Bunraku Japanese Puppetry
The three puppeteers are:
§ Omo-zukai – the head puppeteer, who operates the doll's head and face by holding a stick with levers in his left hand, also operates the doll's right hand with his own right hand
§ Hidari-zukai – the left-hand puppeteer, who uses his right hand to operate the doll's left hand
§ Ashi-zukai – the foot puppeteer, who uses both hands to suggest the movements of the doll's legs and feet.
The puppeteers merge with the puppet in order to control it and move as a team to the sounds of the narrator and musician.
Let us first consider the history of what might be termed the two pillars of Bunraku: joruri and the joruri gidayu-bushi, or joruri narrative singing. Gidayu-bushi, as can be glimpsed from its name, was established by Takemoto Gidayu (1651-1724), and is a special form of vocal music. From ancient times in Japan, vocal music was divided into two categories: utai, or singing, and katari, or reciting and chanting. In brief, the difference between them is that utai had definite melodies, rhythms, and tempo, whereas the main emphasis of katari was on explaining the plot. Katari took the tale-chanting style of heikyoku―the chanting of the Tales of the Heike to biwa (a lute-like instrument) accompaniment, seen as the ancestor of narrative arts-to tell its tale. At the time when heikyoku was very popular, performers turned to sources other that the Tales of the Heike, and among them, those who became known as joruri performers gained much attention. It is uncertain exactly when joruri was first born, but it is thought to have been in about the middle of the Muromachi period (ca. late fifteenth century). The namejoruri derives from a medieval story called the Tale of Princess Joruri and the Twelve Guardian Deities; because the art became so popular, it began to be used to chant other tales as well, but because of its association with the tale of Princess Joruri, the form also became known as joruri. In around the mid-sixteenth century, the sanshin was brought to Japan from the Ryukyuan kingdom of Okinawa, and it was later developed into the shamisen (like a three-stringed banjo) that came to be used in the performances―and this caused joruri to make rapid progress musically. It was at the end of the sixteenth century that this shamisenmusic was first used in the puppet theatre, with strung marionettes.
Originally, the art of joruri developed in western Japan, mainly in Kyoto, and soon after was taken to Edo (the old name of Tokyo), and by the mid-seventeenth century, dozens of schools of joruri had arisen. Among them, gidayu-bushi, the colorful expression of the style of Takemoto Gidayu, which had borrowed techniques from the various other schools, become extremely popular. In 1684, Takemoto Gidayu established the Takemoto-za theatre in the Dotonbori district of Osaka and teamed up with the famous playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), whose works he mainly performed. From that time, all the other jorurischools that had flourished began to fade away, to the extent that gidayu-bushi itself came to be known simply as joruri. The plays were divided into two categories: those about the noble and military classes, calledjidai-mono ("historical drama"), and those based on the lives of the townspeople, called sewa-mono ("domestic drama"). Chikamatsu Monzaemon devoted his energy to accurately and vividly portraying the situations in which people found themselves, and in 1703, he published his most famous work, Sonezaki Shinju, or The Love-Suicide at Sonezaki. The foremost of all his domestic dramas, it is important not only historically, but also for its excellent literary content.
The first performance of The Love-Suicide at Sonezaki caused another important incident. One of Gidayu's apprentices, Toyotake Wakadayu, who possessed a beautiful voice and was very popular because of his beautiful chanting style, left the Takemoto-za and established his own theatre, the Toyotake-za, in the same Dotonbori district. He had made Tatsumatsu Hachirobei, Takemoto-za's lead manipulator of female puppets―said to be the best in the land―business partner and Ki no Kaion, Toyotake-za's lead writer, his resident playwright, and took such great pains with the content of his joruri and various aspects of the stage that the Toyotake-za soon became a formidable rival of the Takemoto-za. And because the two theatres then vied for the top position, their art became all the more popular, and puppet joruri entered its golden age, which is often called the "Chikuho age" (chiku is another reading of Take, and ho, of Toyo). But the glory of puppet theatre reached its peak in the three years between 1746 and 1748. With the trio of Namiki Senryu, Miyoshi Shoraku, and Takeda Izumo, the Takemoto-za theatre produced each year one of what became the three classics of the Bunraku theatre: Sugawara Denju Te-narai Kagami (The Secret of Sugawara's Calligraphy), Yoshitsune Senbon-zakura (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees), and Kanadehon Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers). Even today, they are more often performed than any other plays. However, as the popularity of the puppet theatre began to wane in the latter half of the eighteenth century, both the Takemoto-za and the Toyotake-za were ruined. Later, puppet theatre continued to be performed in the precincts of shrines and temples, as well as in vaudeville-like entertainment halls (yose), and gradually a number of master performers appeared who took the art left to them and refined it through great effort.
