Lone Star Kabuki : On current American tour, Japan’s Grand Kabuki Theatre goes off the beaten track and finds ‘a completely unknown world’

On a scorchingly hot Saturday afternoon in Hondo, Tex. (pop: 6,000), a dozen guys were knocking back a few beers at the ramshackle College of Knowledge. A fan made out of a beer can whirled lazily over the bar.

Although this homespun watering hole hasn’t been a grocery store for quite some time, no one ever bothered to remove the wooden shelves lining the walls. A sign reads: “The College of Knowledge / The Oldest College in Hondo / Experts Are Always Available / May Hear Debates on Anything Anytime.”

Today’s “debates” were going to be a mite different, however. It just so happened that Nakamura Kichiemon II, artistic director and star of the Tokyo-based Grand Kabuki Theatre, had a hankering to see some real cowboys, and a Japanese TV crew was dying to get some colorful footage of the curious goings-on in Small Town, U.S.A.

The company was performing 30 miles due east in San Antonio, the second stop on its 12-city “heartland” tour of the United States. Although the cross-country trek includes performances Saturday and next Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and July 3 and 4 at Japan America Theatre in Los Angeles, the emphasis on this tour is on mid-size cities between the two coasts.

This is a big chunk of America that is utterly mysterious to the Japanese, explained Jane Corddry, the bilingual and seemingly unflappable Japanese projects director for One Reel, Seattle-based producer of the tour. TV news in Japan doesn’t deal with happenings in the United States outside New York, Los Angeles and Washington, she said, so their notions of the American heartland are essentially images from “Dallas” or “Gone With the Wind.”

“You never see this much sky in Japan,” Corddry added, looking up at the huge bowl of blue sky studded with hefty cumulus clouds. Nor do the Japanese erect signs like the one along the highway leading to Hondo: “This is God’s country. Please don’t drive like hell.”

A convoy of three cars disgorged a milling knot of visitors to the sleepy College of Knowledge: Nakamura, two women assistants; mustached, intense Hironobu Nagano, Fuji Television Network’s chief coordinator; feisty, red-haired Melinda Iverson, the TV coordinator employed by One Reel; the TV crew; Corddry; a free-lance photographer and this writer.

Trim and gray-haired at 46, Nakamura is a TV and film star at home, as well as a leading Kabuki actor. For the trip to Hondo he was nattily turned out in jeans, a rakish cloth hat, a partially unbuttoned shirt and a red bandanna worn with the panache of an ascot. A huge gold belt buckle with a silver boot twinkled at his waist, a gift from Norm Langill, executive producer of the U.S. tour and Corddry’s husband.

So much for the brainstorm of the TV crew, assigned to follow the entire tour for a 90-minute prime-time TV documentary to be aired next fall in Japan. They had figured on filming Nakamura in Hondo’s Western wear store, remaking his image with tooled boots and a 10-gallon hat. But now that the star was already duded up in Western gear, it was time to switch to Plan B.

No sweat: The College of Knowledge could have been dreamed up by Central Casting. Once the initial awkwardness wore off, Nakamura easily took center stage. He asked the regulars if people still watch John Wayne in Texas.

When Iverson translated the question, a man with thick white hair, a Lite beer T-shirt stretched across his belly and a cross tattoo proclaimed: “He’s an American hero. He’ll always be an American hero.”

Listening to the flurry of Japanese, his companion, a middle-aged blond woman in a pink T-shirt, snug jeans and gold hoop earrings, muttered, “That’s a foreign language, like talkin’ Mexican.” The bar’s sole Mexican patron, a man who said he spoke no English and stood at a careful distance from the others, looked impassive.

After hearing a rapid description of Nakamura’s fame at home, White Hair explained to Pink Shirt: “He’s the Marlon Brando of Japan.”

“Whatever,” she said wearily.

Now Nakamura wanted to know about the words printed on the man’s beer caddy. “It says bull s--- Bob,” White Hair answered. Nakamura laughed before Iverson had a chance to translate. “Now, I thought you couldn’t understand that!” the man rejoined.

Iverson prodded the regulars to speak out about the state of U.S.-Japanese relations. “I really don’t have much to say, one way or ‘nother,” one replied. Someone else wanted to know what steak costs per pound “across the border” in Japan. Nagano did some rapid figuring, translating kilos to pounds, yen to dollars, and said “$10.”

