Prof. Martin Holman, Director
Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe
Japanese Studies, GCB 443
University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri 65211
Tel. (573) 882-3368
Email: holmanma@missouri.edu
University of Missouri
Japanese Studies Program
http://japanesestudies.missouri.edu/
And visit the following website:
www.bunraku.org
UMass Bunraku Puppetry Program in Japan
June 1~ August 13, 2005
University of Massachusetts 2005 Summer Bunraku Training Course in Japan
The program was located in the city of Iida in Nagano Prefecture, the site of the winter 1998 Winter Olympics. Iida is host to four traditional Bunraku puppet troupes, whose history stretches back more than 300 years, and is the site of the largest puppetry festival in Japan, which is held during the first week of August every year. More information will be available on the summer 2008 program as plans develop. Please check the following site for details or contact program director Prof. Martin Holman: holmanma@missouri.edu
The Tonda Traditional Japanese Bunraku Puppet Troupe hosted a University of Massachusetts Amherst course in Japanese theatre and culture led by Prof. Martin Holman, who has trained as a Bunraku puppeteer with the Tonda Troupe for over 11 years and now teaches at UMass. The course provided students the opportunity to study Japanese language, culture, and theatre in Japan and train in traditional puppetry under the tutelage of the members of the Tonda Troupe. Twenty-nine students from 12 universities participated in the program, which requires no previous knowledge of Japanese language.
For info on the 2004 program, please take a look at
the following page:
www.asianinterstage.com/summer2004japan/
Tonda Puppets Perform at Harvard
University, Brown University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst
February 23~26, 2004
TONDA BUNRAKU PUPPETS OCTOBER 2003 US PERFORMANCE
TOUR
Tonda Puppet Troupe performs in Utah and Massachusetts
The Tonda Puppet Troupe traveled to the United States to perform a program of traditional pieces from Bunraku repertoire, including Keisei Awa no Naruto-Junrei Uta no Dan,Yaoya Oshichi, Hidakagawa,and the Sanbaso. Sixteen members of the troupe--puppeteers, tayu chanters, and samisen accompaniests--offered five full performances. See below for the schedule:
Mr. Hidehiko, head of the Tonda Bunraku Troupe and
seventh-generation puppeteer, and his wife Sueko traveled to Massachusetts
March 3~14, 2003 to conduct Bunraku puppetry workshops and demonstrations
at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as Amherst College, Smith
College, and Mount Holyoke College.
The early history of the Tonda Puppets is documented
by few written sources. According to the story passed down through the years,
an itinerant puppet troupe from Awa, in present-day Tokushima Prefecture
on the island of Shikoku, came to Tonda to perform during the winter in the
mid 1830s. Bad weather prevented the troupe from performing for several weeks
as they remained snowbound in the village. By the time they could move on,
they were broke, so they left behind a large number of puppets and stage
equipment with the local people as collateral for a loan to pay their travel
expenses back to Shikoku. After years passed and no one returned to reclaim
the puppets, the people of Tonda began to try their hand at operating the
puppets themselves. When another itinerant puppet troupe came through the
area a few years later, the people of Tonda had the visitors teach them the
principles of puppet manipulation and the conventions of the theatre. This
was the beginning of the Tonda Bunraku theatre.
Other local puppet troupes existed across rural Japan
during the same period. Most often they were a diversion performed and enjoyed
by farmers in the off season. Many reached a high level of sophistication 
through the dedication of generations of puppeteers, chanters, and samisen
players. By the late 1800s the Tonda Puppets had achieved a level of skill
that led them to travel outside their home area to offer performances on
the road.
The Tonda Bunraku Puppets continued to delight audiences
for many years. The art of puppet manipulation was passed down exclusively
from father to eldest son, as were the arts of reciting the texts and performing
the samisen accompaniment, but there came a period when general interest
in the puppet theatre as well as other traditional entertainments flagged
in the middle of the twentieth century and many troupes disappeared. Fortunately,
recent years have seen a renewal of interest in traditional entertainment
all over Japan. The Tonda Bunraku Puppet Troupe was fortunate to have dedicated
members whose association with the theatre went back many generations and
who carried the troupe through difficult times.
