Kabuki gates

Article posted on Sunday, April, 4th, 2010 at 9:23 am

Everyone has heard of Kabuki, right? Even for people without a particular interest in Japan would know Kabuki is a type of traditional Japanese theatre where beautifully-costumed performers sing & dance to tell a story. Despite living in Japan for over nine years, I don’t know a great deal more than this. It’s just not my cup of cha.

What motivated me to at least check Wikipedia for some background information about Kabuki was the fact that there is a type of Japanese gate also called Kabuki. Let’s break it down.

• Kabuki (theatre) is written as 歌舞伎, with each Chinese character representing Sing, Dance & Skill respectively.
• Kabuki (gate) is written as 冠木. The first character means best or peerless, the second means wood.

As you can now see, the two Kabuki’s are unrelated. This now-obvious bombshell has left me somewhat disappointed. Anyway, moving right along. What does this Kabuki gate actually look like? A picture would quickly put us out of our misery but let me first try to explain. Let’s look at the word “little”, after writing e, you would go back & cross the two t‘s, which I believe is common practice to do in one stroke. That’s what the gate looks like – those two crossed t‘s.

more Japanese gates.