“Here you can get the best steak in the country for $3 per pound,” came the reply.

Another man said: “At some point in time our country is going to get as strong as Japan. Eventually we’ll be equal partners.”

Charlie Lutz had a longer memory. He’s a small, wiry elderly man with a pack of cigarettes in his pocket, a baseball-style cap that says “Lawn Rangers” and a can of beer in a paper sack. “Charlie was here two years before God,” someone called out.

Lutz’s low voice was initially impossible to hear at the distance a reporter had to stand from the video camera, but the words “Pearl Harbor” were unmistakable. Lutz asked the crew how old they are; all were in their 30s, born years after World War II ended.

Still, Nagano made a bowing, prayer-like gesture of respect and said, “In my grandfather’s place, I apologize.”

Lutz shook his head. “Naw, you don’t have to. It wadn’t your fault.”

Nakamura--who uses a stage name that once belonged to his maternal grandfather, Nakamura Kichiemon I--was born into a family of distinguished Kabuki actors. He trained in Kabuki acting, music and dance as a child and made his stage debut at age 4. A frail youngster, he always played “the little sick boy,” he said.

The expectation was that he would also make his mark in the family profession. But, as Corddry--who was serving as our interpreter--explained, “What you’re really born into is an option,” not an iron-clad rule of succession.

When Nakamura’s older brother, known as Koshiro IX, made his mark on the stage, the younger boy felt the pinch of sibling rivalry. Rather than stand in the shadow of his brother, he enrolled in Waseda University and majored in French literature with the idea of becoming a man of letters.

The idol of his university days was the precocious French poet and novelist Raymond Radiguet, who died at age 17 in 1923 from typhoid and dissolution, the same year he published “Le Diable au Corps” (The Devil in the Flesh), a story of an adolescent boy’s affair with a soldier’s wife.

Back then, Nakamura had a French girlfriend. Now he is married to a Japanese woman who is said to be an energetic guardian of her husband’s public image. The couple have four children, ages 6 to 13--all girls, however, who cannot carry on the family tradition since, in Kabuki, all the women’s parts are played by men.

At 20, Nakamura finally decided he did have the stuff to be a Kabuki actor. Since then he has become known for complex heroic roles, ranging from a great general (Kumagai) to a brave outlaw (Mochiyama Michitose).

He played a warrior monk in a yearlong historical drama (“Musashibo Benkei”) on the national Japanese TV network and is now starring as a samurai detective in a Fuji TV series, “Onihei Hankacho.” The shooting schedule was rearranged so that he could come on the U.S. tour.

Corddry explained that One Reel, producer of the U.S. tour, had specifically requested Nakamura because of his audience appeal and youthfulness, and were afraid he might not agree. The actor admitted that he was “anxious and uneasy” because the United States--which he had never visited--was “a completely unknown world.” But he brightened up when urged to think of himself as an adventurer with a sense of mission and courage.

On the afternoon of their first performance, the company had arranged to arrive at the Lila Cockrell Theater on the tourist barges that ply the portion of the San Antonio River winding through the downtown area. The ceremonial opening-night barge trip was a tradition of the Grand Kabuki in Tokyo before the portion of the river running past the theater was filled in and built over in the 1950s, and the ritual is still practiced in Osaka.

Setting off from a downtown San Antonio hotel in smothering 100-degree heat, the barges carrying the robed actors and the musicians playing flutes, drums and lute-like samisen were an exotic sight. The boats were adorned with tall rows of banners that had to be lowered under each of the bridges spanning the narrow channel.

Nakamura’s radiant smile and enthusiastic wave would have stood him in good stead at the Rose Bowl Parade. But no crowds lined the river bank. In fact, for portions of the journey, the city looked like a ghost town.

Eventually, a few sweltering people trudged by, staring blankly at the barge. Every now and then someone waved briefly in response to Iverson’s cheerfully frantic direction from a third barge carrying the video crew. Early diners at the outdoor restaurants paused to gawk. But the whole exercise--faithfully recorded on video--turned out to be mostly for the benefit of the Japanese TV audience.

The weather was a big topic of conversation in town; the summer heat wave had made an unusually early appearance. Nakamura later said he felt a little dizzy on stage and asked the theater to turn up the air conditioning.

