Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century

Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context

Akihiro Odanaka, Masami Iwai

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367150624
• eBook ISBN: 9780429620003
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Asian Art

Bunraku has fascinated theatre practitioners through its particular forms of staging, such as highly elaborated manipulation of puppets and exquisite coordination of chanters and shamisen players. However, Bunraku lacks scholarship dedicated to translating not only the language but also cultural barriers of this work.

In this book, Odanaka and Iwai tackle the wealth of bunraku plays underrepresented in English through rexamining their siginifcance on a global scale. Little is written on the fact that bunraku theatre, despites its elegant figures of puppets and exotic stories, was often made as a place to manifest the political concerns of playwrights in the 18th century, hence a reflection of the audience's expectation that could not have materialized outside the theatre.

Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century aims to make bunraku texts readable for those who are interested in the political and cultural implications of this revered theatre tradition.

1The dramaturgy of bunraku

In this chapter, we will investigate what makes bunraku so unique in its dramaturgy. Bunraku and kabuki, despite their seeming resemblance due to the repertoire, are significantly different as performing arts because bunraku is something in between an epic and a drama. Its text, as narrated by the chanter (tayū), works like a camera eye that focuses on the puppets’ movements. Besides, bunraku history plays are composed around the notion of sekai (story world), which differs from that of the Western world. Finally, we will mention another interesting aspect of bunraku dramaturgy based on puns (word play).

What you see is not what they did

Prior to an analysis of the “social energy” of 18th-century Japan as expressed in bunraku, we think it is necessary to give readers basic information about bunraku texts in their historical contexts, without which an understanding of the relationship between the stage and society would be incomplete.

In the first place, it must be stressed that kabuki and bunraku were considerably different in terms of their treatment of play texts. No kabuki plays remain before the early 18th century, because kabuki scripts were made for in-house theatre use: actors were told only what their parts were by the leading playwright who conceived the plot. What we know today of the synopsis, characters’ words, and even rough ideas of the stage directions of the plays from those days − Chikamatsu’s kabuki plays written in the Genroku era (1688−1704), for example − because they were contained in illustrated kabuki playbooks (eiri kyōgen bon). These playbooks were sold not only for those who missed the stage but also as a program (of sorts) for the audience. The tendency of kabuki to depreciate scripts long prevailed and it was only from the late 18th century that kabuki scripts were preserved for repeated use. In short, kabuki has been favored for its theatricality and was not considered as a literary genre.

Bunraku texts, by contrast, were published from the early 17th century. They were called certified true versions (shōhon) of plays¹ and, like kabuki playbooks, were published for theatregoers and amateurs. But different from kabuki, bunraku provided the full texts of its plays to its readers. This means that, while kabuki actors freely reinterpreted their parts on an improvisational basis, bunraku was principally made for fixed and audible text (which was also readable when printed). At the risk of simplification, we could say that if kabuki is to be seen, bunraku is to be heard (the specific aspect of the latter remains today as the tradition of sujōruri: bunraku recitals without puppets). Such divergence of the two performing arts came, in other words, from their individual circumstances. Contrary to kabuki, which was (and is) dominated by actors, in bunraku, the positions of authors who provided the chanters (tayū) with their texts held a much more important position, especially since the conversion of Chikamatsu from kabuki playwright to bunraku author.

In this regard, we must be aware that the manipulation of puppets was rather on a primitive level, even in the days of Chikamatsu; different from the present stage on which three people manipulate the main puppets, puppets in Chikamatsu’s time were all handled by single puppeteers. It was only in the mid-18th century that the three-man puppet came into practice. The elaboration of the bunraku stage, including puppet manipulation, tayū chanting skills, and shamisen music, began in the late 18th century and reached its peak in the 19th century when bunraku became a classic art. Indeed, we cannot represent Chikamatsu’s plays in the same fashion as that of their premieres not only because the puppets are different, but also because there is no record of the shamisen playing, and even the chanting style has been greatly influenced by later adaptations of his plays, although detailed notations on the narration is included in a text that we will discuss hereunder.

Nowadays bunraku is a performing art that is pleasurable for both the eyes and the ears. In the course of its development, its audible portion, that is, the text narrated by the chanter carried more weight than its visual representation, which justifies our intentions in this book: to read bunraku texts in their social contexts. As a matter of fact, shōhon (published bunraku plays) spread among the people and were widely read. At the same time, in order to approach the bunraku text, it is necessary to gain additional knowledge of its narrative structure or relationship between the chanter (narrator) and puppets, because, as is the case of Japanese traditional theatre, such structure is incorporated on a textual level in bunraku as well.

