For that matter, did the Western Renaissance affect the Japanese Renaissance? It seems curious that the latter came about only 100 years after. Were these just parallel thought?
I was having a conversation with my animation coworkers about the topic of men playing women in kabuki theatre and whether or not this had any relation to why English Renaissance theatre did the same — and at about the same time, if I’m not mistaken. We performed some brief superficial research (ie, Wikipedia) and came up with some uneducated guesses. Please forgive us. We are but simple artists. Most of us are art school educated and/or high school dropouts, decidedly (aggressively) not historians.
The topic came up when a Caucasian male colleague of ours needed reference for a Japanese woman character’s pose. We sometimes have to quickly use what’s at hand for reference and he used a webcam capture of himself for the pose. He presented us with a beautiful draw-over of her, utilizing some of his own physical landmarks. The combination of the drawing and photo reminded us of an onnagata. This sent us down an internet rabbit hole on the subject and some of us landed on those previous questions. If you’d be so kind, help enlighten us or point us in the right direction?
Not his drawing but an eye catcher I “made” of an onnagata for those subreddits that allow it: https://imgur.com/a/CwoFuMU
by No_Friend_1590