What is the meaning and role of the mie?

The mie is the device that most makes kabuki kabuki. At the crest of a scene the actor stops. He wheels his head, draws one eye toward the other into a locked glare, and hardens his whole body like a statue. For a few seconds time appears to halt. Even a first-time viewer knows that something particular is happening — it is designed with exactly that clarity.

Why stop? The most-used explanation is an analogy with the cinematic close-up: as a camera moves in on a face to concentrate attention, the mie freezes flowing time at a point and hands the audience the character's force at full output. It is as though a single painted image were inserted into a moving stage — and indeed it is the mie that actor prints have depicted again and again.

Everything in the theatre is designed to converge on that instant. The tsuke strikes its two hard battari beats. The geza music comes to its peak. A cry of the house name flies from the ōmukō. Applause rises from the seats. It is not one actor's gesture but a moment made by stage and audience together. And it is the Ichikawa line's aragoto that is held to have raised this aesthetic furthest. Being a style that stages more-than-human strength, its mie are extreme in size and extreme in length — the hero of Shibaraku locking his mie at centre stage is the summit of it.