Waka S's List: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts

This is the government site providing information to visitors from foreign countries. This site gives a brief description of Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku. It's a good place to start with.

Nipponia is a quarterly web magazine which is great resources for modern Japan and Japanese culture and is read by a lot of Japanese learners and teachers of the language. This site introduces what Kabuki is and easy to follow for anyone. Japanese translation is also available, so students, who are intermediate or advanced level, can use this site for self study as well.

This is another site from the Japan National Tourism Organization. The great thing about this site is to give a brief introduction with cartoon images which will help understand kabuki stage, make-up and kabuki roles better.

Please see Kabuki-za, the most famous kabuki theater in Tokyo where Kabuki has been played since it was first built in 1889! This Wikipedia site introduces the Kabuki-za and shows some pictures of how it had changed at the bottom of the page. The Kabuki-za was closed to demolish in April, 2010, and the new Kabuki-za will be opened in 2013.

This site is also taken from NIPPONIA. In the world of professional kabuki, most actors are born into kabuki-performing families. However, this center opened the door to the people outside the Kabuki world. The site describes how people are trained to be Kabuki actors at the center.

It's easy to get a picture of what it's like by seeing a real Kabuki performance! This YouTube video along with English explanations will be an excellent resource to peek kabuki performance!

This 3 minutes video shows the process of child kabuki actor's make-up. It's interesting to see how their looks will change after heavy special kabuki make-up.

The Kids Web Japan is very popular and widely used for both Japanese students and students who study Japanese. They have good information about Noh which is easy to understand for young people.

This is somebody' personal website but it explains Noh more in depth. It tells history, play, technical terms, plots, costume, and masks. You will get more information about Noh.

Like Kabuki video, this Noh video on YouTube will help you get a picture of what Noh is like. The video is less than 4 minutes.

This YouTube video shows how Noh mask is created. The skill of a craftsman is very impressive and interesting to see.

This site explains almost everything about Bunraku and provides a lot of pictures as well. There are some video clips of Bunraku. It's really informative and resourceful to learn Bunraku!

The is the official site of the Bunraku Society. This site can be used as a supplemental for "An Introduction to the World of Bunraku." Some of pictures used here are the same as the previous site but this contains more pictures, so if you want to learn more abut Bunraku, please check it out. The downside of this site is that English descriptions are a little too small to read.

This is an old black and while video that shows how the puppets are made and articulated. You can also see how people operate a puppet.

After you learn how a puppet is created and how it is operated, it's time for you to watch part of Bunraku performance. Can you tell what emotion is this female puppet expressing?