As previously noted, China, Korea, and Japan have been historically close for centuries, thus accounting for their numerous common artistic traditions. From pre-Christian times until the 8th and 9th century ce, the great trade routes crossed from the Middle East through Central Asia into China. Hinduism, Buddhism, some knowledge of ancient Greek, and much knowledge of Indian arts entered into China, and thence in time into Korea and Japan. Perhaps before the Common Era, the Central Asian art of manipulating hand puppets was carried to China. For more than 700 years, until 668, in the kingdom of Koguryŏ, embracing northern Korea and Manchuria, court music and dances from Central Asia, from Han China, from Manchuria, and from Korea, called chisŏ and kajisŏ, were performed. Many of the dances were masked; all were stately as befit serious court art. They were taken to the Japanese court in Nara about the 7th century. Called bugaku in Japan, they have been preserved for 12 centuries and are still performed at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, though they have long since died out in China and Korea. In Koguryŏ’s neighbouring kingdom of Paekche, a form of Buddhist masked dance play was performed at court, and, in the 7th century, it too was taken to the Japanese court at Nara by a Korean performer, Mimaji, who had learned the dances while staying at the southern Chinese court of Wuhou. Called kiak in Korea and gigaku in Japan, the Aryan features of some of its masks clearly indicate Indian (or Central Asian) influence. Such complicated genealogies are common in East Asian performing arts.

Very likely by the 7th century, nomadic puppeteers from Central Asia who had taken up residence in northern Korea migrated to Japan. The men continued to be both herdsmen and puppet manipulators in their new homeland, while the women performed dances and sang as popular entertainers. (There may have been a native puppet tradition in Japan as well.) In time the art of puppet manipulation joined with that of epic storytelling to produce the famous Bunraku puppet theatre. Musical accompaniment for Bunraku and for other popular plays in Japan, such as Kabuki, was provided primarily by the samisen, a three-stringed lute, borrowed from China by way of Okinawa. The lion dance, originally from China, is performed in a score of versions in Korea and Japan as well as in China, India, Sri Lanka, and Bali. Certain myths are dramatized in common as well. The story of the angel or nymph who flies down to earth and arouses the love of a mortal man is known in many parts of the world. It is dramatized in Southeast Asia (especially in Myanmar [Burma] and Thailand, as the play Manora), in Chinese opera, and in both Noh and Kabuki theatre in Japan (as Hagoromo [The Feather Robe]). The legend of the one-horned wizard who traps the dragon gods of rain and causes a searing drought originated in India and was later transmitted by the Chinese to Japan, where it is dramatized in Noh (Ikkaku sennin [“The One-Horned Wizard”]) and in Kabuki (Narukami [Saint Narukami and the God Fudō]).

The direction of artistic exchange was reversed in the 19th century. As part of Japanese national policy following the Meiji Restoration (1868), artists studied Western performing arts. In the early decades of the 20th century, Chinese and Korean actors, dancers, and playwrights studying in Japan took back to their countries Western theory and practice in ballet, modern dance, and theatre. Most influential was the Western dramatic theory of realism. It diametrically opposed the traditional intermingling of music and dance with drama, and it eschewed the stylization and symbolism that lay at the heart of East Asian performing arts for more than 2,000 years. A conflict between traditional and Western performing arts came into being that continues to the present.

As has been noted, dance and theatre are accompanied by music in all except the most unusual cases. Music may be instrumental or vocal. The music is especially composed for each Bunraku puppet play in Japan and for most dance plays and court dances. Fixed melodies accompany most folk performances. In Chinese opera and in Japanese Kabuki, melodies appropriate to scene, action, character, or mood being portrayed are selected from a standard musical repertoire of several hundred tunes. The knowledgeable spectator easily identifies scenes by the music that accompanies them (a similar system is found in Southeast Asian theatre). The close linking of music with dance and theatre can be seen in the Korean drum dance, in which the dancer also is a musician who plays the drum, and in a number of Japanese Kabuki and puppet plays that show characters expressing hidden feelings by playing a musical instrument. Equally important, the performer demonstrates to the audience his skill in yet another refined accomplishment.

The performing arts of India (see South Asian arts) are closely linked to sculpture and painting by the unusual phenomenon that bodily positions in all these arts are regulated by similar, indeed almost identical, codes. The code of hand gestures, for example, for the dancer and the actor set forth in the Natya-shastra (“Treatise on the Dramatic Arts”; dated variously from the 2nd century bce to the 4th century ce and later), a treatise on dramaturgy, is identical with that for Buddhist temple sculpture, or painting. Although these hand positions (mudrā) from India also are seen in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese statues of the Buddha, they were not adopted by East Asian performing artists (as they were by dancers and actors in Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Java, and Bali).

