Adachi, Barbara C. Backstage at Bunraku: A behind- the -scenes look at Japan’s Traditional Puppets Theatre. New York: Weatherhill, 1985. Print.
The author introduces Bunraku by describing its birth and tradition. The author denotes the beginning of Bunraku as the time around 1600 when three art forms, puppetry, narrative storytelling, and shamisen music, joined together to form one. Then the author explains the art of each of the different departments: puppeteers, narrators, shamisen players, and offstage musicians. The highlight of this book is a detailed account of artists in the puppet making process, from the carver of the heads, wig master, and repair and keeper of heads and costumes. She provides a detailed description based on her own observation and focuses on the function of these elements. In addition, the author introduces a specific Osaka troupe as a case study, which makes her ideas much more clear.
The book also includes some comparison between Bunraku and kabuki, based on the author's own experience. She says that Bunraku is much more frightening than kabuki, in both the characters and the storytelling. Starting in the late 1800s, Bunraku was replaced by Kabuki, even in Chikamatsu's own work. Why does he make this switch? Is the dramatic form not suited in Bunraku? This book offers new way to think about Chikamatsu’s writing style.
Ando, Tsuruo. Bunraku: The Puppet Theater. New York: Walker/Weatherhill, 1970. Print.
Puppet theaters on the continent of Europe take many forms, such as French Grand Guigol, but they all exist with the object of either startling the audience or make it laugh. In this book, the author argues that the puppet theatres in Japan are much more effective. He first describes the stage and other basic elements of Bunraku to figure out why they use puppets. The limitations of the stage is one of the obvious reasons, the second is that dollmakers can make idealized features, whereas live actors are restricted by nature. But the most important reason is to better represent the emotions as the chanter performs less emotionally in Bunraku than other art forms.
Ando then introduces different artists and events of Bunraku chronologically, from Gorobei (Tennoji) to more recent artists. He spends a whole chapter on Chikamatsu, as this artist is very important in the history of Bunraku. The purpose of this book is not only to provide information about Bunraku, but also to find the reason why these events happened. The author also focuses on the development of Bunraku theater from the very beginning to the present. At the end of this book, Ando analyzes the tradition of Bunraku and offers an interesting observation that the performers, no matter how famous and skilled they are, gave full credit to their teachers and those who came before them. Therefore, Bunraku today still shows the spirit of the founders. This book will help us understand the birth of Bunraku and why it uses puppets as well as the role of Chikamatsu in its development.
Gerstle,
Andrew. “Heroic Honor: Chikamatsu and the Samurai Ideal.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 57.2 (1997): 307-381. JSTOR. Web.
13 Nov. 2014.
Gerstle begins his article with a brief introduction to
Chikamatsu’s early life before discussing how Chikamatsu became so popular and
how he was able to so easily identify with and entertain the lower classes. While
Chikamatsu was born into a samurai family, Gerstle says that Chikamatsu is
consistently criticizing the government and the “internal threat of corruption”
through his plays. During Chikamatsu’s lifetime the samurai class struggled to
define themselves as either warriors or rulers, and the high status of the
samurai meant that they had to be examples of virtue, law, and honor. The codes
of honor and law they had to uphold followed a strict Confucian ideal, and it
is through the opposing forces of these Confucian ideals and personal desire that
much of the conflict that Chikamatsu addresses arises. The section of his article we focus on deals
with the samurai class, the “paradox inherent in the conflicting images of the
samurai” (309), and how that paradox relates to the honor the commoners in his
Bunraku plays try to achieve. Gerstle argues
that Chikamatsu’s Love Suicide plays emulate
the honor of the samurai that many commoners can only dream of obtaining, and
in the act of obtaining that honor through suicide, the lower-class characters,
and the writer Chikamatsu, commit a form of political protest by breaking
through the established class hierarchy. His popularity also influenced how
people viewed honor and the struggle of the low-class commoner to obtain it.
Gerstle goes on to use many plays and texts, including many of the Love Suicide plays as examples of how
the continued struggle to define honor and who can obtain that honor.
Guth, Christine. Arts of Edo Japan: The Artist and the city 1615-1868. New York: A Time Mirror Company, 1996. Print.
