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Oze NP, Fukushima
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Village tradition traces Hinoemata kabuki to pilgrims who saw performances in Edo on their way back from Ise. Old records add milestones: a jōruri script was bought in 1743, a stage appears on an 1810 map, and borrowed costumes are recorded in 1846.
Among the troupe’s traditional plays is a local original: “Nanzan Gimin no Ishibumi,” written in 1933 by Hinoemata-born physician Baba Kasadō. It turns a regional farmers’ uprising into kabuki.
This stage stands in the village guardian shrine’s grounds and faces the shrine like a worship hall. That layout suits its original purpose: Hinoemata kabuki was performed as an offering at shrine festivals.
The stage has a fixed raised platform and a low seat for the narrator, but no permanent hanamichi—the runway that carries actors through a kabuki audience. Here, the hanamichi is put in place for performances.
After fire destroyed its predecessor in 1893, this stage was rebuilt around 1897. Its local “kabuto-zukuri” roof looks hip-and-gable from the front but is actually gabled; the stage became a national folk-culture property in 1976.
The performers and backstage crew are Hinoemata residents, who fit rehearsals around their everyday work. They also make the costumes and stage pieces themselves, so the production is a village effort both onstage and off.
A Fukushima cultural-education resource notes that Hinoemata performers pass down traditional lines and gestures without changing them. The inheritance is not only the plays themselves, but the village’s way of performing them.
As interest from visitors grew, the shrine grounds were reshaped with stepped seating to hold larger crowds. The change brought a twist: villagers working in tourism could find themselves too busy to watch their own performance.
A mountain cherry tree grows beside the stage. In some years its May blossoms coincide with a performance, when lantern light can bring the flowers and the rural kabuki stage together in the evening scene.