He played the shrewish wife in “Migawari Zazen” (The Substitute Mediator), a comic piece about a young lord who devises an elaborate plot to spend a night with his lover, only to be tricked and trapped by his determined spouse.

During the second half of the double-bill evening, Nakamura got to show off his bravura aragoto acting style, which involves big-scale movement performed in huge, elaborate costumes. In “Narukami” (The Thunder God), he plays a devout hermit priest who, in a fit of pique with the emperor, has trapped the rain god in a pool beneath a waterfall. Desperate to relieve the resulting drought, the court sends beautiful Princess Taema to seduce the priest and thereby break the spell. (These two pieces will be performed in Orange County, but Los Angeles audiences will see “Kanjincho” (The Subscription List) and “Osome Hisamatsu Ukina No Yomiuri.”)

The priest eventually gets drunk and passes out, enabling the princess to cut the sacred rope and let the rain fall. When he comes to and discovers what has happened, he throws a fit. Transformed into the thunder god--with a huge head of black hair, fierce makeup and robes patterned with flames and lightning--he becomes a raging, larger-than-life specter who abandons religion and sets off in crashing pursuit of the princess.

In her review of the opening night performance, the theater critic for the San Antonio Light airily noted that “you don’t really need to understand the words to enjoy the show.” But audience members who didn’t plunk down the $5 rental fee for the simultaneous-translation cassette looked baffled when their plugged-in neighbors laughed at details of the amorous byplay.

As luck would have it, however, at least one member of the audience--whose headset was intermittently picking up a local rock station--had the peculiar sensation of hearing commercials for Yamaha and Suzuki while watching a classic 17th-Century play.

Despite a less than sellout crowd opening night--75% of the 2,400-seat house was filled--the San Antonio audience gave the company a warm reception. At the intermission, one man murmured to his companion, “Well, it doesn’t matter if it’s Shakespeare or Kabuki--women always win in the end.”

The Grand Kabuki was one of a handful of big-ticket events at the San Antonio Festival, a 17-day potpourri of high and popular culture. The formerly debt-ridden festival looked to the Japanese troupe and a couple of other high-profile events (a concert by singer Gary Morris, a performance by ballet star Fernando Bujones) to avert financial disaster.

Accommodating the festival dates required a geographical zigzag for the Kabuki company (from Columbus, Ohio, to San Antonio to Atlanta) on a tour that otherwise moves from East to West, continuing from Georgia to Indianapolis, Iowa City, Lincoln, Neb., Minneapolis, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Portland and Seattle.

The company was surprised, Corddry said, to learn that the United States has so many large metropolitan centers with big theaters and cultural centers. In Japan, outside of Tokyo and Osaka, the company would expect to find only school auditoriums or other rudimentary venues.

On this tour, local presenters had to agree to allow the installation of a hanamichi, a raised platform extending from stage right to the back of the house that is used for dramatic--and sometimes thunderously heavy-footed--entrances and exits.

This piece of stage furniture requires a tete-a-tete with the local fire marshal because it blocks one of the exits, violating theater safety rules. The hanamichi also deprives the presenter of income from the 20 to 40 orchestra seats that can’t be used because the platform extends across them.

Other requirements for this tour include bento , the traditional lunch boxes the cast expects every day. Six months ago, during a cross-country checkout of all the venues, One Reel representatives tracked down Japanese restaurants in each city that could prepare 65 lunches at once.

Translators--to ease language problems for the local stage crews and others who deal with the company--are another necessity. Most of One Reel’s personnel on the tour are bilingual. Even so, the festival had to commandeer two university students from Austin for last-minute backstage translating duties.

Outside of New York and Los Angeles--cities the company has toured frequently in the past--economic and cultural support can be elusive.

“We encourage as much community involvement as possible,” Corddry said. “We remind (presenters) about the local Japan-America Society, the consulate, Japanese businesses. In some cities there are universities with Japan experts . . . but we still need to provide a lot of background material.”

But even in Tokyo, Corddry had to beat the bushes for six months until Shimizu Corp., a construction and engineering company, agreed to be the tour’s corporate sponsor. Now that unfavorable stories of Japanese takeovers in the States have become commonplace, she said, the trend is for manufacturers of Japanese consumer goods not to emphasize their cultural identity. These days, they tend to direct their philanthropy to community organizations like the Little League.