It is thought that the history of "moving dolls" is quite long in Japan. At the very least, in the Heian period (784-1185), there was a group of artists who traveled all over the country performing as "puppet operators." These itinerant performers were known as kairaishi and kugutsumawashi―both of which mean "doll manipulators." By the thirteenth century, these traveling "puppeteers" had become attached to shrines and temples, and, through becoming connected with joruri at the end of the sixteenth century, the art of the puppeteers was no longer seen on the streets but in small halls. In the beginning, they were only "small halls" in name, as the puppeteers would stretch shoulder-high curtains, from behind which they would hold the puppets above the curtain as they operated them, andjoruri was also performed in this manner. The puppets had no feet, so the operators had to thrust their hands in the hems to make the "feet" move; but the dolls had moveable hands and arms that could be manipulated to perform simple movements. At about the time that the Takemoto-za was opened, the puppets were small and manipulated only by a single operator. But as time went by, improvements were made, such that by 1734 a plan was devised to have three operators per puppet. Two years later, the size of the dolls was doubled, making them close to the size used today (which is about 2/3 the height of the average person). It is also thought that the stage itself was changed at about the same time in order to accommodate the three manipulators.
After the collapse of both the Takemoto-za and the Toyotake-za puppet theatres, a small jorurihall was opened near Kozu Bridge in Osaka, and in 1811 it found itself within the precincts of the Inari Shrine. The proprietor was a man named Uemura Bunrakuken, and it was in 1872, after it was relocated to Matsushima, that the hall became officially known as the Bunraku-za
Soon after, in 1884, the Hikoroku-za was founded within the precincts of the Inari Shrine, and it became a rival of the Bunraku-za, which had moved to Osaka's Goryo area. Just as in the days of the Chikuho age, once again puppet theatre became very popular. Although the Hikoroku-za was closed in 1893, the Goryo Bunraku-za prospered as the main representative of the puppet theatre. Then, from the name of the theatre, the art itself came to be called Bunraku. In 1909, the title of the Bunraku theatre passed from the Uemura family to the Shochiku entertainment industry. The Goryo Bunraku-za burned to the ground in 1926, and in 1930, a new Bunraku-za was built near Yotsubashi. After the end of World War II, of all the theatres to be rebuilt from the ashes of the air raids, the very first was the Yotsubashi Bunraku-za. That was because it was felt that Bunraku was not only a famous product of Osaka, but also a traditional performing art of world renown that should be preserved. In 1955, the government recognized the art of Bunraku as an Important Intangible Cultural Property (juyo mukei bunkazai). In 1963, Bunraku divorced itself from Shochiku control and began operating under the auspices of the Bunraku Association. And in 1966, the first National Theatre was built in Tokyo's Miyake-zaka area, from which time Bunraku performances in Tokyo were planned and produced by the National Theatre. The National Theatre's basic policy of performing full plays evoked the interest of the young, which was instrumental in developing a new level of audience. Further, due to the efforts of the Bunraku Association, both the city and the prefecture of Osaka, and the Kansai Economic Association, it was planned to build a National Bunraku Theatre in the land of its birth, Osaka. Thus, in 1984, the National Bunraku Theatre was erected. Throughout its long history, Bunraku has faced many dangers threatening its continued existence, but each time it was able to overcome the obstacles with the help of the people who love it, and this is true even today. Indeed, it is the accumulated wisdom and efforts of those who came before that have given Bunraku the superb artistic quality it enjoys today.
