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.

Week 2 Entry

This week I paid close attention to the change of fine arts in Edo Japan. My goal was to find possible reasons why Bunraku, as one of the art form, was undergoing radical changes back to that time. This series of changes include fewer acts in one play, story became important, a climatic and dramatic form, current social incident became one of the major theme and so on. Though reading extensively in the book Arts of Edo Japan: The Artist and the city 1615-1868, I believe I found one clue: urbanization.

At the beginning, I only considered Edo period as strong and powerful centralized society. In my mind, a centralized government always gave the artists less freedom. However, Guth offered me new perspective to think about the centralization. The Tokugawa shogun government created an official hierarchy to foster stability. “With the samurai at the top, followed in defending order by farmers, artisans, and merchants.” (Guth 12) Though this rule, the Tokugawa government guaranteed the production of rice and other kinds of food. Along with the development of agriculture, social stability and peace reduced the cost of wars. All above created the conditions for urbanization and the blossoming of urban culture. Cities and rural areas became wealthy and affluent, which was the beginning of self-consciousness.

At that time, government controlled the artists’ choice mostly through the way of patronage. It was impossible for artists to refuse the official taste of choice if the city’s economy was very bad. Due to the economical developments of cities during urbanization, people had the ability to pay for theatre and performances, which gave the artists the opportunity to make their own choice and get rid of the government’s control. Arts were not only for the privileged few any more. The basic facts for the artistic survival in local areas is finding and keeping audiences. One of the best way to keep the audience is to entertain them.

Before Chikamatsu, Bunraku always include 10-12 acts. The story and plot is not important in the play. The process of seeing a play could take a long time. Bunraku, so as most of the other arts forms are performed for the privileged few, a group of people not had so much to do everyday. For people in lower class, their lives were much busier. That’s why the play need to be shorter with a climatic form.  And for the goal of keeping and entertaining the audience, story became important, especially the story happened in current time. 

Besides the analysis of change, I also looked into the Bunraku art form. I think it might be very dangerous to consider Bunraku as same as western drama or other Japan theatres. For the goal of understanding Chikamatsu’s writing style of the specific Bunraku, I think it is very important to understand the history and functions of this art form. Therefore, I read two books Bunraku: The Puppet Theatre and Backstage at Bunraku: A behind- the -scenes look at Japan’s Traditional Puppets Theatre. The first one is written by a Japanese while the second one is written though a Japan-American.  

According to Ando in Bunraku: The Puppet Theatre, it is highly possible that the puppets were solutions for performing in a small space. It also might be the pursue of idealized features caused the use of puppets. Puppets in performance are served as the tool to express feelings and emotions of the chanters. Since the chanters in Bunraku are less emotional than other forms of performances in Japan. So, we should look into Chikamatsu’s writing style with the relevance to the art form of Bunraku. For example, if his play seems very calm and cool, no character had strong emotion, that might have something to do with Bunraku art itself. In Backstage at Bunraku: A behind- the -scenes look at Japan’s Traditional Puppets Theatre. Adachi observed that Bunraku was more frightening than Kabuki, in both the stories and the characters.  So we ‘d better be careful about this aspect in Chikamatsu’s writing style.

And something frustrated: spending a lot of time on the anthology of Chikamatsu’s five late plays and found out finally that they are plays of Kabuki! So angry!

Guth, Christine. Arts of Edo Japan: The Artist and the city 1615-1868. New York: A Time Mirror Company, 1996. Print.

Ando, Tsuruo. Bunraku: The Puppet Theater. New York: Walker/Weatherhill, 1970. Print.

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

Week 1 Entry

This week I have primarily worked on narrow down the scope of our group. When thought about topics about Bunraku for the first time, it remind me of a Japanese animation Puppet Master Sacon. This Animation is about a boy Sacon who was born in a family with a long history of perfoming Bunraku. He and his puppet travel together and solve mysteries. The most interesting thing is in this animation, the puppet is alive. He can speak and move by himself. I thought it might be interesting if we look at the adaptation of Bunraku in popular animation. How the understanding of the art form Bunraku changes in the contemporary world of Japan? How the puppet represents life and death? These are questions might be possible to further narrow down in a research. Therefore, I searched some articles about this topic. Jamie gave me a link of a useful article: From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls:Mechanical Bodies in Anime and Japanese Puppet Theater. The article uses the animation film “Ghost in the Shell' and “The Empire of Signs” to analyze performative aspects of puppets. The puppets in these two films helps to refocus the audiences’ attention on anime’s particular mode of representation—distanced from real body and lives. This article helps me deeply think about the relations between anime and the Bunraku. They both are detached from real body and imitate the real life. That makes Puppet Master Sacon more interesting because the puppet is alive. What will happened and what is the meaning of some artificial objects gain the ability to think and control human? Is that terrible? What is the fear from contemporary society in japan (or anywhere) change the representation of Bunraku art?

In our second group meeting, we discussed everybody’s interest and finally decided to focus on  Chikamatsu. I found a book written by Shigetoshi Kawatake, The Development of Japanese Art. I found the English translation but cannot access it. So I use a Chinese translation instead. Hopefully I can found one English version soon. In this book, it introduced Chikamutsu is the first playwright of Bunraku. Before, the Bunraku was written only by actors themselves. His plays are much more dramatic than the earlier Bunraku works, and contain much more complicated stories. In another book I found Bunraku, the Puppet Theatre, it talked about the five-act play created by Chikamutsu. The first act is ceremonial setting, the second act is to give details about the situation, the third act is the action, the fourth act is road-going (an important change will happened at the destination, the fifth act is the ending, usually with a glorious triumph. (Ando 126-128) After reading the description of the functions of the five acts, I guess there are connections between this form and the characteristics of much more dramatic stories in the play. Before, there were usually 8-12 acts in one play. Five-act dramatic form is shorter, in which will make the writer concentrated in storytelling.  In addition, almost every action is in the third act, equals to one-act play, to some extend. That is another reason of why his plays are much more dramatic than the former Bunraku plays.

I read the introduction of Chikamatsu 5 late plays in order to find something important about his life and writing styles. He was born in edo-period, in an upper-class family. (Gerstle 8) I think this historical context is very important and I will dig into it and find other information of his childhood and the edo-period society. These will help me to understand why he has the ability and power to make such changes. In his history or period plays, he increasingly incorporated elements of complex character portrayal from the contemporary-life works. They are usually realistic. In his period plays there are multiple plots and supernatural elements. (Gerstle 2) From this description I know more about genres of his plays. It seems his period play is one of the most dramatic genres and with the concern of social issues. If we focused on the connection between society and his writing styles, I think it will be very good to choose one of his period plays as the example to analyze.

Bolton, Christopher A. From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls:Mechanical Bodies in Anime and Japanese Puppet Theater. Positions. Winter 2002, Vol. 10, Issue 3.

Monzaemon,Gerstle, C. 5 Late Plays. New York : Columbia University Press, 2001. Print.

Ando, Tsuruo. Bunraku: The Puppet Theater. New York: Walker/Weatherhill, 1970. Print.