How can I come to love kabuki more?

The shortest road to loving kabuki runs, in truth, through people rather than plays. Since Edo, audiences have gone to the theatre less for what is on than for who is on. Actor prints were produced in such quantity because so many people wanted the image of their hiiki — their favourite — close at hand. That way of enjoying it works exactly as well today.

Once you begin following one actor, the interest widens by itself. First you want to know the roles he excels in. Then his house's art — which plays this family has carried down. You go back through his father's and grandfather's stages, and want to compare how another house plays the same role. Before long the repertory, the history and the genealogies have all come in together. Nothing was learned as study, so little of it slips away.

A few things you can start today. See the same play in different casts. Keep the programmes you buy instead of discarding them, and build a record of your own viewing. Use the single-act seats to raise your count without ceremony. Follow the actors' own posts and videos. None of it requires elaborate preparation. And once you have even one hiiki, the theatre stops being somewhere you occasionally go and becomes somewhere you attend. That is when it becomes most interesting.