日本の伝統演劇を語る上で、能と歌舞伎は双璧をなす存在です。いずれも数百年の歴史を有し、独自の様式美を極限まで磨き上げてきました。その芸術的価値は世界的にも高く評価され、いずれもユネスコの無形文化遺産に登録されています。しかし、両者は対極とも言える美意識に立っており、その対比を通じて、日本文化の振れ幅と懐の深さを実感することができるでしょう。
In any account of Japan's traditional theater, Noh and Kabuki stand as the twin pillars. Each has a history of centuries, and each has polished a distinctive formal beauty to its limit. Their artistic worth is highly regarded around the world, and both are inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Yet the two stand on aesthetic sensibilities that are, in fact, opposite poles of each other, and the contrast between them lets us feel the breadth and the generous reach of Japanese culture.
能の起源は、奈良時代に中国大陸から伝来した「散楽」にさかのぼると言われています。やがて農耕儀礼や寺社の祭礼と結びついて「猿楽」となり、室町時代に観阿弥・世阿弥父子の手によって、現在の能の形に大成されました。武家の保護を受けて発展したことから、能には武士の精神性が色濃く反映されています。
Noh's origins are said to go back to "sangaku," brought over from the Chinese mainland in the Nara period. In time it merged with agricultural ritual and shrine and temple festivals to become "sarugaku," and in the Muromachi period the father-and-son masters Kan'ami and Zeami completed it into the form that we know today as Noh. Because it developed under the protection of the warrior class, Noh carries within it a deep coloring of the spirituality of the samurai.
舞台に立つ能のシテは、面をつけて演じます。表情を覆い隠したまま、わずかな首の傾きや視線の動き、足の運びだけで、人間のあらゆる情念を表現する——その極限まで抑制された動きは、見る者を圧倒せずにはおきません。動かないことが、最も雄弁に語る瞬間が、能には確かに存在するのです。
The shite, the leading actor of a Noh play, stands on stage wearing a mask. With expression hidden, using only a slight tilt of the head, the smallest shift of the gaze, or a single stride of the foot, he gives voice to every shade of human passion — and movement held to such extreme restraint cannot fail to overwhelm the viewer. There is, in Noh, a moment in which not moving speaks the most eloquently of all.
世阿弥は『風姿花伝』において、「秘すれば花」という言葉を残しました。すべてを見せ尽くしてしまっては、芸の魅力は消えてしまう——隠すことによってこそ、観客の想像力を喚起し、真の感動を生み出すことができるのだという思想です。この美学は、能のみならず日本文化全体に通底する哲学と言っても過言ではないでしょう。
Zeami left, in his treatise Fushikaden, the line that has become famous: "What is kept hidden becomes the flower." The thought is that to display everything is to extinguish the charm of art — only by concealing can one stir the imagination of the audience and call forth true emotion. It is no exaggeration to call this aesthetic a philosophy that runs through not only Noh but the whole of Japanese culture.
能の舞台装置は、極限まで簡素なものに削ぎ落とされています。背景には松の絵が一本描かれているだけ、小道具もごくわずか。それでも演者の所作と謡、囃子の音だけで、雪景色も、戦場も、彼岸の世界までもが、観客の心の中にありありと立ち上がってくるのです。
The stage setting of Noh has been pared down to the utmost simplicity. The backdrop bears only a single painted pine tree, and the props are kept to the barest minimum. Even so, from the actor's gestures, the chanted lines, and the sound of the small ensemble alone, a snow-covered landscape, a battlefield, or even the world of the dead can rise up vividly within the heart of the audience.
一方の歌舞伎は、能とは対照的に、江戸時代の庶民の娯楽として花開きました。その起源は出雲阿国の「かぶき踊り」と言われています。やがて女歌舞伎、若衆歌舞伎の禁止を経て、現在の男性のみが演じる「野郎歌舞伎」の形へと変化していきました。「かぶく」とは「傾く」を意味し、世の常識から外れて目を引く様を表します。その名にふさわしい派手さこそが、歌舞伎の生命線なのです。
Kabuki, by contrast, blossomed in the Edo period as the entertainment of the common people. Its origins are said to lie in the "kabuki dance" of Izumo no Okuni, and after a stage that saw women's kabuki and youth kabuki banned in turn, it took the form of the all-male "yarou kabuki" still performed today. The verb "kabuku" originally meant "to tilt," that is, to swerve outside the bounds of common taste and catch the eye — and the flamboyance that lives up to that name is the very lifeline of Kabuki.
