Kabuki Heroes is about collective participation in urban culture—on the stage, in poetry salons, in art studios, and in fan clubs. Focusing on the culture of Kabuki theater in Osaka and Kyoto, the book illustrates the passionate hero worship of actors by all levels of society. Fans vigorously engaged in the creation of celebrity and fame for their idols, and thereby won their own moments of glory and glamour in the spotlight. Many of these participants are represented here—most of them ordinary townspeople, but also a few samurai and courtiers. This interactive nature of Kabuki culture is particularly intriguing: the actors themselves not only appeared on stage, but involved themselves in other cultural circles such as poetry salons, Kabuki fan clubs, as well as performing formal rituals at the theater. Individual fans became amateur performers, while others created lavish color prints and books to support favorite actors and spread their fame.
This catalogue illustrates that our obsession with celebrity is not just a modern phenomenon: in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Osaka, we can rediscover many elements in common with our own times. Just as we now worship celebrities both in private and in public—at concerts, theaters, and sports events—so too did Kabuki fans celebrate their stage idols. Most importantly, after the spread of new color woodblock printing technology in the late 1760s, a golden age of popular Kabuki culture was promoted far and wide withbeautifully colored prints and books. The over-300 fine examples brought together in this catalogue reside in leading public and private collections in Europe and Japan and evoke a fascinating period when theater, art, and poetry were essential elements of social and cultural life. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage, 1780-1830 (C. Andrew Gerstle)