Week 3 Entry

This week, I continued to research on why Bunraku became the most popular theatre form in Edo period. I focused on the religions and philosophies inside the art form and especially in Chikamatsu’s plays.

At the very beginning, I searched the meaning of the Bunraku as a word. Bunraku, the name used broadly in the Western academia, came from “name of the man who took over the management of an important puppet theatre at a particularly dark history”. (Adachi 1). It is originally a surname in Japanese. However, Bunraku is also known as jingyo joruri, which is as important as the word Bunraku in Japan and China. This name showed its inside philosophy. In Japanese dictionary, ningyo means human body, jo is clean, and ruri is glass,the material. Joruri was first a Buddhism term transformed from Vaidūryanirbhāsā in Sanskrit, means clean land for the buddha Bhaiṣajyaguru, which known as the buddha of the present. 

It looks the Bunraku is close to Buddhism. But the creation of the name is not the time of Chikamatsu, in which Bunraku became popular. It’s worth a while to look at Chikamatsu’s time in the whole Asian history. Chinese culture is influential to Japan for a long time, since Japan was belong to China in the past. In Edo period, the time of China is Ming Dynasty. This time, in Chinese society, new confucianism dominant the ideology. Neo-confucianism is created by Zhu Xi. The main idea of this Neo-confucianism is people should oppress their individual desires and submit to obligations. This idea is welcomed by the Ming government, as a perfect tool to control people. At this time, the government restricted or even prohibited other religions, especially Taoism and Buddhism. The class hierarchy in Edo Japan was similar to the hierarchy in China. The latter was the scholar - bureaucrat group on top, followed by farmers, craftsmen and merchants. I assume it might be possible that Japan Edo government influenced by this Neo-confucianism dominant ideology.

In chikamatsu’s plays, especially in his love suicide plays, not meeting the obligations of the townsmen became the biggest reason to commit a suicide. And their lovers commit suicide together or later without any hesitation. For example, in The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,  the hero Tokubei committed a suicide because he was forced by his boss and tricked by his step-mother and could’t marry his lover Ohatsu. Therefore, Ohatsu encouraged Tokubei to die with her. And then comes the love suicides. Tokubei, as a townsman, a merchant’s employee,  was the the representative of the lower class. He needed to meet the obligation of working for the store and obey his boss and mother’s orders. His own desire was overlooked or even considered as evil. He and his lover committed the suicides for love, moreover, for the rebellion to Feudalism and Neo-confucianism. The audiences of bunraku were townsmen, known as the farmers, artisans and merchants. These rebellion appealed to the audiences.  That is why bunraku is very popular at that time. That was also the reason, Noh, theatre which only relevant to Buddhism, is less popular than Bunraku in Edo period. 

I am still looking for the characteristics of the Bunraku art form. There are two things I found very interesting and might be useful for analysis the use of puppets.

1. Each puppet has more than one head, the performers can change the head to perform different characters, which is very cheap.  Thus, I found the stage is cheaper for the puppets last week. I think cost can be one reason why Bunraku is popular: it is very easy to find a place and troupe to perform.

2. The puppets in China might be first used for mourning situations. As the historians found the historical relic of puppets in the tomb. There are also traditions in China that puppets can remove the bad things such as the ghost and the curses, because the human-like puppets can trick the ghosts and take the bad things for you. The puppets also used as a tool of curse even today in Asian society: make a puppet represent somebody and use a needle to stab it. It might be in the audiences’ mind of that time,  puppets can be religiously related to human body. The puppets could be either good to educate or good to threatened.

Adachi, Barbara C. Backstage at Bunraku: A behind- the -scenes look at Japan’s Traditional Puppets Theatre. New York: Weatherhill, 1985. Print.

Ho, Norman, P. “Legal Philosophy of Zhu Xi (1130-1200) and Neo-Confucianism's Possible Contributions to Modern Chinese Legal Reform”. Tsinghua China Law Review. 3.2 (2011):167-214. Print.