ケレン

Keren—also written with the ateji characters 外連, read the same way—is the general term for showstopping stage tricks designed to astonish: chūnori, in which an actor flies above the stage and audience on wires; hayagawari, instantaneous costume-and-role changes; and honmizu, the use of real water on stage.

Keren is said to have flourished in the late Edo period, answering audiences hungry for thrills, and its spirit lives on in the stage machinery of ghost plays like Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan. Once a slightly dismissive word, it is now embraced as the essence of kabuki showmanship—and kerenmi survives as an everyday Japanese word for theatrical flair.

Keren has not always basked in favor. In the Meiji era, when the theatre-reform movement prized decorum, it was dismissed as vulgar trickery and long neglected. Its restoration is credited to Ichikawa Ennosuke III (later En'ō II), who revived one keren after another beginning with the 1968 chūnori in Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura at the National Theatre—and keren has since been rehabilitated as a word indispensable to describing kabuki's appeal.

Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII Hakuen has repeatedly staged the full-length play Raijin Fudō Kitayama Zakura since his Ebizō years, performing five roles—including the priest Narukami and Fudō Myōō—through quick changes. The energy of keren, alongside aragoto, shapes the family's stage today.