The is an extra stage section used in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese kabuki

Kabuki

is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...

 theater. It is a long, raised platform that runs, left of center, from the back of the theater, through the audience, to connect with the main stage. Generally it is used for characters' entrances and exits, though it can also be used for aside

Aside

An aside is a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience. By convention the audience is to realize that the character's speech is unheard by the other characters on stage. It may be addressed to the audience expressly or represent an unspoken thought. An aside is usually a brief...

s or scenes taking place apart from the main action. In this use, it can be seen as an alley theater

Alley Theater

A traverse stage is a form of theatrical stage in which the audience is predominantly on two sides of the stage, facing towards each other.They can see using "Proscenium arc", named after the mirrors used in Proscenium staging...

 connecting to a larger stage.

History

The hanamichi was first used in 1668 in the Kawarazaki-za

Kawarazaki-za

The ' was one of the major kabuki theatres in Edo during the Edo period and into the Meiji period. Not being one of the four theatres formally licensed by the Tokugawa shogunate, the theatre was largely inactive for long stretches of time, operating only when the Morita-za, facing financial...

, in the form of a simple wooden plank that reached from the center of the stage to the middle of the theater. It was not used in performances, but allowed actors to step into the audience after a performance to receive flowers. The word hanamichi literally means "flower path."

The modern style of hanamichi, sometimes called honhanamichi , was first conceived and standardized in 1740. The standard size ranges from 16.38 m - 18.20 m (53 ft, 9 in - 59 ft, 8 in) long and 150-180 cm (4 ft, 11 in - 5 ft, 11 in) wide. Some theaters have since begun to make use of a secondary hanamichi on the right side of the audience, known as karihanamichi which is one-third to half the width of the honhanamichi on the left.

Usages

Though it is rarely used for the main action of a play, much of the more dramatic or famous character moments occur during entrances or exits along the hanamichi. Many particularly dramatic actions take place seven-tenths of the way down the hanamichi (three-tenths away from the stage), at a spot known in Japanese as shichisan . It is here that exiting characters may say their final words, and entering characters may address the audience or the characters on stage. Since the hanamichi runs through the audience, it allows for a closer experience for the spectator than might normally be allowed by other forms of traditional theater.