Bunraku

On Sunday, I decided to attend a Bunraku performance at the National Bunraku Theater.

Bunraku is the traditional Japanese puppet theater which was established in the 17th century. Today, Bunraku is classified as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO (and this was reason enough for me to go and see a performance).

The theater has an on-line ticket sale available in English, so I could ensure that the performance wasn't sold out and buy my ticket before actually going there. As I don't have a printer at home, I was happy to find out that they have ticket machines where you can pick up prepaid tickets using the ticket order number.

The show started at 4pm and consisted of two entire plays, lasting for more than four hours in total (quite some value for your money, isn't it?). Between the two plays, there was a half-hour break. During the break, most of the people in the audience sat down to eat some food that they had brought, both in the auditorium and in the hall in front of it. I was rather surprised by this. First, because the theater staff seemed to be ok with people eating in the auditorium, and second because the theater wasn't trying to cash in by selling any food or drinks themselves.

So, what is Bunraku all about? It is a puppet theater, so obviously, there are puppets. The puppets are about two thirds the size of a real human, and are operated by three puppeteers each. Now, the puppeteers are not hidden behind the stage or anything, but are on the stage, in full view of the audience. To imply that they should be treated as invisible, the puppeteers are dressed in black, and also wear a black hood. However, in scenes considered important, the main puppeteer for each puppet may wear a traditional dress and no hood. Of the five scenes I saw during the evening, it seems that four were deemed important enough to feature hood-less puppeteers. Apparently, the non-hooded puppeteers must keep a straight face and show no emotion at all, to contrast the extreme emotions shown by the puppets (as I read in a leaflet explaining the mysteries of Bunraku to foreigners).

The puppets and puppeteers are only responsible for the visual stuff happening in a scene. They do not speak or sing or anything. The acoustic stuff is handled by two additional people. They sit on an additional stage to the right of the main stage. They, too, are in full view of the audience. One of them is the narrator, who not only explains the scene and recounts the story, but also speaks for the different characters on stage with different voices, and also has to represent the various emotions the characters feel. The other one is the Shamisen player (a Shamisen is a little like a three-stringed guitar or banjo), who adds to the narrative and the presented emotions with his playing.

The two plays I saw were "Musume Kagekiyo Yashima nikki" (Kagekiyo and His Daughter) and "Chikagoro kawara no tatehiki" (Oshun and Dembei). The theater website has a short summary for each play. The first play consisted of two, and the second of three scenes. Each scene is enacted by a different narrator and shamisen player, and sometimes also different puppets for the main characters.

All in all, the show was a very fascinating experience, and very different from European theater. The reason I understood anything at all about what was going on, was the excellent English audio commentary/translation that was available via earphone.

But I fear that words alone can be no adequate description of Bunraku. So have a look for yourself if you like: several on-line video clips of a Bunraku performance are available here, but if you only want to watch one of them, I think you should choose this one (about three and a half minutes, it features two puppets with hood-less puppeteers, and the narrator and Shamisen player can be heard, although they are not shown in the video).

One final note: It took me more than one hour to get from my apartment to the theater by train and subway (it seems Osaka is really quite big). Here is the track, if you're interested.