Kyogen is a form of comedy that originated during the upheavals in medieval (14th century) Japan. It has been played almost six hundred years together with Noh. The relationship between Noh and Kyogen is, so to speak, like brothers in performing arts. Noh is a drama of songs and dances, while Kyogen is a drama of dialogue and acting. (The Shigeyama Family will explain the different points on the stage with actual performances.)

Kyogen treats a common comic incident in the lives of contemporary ordinary people as comedy, and dramatizes it. It moves forward through conversations and lines drawn mainly from the words of ordinary people in the Muromachi period (1394-1573). The characters in Kyogen are common people from the period, with no surnames. This makes the audience feel the story concerns something common around them, decreasing the distance between audience and stage in order to develop a sense of unity.

History of Kyogen

Kyogen as well as Noh were created and passed on not by the social elite literati, but by town people and villagers. But the Shoguns in the Muromachi period (beginning of the 15th century) patronized the father-and-son Noh geniuses Kan’ami and Zeami, and were fond of everything about Noh and Kyogen, embracing them as Shikigaku (required musical accomplishments) for the elite literati. This can be taken as an indication that Noh and Kyogen ascended to the throne of the medieval performing arts.

As the ages passed, even in the Edo period (17th - 19th centuries), Noh and Kyogen that had the good fortune to be patronized in as Buke Shikigaku (cultural accomplishments for samurai elite), trained artistic skills and techniques, and came to be ranked as the first of the performance techniques of modern drama.

Since the establishment of a modern democratic society after the end of the samurai era (late 19th century), Noh and Kyogen were separated from the samurai by whom protection had been granted, and continued to flourish independently as they had when they originated in the early Muromachi period. This implies that Noh and Kyogen, once performing arts only for some of the elite literati and samurai class, returned to the common people.

For actors, released from the regulations of the samurai and others who had extended their patronage, this marked the inauguration of a dynamic era in which they were able to perform freely.

The era has now dawned in which Noh and Kyogen have come to be enjoyed more widely than ever before in history, performances are held almost daily throughout Japan, and they have become established as classical performing arts enjoyed widely by ordinary people.

It is worthy to mention that Kyogen is now popular even among young generations, especially among young girls, who became interested in Kyogen through Motohiko Shigeyama, 26, who actively appear in TV dramas and musicals in Japan. 

Tag: Kyogen