The Kaho Gekijo Theatre (嘉穂劇場), Iizuka, Fukuoka

Today, I'll talk about Kaho Gekijo, a Kabuki theater located in Iizuka City, Fukuoka prefecture. We visited there on our day trip on August 11.

The theater was first open in 1921 which was built to imitate the three-story wooden theater, Nakaza (中座) in Osaka. After that, it was once burned down in 1928, and was rebuilt in the following year. However, it was completely collapsed by typhoon of 1930. The present building was open in 1931.

The most audience at that time were workers of the coal mine and their families which was the center industry of the Chikuho Region (筑豊地域 -chiiki). It was crowded with such performances of Kabuki actors and various artists of Japanese enka popular songs. But because of the decline of the coal industry in Japan, and as a result, the number of performances was drastically decreased year by year. In 1962, it was held a total of 266 days. In the 1970s, however, was only 10 to 15 days.
Several years after, the theater has revived because of such retro style building is now become popular throughout the country. Since 1979, the National Chairman tournament will be held in every September, and now there are performances of 30 to 40 days on stage per year. In addition, it was a venue of Ringo Sheena's one night only live event, Zazen Ecstasy (座禅エクスタシー) on July 30, 2000.

Let's take a tour to the retro style building of the early Showa era.
There's no performance on this day, we could go there freely. Going up the stairs to the second floor.

A view of the stage from the audience seats on the second floor.

Audience seats. Seats are available from the following three types; Zashiki (座敷) with conformable tatami rooms located in the center of the first floor, Masuseki (桝席) or boxed seats on the both ends of tatami rooms, and they also provides free seats on the both sides of second floor.

 Going down the stairs, and finally we came back to the starting point.