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Originally Posted by DarkScribe
When I was in Japan - many years ago - back in the Vietnam era, Kabuki was described to me as the Japanese version of Burlesque. Nothing that I saw or had related to me seemed to disagree with that summary.
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To the best of my knowledge, Kabuki is far from burlesque, at least today. But it might be that whoever explained it to you was referring to the time when kabuki was at its formative age, and when it was meant mainly to entertain "the masses" as opposed to Nō/Noh theatre (one of the oldest extant theatrical forms in the world) which could be "afforded" only by "aristocracy" at the time...
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In an interview with The Times in 2007, late Kanzaburo Nakamura XVIII, a star of Japan’s Kabuki theater, explained the stark differences between Kabuki and Noh, an older, more aristocratic form of Japanese theater. “Noh has a history of patronage by those who hold power,” he said. “But it is the common people who have always supported Kabuki.”
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