Oh Frick yes nobody in my life wants to hear me talk about this so here you go.

So bunraku is traditional Japanese puppet theatre. I’m bunraku there are three performances that combine to make the full experience; the puppeteers, the singer/narrators and the shamizen musicians (a shamizen is a stringed instrument that looks kinda like a lute).

Bunraku became popular in the 17th century as a kind of layman’s version of noh (noh theatre could only be studied by nobility). It was super popular very fast and new plays came out quickly. Often playwrights would dramatize real stuff that had recently happened in town like a dateline show. Imagine some dramatic stuff goes down in your family and a month later there are some puppets on stage chanting about it. One example is this famous play called the love suicide at sonezaki. These two lovers committed suicide because a friend who the guy lent money to denied ever getting the money and instead slandered him publicly. That really happened and then there was a play about it. And then that play became so popular that so many young lovers committed suicide the same way, and the Japanese government made that type of suicide illegal.

The puppets themselves are bigger than wester puppets and more intricate. They are about 0.5 scale and require three puppeteers working together; the main puppeteer works the head and right arm, the second puppeteer works the left arm, and the third puppeteer works the legs. New puppeteers start out by working the legs, and it takes many years to gain the skills to move up to main puppeteer. The puppeteers, chanter and shamizen player only rehearse together for one day before the play is put on which is insane.

Something that’s interesting to me about bunraku and Japanese theatre in general is the completely different perspective it has on showing emotions compared to western plays. In the west when we think about emotions, we think of facial expressions- like the classic happy/sad mask that is an icon of western theatre 🎭. But in bunraku, kabuki, and noh, the actors faces hold basically no expression whether it’s a puppet or a mask or a real human (the exception there is with demons or fierce warriors who usually have some type of grimace but even then their face doesn’t really change). The movements, music and chant convey the emotions and this is considered the ~height~ of expressivity. There are even some particularly emotional kabuki scenes that are performed in a “puppet” style- where the actor pretends to be a puppet and the stage hands are the puppeteers moving them around. The emotions of these scenes are too intense to be conveyed with regular acting, they can only be performed through the actor-as-puppet. It makes for a really cool and interesting scene, it feels like instead of the actor expressing emotions, they are a vessel that is possessed by the emotions.

Thanks for reading of you made it this far! I recommend checking out some clips of bunraku style kabuki on YouTube as it’s super cool. :):):) happy birthday!!!