This is the new enlarged and revised edition of an important book on the Kabuki, originally published by the University of Tokyo Press in 2001 and released in English translation by I-House Press in 2003.
Among the reasons for its excellence is that it is by one of the leading experts in the field. Toshio Kawatake, scion of a distinguished family long associated with the Japanese arts, is the author of some 80 books, most of them about theater and drama and he knows his field as do few others.
Consequently, he is able see connections in the history and present practice of the Kabuki, can join its apparently disparate techniques, and can place this drama in the context of world theater.