Bunraku Puppet Play

BUNRAKU PUPPET THEATER

Bunraku puppet theater was founded by Takemoto Gidayu (1651-1714) in 1684 in Osaka. The theater style appears to be derived from earlier live theater and from religious puppet dramas. While the Noh tradition (which dates back to the fourteenth century) gave theater a reserved, reflective aspect, Bunraku theater was colorful and emotional. It was a response to the demands of the increasingly affluent merchant class, who, though socially inferior to virtually all other classes, could afford vibrant new entertainments. While Noh theater praised honor and custom in its storylines, Bunraku delighted in showing conflict between private emotions and social demands.

The puppets used are large, complicated, and colorful. They are designed to show strong emotion. Main puppet characters were manipulated by on-stage puppeteers. Usually these puppeteers are covered in black hoods and costumes, but in the dezukai style, the principal manipulator does not wear a hood. For a major male character, the puppet is manipulated by three puppeteers. The principal manipulator wears high sandals and controls the head and right arm. The second puppeteer controls the left arm and bears most of the puppet's forty-pound body weight. The third puppeteer controls the puppet's legs. In the case of female puppets, only two puppeteers are used; the puppet's feet are hidden by a long kimono.

The star of the Bunraku play is the storyteller. With a book open in front of him, he narrates the play and reads the parts of all characters. His reading style is deliberately expressive and emotive. A biwa or shamisen traditionally accompanies the Bunraku play.

The tale that follows is based on a classic Bunraku love story. Takemoto Gidayu is said to have based it on a true story that captured the public's imagination. It tells the tale of a paper merchant named Jihei who falls tragically in love with a courtesan named Koharu. The title tells us the lovers' fate: "The Double Suicide at Sonezaki" (Sonezaki Shinju). It was a theatric breakthrough because it told the story of contemporary commoners, and not of ancients heroes or supernatural beings. The story not only produced theatrical imitators; it also inspired a rash of young lovers attempting immortalize their love by killing themselves.

Sources:

Ando, Tsuruo. Bunraku: The Puppet Theater. New York: Walker/Weatherhill, 1970.
Immoos, Thomas. Japanese Theater. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1977.
Johnson, Matthew. "A Brief Introduction to the History of Bunraku."
www.leland.stanford.edu/rosesage/puppetry/bunraku.hist.html, 1995.
Lombard, Frank Alanson. An Outline History of the Japanese Drama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929.

The Double Suicide at Sonezaki

Cast:
Narrator
Jihei, a paper merchant
Koharu, a courtesan

[Koharu begins play in center stage, holding a scroll in one hand and a knife in the other]

N: What is this? What sorrow do we see? A fair maiden, clad in the garb of a courtesan. A fair maiden called by the name of Koharu, which means "little spring." A woman of low station, yet honorable in her heart. Her father has died, and to care for her widowed mother she has been sold into the service of the scoundrel Saibei and his House of Entertainment.
With Koharu of Shinchi, in bloom like the bloom of the sea, poor Jihei, the paper-merchant has fallen in love. His infatuation, like expensive thick Sugiwara paper, became so great that at the year's end he asked postponement of accounts, and put his bills aside like paper hankies, tossing his customers here and there like cheapest toilet paper. He no longer cares for his wife, but secretly, summer and winter alike, visits Koharu.

[Jihei arrives, holding a purse and a bundle of cloth]

J: Stop!

N: Behold! The paper merchant arrives.

J: Koharu, stop! Do not kill yourself!

K: Oh, my love! But I must! I am to be sold tomorrow to your rival, Tahei! After I am his, I may no longer see you, and my heart cannot bear such privation!

J: Nor can I...but I fear that I have neglected my finances out of my longing for you....

K: Out of your love for me...

J: ...and I cannot afford Saibei's price. I have here all that I could muster...

K: Your wife's kimono?

J: And my daughter's as well.

N: Listen well to the story which unfolds.

K: You stole them?

J: I would have, my love, but that was not needed. My wife gave them to me, and this purse which holds her hidden coins. Yet they are not enough...

K: She gave you all the wealth that she possessed?

J: Yes, that and more. This day she and my daughter have entered a convent to become nuns. Their new names are Teigyoku--chaste jewel--and Chigetsu--moon wisdom.

K: Oh! If your wife and daughter have become nuns, what shall I do?

J: My wife understood the depth of my love for you, and she has graciously chosen not to despise me for it. The more I know of her true heart the greater my guilt appears.

K: Such a dear woman!

[The puppets embrace and sob.]

N: Embracing each the other they sob, and sobbing their hearts, each to the other, in secret speak.

J: And further, when she learned that you had planned suicide [the puppets both stare at the knife], she could not bear that it should happen. She said, "Though our daughter and I shall have nothing to wear, reputation is all-important to a man. Redeem Koharu, and yield not to that Tahei."

N: Though thus she speaks, the tears well up; they well, but are swallowed down. Her changeless loyalty to him seems most pathetic.

K: Perhaps they will suffice; perhaps it is enough to redeem me.

J: I know it is not. For this very afternoon, as I ran stop you from this act, I encountered Tahei and Saibei on the street.

N: Mark well the tragedy as it unfolds.

J: Saibei laughed at my coins and silk. Tahei had already yielded to him more than twice my best offer.

K: Twice more?

J: And so enraged was I by their haughty laughter that I struck them. I struck them and slew them, there on the street.

K: How, Tahei dead? Saibei dead as well?

J: Dead by these hands. Dead by this heart. My freedom shall soon be taken from me, yet I love you.

K: What shall we do? What shall we do?

J: Look, there is a cup here, one decorated with crane and tortoise. May we not, for a moment at least, be married?

K: Yes, my love, let us drink the marriage cup together. Yet I fear that I have no wine, only water.

J: Only water?

K: And water is a drink for parting, not for marrying.

J: This is fitting. Let us drink together.

[The puppets share a cup of water, looking meaningfully into each others' eyes as they do so. They begin to cry.]

N: Weeping, they hold up the cup; drink they the water, wine of their parting for aye, wine of their parting. Earthen the cup which they hold; Earth our conclusion. Crane and tortoise alike tell them of dying. These are the things which now break hearts that are grieving.

J: Love is pain.

K: Love is pain indeed.

J: May our love be eternal.

K: May our love be eternal.

[The puppets commit suicide.]

N: The end of ill-starred love is tears; tears, and the seed of a story.

THE END