Some changes have come to the troupe in the last few
decades. Since the 1970s men from outside traditional puppeteering families
as well as women have been welcomed into the troupe. The Tonda Bunraku Puppet
Troupe 
is now designated as an Intangible Cultural Treasure, rehearsing and performing
in its own theatre build in 1991 by the Shiga Prefectural government and at
Lute Plaza Municipal Hall, which was constructed in 1998 with a stage designed
specifically for the Tonda Puppets. The Troupe is active in recruiting and
training new puppeteers and frequently offers performances for school groups
to introduce a new generation to the puppet theatre. The Troupe is
now headed by Mr. Hidehiko Abe, a seventh-generation puppeteer whose great-great-great-great
grandfather was one of the founding members of the Troupe.
In fall 1993, the Tonda Bunraku Troupe became the
first traditional puppet troupe in Japan to admit a non-Japanese as a performing
member. Since then, the Tonda Troupe has been active in teaching Bunraku puppetry
to college and university students from the United States and has hosted
theatre practitioners from abroad who have visited the Tonda Puppetry Hall
in Biwa-cho to study Bunraku techniques.
In 1994 the troupe performed by invitation in New
Zealand. They toured the United States in 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2004, performing
in Massachusetts, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Utah, New Jersey,
and Michigan. The Tonda Bunraku Troupe has also been invited to perform
in Minnesota in July 2005 as the featured guest act at the quadrennial conference
of the Puppeteers of America.
Plans are now being made for another performance tour
to North America in October 2004. If you would be interested in bringing the
Tonda Bunraku Troupe to your area for a performance, please get in touch
at the email address at the bottom of the page. Also, members of the
Tonda Troupe are available to travel internationally for smaller puppetry
demonstrations and workshops. Please get in touch if you would like details.
The history of the Japanese puppet theatre known commonly
today as Bunraku began sometime before the year 1600 when puppet manipulation,
the tradition of oral narrative, and the music of the samisen were combined
in a dramatic form that came to be the most popular entertainment in Japan.
In Japan, puppets seem to have been used for centuries
in a formal context in religious rituals at shrines and temples, while storytellers
had been relating tales of heroism and tragedy for generations. Eventually
a tradition of recitation to musical accompaniment developed as an art form
with blind balladeers who traveled the countryside telling tales derived
from legend and from the history of years of warfare in Japan. Originally
the biwa, or Japanese lute, had been used to accompany such narrative, but
in the middle of the sixteenth century a new three-stringed instrument was
introduced to Japan from Okinawa. It was soon modified into the instrument
now called the samisen and came to be preferred for its greater range of
expression that the expanding scope of storytelling demanded. Simple puppets
were used to illustrate the story line.
The peaceful seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
in Japan saw the flourishing of the merchant classes who sought entertainment.
In the cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo (present-day Tokyo) puppet troupes
were formed and the commercial theater developed at a rapid pace. In the late
1600s, a narrative chanter Takemoto Gidayu founded a theater in Osaka. He
was joined by the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon who devoted himself to
writing plays drawn from the daily life of townspeople, which were in contrast
to the legendary and historical themes of the plays that had been commonly
performed until his time.
Competition between rival theatres was fierce, which
led to innovations in puppet manipulation and design. Until the end of the
seventeenth century, the puppet had been a simple creation operated from
beneath by a single puppeteer, but in 1703 audiences were surprised to see
the puppeteers appear in full view of the audience. Eventually the chanter
and samisen player were also removed from behind the curtain and given their
own small stage to the right of the main puppet stage. Later years saw puppet
design become more sophisticated with the appearance of movable eyes and
hands. In 1734 the system of three-man operation, in which the main puppeteer
operates the head and right-hand, a second puppeteer manipulates the left
hand, and the third moves the feet, became the standard.
Through most of the 1700s, the puppet theatre was
the most popular form of dramatic entertainment in Japan, far more popular
than the live-actor Kabuki drama. Theatres were established outside the major
cities and some troupes toured the countryside offering performances even
in remote towns and villages. By the late 1770s, however, the puppet theatre
suffered a decline in its major center of Osaka.