After the opening-night performance, audience members streamed into a nearby hotel for a lavish bash thrown by Sony, with plentiful offerings of sushi, guacamole and other pan-cultural treats. The local sponsor of the tour, Sony, is one of three Japanese-owned businesses in town.

Five years ago, the first Japanese-owned company to come to the city was blood-pressure instrument manufacturer Colin Medical Instruments Corp.

Vice President Yugi Kawabata, 37--who admits, with some embarrassment, that he never got around to seeing the Grand Kabuki when he lived in Tokyo--says he enjoys his new surroundings. He praises the “good old American people who work very hard” and remind him of characters in the TV show, “Father Knows Best.”

In April, TB Co. of Osaka bought the Club at Sonterra, a country club founded by a Texan in 1984. The new owner, Kiyonori Higa --another John Wayne devotee--promised at a press conference that things at the club would remain very much the same.

So far the only changes folks have noticed at the club are the tidying of one of the golf courses, a large-scale flower-planting project and a newly zealous emphasis on cleanliness. The ladies’ room now boasts a rather startling contraption: With a press of a button, the transparent toilet seat cover zips around to reveal a hygienic expanse of virgin plastic suitable for the most germ-fearing user.

Prominent among the post-performance party-goers were members of San Antonio’s Japan-America Society, whose 160 supporters are just about evenly divided between Americans--many of whom have lived in Japan--and Japanese. In this city of military bases, most of the Japanese population are women who married American servicemen.

Hiroko Fay, 55, an energetic and friendly woman who runs her own bookkeeping and tax service and works as a translator on the side, came to San Antonio 26 years ago from Tokyo as the bride of an American soldier, a preacher’s son who played the organ at Tokyo Baptist Church.

“You dreamed about the luxury” in America, she recalled. But her husband was initially posted to Ft. Hood in Killeen, Tex.--”a little bitty town with no trees.” After that shock, San Antonio seemed relatively bearable. Fluent in English, she immediately began working for a carpet company.

She remembers how strange American rice looked and tasted, and how she didn’t speak Japanese “for years.” But she was determined to make it in San Antonio even after her husband left her while she was expecting their second child.

Now remarried to another American, she says she never experienced prejudice. “The population is more than 50% Mexican-American. People are used to seeing different (skin) colors,” she said.

Fay had taken a visitor under her wing the day before the performance, pointing out how the city’s so-called Japanese Tea Gardens in Brackenridge Park--built in 1917 by Japanese-born Kimi Jingu, who lived there with his family--were renamed the Chinese Tea Gardens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The city shut off the Jingu family’s water supply, forcing them to leave.

(Jingu’s wife, Alice, later moved to Los Angeles, where she had acted in the film “Teahouse of the August Moon.” Her last role before she died in 1969 was with Cary Grant in “Walk, Don’t Run,” set in Tokyo.)

Although the garden was rededicated in 1984 with its original name, the design was changed by the Chinese gardeners who lived there during the war with tiered gardens separated by piles of vertical rocks and Chinese-style ornamental gates.

San Antonio’s real Japanese garden is a 2 1/2-year-old oasis of calm near the entrance to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. Fay explained that the bent bamboo edging along the paths was necessary to keep Americans from clambering over the rocks. “Visitors are not trained like Japanese visitors,” she sighed.

At the reception, there were speeches by Mayor Lila Cockrell; the consul general, who buzzed in from Houston (“Don’t jump at the conclusion that flirtation and seduction are the everyday business of Japan,” he teased); and Chikashi Mogi, the company’s executive producer, who shrewdly declared his company had “ pioneered Kabuki in Texas tonight!” The applause was mighty.

Then senior members of the company were trotted out for brief words and bows. Junior company members--most in elegantly cut European suits, a few in traditional dress--wolfed down the food and smoked up a storm, pausing politely to applaud their colleagues.

Finally--when midnight began to seem a distant memory--the festively garbed Japanese women of San Antonio clustered aggressively around their idol, Nakamura, holding out fans and programs for his signature, and flinging their arms around him for photos.

Nakamura, on his first tour of America, had found his first groupies.

The Grand Kabuki Theatre of Japan performs Saturday at 8 p.m. and July 1 at 2 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $15 to $35. Information: (714) 556-2787.(CQ)