Old School Style Magical Realism and Quantum Mechanics

by Christopher Agostino

This week I visited a couple of English classes in our local High School to tell some very old folktales. The students are studying the genre of Magical Realism in literature and film. They’d read authors such as Gabriél Garcia Márquez and seen films like Pan’s Labyrinth. I went a little more old school on them to tell a 1000 year old Japanese Demon tale to get their attention (having just seen the Storytelling in Japanese Art exhibit I had to tell a demon tale). We discussed the universal belief of ancient human cultures in a spirit world and what we today would call magic, and how, from a storyteller’s perspective, modern authors include such elements in fiction to tap in to this ancestral understanding that the world is more than what it appears to be, using magic (or science fiction, for that matter) as a vehicle to open up the reader to new perceptions about their own lives.

It is an old device. When Homer wrote the Illiad and the Odyssey (the oldest examples of Western literature) he was already writing about a time that was mythic from his perspective, and using mythological stories as conceptual archetypes in the way a modern Magical Realist might. As a young actor I was in a version of The Odyssey that might be termed “Realist Magicalism” because it reframed the myth as psychodrama, making it the inner psychological journey of Odysseus from adolescence (reckless hero) to maturity (responsible husband) a la Joseph Campbell’s interpretations of hero tales via Freudian (or perhaps more accurately Jungian?) psychology. Continue reading →

Oshiguma ― Kumadori ― Japanese Kabuki Theatre Makeup Prints ― “Leaving an Impression”

Feb21

by Christopher Agostino

The process of a Kabuki actor applying his makeup is referred to as Kumadori, meaning “taking an impression”, in the sense that the makeup pattern conforms to the inner structure of their face and the interior persona of their designated character. After the performance, the actor may then leave an impression of the makeup on a silk cloth by pressing it against their face, creating an object of art called oshiguma.

Oshiguma of Ichimura-Uzaemon

In the book Kumadori (Toshiro Morita, 1985) there is a gallery of oshiguma prints from makeup worn by the Kabuki actor Ichimura-Uzaemon. The actor explains that the tradition began in earlier times when Kabuki actors needed to supplement their income and did so by making the oshiguma after a performance and selling it to admiring fans. As the prints became prized as art objects, actors would put their makeup on just to make the print:

Ichimura-Uzaemon creating an oshiguma

“A peculiar thing about the “Oshi-dori” [sic] is that an impression taken of Kumadori after performing dynamically on a live stage, seems to come off as if the actor’s actual face was there alive on the cloth. But when an impression is taken of a Kumadori painted only for the purpose of making an “Oshi-dori”, the result is totally lacking in life. It is here we see the mystical quality of the Kumadori.” ― Ichimura-Uzaemon in Kumadori, 1985

1922 oshiguma

Ichimura-Uzaemon is part of a long line of Kabuki actors to bear that name. Kabuki is a theatre tradition that is past on through families (by birth and adoption), as evidenced in this oshiguma from 1922, which featured Ichimura-Uzaemon XV (perhaps his grandfather?). It is described in the BBC radio broadcasts of The British Museum series “A History of the World in 100 Objects” as linked to a specific transitional period in modern Kabuki theatre, and includes the makeup prints of three actors that were, respectively, the 4th , the 15th and the 6th of their family’s lineage within the Kabuki theatre:

“An oshiguma, or face pressing by three Kabuki actors; Ichimura Takematsu IV, Ichimura Uzaemon XV and Onoe Baiko VI created after a performance of Momijigari, or Contemplating Maples, at the Shintomiza an old style Kabuki Theater destroyed in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. They were part of the creative change in the Kabuki world when influences were continuing to open up the perceptions of the Japanese to Western ideas creating a crucible out of which emerged modern playwrights and plays” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/7sG6iEl1SgeooiGokuePHw)

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Oshiguma . Collection of Ronald Cavaye

