廻り舞台

The mawari-butai (revolving stage) is a large circular section of the stage floor that rotates with actors and scenery aboard. While a scene plays on the front half, the next set is quietly built on the hidden half; a half turn transforms the world in seconds. The revolving disc is called the bon. In the Edo period it is said to have been pushed around by hand from beneath the stage; today it is powered electrically.

It is said to have been devised in the mid-eighteenth century by the Osaka playwright Namiki Shōzō, reportedly inspired by spinning tops—well ahead of the West, where a revolving stage is said to have first appeared at Munich's royal theatre in 1896. Techniques unique to the device, such as the itte-koi alternation between two scenes, grew up around it.

The revolving stage is said to have first turned in 1758, in Shōzō's Sanjikkoku Yofune no Hajimari at the Kado no Shibai theatre in Osaka. Its novelty lay in showing the audience none of the labour—the disc was turned by hand from the naraku below—and the device spread to theatres far and wide, transforming kabuki's stagecraft.

The revolving stage belongs to kabuki as a whole rather than to any one acting family. The Kabukiza, where Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII performs, is equipped with a great revolving stage that still quietly powers the scene changes of the repertoire, the Kabuki Jūhachiban included.