Interest was revived in the nineteenth century by
a puppeteer named Uemura Bunrakuken, whose name came to be synonymous with
the puppet theatre. Bunraku is now the most common term used to refer to
the puppet theatre, although purists insist that the word designates only
puppetry derived directly from the late Osaka tradition. The Tonda Puppets
trace their origin to Tokushima on the island of Shikoku, where some of the
earliest developments in puppet theatre occurred. But the various traditions
were never completely independent; puppeteers traveled and most new plays,
as well as innovations in performance techniques, quickly made their way
around the country. The word Bunraku now indicates to most people the three-man
style of manipulation that the Tonda Puppets employ.
The play Keisei Awa no Naruto was first staged
in June of 1769 at the Takemoto Theatre in Osaka in commemoration of its
re-opening. It is one of the most popular pieces in the Bunraku repertoire.
The work is a collaboration by a number of playwrights
and it is thought to be based on an earlier work by the most famous playwright
of the puppet theatre, Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Bunraku plays generally are divided
into two categories: jidaimono, plays about legendary and historical
figures, and sewamono, plays about contemporary, more ordinary people.
Keisei Awa no Naruto belongs to the latter group.
Jurobei, a samurai, has taken upon himself the task
of finding his master's lost sword. He moves to Osaka with his wife Oyumi,
leaving their infant daughter in the care of her grandmother for her own
safety. He joins a band of thieves to allow himself access to places where
the sword might be found and has been searching for 10 years to no avail.
In the scene immediately preceding the one performed,
a messenger visits Oyumi who is alone at home. He brings a letter from one
of Jurobei's cohorts: their crimes have been discovered and some members of
the group have been caught. Jurobei and his wife should flee as soon as possible
to escape capture.
Shortly thereafter, Oyumi hears the songs of a Buddhist
pilgrim and the ringing of a bell. A young girl on a pilgrimage has called
at the house. Oyumi gives her an offering of rice and invites her in when
she learns that the 
girl is from her own home province. The girl tells of how she is on a walking
pilgrimage from distant Awa in search of her parents from whom she was separated
when she was a small child. Suspicious, Oyumi asks the names of the girl's
parents. Whereupon, the girl tells her they are "Jurobei" and "Oyumi."
Shocked to learn that the girl standing before her
is her own daughter Otsuru, whom she had left behind years earlier, Oyumi
is torn; she wants to take her beloved daughter in her arms, but if she reveals
to the Otsuru that she is her mother the girl will surely be dragged into
the sordid and potentially fatal affairs of her family. Oyumi fears for her
daughter's life should she rejoin her parents, who may themselves be doomed.
Clutching the letter she had earlier received, Oyumi vacillates but finally
decides to compose herself and keep her identity secret.
The purity of Otsuru's devotion to the search for
her parents pierces Oyumi's heart. She waivers several times but finally decides
to tell the girl that she should go back to her grandmother and await her
parents' return.
Touched by Oyumi's motherly compassion, the girl pleads
that Oyumi might allow her to stay. Oyumi is overwhelmed by sadness but realizes
that she must send Otsuru away for her own safety. She prepares some traveling
money and gives it to the girl, but Otsuru will not accept it: she has enough
for the road. Oyumi brushes the dust from Otsuru's kimono, then takes a hairpin
and fixes Otsuru's hair before the girl turns to leave.
Unable to part without seeing her one last time Oyumi
calls her daughter back to her and they embrace. Otsuru grasps the end of
a strip of cloth that Oyumi is holding and tries to pull her mother toward
her in a highly-stylized scene that is one of the most famous in the puppet 
theatre. Oyumi eventually pushes Otsuru out of the house then sits stifling
her sobs beside the closed door as Otsuru beats on it from the other side.
Oyumi listens as Otsuru's song fades in the distance.
Overcome with grief that she may never see her daughter again, Oyumi rushes
out of the house to call her back. But the girl is already gone. Anguished,
Oyumi is reduced to tears, but she resolves to go after her daughter. The
scene ends with Oyumi standing before her house preparing to leave.
Prof. Martin Holman, Director
Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe
Japanese Studies, GCB 443
University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri 65211
Tel. (573) 882-3368
Email: holmanma@missouri.edu
University of Missouri
Japanese Studies Program
This page was last modified July 14, 2005.