***
Note: In 2003, the Japanese traditional puppet art of Bunraku was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
***
The Chanter (Tayu)
Bunraku plays develop through the chanting ofgidayu-bushi, and their mission is to see to what degree an expressionless doll made of wood can be filled with the breath of life through thegidayu-bushi. The chanter (tayu) not only recites the dialogue for all the characters, but also relates the spectacle of the scene and explains the background behind the event taking place. Long pieces take about 90 minutes, and the number of characters can vary from only a few to around fifteen. And the chanter performs them all―young and old, male and female, warriors and townspeople―in different ways appropriate to each character, all by himself. So it is not an easy task. Moreover, his greatest objective is to express the actual emotions of each of the characters. Someone who listens for the first time to a chanter perform might feel besieged by exaggerated emotions. But that is itself the uniquely expressive power of gidayu-bushi ―to give the audience a strong impression about the character's personality. And even if the story is about something that took place in the ancient past, still our basic humanness and human emotions are very carefully portrayed, and even today's young performers can elicit the same responses from the audience.
The Shamisen Player
There are three types of shamisen: futo-zao ('thick-necked'), chu-zao or naka-zao ('medium-necked'), andhoso-zao ('thin-necked'). True to its name, the futo-zaoshamisen is the largest and lowest pitched of the three types, for which reason it is made use of in gidayu-bushi, which requires singing from the lower abdomen, and it produces a very powerful timbre. Unlike other types of accompaniment, the shamisen used in gidayu-bushi must "play the strings of the heart." Just as the chanter, when reciting, places more importance on expressing the feelings of the tale than on musicality, it is important for the shamisen player too to fill his playing with the "heart" of the piece, and also to assist the chanter in his recitation. But even if it produces exceptionally beautiful tones, or allows us to listen to the freshness of the dexterous use of its large plectrum, the futo-zao shamisen produces a type of music whose feeling is quite different from joruri, and is not proper as the gidayu shamisen. For that reason, the ideal is that the shamisen player must become one in spirit with the chanter. Unlike with the recitation, which is expressed through words, with the shamisen, it requires extremely difficult techniques to express human emotions through a single tonal color. That is why even a first-time theatergoer who listens to a shamisen master cannot help but come away filled with emotion.
§ Omo-zukai – the head puppeteer, who operates the doll's head and face by holding a stick with levers in his left hand, also operates the doll's right hand with his own right hand
§ Hidari-zukai – the left-hand puppeteer, who uses his right hand to operate the doll's left hand
§ Ashi-zukai – the foot puppeteer, who uses both hands to suggest the movements of the doll's legs and feet.
The puppeteers merge with the puppet in order to control it and move as a team to the sounds of the narrator and musician.
Let us first consider the history of what might be termed the two pillars of Bunraku: joruri and the joruri gidayu-bushi, or joruri narrative singing. Gidayu-bushi, as can be glimpsed from its name, was established by Takemoto Gidayu (1651-1724), and is a special form of vocal music. From ancient times in Japan, vocal music was divided into two categories: utai, or singing, and katari, or reciting and chanting. In brief, the difference between them is that utai had definite melodies, rhythms, and tempo, whereas the main emphasis of katari was on explaining the plot. Katari took the tale-chanting style of heikyoku―the chanting of the Tales of the Heike to biwa (a lute-like instrument) accompaniment, seen as the ancestor of narrative arts-to tell its tale. At the time when heikyoku was very popular, performers turned to sources other that the Tales of the Heike, and among them, those who became known as joruri performers gained much attention. It is uncertain exactly when joruri was first born, but it is thought to have been in about the middle of the Muromachi period (ca. late fifteenth century). The namejoruri derives from a medieval story called the Tale of Princess Joruri and the Twelve Guardian Deities; because the art became so popular, it began to be used to chant other tales as well, but because of its association with the tale of Princess Joruri, the form also became known as joruri. In around the mid-sixteenth century, the sanshin was brought to Japan from the Ryukyuan kingdom of Okinawa, and it was later developed into the shamisen (like a three-stringed banjo) that came to be used in the performances―and this caused joruri to make rapid progress musically. It was at the end of the sixteenth century that this shamisenmusic was first used in the puppet theatre, with strung marionettes.
