Bunraku

A bunraku performance has three groups of artists, each a lifelong specialisation. The tayū narrates the entire play, voicing every character and the narration, from a platform to the side of the stage, with a single shamisen player beside him. The shamisen player uses a heavy, thick-necked instrument (futozao) to create mood, rhythm and even sound effects.

The main puppets are operated by three puppeteers. The chief puppeteer (omozukai) moves the head and right arm, the second (hidarizukai) the left arm, and the third (ashizukai) the feet, or, for female characters who wear long kimono, the movement of the hem. Traditionally a puppeteer spent around ten years on the feet and another ten on the left arm before becoming a chief puppeteer. The assistants wear black hoods; senior chief puppeteers often perform with their faces visible, in formal dress.

Bunraku puppets are large, often more than a metre tall, and have a carved wooden head (kashira), a shoulder board from which the costume hangs, and hands and feet attached by strings and rods. Heads are type-cast: a stock of standard heads represents young heroes, old men, villains, young women and so on, and each is repainted and given a new wig for a new production. Some heads have mechanisms to move the eyes, eyebrows or mouth, and a few transform in an instant from a beautiful woman into a demon.

Three-person manipulation was introduced in 1734 and allowed a subtlety of gesture unmatched in puppetry elsewhere: a puppet can weep, sew or play an instrument, and its breathing is visible.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon wrote both historical plays (jidaimono) and domestic plays (sewamono). His Sonezaki Shinjū of 1703, based on a real double suicide of a clerk and a courtesan in Osaka, created the genre of love-suicide plays. In the 1740s a team of playwrights produced three works regarded as the masterpieces of the repertoire, all later adapted for kabuki.

The National Bunraku Theatre in Osaka's Nipponbashi district, opened in 1984, is the home of the professional bunraku company, with several runs a year and English audio guides. The company also performs regularly in Tokyo and tours other cities.

Regional puppet theatre traditions related to bunraku survive in many places. The island of Awaji, regarded as a cradle of Japanese puppetry, has its own puppet theatre, and in Tokushima Prefecture Awa puppet theatre is performed on outdoor rural stages at shrines.