修羅場

Shuraba is at root a Buddhist-derived word for the battlefield where the ashura demons fight the god Taishakuten—shura abbreviating ashura. From there it came to mean any place of fierce combat and bloodshed. In the performing arts, the word named the battle scenes performed and narrated in the puppet theatre, kabuki, and kōdan storytelling, where reciters are said to have also read it hiraba.

In daily Japanese, any scene of fierce conflict or desperate disarray is a shuraba, and to have "passed through shuraba" is to have been tempered by hard experience. The word is not the theatre's invention alone—but it was the battle scenes of the storytellers' and puppet stages that made it familiar to Japanese ears.

In present-day usage: "On deadline eve the editorial office turned into a shuraba"; "a veteran who has come through countless shuraba." In recent years a colloquial use for scenes of romantic entanglement has also become widespread—from the image of the battlefield to the disorder of daily life, the word's reach keeps extending.

Shuraba rests on a Buddhist foundation and spread through the narrative arts—jōruri and kōdan—rather than originating in kabuki alone. Kabuki shares in its world through the battle scenes of the history plays, and the word is best placed among those nurtured by the performing arts as a whole.