Kabuki Plays on Stage v. 3; Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864

publication date: 31/07/2002
ISBN13: 9780824824556
Format: Hardback
Number Of Pages: 432
ID: 9780824824556
ISBN10: 0824824555

By: Samuel L. Leiter (editor), James R. Brandon (editor)Hardback

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Description

Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864, is the third volume in a monumental new series - the first collection of kabuki play translations to be published in nearly a quarter of a century. Fifty-one plays, published in four volumes, vividly trace kabuki's changing relations to Japanese society during the premodern era. The fourteen plays translated in Volume 3, Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864, mark an extreme point in the development of kabuki dramaturgy. The plays are remarkable, even within kabuki, for their intense theatricality, gutsy individualism of character, cold-blooded and ferocious violence, realism pushed into fantasy and grotesquery, novelty for its own sake, sexual aggressiveness, and assertion of female will. The plays depict a society in extremis, the end of an era, a time often marked by unmitigated darkness and desire.