Since the fourteenth century, theater has been at the center of cultural life in Japan to an extent rare in the world. several Japanese theatrical traditions, noh, kyogen, bunraku, and kabuki, continue to the present as living lineages of actors passing on their skills from generation to generation, actors have maintained control over the interpretations of texts on the stage. kabuki and bunraku differ fundamentally in their origins and essence. Joruri was the inheritor of the long oral storytelling tradition of blind musicians that flourished after the Genji civil war. During the time of the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who wrote for both the bunraku and kabuki stages, it became standard to publish complete bunraku texts at the time of first performance with the name of the playwright as author. The theater was a vibrant aspect and stimulant of cultural life in the Edo period, one in which individuals from all walks of life participated through a variety of means.

Kyogen is Japan's classical comic theater, and also Japan's oldest dialogue-based drama. The earliest precursors to kyogen plays are thought to be irreverent skits performed along with court dances in the Nara and Heian periods. From the early 1400s Zeami and other leaders of noh troupes brought kyogen performers under their organizational umbrella, and kyogen plays have been performed as comic interludes between noh plays from that time until today. The most popular play in the current repertory, Delicious Poison, is one of the few for which one can identify an original literary source. As in the noh drama, kyogen developed many conventions of staging. The kyogen repertory stands as medieval Japan's secular and playful counterpart to the harsh, formal social values intended to govern the lives of Japanese. The core of much kyogen humor is in parody, which deconstructs and inverts specific texts or social types and norms. Kyogen maintained its traditional repertory and functions through World War II.