kabuki
Kabuki is a traditional Japanese art form involving music, dance, drama, and mime. Kabuki performers in elaborate costumes and makeup act out ancient history and legends.
Kabuki performers are almost always men, but it was invented by a woman, a Shinto priestess named Izumo no Okuni. She taught her all-woman troupe to perform movements originally called onna-kabuki, or "woman song and dance." The exaggerated, stylized movement of kabuki inspired a metaphorical meaning in English — a kabuki dance is a kind of political theater in which people pretend to be in conflict but have actually decided on a predetermined outcome. Party conventions are an example of kabuki dance.
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a traditional form of Japanese drama characterized by highly stylized movement and song and using only male performers
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Vocabulary lists containing kabuki
In this first book of the Samurai Detective series set in 18th-century Japan, Konoike Seikei, a tea merchant’s son dreaming of becoming a noble warrior-poet, helps a judge solve the mystery of a missing jewel.