Originally, the art of joruri developed in western Japan, mainly in Kyoto, and soon after was taken to Edo (the old name of Tokyo), and by the mid-seventeenth century, dozens of schools of joruri had arisen. Among them, gidayu-bushi, the colorful expression of the style of Takemoto Gidayu, which had borrowed techniques from the various other schools, become extremely popular. In 1684, Takemoto Gidayu established the Takemoto-za theatre in the Dotonbori district of Osaka and teamed up with the famous playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), whose works he mainly performed. From that time, all the other jorurischools that had flourished began to fade away, to the extent that gidayu-bushi itself came to be known simply as joruri. The plays were divided into two categories: those about the noble and military classes, calledjidai-mono ("historical drama"), and those based on the lives of the townspeople, called sewa-mono ("domestic drama"). Chikamatsu Monzaemon devoted his energy to accurately and vividly portraying the situations in which people found themselves, and in 1703, he published his most famous work, Sonezaki Shinju, or The Love-Suicide at Sonezaki. The foremost of all his domestic dramas, it is important not only historically, but also for its excellent literary content.
The first performance of The Love-Suicide at Sonezaki caused another important incident. One of Gidayu's apprentices, Toyotake Wakadayu, who possessed a beautiful voice and was very popular because of his beautiful chanting style, left the Takemoto-za and established his own theatre, the Toyotake-za, in the same Dotonbori district. He had made Tatsumatsu Hachirobei, Takemoto-za's lead manipulator of female puppets―said to be the best in the land―business partner and Ki no Kaion, Toyotake-za's lead writer, his resident playwright, and took such great pains with the content of his joruri and various aspects of the stage that the Toyotake-za soon became a formidable rival of the Takemoto-za. And because the two theatres then vied for the top position, their art became all the more popular, and puppet joruri entered its golden age, which is often called the "Chikuho age" (chiku is another reading of Take, and ho, of Toyo). But the glory of puppet theatre reached its peak in the three years between 1746 and 1748. With the trio of Namiki Senryu, Miyoshi Shoraku, and Takeda Izumo, the Takemoto-za theatre produced each year one of what became the three classics of the Bunraku theatre: Sugawara Denju Te-narai Kagami (The Secret of Sugawara's Calligraphy), Yoshitsune Senbon-zakura (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees), and Kanadehon Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers). Even today, they are more often performed than any other plays. However, as the popularity of the puppet theatre began to wane in the latter half of the eighteenth century, both the Takemoto-za and the Toyotake-za were ruined. Later, puppet theatre continued to be performed in the precincts of shrines and temples, as well as in vaudeville-like entertainment halls (yose), and gradually a number of master performers appeared who took the art left to them and refined it through great effort.
It is thought that the history of "moving dolls" is quite long in Japan. At the very least, in the Heian period (784-1185), there was a group of artists who traveled all over the country performing as "puppet operators." These itinerant performers were known as kairaishi and kugutsumawashi―both of which mean "doll manipulators." By the thirteenth century, these traveling "puppeteers" had become attached to shrines and temples, and, through becoming connected with joruri at the end of the sixteenth century, the art of the puppeteers was no longer seen on the streets but in small halls. In the beginning, they were only "small halls" in name, as the puppeteers would stretch shoulder-high curtains, from behind which they would hold the puppets above the curtain as they operated them, andjoruri was also performed in this manner. The puppets had no feet, so the operators had to thrust their hands in the hems to make the "feet" move; but the dolls had moveable hands and arms that could be manipulated to perform simple movements. At about the time that the Takemoto-za was opened, the puppets were small and manipulated only by a single operator. But as time went by, improvements were made, such that by 1734 a plan was devised to have three operators per puppet. Two years later, the size of the dolls was doubled, making them close to the size used today (which is about 2/3 the height of the average person). It is also thought that the stage itself was changed at about the same time in order to accommodate the three manipulators.
