How do these puppets float so gracefully on an otherwise seemingly empty stage? Suspension of disbelief?
Without visible props or sets, your imagination fills in the world that the majestical Bunraku traditional Japanese puppets inhabit.
Three Bunraku artists perform with a puppet wearing a traditional Japanese kimono. Photo courtesy Martin Wong.
Invited to USC by Dr. Rebecca Corbett, USC’s Japanese Studies librarian, and other faculty as part of the Visions and Voices series in early January, puppet master, Kanroku, and his untraditional troupe, Mokugu-sha, inspired revisionist metaphors about stage magic.
Two Bunraku puppets housed at USC, Oshichi (left) and Kumagai (right). Photo courtesy Rebecca Corbett
Corbett had good reason to expect nothing less than something radical from his two performances.
She says the plan to bring Bunraku to USC was inspired, in part, by the puppets looking over her shoulder at her desk in Doheny Library, where she agreed to meet with Ampersand.
“Let’s try to bring them to life,’” the librarian recalls, adding that Kanroku was the person for the job, because, “he feels that to keep Bunraku alive, you need to allow women and foreigners to participate.”
Specifically, Corbett and several East Asian studies and dramatic arts faculty wanted answers to questions about two puppets housed in USC’s collection. Where did they come from? Had they ever been used in performance?
Kanroku repairs USC’s Kumagai puppet before using it for the first time in performance. Photo courtesy Rebecca Corbett
Kanroku, who is based in Osaka, flew in to scrutinize USC’s puppets, and determined that the samurai puppet, or Kumagai, had never been used. He effectively told Corbett, “this puppet has not been awakened yet. He doesn’t really exist.”
So, Corbett and the USC crew proposed that he give Kumagai a wake-up call by way of an improvised piece designed especially for USC’s Visions & Voices.
Summoning his artistic peers and friends — which for USC’s remarkable performances on January 11 and 12 at Joyce J. Cammilleri Hall, included women, a no-no in traditional Bunraku — Kanroku anchored his new drama on live musical accompaniment by two Native American musicians.
Sage Romero and his cousin, Robert Piper Jr., performed using voice, flute, ocarina, hand drums and clapper sticks, while Kanroku improvised the elaborate Bunraku choreography.
Romero, a member of the Paiute and Taos Pueblo tribes, said that collaborating with Kanroku had exceptional significance for him because of the parallel histories of Native Americans and Japanese-Americans. He compared the placement of Native Americans onto reservations with the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during WWII.
“We have a lot of similarities in our spiritual beliefs which carry over into our cultural beliefs and music as well,” Romero said.
Kanroku added, in a January 12 talk-back, that he wanted to open the Bunraku form to include so-called outsiders, such as Romero and female puppeteers, and also extend the performance beyond the stage.
The puppets engagde with a captivated audience during Kumagai’s USC performance. Photo courtesy Martin Wong.
Light on their feet with legs slightly bent, each responsible for manipulating a specific puppet appendage, all the puppeteers assisting Kanroku on stage were women. The puppets are about half the size of the average human, and they bend in all the places that most human bodies do.
“When you’re manipulating puppets, you’re first and foremost a puppeteer and you have someone behind you manipulating you as a puppeteer and that person is paying attention to the audience and how they’re feeling,” said Kanroku.
A traditional Bunraku drama can last for hours, and is usually accompanied by music played on an instrument called a shamisen.
The lead puppeteer manipulates the puppet’s right hand and reaches through a slit in the back of the puppet’s costume to grip the puppet’s upper spine and control the movement of its torso.
A second puppeteer manipulates the puppet’s legs to emulate walking, sitting, kneeling or lying down, and sometimes stomps his or her feet for percussive emphasis.
A third controls the puppet’s left hand and any props that the puppet might need to pick up or manipulate on that side.
The puppet master (in this case, Kanroku) communicates with the other
Kanroku’s troupe, composed largely of women, performs a complex piece using two Bunraku puppets and props. Photo courtesy Martin Wong.
puppeteers through non-verbal cues, indicating where the puppeteers should move their own bodies and how they should manipulate the puppet.
At USC, Kanroku utilized the theater’s physical infrastructure to tell the narrative by breaking the fourth wall, another departure from Bunraku tradition. The puppet, Oshichi, scaled the hand railing in the theater’s main aisle, as if it was the tower she was climbing to save her lover.
Karoku also brought the puppets into the audience where they greeted and even embraced audience members, during tender moments in several of the stories.
“When you use puppets you can bring expression to the stage that’s usually embarrassing as a human,” he said.
Kanroku’s artistic intent was palpable in this evocative Bunraku performance, not soon to be forgotten.