Today, the travel agent’s side was quiet. No message came through. Perhaps they are still waiting for the school and the dormitory to confirm receipt of the money before anything else can happen.
October 22 is Kyoto’s annual Jidai Matsuri. I had originally thought that the procession I remembered from a few years ago, with Takuya Kimura riding on horseback as Nobunaga while promoting the film THE LEGEND & BUTTERFLY, had been this very festival. A little checking told me otherwise: that was the Gifu Nobunaga Festival.
There is no good reason to ignore an event that comes only once a year. So I began working out how to turn it into a short journey, with weekend visits to Kobe and Himeji folded in along the way.
Planning a trip is always full of excitement and anticipation. I want to gather as many different experiences as I can.
If I was going to Kyoto for the Jidai Matsuri, it felt only natural to see a kabuki performance while I was there. Then I looked it up and learned that the Osaka Shochikuza had closed in May 2026, and that the building itself was to be demolished. On this particular journey through Kansai, Kyoto’s Minamiza became the most convenient, and almost the only, choice.
It has been nearly thirty years since I last saw kabuki.
I was a first-year university student then, travelling alone in Tokyo for a week. I mistook Kabukicho for the district where the Kabukiza stood and walked round and round, seeing nothing but enormous photographs of beautiful women and little booklets handed out by various establishments, all of them printed with handsome men and pretty women. All the while I kept wondering: where on earth was the theatre?
Only after I realised I had the wrong place did I get back on the train and make my way to the Kabukiza.
By then it was almost evening. I found a place that looked rather cosmopolitan, with a counter and food, and went inside.
I can no longer remember what my younger self was thinking, or why I deliberately chose somewhere with counter seating. The logic in my head was probably this: sitting alone at a table would look strange, and in films, don’t people who go out alone always sit at the bar? So that was what I did.
As it happened, a blonde foreign woman was already seated there. She looked as though she, too, was travelling by herself.
I suppose I was the one who spoke first. It was so long ago that the details have blurred. We talked about our travels. I still remember that she was Swiss, and that she said she had made no plans for that evening and did not yet know what to do.
So I casually asked whether she would like to come and see kabuki with me.
Thirty years ago, single-act tickets were still fairly easy to get. The Swiss woman and I bought ours for, what, about a thousand yen each? As for what we actually saw that night, I have forgotten every last bit of it.
When I was a child, I used to watch Peking opera with my grandfather. I could not understand a single word of the stories being sung. Kabuki felt much the same to me: the plot remained hazy, yet that never stopped me from enjoying the actors’ singing, acting, declamation and movement.
A little over ten years ago, I tried once more to buy a single-act ticket, only to find that none were left that day. I had to go away disappointed.
This time I had learned my lesson. I hurried to check the dates and tickets in advance.
It was only after opening the website that I discovered kabuki is not performed there every month. When it is, the programme is often divided into a daytime and an evening performance.
My plan, in its elegance, was obvious: I would see the daytime performance, then spend the afternoon moving on to another city.
Except every ticket for every daytime performance in October was sold out. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Did everyone in Kyoto really get up this early?
That lovely plan collapsed. Only the evening performances were still available, so I had to think the itinerary through again.
Google told me that a full kabuki programme lasts about four hours. The performers finish the daytime show that begins at eleven thirty, then start the evening show at four. They must be exhausted by the end of it. I had not even seen the performance yet, and already I admired their stamina.
Incidentally, Kokuho is a film I love, one that traces the lives of kabuki actors. I waited and waited, but it never seemed to reach German cinemas. I was lucky to have seen it while I was still in Taiwan.
Apart from kabuki, for some reason my memory had long been hypnotising me into believing that the Takarazuka Revue was in Osaka.
I thought: if Osaka no longer had the Shochikuza, at least I could still go and see Takarazuka, couldn’t I?
It turns out Takarazuka is not in Osaka at all, but in Hyogo. All one can say in my defence is that it sits right next to Osaka.
Time to write a plan. Time to start collecting a list of all the things I hope to see.
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