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Theatre The National Theatre, a corporation with a special status. Was established in July 1966 for the purpose of preserving and promoting traditional Japanese performing arts. Its Large Theatre and Small Theatre opened in November of the same year, and have since been engaged in public showings of traditional performing arts, the training of successors, investigation and research.
With the 1979 opening of the National Performing Art Materials Annex, the September 1983 opening of the National Noh Theatre and the March 1984 opening of the National Bunraku Theatre, the National Theatre has been equipped as a fully functional comprehensive center for Japanese traditional performing arts. In March 1990, with the establishment of theJ2lP3I1 Arts Fund, the name of this corporation was changed to the Japan Arts Council. The Council now conducts the following programs for the preservation and promotion of traditional performing arts.
The traditional performing arts produced by and staged at the National Theatre are presented with the intent of preserving the original style of the production as much as possible, respecting the dramatic representation and techniques of the traditional performing arts and paying full attention to their maintenance and preservation. So far, 151 public performances (962stations)
have been presented, including 22 Kabuki and Bunraku shows in1992. There has been
a recent rise in interest among young people in traditional performing arts such as
Kabuki and Bunraku, and in traditional Japanese musical instruments such as the
shamisen. The National Theatre has begun a "Kabuki Appreciation Class" mainly for
students and other similar programs for the broad appreciation and dissemination of
traditional performing arts.
Programs to train successors in traditional performing arts were begun for Kabuki actors in 1970, for takemoto players in 1975, for musical accompaniment (narimono)in 1981, for Bumraku in 1972, for vaudeville accompaniment yose-hayashi) in 1979 and for Noh in 1984. h 1992 there were two graduates from the takemoto training course (12th term), six from the yose-hayashi course (8th term), four from the beginner's Noh course (3rdterm) and five from the next level Noh course (2nd term). As of the end of fiscal 1992, these graduates accounted for about 18% of all the successors in traditional performing arts (147 out of 820 persons).
To show traditional performing arts to the public in their purest form, investigation and research aimed at contributing to the improvement of presentation and performance have been carried out partly as a means of preserving and promoting traditional performing arts. The results of this investigation and research include: publication of data on performances; the making, of records by means of video recording, audio recording, photography and the like; reprinting various documentary materials; and compiling indexes of theatrical books, catalogues, files.
The National Theatre collects materials on performing arts. Including audio visual materials concerning performances produced by and staged at the Theatre. The Theatre also regularly opens to the public its library, audio visual room and reference material exhibition gallery, and holds periodic meetings for lecture classes and to show films of recorded performances and films made by the Theatre.
The facilities of the Theatre (Large Theatre, Small Theatre, Engei Hall, Noh Theatre, Bunraku Theatre, rehearsal space, and so on) are made available for programs whose purpose is to preserve and promote traditional performing arts.
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