A collection of fifteen essays written over nearly four decades by one of America's best-known scholars of Japan's kabuki theatre. Illustrated with numerous photographs, prints, and line drawings, it includes an overview of kabuki and its impact on world theatre, interviews with and biographical accounts of famous actors, discussions of kabuki acting and staging techniques, an examination of kabuki violence, accounts of English-language kabuki productions, studies of theatrical architecture, a survey of amateur kabuki in rural communities, and a comparison of kabuki with the eighteenth-century English theatre. Each essay has been revised, some considerably, and two previously unpublished essays have been provided.