I came upon this wonderful oshiguma image (Nakamura Utaemon VI as the serpent of Sanuki in Nihon Furisode Hajime, May 1984, Kabuki-za. ) accompanied by a remarkable post called “Letter from London” in which Ronald Cavaye describes the experience of seeing a Kabuki performance, the ordeal it can be for the performers, and how the oshiguma is meant to capture the life force of the actor in performance―including the story behind this particular oshiguma. I have excerpted only a brief piece of his post here, and it really is worth going to the link and reading it:

“Everything about this oshiguma seems to convey that this performance was an ordeal. This actor was suffering for his art. There are no finely drawn lines of makeup here. Or rather, they may have been finely drawn by the actor in his dressing room, but here they’re misshaped and deformed by the ineluctable downward trickle of his sweat. The role is that of the eight-tailed serpent in the dance-drama, Nihon Furisode Hajime – 日本振袖始 – performed by Utaemon at the Kabuki-za in May, 1984. I saw that performance. It was amazing and I bought this oshiguma in the National Theatre in Tokyo where it was sold in aid of charity.” http://www.kabuki-bito.jp/kabuki_column/letterfromlondon/post_197.html

Yves Klein, An "Anthropometry/Shroud"

It is a clear example of how the oshiguma is in itself a work of art, a static object that still contains the energy of the performance. The oshiguma concept inspired the work of art I generated a few years ago from my own Kabuki makeup (at the top of the post). And I wonder at the apparent stylistic connection to Yves Klein and his Anthropometries, which also capture the spirit of a theatrical action through impressing a painted person against cloth or paper (see Men Getting Women Naked and Yves Klein — Female Nudity in Art http://wp.me/p1sRkg-ll )

And check out Anatomy of an Oshiguma about that 1922 oshiguma, which includes this description of the medium as “make-up and sweat on silk”

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Ichimura-Uzaemon painted himself in several different character patterns for the book “Kumadori”. From left to right, these are Benkei-kuma (“Benkei’s Pattern”), Kuge-Aku (“Evil Aristocrat’s Pattern”), and Saru-kuma (“Monkey Pattern”), and look at how much his face changes from design to design—it would be hard to recognize these as all the same actor.

To learn more about our programs and performances: http://www.agostinoarts.com

follow me for the face of the day: https://twitter.com/#!/storyfaces

Kumadori – Japanese Kabuki Theatre Makeup (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
From a Mask to a Painted Face — Face Painting from Cultural Sources http://wp.me/s1sRkg-812
Japanese Demons and Kabuki Spooky http://wp.me/p1sRkg-eV
Flamenco dancer Kagita tells a kabuki tale (japantimes.co.jp)

Kumadori — The Painted Faces of Japanese Kabuki Theatre

Jan20

Kumadori: the Makeup of Aragato Kabuki

see also: The Eye of the Demon — a StoryFaces Performance to learn about the stage presentation I do based on the legends of the samurai and the demons that they fight

by Christopher Agostino – published 1/20/12, occasionally revised since

“In a way completely different from the realism and individualism basic to the makeup used in Western theatre, Kumadori stylistically beautifies and emphasizes the stereotypical personality of a specific role. At the same time, unlike the Noh masks or the Chinese stage makeup used in Peking Opera, the Kumadori allows for greater power of expression since it closely follows the actual facial features and expressions of the actor.” — Toshiro Morita, Kumadori, 1985

Suji-kuma pattern of the Aragato Kabuki samurai

In theatre traditions of Asia such as the Chinese Opera, Kathakali theatre of India and Japanese Kabuki, the actor is the show. The stories are well known myths and historical epics, so everyone knows the plot. The audience is there to see the performer’s mastery of stylized movements, traditional vocal patterns and their otherworldly appearance in costume and makeup, as they embody legendary roles in a larger-than-life fashion.