In this book, the author described the major artists of music, painting, calligraphy and pottery in Edo period. The author introduced artists, dividing them by city: Kyoto artists (design, art school, literati movement), Edo artists (woodblock prints, polychrome prints, the realm of official arts), Osaka and Nagasaki Artists (visiting Chinese artists, painters, monk-artists), rural artists (poets and literati painters). The biggest characteristic of these art works is the expansion of audience. The author also analyzed the huge transformation in the art world in Edo period. The Edo period is the most peaceful period in Japan history, therefore the economy developed and urban arts bloomed. The art world changed for two main reasons: the court, the shogunate, and religious institutions used their patronage of the arts to spread their political ideologies, and the artists themselves were still able to follow personal interest for private enjoyment. Some of them recognized the advantages of opposing official taste (finding and keeping audiences), which created a kind of self-conscious counterculture.
This book will help me find the reason of transformation in the art world of Edo period. We decided to focus on Chikamatsu’s writing style, which is very different from previous Bunraku plays. We can find clues in other kind of arts why this change happened. This book offered us the possibilities.
Keene, Donald. Kaneko, Hiroshi. Bunraku: The Art Of The Japanese Puppet Theatre. Tokyo: Kodansha International [1973. Print.
Monzaemon, Gerstle, C. 5 Late Plays. New York : Columbia University Press, 2001. Print.
This anthology contains Chikamatsu’s five late plays. In this selection of the five plays, Chikamatsu depicts the tension between the private and the public spheres of society through political themes. Twins at The Sunmida River: Adapted from Noh theatre. The story focuses on a mother searching for a stolen child. The play was performed regularly in the puppet theatre as Kabuki during the Edo period from 1772 until 1867.
Lovers Pond in Settsu Province: Considered as his best “contemporary life” play. The title is an Osaka tale. The story focuses on news of a man who killed his friend so that he could marry his wife. This is also a Kabuki play.
Battles at Kwa Nakajima: His last in a series of “muderer hero” plays, which explored the psychology of crime and responsibility and were highly critical of corruption in government. This play is based on the history of wars in Japan but is not true to history. This as also performed on Kabuki stage.
Love Suicides on the Eve of Koshin Festival: This was based on an actual incident in Osaka about a married couple—the wife pregnant— who committed suicide. This was adapted by several artists of that time to different art forms. Chikamatsu’s version is Kabuki.
Tethered Steed and the Eight Provinces of Kanto: This is his longest drama and it is very “large” so it is seldom performed onstage.
Although all these plays are kabuki, we can also find information about his writing styles and the relation between the art and the audiences. Fewer characters, contemporary content, and adaptation of tales with new ideas will help these plays to be popular and easy to stage.
Tokugawa, Tsunenari. The Edo Inheritance. Trans. Tokugawa Iehiro. Tokyo: International
House of Japan. 2009. Print.
This book is an overview of the
political and social change that occurred during the time leading into the
Tokugawa Era (or Edo Period) and during that time period (1603-1867). It is
worth noting that Tokugawa Tsunenari is the eighteenth head of the Tokugawa main
lineage and identifies himself as a “history-loving amateur.” The main argument
of his book is to identify the Tokugawa Era not as the “feudal” period of
stagnation, isolationism, and great peasant suffering, but as a period of great
peace which united the country, ended constant civil wars, and allowed for the
development of a uniquely Japanese culture. In the rest of his book he
discusses the major political figures, the cultural growth, the economics, the
types of education available, and the lives of people of various social
classes. Near the end of the book he includes a timeline and various
illustrations which were drawn in the early nineteenth century.
One aspect of
this book to consider while reading it is the point of view of the author.
While he is obviously a bit biased (being a Tokugawa himself), he doesn’t quite address the issues of the
lower classes and this book is mainly written to outline the higher political
and economic powers. He also presents the information about Tokugawa Japan in
an interesting light as he compares major events occurring in Europe to the
events occurring in Japan at the same time. This method helps him to put the “feudal”
era in a different light as the reader is able to identify major political
upheavals and social change occurring in other powerful countries of the time.
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