Heroes of the Kabuki Stage--An introduction to kabuki with retellings of famous plays.

Heroes of the Kabuki Stage--An introduction to kabuki with retellings of famous plays

Illustrated with woodblock prints by Arendie and Henk Herwig

Hotei Publishing/KIT Publishers, Amsterdam

www.hotei-publishing.com

dist. in U.S. by Stylus Publishing

PO Box 605, Herndon, VA 20112-0605

800-232-0223

ISBN 9074822614 $68.50 359 pp.

The large, coffee-table quality book offers a particularly engaging, different way to learn about the kabuki theater that has long been an integral part of Japanese society. With full-color pictures of Japanese woodcuts on nearly every page, it's really an art book on kabuki. One aspect of the woodcuts relating to the theater are woodcuts of actors. These testify to the important place of kabuki in Japanese society, while they sometimes served as a sort of publicity. Besides offering a multi-dimensional treatment covering origins and evolution, playwrights and actors, the yearly cycle of kabuki, costumes, staging, and music, the work is also a lifelong reference--with its six indexes for instance. The Dutch authors are steeped in the subject from extensive research and attraction to Japanese prints. Thirty-seven kabuki dramas are reviewed with casts of characters, narratives of story lines, appropriate woodcuts, and endnotes and references.