Kabuki began with women, then banned them in 1629
Kabuki is classical Japanese theatre mixing drama and dance, famous for stylised acting, lavish costumes, and kumadori makeup. Izumo no Okuni’s female troupe began the form in early Edo Kyoto; after women were barred from the stage in 1629 it became an all-male art that peaked by the mid-eighteenth century.
Kanji for kabuki can be read sing, dance, and skill, though those characters are ateji; the name likely ties to kabuku—to lean or be out of the ordinary—echoing bizarre kabukimono dress. In 1603, former shrine maiden Okuni staged dance-drama pantomime on a makeshift platform in Kyoto’s dry Kamo River bed. Early actresses played men and women in comic sketches of ordinary life, drew imperial attention, and sparked rival troupes; the scene also mixed with prostitution in districts such as Yoshiwara.
Authorities banned women to curb fights among young samurai patrons; boys briefly replaced them before mid-1600s yaro-kabuki settled on adult male actors who still play both sexes, including onnagata female roles. All-day bills, shamisen music, fashion display, and teahouse socialising made theatres places to see and be seen across classes. Major Edo houses such as Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, and Kawarazaki-za anchored the commercial circuit.
UNESCO proclaimed kabuki an intangible heritage of outstanding universal value in 2005 and inscribed it on the Representative List in 2008.
Its classic shape settled in the Genroku period, when play structure and stock character types were fixed, Ichikawa Danjūrō I was credited with the mie pose, and mask-like kumadori makeup developed. Chikamatsu Monzaemon became one of the first professional kabuki playwrights, though his best-known piece, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, was first written for bunraku puppets, which overtook kabuki in popularity for a time in the mid-eighteenth century. In the 1840s drought fed repeated fires in the wooden theatres; after the Nakamura-za's district burned in 1841, the shogunate pushed all three great houses out to Saruwaka-machi in Asakusa, home to some of the most exaggerated kabuki Japan produced.
Source: Kabuki
