The Art of Bunraku
JACOBS, LAURA
On Dance THE ART OF BUNRAKU BY LAURA JACOBS Anation's approach to its puppet theater is as distinct as its politics or poetry—and therefore lends itself to interesting analysis. How are the...
...They personify the strong arm tactics we would like to employ in our own close-knit communities...
...Small wonder it is a favorite in the East...
...The language, for example, is a maze of subtlety...
...A human hand and mind are actively involved in the stillness, thus it is calculated, more akin to a held breath...
...The puppeteers hold them close to the chest, like royal babies, and sometimes they appear to nestle back...
...This elegant maneuver in particular conveys a haunting implication of Bunraku: Someone, or something, is always watching...
...The shadow puppet, for instance, is upstage from the puppeteer and projected into another dimension...
...Bunraku, the National Puppet Theater of Japan, brought The Love Suicides at Sonezaki to New York's City Center in March and offered its own clues to national character...
...The Bunraku figure itself is an object of intriguing beauty...
...Death together is the couple's only path to lasting union, so they make a beautiful death of it, ennobling themselves in the process...
...Anywhere from one-half to two-thirds human size, they are operated without strings or rods...
...The two characters can be found in nearly all cultures...
...What type of figure is favored...
...Details of form are paramount, and the choices of face, hair and clothes are made even before a play is staged and rehearsals begin...
...One of the puppets' most profound effects is their posture at rest...
...Indeed, "close to the chest" is the operative phrase here: The hidden bond between man and puppet embodies a quality that pervades Japanese culture...
...Although the play takes place in a tea shop, where the patrons are gossiping animatedly, the shadowy figures behind suggest another setting: The humans look like silhouette landscapes or mythological creatures, and the dolls seem to be moving through a cragged underworld, at times carried aloft by their mysterious guides...
...Its operator is positioned overhead, godlike...
...Several Japanese artforms intersect in Bunraku...
...There is also a Haiku-like simplicity of movement—every gesture is backed by a lifetime's observation...
...Ohatsu and Tokubei glide into their suicide from one long swirl, a mesmerizing pas de deux of adagio turns and pauses...
...The Love Suicides demon-sir ates the tyranny of conforming to social mores and traditional notions of beauty...
...Since the Bunraku doll's connection to its handlers remains uninterrupted, the puppet never reaches that point...
...By poking their arms into the intricate folds and openings, the puppeteers can manipulate the doll's limbs, spine, head and eyes...
...The stringed marionette is more typically Western...
...How are the rhythms unique...
...it can take as many as three people to manipulate one figure...
...These puppets at first may come as a shock...
...The Japanese classic is a small-scale tragedy that was initially produced in 1703...
...Hand puppets like Punch and Judy are down to earth and aggressively social...
...When communication along a marionette's strings is halted, the figure simply goes limp...
...A 19-year-old courtesan, Ohatsu, and a hapless young businessman, Tokubei, are in love, but money and caste make marriage impossible...
...No matter how badly the puppet might behave, the existence of an "above" implies a hierarchy of mind, a superego sitting in judgment...
...Clothedin gray with their heads hooded, they actually lend each scene a strange and complex dualism...
...Where are the handlers situated in relation to the stage...
...As with all Japanese arts of arrangement—from the brocaded geometries of the Geisha to the glistening symmetry of the sushi master—the poise of the puppets is deftly erotic...
...While the Salzburg Marionettes, who performed arep-ertory of Mozart operas in New York last December, are amusingly quick and clever, Bunraku's characters labor under heavier emotions...
...Bunraku puppeteers are said to disappear into the performance...
...Unlike puppets that are carved ormoldedfor eternity, it is constantly redefined by its handlers, who reassemble it for each new production...
...Bunraku, in its esthetic decorum, illustrates the compensations...
...At one point, she tosses her robe onto a tree in a leap of passion, an apprehension of death that is more dramatic than the knife thrust that follows...
...It appears to have fallen into a primeval quiet...
...The structure of the puppets' bright robes resembles Origami...
...The connection between puppet and puppeteers is simultaneously fine and cumbersome...
Vol. 75 • March 1992 • No. 4
