g feature of kabuki as a theatrical art in comparison with other dramatic forms is perhaps that it places primary emphasis upon the actor (Hsu, 121). Thus the writers attached to the various kabuki theatres supplied the vast majority of the classical kabuki plays. Those writers were fully aware of the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of the individual actors as well as their dramatic taste in performance, and they took unusual pains to write plays capable of bringing out the superior talent of these actors. Not infrequently, actors, regarding the plays only as means of expression for them to star in, temperamentally altered the lines and the plots. Yet, in the last analysis, it is to the actor that kabuki's chief greatness is due. Since the dramatic art of kabuki is based on its special formula of representation, every kabuki actor is required to have a fundamental preparatory training. This in turn makes it almost compulsory that a person who aspires to be a kabuki actor start his training from childhood. He must be thoroughly trained in many branches of artistic culture. Since kabuki is a kind of musical drama, both Japanese dancing and music are integral parts of such training. It is noteworthy that much of the dramatic technique in a kabuki performance is not what the contemporary actors have acquired by themselves, but is the basis of accumulated efforts contributed by their ancestors for many generations back, and handed down to them by the principle of family inheritance. Hence, there are today families of kabuki actors that go back as far as seventeen generations (Mackerras, 145). For one thing, under the feudalistic social system of the Edo period, the adoration of family lineage was almost an unwritten law. For another, the very nature of the kabuki art with its vast requirements of training and experience made such a family system ideal. This system, still fairly rigidly observed today, is perhaps more important than ...