The narrative structure of bunraku plays

When we look at bunraku texts through the modernized (or Western) eye, we certainly have the impression that it is an art that has been suspended in the process of its evolution from an epic to a drama – and this is visually evident. To ascertain this, below is a passage from The Battles of Coxinga by Chikamatsu, translated by Donald Keene,² which set the cornerstone for the introduction of bunraku pieces to English readers. In this scene, the hero of the play, Watōnai (who will later be called Coxinga), and his mother are lost in the vast land of China after crossing the East China Sea with his father.

NARRATOR:… Watōnai, following his father’s instructions, steadfastly carried his mother on his back, looking for a house where they might hide. He jumped and leapt over dangerous rocks and boulders, over the roots of old trees, and over waterfalls and mountain streams, but though he speeded ahead like a bird in flight, China is a land of boundless distances, and he wandered into the vast Bamboo Forest of Senri, where no people dwell. Watōnai was at a loss what to do.

WATONAI:Mother, my legs are beginning to feel the strain. We must already have come forty or fifty miles, but we have met neither man nor monkey.³

If we are faithful to the original text, however, the above could be translated as follows:

^(ji) Following his father’s instructions, Watōnai, looking for a house where they might hide, steadfastly carried his mother on his back, and jumped and leapt over ^(iro) dangerous rocks and boulders – over the roots of old trees, and over waterfalls and mountain streams. Though he speeded ahead like a bird in flight, China is a land of boundless distances, and ^(fushi) he wandered into the vast Bamboo Forest of Senri, where no people dwell. ^(ji) Watōnai was at a loss what to do. ^(kotoba) Mother, my legs are beginning to feel the strain. We must already have come forty or fifty miles, but we have met neither man nor monkey.⁴

Needless to say, the most obvious difference between the two versions is that there is no indication of a separation between the characters’ lines in the latter; even the narrator is not indicated because it is self-evident that the text is narrated by the chanter (though, as noted in the preface, chanters are replaced one after another in the course of the stage production).

Next, we may ask, what are the superscript characters, such as (ji), (iro), (fushi), and (kotoba), inserted between phrases?⁵ They are tune indicators to show that bunraku is a poetic play based on musicality, although it has neither distinctive meter nor rhyme.⁶ The easiest to understand among these signs is the opposition between ji and kotoba: while the former denotes melodiously recited (or sung) parts accompanied by shamisen music, the latter designates the sober speech of the characters. Iro is used in between these two modes of narration and fushi is used for demarcating the end of a sequence with musical cadence.

While there are also many other indicators for adding fine nuances to the chanting, as far as the above passage is concerned, we can see it is composed of four units. First, the start of Watōnai and his mother’s adventures is sung in animated ji, with the difficulty they encounter (dangerous rocks and boulders) spotlighted in a tone change to iro inserted between, and the rest of their journey continuously sung in ji. When they arrive at the bamboo forest where a dramatic event is expected, it is musically announced by fushi. Finally, the hero’s kotoba (which literally means “words”) cuts into a scene in which his conversation with his mother is highlighted frontstage.

With the aid of these indicators, the audience (and readers) are given a vivid image of Watōnai and his mother’s wanderings while the narrator in Keene’s translation just narrates.⁷ As C. Andrew Gerstle suggests in his analysis of one of Chikamatsu’s sewa-mono plays, the difference comes from the fact that bunraku narration with tune indicators functions like camera work in a movie.⁸ The four units in the above passage can be easily visualized as different sequences which contain, for example, a medium shot of Watōnai carrying his mother on his back, pan shots of their adventure in the immense land of China, and a close-up of the mysterious bamboo forest.

Keene remarks in his translator’s note for Coxinga: “The speeches of the various characters are sometimes not indicated as such, and one has the impression that the whole is one long narrative.”⁹ That is true. Bunraku text is in fact an incessant flow of narration composed of different dan (or part; dan is generally interpreted as act in English translation, but we believe it is not – a problem that we shall address later). In the Japanese text, even the changing of scenes is not marked. Concerning the above passage describing Watōnai’s adventures, Keene interprets that it is included in a longer scene covering the departure of the hero and his parents from Japan up to his fight with a fierce tiger in the bamboo forest of China, and entitles it as “The Bamboo Forest of Senri.”¹⁰ Not only is there no such caption in the original text, but also what Keene considered as an independent scene is further divided into several scenes, because there is another tune indicator in the sentence preceding the above...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Conventions
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The dramaturgy of bunraku
• 2 The Battles of Coxinga: The self-image of early modern Japan
• 3 A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman: Echoes of a shadowy domain
• 4 Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy: The Emperor and the stability of society
• 5 Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees: Re-appropriating history
• 6 The Treasury of Loyal Retainers: Money can buy you loyalty
• 7 The Genji Vanguard in Ōmi Province: The Osaka people are indomitable!
• 8 Mount Imo and Mount Se: Precepts for Women: Eros and politics
• 9 Travel Game while Crossing Iga: Individuality on the margin of society
• Conclusion
• Index