the Okuni kabuki for corrupting morality, and in particular for the performers' possible engagement in prostitution. From then until almost the beginning of the twentieth century, women were officially excluded from public performance in Japan.

The kabuki launched by Okuni, however, had already become very popular among its audiences. How, then, was the vacuum created by expelling women from performance on the public stage filled? How did male actors construct femininity on the stage when, due to the ban, women players were no longer available? Maki Isaka's stimulating discussion starts at this very important period in the history of kabuki.

Chapter 1, "Geneses of a Maze: Androgyne Fatale," concerns wakashu (young boys) kabuki, the first version of the all-male kabuki that replaced the Okuni kabuki. This chapter is of great importance since most studies on kabuki do not discuss wakashu kabuki extensively because of the lack of contemporary records. Drawing upon twentieth-century theories of gender, in particular by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Luce Irigaray, Isaka elucidates wakashu aesthetics based on early modern assumptions concerning gender. Wakashu kabuki represented a relationship between beautiful young men and their older partners, relationships that actually existed among Buddhist monks and men in the samurai class. No matter how attractive they may have been, however, wakashu could not play the role of women. Their aim was to acquire military masculinity, emulating their senior partners. When wakashu matured, they themselves became nenja, senior partners in the male-male relationship; their androgyny therefore lasted only several years.

In discussing the transient nature of wakashu's gender, Isaka introduces relevant discourses on androgynous aesthetics, futanari and futanarihira. The former word means intersex and androgyny, while the latter, androgynous sexual beauty, deriving from the name of a well-known ninth-century poet, Narihira, who is said to have radiated incomparable, androgynous beauty. Futanarihira's sex identity is male, while his gender identity is androgynous, pleasing both men and women. This concept of androgyny reminds us of Shakespeare's dramatization of beautiful young boys enacting women's roles. The ravishing charm of the male-disguised Viola in Twelfth Night, for instance, is much admired by Duke Orsino. A comparative study of Shakespeare and wakashu kabuki would have been rewarding, but, as Isaki points out, what matters most in kabuki is the artificial construction of femininity in performance, not the play-texts, as in the...