a podium, in full view of the audience, as in the puppet theatre. But the actors, with narratives and descriptive passages left to the singer speak the actual lines. In the puppet theatre, the entire text is recited and sung by the singer. Among the representative plays of this group are Chushingura and Tsubosaka-Dera. Lastly plays intended for kabuki make up the final category. These plays were written and produced exclusively for the kabuki theatre. Among them are a considerable number of excellent dramatic works such as Kagotsurube. Kabuki theatres in Japan today are built, without exception, in Western style, with respect to their building and staging facilities and accoutrements. They have retained, however, some of the significant features of the traditional kabuki theatre, such as the hanamichi and the mawari-butai. The Hanamichi, or flower-walk ramp, is a passageway connecting the left side of the stage with the back of the hall, through the spectators' seats at about head level of the audience. It provides a way for the actors' entrances and exits, in addition to the passages available at both wings of the stage. The hanamichi, however, serves not only as a passageway, but constitutes a part of the stage. While making their entrance or exit via this ramp, the actors very often give one of the most important scenes of their performance. The Mawari-butai, or revolving stage was first invented in Japan nearly 300 years ago. This device was later introduced abroad. It makes rapid changes of scene possible without interrupting the sequence of the plot. The proscenium of the kabuki stage is lower and much wider than that of American and European theatre. The stage has the appearance of a long rectangle instead of the nearly square form of theatres elsewhere. The curtain in the kabuki theatres consists of red-brown, black, and green cotton stripes, and is not raised as in the Western theatres, but drawn aside. The most distinguishin...
