Audience Participation

Spring in Dai-Nippon brings with it the usual schedule of getting out after holing yourself up in a drafty apartment watching the bitterly cold rain rappel down the concrete sides. The cherry blossoms bloom, and most see fit to honor this harbinger of spring by plunking a little plastic mat down somewhere and getting piss drunk on it. Remember to take off your shoes before entering.

Colleen and I, though--always ones to buck the system--decided to take in a bit of light entertainment at the Misonoza in Nagoya. Seats were offerred at a reduced price (though the added price of the nosebleeds may have covered the difference) to we foreign folk, and as an added bonus they threw in a little lecture beforehand to acculturate our barbaric tastes to the finer points of kabuki. It wasn't so much a lecture as a comedic duo comprising a nasally "lecturer" and his consistently interloping translator.

Our Japanese Laurel and Hardy went to great pains to be certain that we would pay particular attention to the culmination of the evening's final performance. After the curtain closes, the character Benkei was to perform a particular flourish as he exited on the hanamichi. I remember it leaving me with the impression of being a simplified form of hopscotch. Shit, I did that in grade school!

Kabuki seems to be mostly about posing, after all the modern verb to which it is related, kabuku, means "to strut" or "to show off." Everytime one of the actors would pose, geezers in the audience--kabuki otaku, if you will--would yell out the player's name in almost ebullient glee.

That was Saturday.

Sunday, our cravings for music having not been satisfied by the twanging of shamisen and shrieking of bamboo flutes, we headed to Sakae for a Pillows concert. It was the sweatiest I've been in a long time; even today my right ear is still a little numb from how fucking loud it was in there. Normally these things would piss me off, had the concert not been so absolutely amazing. The floor shook from the beating it was receiving and I think it was the guitar solos that were making my balls vibrate. I found myself yelling out Yamanaka's name with ebullient glee as he climbed on top of the monitors and leaned out over the audience. Can you blame me? The man is a golden god!

Later, Yamanaka mused to himself as the band prepared for a second encore, "Nagoya is a mysterious place."

Well, only in spring.