能の幽玄な世界とはまさに対照的に、歌舞伎は華やかな衣装、大胆な化粧、ダイナミックな演出で観客を魅了します。隈取と呼ばれる赤や青の化粧は、登場人物の性格や立場を一目で伝える視覚言語でもあり、初心者にもその役割が直感的に分かるよう工夫されています。花道を颯爽と歩む役者の姿は、江戸の粋そのものを今に伝えるものです。
In sharp contrast to Noh's world of subtle depth, Kabuki captivates its audience with vivid costumes, bold makeup, and dynamic staging. The red and blue makeup known as kumadori is also a visual language that conveys at a glance the character and standing of the figure on stage, so designed that even a first-time spectator can intuit each role. The figure of an actor striding the hanamichi runway brings to the present day the very essence of Edo chic.
歌舞伎の「見得」は、役者が感情の頂点で動きを止め、目を大きく見開く独特の技法です。この一瞬の静止が、観客の心を鷲掴みにしてしまいます。動と静の劇的な対比こそが、歌舞伎ならではの様式美の極みと言ってよいでしょう。「成田屋!」と屋号を叫ぶ大向こうの掛け声もまた、観客が芝居に参与する作法として、四百年の時を生き続けてきました。
The "mie" of Kabuki is a distinctive technique in which the actor, at the height of emotion, halts all motion and throws his eyes wide open. That single instant of stillness takes the audience's heart entirely captive. The dramatic contrast between motion and stillness is the very summit of Kabuki's formal beauty. The call of "Naritaya!" — the actor's house name — shouted from the upper gallery is itself a manner by which the audience takes part in the play, and it has gone on living through four hundred years.
両者が対照的な美学を持ちながらも、共有しているのは「型」を尊ぶ姿勢です。一つ一つの所作、声の出し方、見得の決め方——それらは数百年の試行錯誤の末に磨き上げられた最良の形であり、まずは型を完璧に身につけることなしには、本物の表現には到達できないのです。
What the two forms share, even as they stand on opposite aesthetics, is a deep respect for "kata," or set form. Each single gesture, each way of throwing the voice, each manner of striking a pose — these are the best shapes that have emerged from centuries of trial and error, and unless one first masters the form completely, one cannot reach genuine expression.
世襲の問題もまた、両者に共通する大きな特徴です。観世、宝生、市川團十郎、坂東玉三郎——名跡を継ぐ俳優たちは、生まれた瞬間から舞台への道を運命づけられています。早ければ二、三歳で初舞台を踏み、十年、二十年の修練を経てようやく一人前の役者となる——その世界の重みは、外からは想像しがたいものです。
The matter of hereditary succession is another major feature the two forms have in common. Kanze, Hosho, Ichikawa Danjuro, Bando Tamasaburo — the actors who succeed to these great names are destined for the stage from the moment they are born. They may take their first step on stage at two or three years of age, and only after ten or twenty years of training does one truly become a full actor. The weight of that world is hard to imagine from the outside.
文楽もまた、能・歌舞伎と並ぶ日本の三大伝統演劇の一つです。三人の人形遣いが一体の人形を操り、太夫が物語を語り、三味線が音を添える——人形でありながら、人間以上に切ない情念を表現するその不思議は、世界の人形劇の中でも他に類を見ません。
Bunraku, too, is one of Japan's three great traditional theaters, standing alongside Noh and Kabuki. Three puppeteers move a single puppet together, while a chanter narrates and the shamisen lays in its sound. The wonder by which a puppet can express emotion more piercing than any living human is one that has no real parallel anywhere in the world of puppet theater.
現代において、伝統演劇は決して安泰な状況にあるとは言えません。観客の高齢化、後継者の不足、上演にかかる莫大な費用——時代の波に押されて、廃れる流派や失われる演目も少なくないのが実情です。
In the present day, the situation of traditional theater is by no means secure. An aging audience, a shortage of successors, the enormous cost of staging — pushed by the waves of the times, there are not a few schools that wither away and not a few works whose performance is lost. This is the reality.
それでもなお、伝統芸能の灯を絶やすまいとする努力は、各方面で粘り強く続けられています。野村萬斎の現代的な狂言や、市川海老蔵改め團十郎の歌舞伎、シェイクスピアと能を融合させた実験的舞台——若い世代を惹きつけるべく、新たな試みが次々と生まれているのです。
Even so, the effort to keep the flame of traditional arts from going out continues, with stubborn persistence, in every quarter. Nomura Mansai's contemporary kyogen, the kabuki of Ichikawa Ebizo, now Danjuro, experimental stages that fuse Shakespeare with Noh — new attempts that try to draw younger audiences in are appearing, one after another.
古典の格式を守りつつ、時代に合わせて進化する柔軟さこそ、日本の伝統演劇が数百年にわたって脈々と受け継がれてきた所以にほかなりません。変えてはならないものと、変えていくべきものとを見極める眼差し——その営みの中にこそ、伝統が生き続ける真の力が宿っているのではないでしょうか。
The flexibility to honor the dignity of the classical form while still evolving with the times is precisely the reason that Japan's traditional theaters have gone on being passed down through the centuries without break. An eye that can tell what must not be changed from what should be changed — within that very practice lives, perhaps, the true power that lets a tradition keep on being alive.