by Matsui Kesako
Translated by David Crandall
JPIC, 2016
ISBN: 4-9160-5558-6
Hardback, 242 pp

Kabuki: A Mirror of Japan by Matsui Kesako was originally written as a television script for an NHK educational series on kabuki. Novelist Matsui brings her story-telling talent to bear as she selects ten of the most famous and influential kabuki plays of Edo Period beginning with Danjiro I's Shibaruku, staged at the end of the 17th century and ending with Mokuami's Sannin Kichisa, which appeared just before the downfall of the Tokugawa regime and Japan's opening up to the West in the late 1860's. Easily accessible to the lay reader and non-kabuki specialist and expertly translated by the American Noh specialist, David Crandall, Kabuki: A Mirror of Japan is no dry academic text. Specialist terminology and references are kept for the extensive Notes section at the end of the book. The book races along at a fair pace and one of the book's many strengths is its thought-provoking drawing of parallels to both contemporary and classic entertainment forms such as film, manga, opera, novels and transgender revue. For example, Matsui compares Sannin Kichisa with the 1960's Hollywood classic Bonnie & Clyde starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (The Ghost Story of Yotsuya) is seen as a forerunner of the Japanese horror smash, The Ring and the account of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami (Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy) draws comparison wit...