English Translation

52-15 These are melancholy fairy tales, legends, everything but the real- lystic theatre. Everything on the stage Kabuki is overdressed, makeup, costumes, dances, mimics and the speech of actors. Heroes walk on hard- wreathed kothurns, their faces are heavily exaggerated with thick layers of cotton wool, faces cruelly and barbarically painted. Colors are sym- bolic as in Chinese theatre, white means betrayal and cruelty, red blood and under. The sharp and nebula dance moves of the actors are driven by the blow of the hammers and accompanied by the play of the samisen, the drum - neb, the flute of the choir, which sits on the side of the stage. The actor's dresses with their colours preserve the decorative traditions of the old woodcuts. The bones are very expensive, the usual price for the historical costume of the star Kabuki is twenty to thirty tissie kron. One costume of Kikugura, today the most famous actor, cost CZK 100,000. Kabuki most resembles stylized theatre, which he attempted- went to create Meierchold. The whole scene is a decorative image, calculated on an aesthetic effect, but it does not have the flaws of a Russian stylized theatre, which claimed that heree had lost its validity on the stage, that it was just a complement of the giant-zu, a colorful stain. Actors in the kabuki remained decisive or-netels on the scene, they introduced their art in harmony with it. The actor's art is stylized, actors do not depict a person with his individual speeches, but certain types, noble samurai, evil rapist, when played by a young woman, a beautiful woman, must embody what is typical of all young women, etc. All mental movements are styliso- tub. When actors study in the smallest detail expressions of joy and mountain, it is only to find what is typical of them. Therefore, they use masks and makeup. Even the movements and speech of actors is styliso - tuba. They speak in an unnatural voice, as they never speak, on- semi-song, they recite. They move unnaturally, dancely. Their movements correspond to the character of the role and at the same time must be beautiful. The beggar does not arouse compassion for his torn, filthy shama-theme, an overgrown face to seal poorness, on the contrary, has such a beautiful costume as others and only the way he moves will cause the audience to imagine a begger and regret over his fate. Therefore, dancing has an important place in the education of an actor and Japanese art is insurmountable in this field. A foreigner has to get used to it for a long time before he likes it in this theater. He is repelled by the singing speech of actors, non-melodic, disharmo-nic music that accompanys it, the staticity of the scene, seems to him to be the theatre only external and formal. But for Japanese this theatre grows from their inner needs, it is in agreement with their extraordinaryly developed sense of beauty and form. According to them, the aesthetic requirements of every art are to serve to break free from the real world and create a harmo- nii between everydayness and beauty that they desire. This aesthetic po- 269