The samurai character in action

The actors become living special effects to present the story, and extravagant masking and makeup is integral to this complete transformation of the actor, so Asian theatre generally includes the most sophisticated facepainting designs in the world, such as the Kumadori makeup tradition in Japanese Kabuki theater. The use of transformational makeup in Japan can be traced back to ancient religious rituals and, over time, as such ceremonies evolved into theatre, makeup was retained as a vehicle for transforming the actor in performances maintaining elements of the ritual origins without the specific religious context. Examples of this transition from religious ceremony to theatre can be found in many world cultures, often retaining elements of masking and makeup to allow modern performers to portray supernatural and mythological figures.

A living special effect

We can glimpse a direct link between the famous makeup for the samurai hero of the Aragato style of Kabuki and the ancient use of makeup in rituals pertaining to spirit worship and shamanic possession, for the samurai’s ability to do the impossible is understood to be because they have allowed themselves to be possessed by a powerful kami (“supernatural deity”) and thus have become hitokami (“man-gods”) and a functionality of any extravagant transformational makeup like this is to generate the suspension of disbelief in the audience so that they can accept the convention that they are in the presence of supernatural beings during the performance (just think of the way Hollywood movies use CGI today to make us believe we are on another planet watching blue aliens run through strange forests for the modern version of this age-old concept). In the Edo region of Japan in 1673, a fourteen-year-old actor named Ichikawa-Danjuro I invented a Kabuki performance style called the Aragato, or the “wild show”, with stories centered around powerful samurai heroes to present the “super-human actions that a righteous and courageous hero undertakes in standing up to forces of evil (Toshiro Morita, Kumadori, 1985)”, and for his first performance he painted his face in a bold red and black makeup design—a modern example of which is at the top of the post, this suji-kuma or “sinew pattern” worn by the samurai hero of one of the Aragato dramas as it is seen today. (And, to be clear, real samurai did not paint their faces—this is an actor’s invention to project the inherent power of the character he portrayed) The complex stylized makeup in Aragato Kabuki is called “Kumadori”.

The “Demon Queller Glare” as depicted by printmaker Kuniyoshi

His makeup is so fierce that the actor can strike a “glaring pose” to scare away evil spirits—an ingenious element of the samurai pattern achieved by leaving the eyelids white while framing the eyes above and below with black lines so the actor can make maximum use of his eyes and they seem to grow impossibly wide as he stares. This “glaring pose” is the theatrical embodiment of samurai legend, that a true hitokami samurai could scare evil spirits away just by glaring at them, and this again points to the connection between theatre and ritual as it is said that Danjuro miraculously cured a man of his afflictions by glaring at him, proving that he too had a touch of the gods in him.

“Kabuki makeup is already in itself an interpretation of the actor’s own through the medium of the facial features. On stage this interpretation becomes a temporalization of makeup in collaboration with the audience. The result is a decoding of the drama traced out in the graphic designs of the painted face.” — Masao Yamaguchi (quoted in The Painted Body, 1984)

painting the suji-kuma: “taking the pattern”

The influences on the development of Kumadori may have included the mask traditions of Noh and other Japanese theatre styles, and also the painted faces of the Chinese and Peking Opera, however, there is a difference in the intention and theatrical effect. Theatrical masks, such as Noh masks, free the actor from naturalistic facial expression, so that all the elements of performance are within the structured movements of the body, and Chinese Opera designs, although they are painted onto the actor’s face, also function very much as physical masks obscuring the actors’ features and expressions. Kumadori makeup does not function as a mask to hide the actor. It is a makeup designed to capture and project the expressions of the actor in enhanced form, to externalize the inner persona of the role through a design that responds to the actor’s features.

