onnagata

[on-uh-gah-tuh, awn-nah-gah-tah]

noun

1. a male actor in kabuki who performs female roles.

Word History and Origins

Origin of onnagata¹

Borrowed into English from Japanese around 1900–05

Example Sentences

The internet has long made it easy of people to present themselves as different genders, although Hirota compares this to an even older tradition in Japanese Kabuki theatre, called Onnagata, where male actors play female roles.

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Bowie was a natural "shapeshifter", says Ms Thian, and his training with Kemp and onnagata style helped him as he explored ideas of masculinity, exoticism and alienation.

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"It wasn't trying to be literal interpretation" of onnagata, said Ms Thian, "but rather inspired by its gender-bending androgyny. That's what makes it so powerful, it's more evocative."

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He even learned from famed onnagata Tamasaburo Bando how to apply traditional kabuki make-up - its bold highlighted features on a white background are evident in the lightning bolt across the Ziggy face.

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In the mid-1960s, he studied dance with Lindsay Kemp, a British performance and mime artist who was heavily influenced by the traditional kabuki style, with its exaggerated gestures, elaborate costumes, striking make-up, and "onnagata" actors - men playing female roles.

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