The earliest performances of kabuki were dancing and song with no significant plot, often disdained as gaudy and cacophonous, but equally lauded as colorful and beautiful.
Its name literally means small or short song, which contrasts with the music genre found in bunraku and kabuki, otherwise known as nagauta (long song).
With these startingly new, realistic, and up-to-the-minute plays, they hoped to lure into the theater new audiences, who had been put off by the stylization and old-fashioned forms of kabuki.