the Evil Aristocrat

Toshiro Morita writes that Kumadori should not be described as painting an actor’s face but rather as a “pattern-taking”, as in taking an impression of his own face, and in the original tradition, Kumadori was applied by the actor with his fingers so he could take the pattern of his bone structure as he painted himself. Painted today with fingers and brushes, the Kumadori still lives and moves with each facial gesture, through designs bold enough to project the performance throughout the theatre. The concentrated process of painting himself is also part of the actor’s internal preparation to present the mythic persona required. The different traditional characters each have general makeup patterns they wear, with subtle variations to develop sub-types for specific characters, following a “Yin/Yang” color symbology system. Aragato dramas are intense, and deal primarily with the expression of anger, of which there are two types in Yin/Yang symbology: the positive, extroverted “Yang” type (red) and the negative, introverted “Yin” type (indigo blue). So the red stripes radiating from the center of the samurai suji-kuma express the positive Yang anger of the hero, denoting his youthful vitality and therefor hot-bloodedness, coupled with a strong sense of righteousness as he acts openly and directly “with the heart of a child.” Other red patterns may be used for animals and comic roles. Indigo patterns represent the Yin anger more common to mature adults who have learned the conventions that govern society and so do not express their anger, but hold it in until it darkens the heart and turns one to evil, and those patterns are worn by characters such as evil aristocrats, vengeful spirits and demons. Browns in a pattern indicate a being has non-human powers, such as gods or demons. “The stage regained its original character as a sacred space, and the players their supernatural power…The significant thing is that makeup thus recovered its magical function as a vehicle of the supernatural, deliberately transgressing the natural features of the human face,” writes Michel Thévoz (The Painted Body, 1984) about the fascination engendered in Europe of the 1950s by presentations of Kabuki theatre. He’s talking particularly about the impact of the degree of transformation and stylization in traditional Japanese theatre in opposition to the naturalistic realism of the prevailing theatre in Europe and America, but if we are looking to the place that makeup has retained its “magical function” in modern Western culture we can more readily look to movies, even the cheesy sci-fi movies of those same 1950s. In my explorations of body art from tribal origins through modern cultures, I see an interesting evolution. In its original function, body art is a social act, elevating an individual above his natural/animal state to mark him as a member of human culture and his specific social group. In modern cultures, transformational makeup survives in the arts, in theatre, in movies, where its most profound use is to take the wearer (an actor) beyond his humanity so he can portray the supernatural and the super-human.

Exploring how Kumadori changes with my expressions as I painted this one on myself for my book

Sometimes I’ll use the eyes on the eyelids trick to create the “glare”.

Painting the suji-kuma in a demonstration for the Art Educators of New Jersey conference

There are a lot of lessons from such an effective and sophisticated art as Kumadori that I can apply as I paint a face. The foremost might be the importance of fitting a design to an individual’s features, “taking the pattern”. I am also perpetually intrigued by the idea of a painted face that does not mask the individual but rather projects the inner persona. I sometimes paint the suji-kuma face on an audience volunteer in my stage demonstrations on transformational makeup, both because it is such an exemplar of the power of makeup and because I’ve found that if I do take the time to paint it right and match the person’s features that the “glaring pose” always works, so I can show an audience just how theatrical makeup designs work to support an actor. As a vehicle for generating new facepainting designs I respond to the apparent looseness of the line work in these faces, the rough boldness. The sinuous lines make me think of movement, of wings and flying, so I have developed a number of bird designs out of the Kumadori patterns. I’ve also found these designs a great basis for some really fun spooky designs, see the Kabuki Spooky post. I’m a big fan of samurai movies—Toshiro Mifune in all those great Kurosawa films, like Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress—so I enjoy keeping alive the samurai transformation tradition. As a final note, much of the information here was from a fantastic book that is one of the real treasures in my library: Kumadori, by Toshiro Morita. (go to the Books page for bibliography info) I received this book as a wedding present from an equally treasured friend. Thank you Kate!

“The metamorphosis of a Kabuki actor begins in his make-up. They call it ‘face making’ or ‘face preparation.’ Painting out their ordinary faces, they color in to create their new faces. The make-up is the basic condition for an actor’s metamorphosis and it is the first step to be taken in the process, a new beginning. From being a live in-the-flesh human, with every dab of paint, the actor inches closer to becoming one with the character of his given role. It is a process transcending the mundane dimensions of time and space.” — Toshiro Morita, Kumadori , 1985