People

Where the traditional Japanese art meets high energy physics

	Mr. Bungo YOSHIDA playing Kumagai Naozane

Origin of the Bunraku, the Japanese puppet theatre, goes back several hundred years. It is a combination of a story-telling music, and puppets which made the Bunraku one of the most popular entertainment of the 17th century. When a great singer, Gidayu TAKEMOTO (1651-1714) and one of the most famous playwright, Monzaemon CHIKAMATSU (1653-1724), started a collaboration, Bunraku reached its peak of fame. CHIKAMATSU wrote 103 plays, many of his scenarios found way to Kabuki and even to movies of modern days.

CHIKAMASTU is called as “the Japanese Shakespeare” due to his dominating influence in Japanese theatrical plays. Between 1729 and 1749, lots of improvements, such as opening and closing eye lids, moving eyeballs, were incorporated to the puppets. By 1736, three manipulators started to work together for each puppet to provide more sophisticated movement. Movement of eyebrows and ears followed. One would think that an audience would see manipulators and not puppets on stage since there are many more manipulators and humans are significantly larger than the puppets. When you are dragged into the magic world of Bunraku, you are amazed to realize that you do not notice the manipulators and watch the puppets as the live actors/actresses on the stage. These puppets are actually quite heavy, ranging between 3kg to 13kg (some weighs 20kg) and the main player has to support the weight for over half an hour while providing sophisticated puppet movements.

Most Japanese have an image of traditional Japanese artists as very exclusive, stubborn, extremely conservative people, who would lead life along with very old customs which in turn have kept the arts in original form. Most of them keep the art within their family so that it would be very difficult to join the group if you are not related to the family. However, Bunraku is, as I learnt recently, one of the exceptions. Any talented person can join in Bunraku company.