Kabuki Structure and Social Structure

1989 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 63510095
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: 社会学(含社会福祉関係)
• Research Institution: Kobe University
• Principal Investigator: ONO Mitchikuni Kobe University College of Liberal Arts Professor, 教養部, 教授 (20067862)
• Project Period (FY): 1988 – 1989
• Keywords: Kabuki / Kata / Pattern / Symbol System / Structure / Social Structure / Value Pattern / Edo era(Tokugawa Period)

Research Abstract

This Project attempts to elucidate a correspondence between "structure" of Kabuki drama as symbol system and "social structure". Our research results are as follows. 1. We can say that the structure of Kabuki consists of "Paradigmatic" relationships among various "Kata"(Pattern or style of acting) such as Kata of "Sekai"(worlds), "Yakugara"(role-types), acting, settings, properties, costumes, and wigs. This structure may be called "repertoire of Kata or patterns". And, a particular play may be regarded as one or another combination of Kata selected from this repertoire. Therefore any one of plays stands, as it were, at the "syntagmatic" level. "Kata", constituting the structure, are defined as visual-auditory and typical-rhythmical expressions of natural phenomena, psychological states, and human behaviors. In other words, a Kata is an autonomous form which is itself an articulation and an exaggeration of everyday reality.
2. The social structure consists in "institutionalized value pat terns". In particular, it seems that the Tokugawa social structure was governed by such patterns as interpenetrated into "Mibun" (estate) and "Ie" institutions. Those patterns might be called "type distinction", "hierarchization" (which are Mibun value patterns), and "genealogical continuity", "system priority"(Ie patterns).
3. Between both kinds of structures, there are three types of correspondence. (1)"Mibun" and "Ie" patterns caused typified and hierarchized Kabuki productions on one hand and "Ie no gei"(family art) on the other hand(causal correspondence). (2) A Kata became, positively, a certain support for the central values in the Tokugawa Period because of its ideological simplism, and negatively, a certain threat to these values because of its aesthetic-emotional values(functional correspondence). (3) It will be suggested that two orders of structures or patterns would be no more than two realizations, on the Kabuki symbolism level and the social system level, of one world view (structural correspondence).