In three notable instances, however, the performing arts in China and in Japan can be seen to be closely related to the visual arts. During the Song dynasty (960–1279) in China, Northern and Southern schools of painting evolved that were totally different in style; the former used bold outline and brilliantly contrasting colours of deep green, blue, and gold, while the latter emphasized delicate, monochrome ink painting of misty landscapes. Northern and Southern schools of opera at the time reflected the same contrasting characteristics: the former dynamic, vigorous, and filled with action, the latter emphasizing wistful emotions and soft, gentle singing. Zen Buddhism was a common source of inspiration in the 15th and 16th centuries in Japan for Noh dance drama, for the tea ceremony, for ink painting, and for the art of rock-and-sand gardens. Spareness of form, discipline, and suggestion rather than explicit statement are Zen attributes found in these and other arts cultivated by the military ruling class (samurai) of the time. In 18th-century Japan, a lively and faddish urban culture produced both ukiyo-e wood-block prints and Kabuki. In fact, ukiyo-e artists, such as Tōshūsai Sharaku, established their fame by portraying famous Kabuki actors as their subjects. Eroticism, verve, brilliant colouring, and an intense interest in the passing moment characterize equally both Kabuki theatre and ukiyo-e visual art.

Although dances were often performed to sung poems and plays either were written in verse form or contained references to classic poems, the performing arts traditionally are seen as distinct from literature in East Asia. A century and a half passed in Kabuki before the first complete play script was preserved, and in China, where a tradition of written literature dates to 1400 bce, no play text was considered worth committing to paper until the late Song, about the 13th century. With few exceptions, playwrights have rarely been accorded the same status as writers of poetry, novels, or criticism. As a result, the performing arts in East Asia succeeded by and large in escaping the stultifying grip that literature came to hold on Indian Sanskrit drama and, some would say, still holds, at least in part, on drama in the West.

The general outlines of artistic borrowings among East Asian countries can be traced from historical records. But borrowing tells only half of the story. No matter how strong the initial outside influence, in time, assimilation of the foreign art took place. Older native performing traditions reasserted themselves, and new creativity altered the borrowed elements. This can be seen even in bugaku dances in Japan; although they are believed to preserve ancient Chinese and Korean forms to a very remarkable extent, native Japanese qualities are also present. Local styles predominate even more in the popular arts. Japanese Bunraku puppet plays and Kabuki theatre show almost no observable signs of foreign influence. In spite of certain general cultural similarities, then, the dance and theatre of China, Korea, or Japan exhibit definite local characteristics not shared by the arts of their neighbouring countries.

In China singing became highly developed, and the most important theatre performances are built around song (hence the term Chinese opera). Dance as a separate art has a weak tradition there and, at least in the 20th century, was tied very closely to the theatre. The shadow theatre, known from Morocco through Egypt and Greece and in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, is found in East Asia only in China. In Korea there are scores of court and folk dances and danced plays, but no sophisticated dramatic forms evolved until the 20th century. Masked dances especially are characteristic of Korea. In Japan, from an early tradition of imported pure dance and from folk dance, complex theatrical forms evolved that include dance drama, epic narrative performed as a puppet play, and dialogue dramas either accompanied by music or not.

The aesthetic principles that govern dance and theatre in East Asia are radically different from those of the West. Dancers in the West attempt to be free from the pull of the Earth, trying to leap and soar in the air. Dancers in China, Korea, or Japan stand firmly on the dance floor, often scarcely raising their feet in the air; they move in relatively slow and often geometric patterns. Arm and hand movements are important and varied, while in Western dance the hands are little used. Whether the dancer’s movement is dance or not, it is always stylized. Speech is stylized as well, whether it is dialogue or narration, chanted or sung. The intent may be to portray archetypes, human or mythological, especially in shadow and puppet theatre and in masked dances and plays. Form is emphasized, both for its ritual value and because audiences are trained to recognize the beauty implicit in form. There may be a purposeful contradiction between artistic ends and means: children were moved as human puppets in China, and adults acted before lighted screens to make a living shadow play; in Japan, puppets execute realistic daily actions, while live Kabuki actors refrain from duplicating daily life. The East Asian audience is prepared to respond in quick succession to a sequence of different stimuli—physical characterization, human speech, song, narrative commentary, visual composition, formal movement patterns—over long periods of time, for 8 hours in Noh or up to 12 hours in Kabuki. This differs from the West, where the spectator expects to be exposed to a clearly focused theatrical image for only two or three hours. The East Asian experience is more diverse, more extended, more conventional than the Western experience in the theatre.