After the collapse of both the Takemoto-za and the Toyotake-za puppet theatres, a small jorurihall was opened near Kozu Bridge in Osaka, and in 1811 it found itself within the precincts of the Inari Shrine. The proprietor was a man named Uemura Bunrakuken, and it was in 1872, after it was relocated to Matsushima, that the hall became officially known as the Bunraku-za
Soon after, in 1884, the Hikoroku-za was founded within the precincts of the Inari Shrine, and it became a rival of the Bunraku-za, which had moved to Osaka's Goryo area. Just as in the days of the Chikuho age, once again puppet theatre became very popular. Although the Hikoroku-za was closed in 1893, the Goryo Bunraku-za prospered as the main representative of the puppet theatre. Then, from the name of the theatre, the art itself came to be called Bunraku. In 1909, the title of the Bunraku theatre passed from the Uemura family to the Shochiku entertainment industry. The Goryo Bunraku-za burned to the ground in 1926, and in 1930, a new Bunraku-za was built near Yotsubashi. After the end of World War II, of all the theatres to be rebuilt from the ashes of the air raids, the very first was the Yotsubashi Bunraku-za. That was because it was felt that Bunraku was not only a famous product of Osaka, but also a traditional performing art of world renown that should be preserved. In 1955, the government recognized the art of Bunraku as an Important Intangible Cultural Property (juyo mukei bunkazai). In 1963, Bunraku divorced itself from Shochiku control and began operating under the auspices of the Bunraku Association. And in 1966, the first National Theatre was built in Tokyo's Miyake-zaka area, from which time Bunraku performances in Tokyo were planned and produced by the National Theatre. The National Theatre's basic policy of performing full plays evoked the interest of the young, which was instrumental in developing a new level of audience. Further, due to the efforts of the Bunraku Association, both the city and the prefecture of Osaka, and the Kansai Economic Association, it was planned to build a National Bunraku Theatre in the land of its birth, Osaka. Thus, in 1984, the National Bunraku Theatre was erected. Throughout its long history, Bunraku has faced many dangers threatening its continued existence, but each time it was able to overcome the obstacles with the help of the people who love it, and this is true even today. Indeed, it is the accumulated wisdom and efforts of those who came before that have given Bunraku the superb artistic quality it enjoys today.
***
Note: In 2003, the Japanese traditional puppet art of Bunraku was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
***
The Chanter (Tayu)
Bunraku plays develop through the chanting ofgidayu-bushi, and their mission is to see to what degree an expressionless doll made of wood can be filled with the breath of life through thegidayu-bushi. The chanter (tayu) not only recites the dialogue for all the characters, but also relates the spectacle of the scene and explains the background behind the event taking place. Long pieces take about 90 minutes, and the number of characters can vary from only a few to around fifteen. And the chanter performs them all―young and old, male and female, warriors and townspeople―in different ways appropriate to each character, all by himself. So it is not an easy task. Moreover, his greatest objective is to express the actual emotions of each of the characters. Someone who listens for the first time to a chanter perform might feel besieged by exaggerated emotions. But that is itself the uniquely expressive power of gidayu-bushi ―to give the audience a strong impression about the character's personality. And even if the story is about something that took place in the ancient past, still our basic humanness and human emotions are very carefully portrayed, and even today's young performers can elicit the same responses from the audience.
The Shamisen Player
There are three types of shamisen: futo-zao ('thick-necked'), chu-zao or naka-zao ('medium-necked'), andhoso-zao ('thin-necked'). True to its name, the futo-zaoshamisen is the largest and lowest pitched of the three types, for which reason it is made use of in gidayu-bushi, which requires singing from the lower abdomen, and it produces a very powerful timbre. Unlike other types of accompaniment, the shamisen used in gidayu-bushi must "play the strings of the heart." Just as the chanter, when reciting, places more importance on expressing the feelings of the tale than on musicality, it is important for the shamisen player too to fill his playing with the "heart" of the piece, and also to assist the chanter in his recitation. But even if it produces exceptionally beautiful tones, or allows us to listen to the freshness of the dexterous use of its large plectrum, the futo-zao shamisen produces a type of music whose feeling is quite different from joruri, and is not proper as the gidayu shamisen. For that reason, the ideal is that the shamisen player must become one in spirit with the chanter. Unlike with the recitation, which is expressed through words, with the shamisen, it requires extremely difficult techniques to express human emotions through a single tonal color. That is why even a first-time theatergoer who listens to a shamisen master cannot help but come away filled with emotion.