You’re the puppet

from this amazing website

Bunraku is Japanese puppet theater.  It’s been around since the beginning of the 17th century.  The puppets are maybe three feet tall and are operated by people all in black.

Must credit young adult book The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Paterson for giving me some background in this bizarre art when I was a boy.

When I was in college the Awaji Island Puppet Troupe of Awaji Island came and did a performance in Boston.  I went to see it and only left with more questions.  Awaji puppets are similar to but not exactly bunraku.

Here we see Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who wrote at least 130 plays and is sometimes compared to Shakespeare.  Until 1705, he wrote kabuki plays, for human actors.  Then he abruptly switched to puppets.

WHY?

Why did Japan’s greatest dramatist switch to writing plays for puppets?

Wikipedia wagers some guesses:

The exact reason is unknown, although speculation is rife: perhaps the puppets were more biddable and controllable than the ambitious kabuki actors, or perhaps Chikamatsu did not feel kabuki worth writing for since Tōjūrō was about to retire, or perhaps the growing popularity of the puppet theater was economically irresistible.

Perhaps in Chikamatsu’s day the puppets weren’t really point, the point was the lyrics and the music, so you may as well have puppets instead of actors.

How cool would it be if Aaron Sorkin switched tomorrow to puppets?  Or better yet Shonda Rhimes?

“I only do puppets now!”

After the switch, Chikamatsu’s career followed an all too familiar path:

Chikamatsu’s popularity peaked with his domestic plays of love-suicides, and with the blockbuster success of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, but thereafter the tastes of patrons turned to more sensational gore fests and otherwise more crude antics

I feel I’ve reached the end of what I can learn about this art form unless I actually go to the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka to see a performance of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki.

The National Bunraku Theater – Mc681 on Wikipedia.

“Art is something that lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.” — Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Naniwa Miyage