A further important characteristic of dance and theatre in China, Korea, and Japan is that performing arts developed very largely within an oral tradition. By and large the performers themselves created the forms; only gradually did specialists in choreography, musical composition, or writing take their places in performing groups. Even after forms reached maturity, traditions of dance, acting, and music were passed on orally to the next generation. Play scripts came to be written in full only at a late date.

Social conditions

It is notable that, although some dance and theatre forms were highly regarded in China, Korea, and Japan, performers were usually looked down upon. Wandering performers especially were despised in the agrarian societies, where attachment to the land was valued and Confucian teaching, strong throughout East Asia, stressed veneration of one’s parents, which included tending their graves and making offerings for their welfare in the spirit world. The place of drama or of dance in these societies depended in part upon their audiences, whether they were court nobles, villagers, or town merchants.

Chinese emperors, Korean kings, and Japanese emperors and military rulers (shoguns) all supported performers at their courts. During the Tang dynasty, the 8th-century Chinese emperor Xuanzong (also called Minghuang) established schools in the palace city of Chang’an (Xi’an) for music, dancing, and acting. The latter school was called the Pear Garden (Liyuan); ever since, actors in China have been called “children of the pear garden” (liyuan zidi). More than a thousand young people from all ranks of society drew government salaries while studying and performing at lavish state banquets and for official ceremonies. Acting or dancing might be a permanent job (at least until old age made one less attractive) at the Chinese court, but in Korea performers at the court held other positions in the government and were mobilized from around the country only for rehearsal and performance. In Japan, dancers and musicians have been attached to the imperial household from the 7th century until the present time. First gigaku and then bugaku dances were official performing arts, while shrine dances (kagura) were also partly under imperial patronage. The military rulers of Japan incorporated into their retinues Noh actors and musicians beginning in the 15th century, and, in time, provincial lords also began to follow this practice.

Court support resulted in high artistic levels in all countries. Performers were relieved of financial problems and could devote themselves, often full-time through their entire lives, to their art. Audiences were educated and for the most part discerning. The importance attached to official performances undoubtedly spurred artists to extend themselves to their utmost. In time, however, such forms as Japanese Noh and bugaku and Chinese kunqu opera became so rarefied that they could be appreciated only by a small elite group.

At the Chinese and Korean courts, young female dancers were part of the ruler’s personal retinue (often his concubines); they were not allowed to mix with men of the court, so that some court arts were performed solely by men and others solely by women. This custom and the consequent artistic practice of male and female impersonation is also found in court theatre of Cambodia and Thailand. In Japan, women seldom performed at court, and the major dance and theatre forms were entirely the province of male performers. Since it was unusual for rulers or courtiers themselves to take part in performance (they often did in Java, Bali, and Thailand), the court artist was usually a middle-level civil servant.

Folk performers, on the other hand, are local villagers who, like the sandae masked dancers of Korea or the young women who perform festive ayakomai dances in Japan, are amateurs who do not live by their art. The midsummer Bon dance for spirits of the dead or early spring rice-planting dances in many areas of Japan or various auspicious dances held at the New Year in Korea and China were performed only once a year, and hence a high level of artistry was not usually achieved. Because many folk performances were held as part of religiously sanctioned rituals (Korean mask plays ensuring harvest, dances and dance plays of many varieties in Japan dedicated to local Shintō deities), performers achieved considerable status in the local community by their participation in these essential communal rites.

Performers of popular dance and theatre in East Asia live—as do commercial artists everywhere—by their ability to draw audiences who are willing to pay money for a seat in a public theatre. The shadow and puppet performers of China, jingxi actors and musicians, and Kabuki and Bunraku puppet performers in Japan are popular artists. Neither a part of village culture nor patronized by the court, they have always been held suspect by their rulers. Kabuki, in particular, was faced with repressive government action throughout most of its history. Popular theatre grew in importance in China and in Japan concurrently with the growth of large urban centres and a moneyed, mercantile economy, in the 17th–19th centuries. (An important urban popular theatre did not develop in Korea.) Today troupes perform nightly throughout the year, when it is possible, and consequently, in popular theatre, large repertories of standard plays are created (some 350 in Kabuki and more than 200 in Chinese opera). Popular theatre forms in China and Japan are intensely theatrical, though they lack literary qualities that would recommend them to the intelligentsia. Indeed, Kabuki in Japan and jingxi in China have had little official status until the mid-20th century in spite of their immense audience popularity and their obvious excellence as performing arts. Traveling troupes that perform shadow or puppet plays, do acrobatics and juggling, dance and sing, and perform versions of court or popular entertainments have long been a feature of Chinese and Korean village and provincial town life. Artistically the forms are related to folk performing arts; socially the performers are considered outcasts, wandering entertainers of no status who belong to the popular tradition of performing arts.