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Puppetry Networks of the Island of Naoshima

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2024

JYANA S. BROWNE
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Abstract

The Naoshima Onna Bunraku, an all-female bunraku troupe on the island of Naoshima in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, has revitalized a puppetry tradition dating back to the Edo period (1603–1868). This article examines how the Naoshima Onna Bunraku negotiates the pull of its local, community-oriented past and its global present as a folk performing art on an island now known for art tourism as the site of the Setouchi Triennale. I trace Naoshima's puppetry networks from the Seto Inland Sea that nurtured their ancestors to new networks that extend globally to reveal the dynamic flows that animate and sustain puppetry on Naoshima.

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Theatre Research International , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , July 2024 , pp. 188 - 202
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Federation for Theatre Research

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References

Notes

1 Sambuichi, Hiroshi, Sambuichi and the Seto Inland Sea (Tokyo: Toto Publishing, 2016), p. 183Google Scholar.

2 Kwon, Miwon, ‘A Position of Elsewhere: Lessons from Naoshima’, in Foundation, Fukutake, ed., Naoshima: Nature, Art, Architecture (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010), pp. 147–67, here p. 151Google Scholar.

3 ‘52 Places to Go in 2019’, New York Times, 26 January 2019, A21; and Sebastian Monk, ‘On an Art Scavenger Hunt in Japan's Seto Inland Sea’, New York Times, 12 November 2019, TR6.

4 See Hiroyuki, Hashimoto, ‘Between Preservation and Tourism: Folk Performing Arts in Contemporary Japan’, Asian Folklore Studies, 62, 2 (2003), pp. 225–36Google Scholar; Nelson, Christopher T., ‘Against the Flow of Time: The Politics of Repetition in Postwar Japan’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 27, 4 (December 2015), pp. 424–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thronbury, Barbara E., ‘From Festival Setting to Center Stage: Preserving Japan's Folk Performing Arts’, Asian Theatre Journal, 10, 2 (Autumn 1993), pp. 163–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Thornbury, Barbara E., ‘Cultural Properties Protection Law and Japan's Folk Performing Arts’, Asian Folklore Studies, 53, 2 (1994), pp. 211–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Robertson, Jennifer, ‘Furusato Japan: The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 1, 4 (Summer 1998), pp. 494–518, here p. 508CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Hiroyuki, Hashimoto, trans. Butel, Jean-Michel, ‘Réinventer les arts performatifs folklorique: L'impact des politiques publiques sur les spectacles folkloriques’, Nouveau regards sur les arts de la scène japonais II, 21 (2014), pp. 33–54Google Scholar, here p. 50.

8 Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, ‘Liquid Area Studies: Northeast Asia in Motion as Viewed from Mount Geumgang’, Positions: Asia Critique, 27, 1 (February 2019), pp. 209–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ibid., p. 216.

10 Yonemoto, Marcia, ‘Maps and Metaphors of the “Small Eastern Sea” in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868)’, Geographical Review, 89, 2 (1999), pp. 169–87, here p. 170Google Scholar.

11 See Laura Nenzi, Excursions in Identity: Travel and the Intersections of Place, Gender, and Status in Edo Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008); Jilly Traganou, The Tōkaidō Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004); and Constantine Vaporis, Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008).

12 The Osaka puppetry lineage died out in the nineteenth century. Then in 1872, a puppeteer from Awaji, Masai Kahei (1737–1819), whose stage name was Bunraku-ken, founded the Bunraku Theatre in Osaka. This theatre reignited puppetry in Osaka. Donald Keene, Bunraku: The Art of the Japanese Puppet Theatre (Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1965), p. 33. Thus, while initially separate traditions, the form of puppetry performed in Osaka now stems from Seto Inland Sea-based practices, although some differences remain between the two traditions. These are described in Jane Marie Law, Puppets of Nostalgia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

13 Tsunoda Ichirō, ‘Jōruri ayatsuri sanninzukai no sōshi to fukyū ni tsuite’, Bungakuin zasshi, 85, 11 (1984), pp. 163–75.

14 Law, Puppets of Nostalgia, pp. 17–18.

15 For a full treatment of Awaji's puppetry tradition see Law, Puppets of Nostalgia.

16 Naoshimachōshi hensan iikai, Naoshimachōshi (Okayama: Okayama insatsu kabushikigaisha, 1990), pp. 158–60.

17 Ibid., p. 158.

18 Ibid., p. 156.

19 Barbara E. Thornbury, ‘Behind the Mask: Community and Performance in Japan's Folk Performing Arts’, Asian Theatre Journal, 12, 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 143–63, here p. 147.

20 Awa no Bunka Kenkyūkai, A Bilingual Introduction to the Puppet Theatre of Tokushima (Tokushima: Awa no Bunka Kenkyūkai, 1995), pp. vi–vii.

21 John M. Elzey, ‘Awa Ningyō Jōruri: Provincial Puppet Theatre’, Asian Theatre Journal, 4, 1 (Spring 1987), pp. 115–21, here pp. 119–20.

22 Barbara E. Thonbury, Folk Performing Arts: Traditional Culture in Contemporary Japan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 45.

23 Ibid., p. 7.

24 Naoshimachōshi hensan iikai, Naoshimachōshi, p. 158.

25 Ibid., pp. 159–60.

26 These figures represent the troupe's composition as of April 2023. When I visited in the summer of 2019, there were ten puppeteers, two chanters and three shamisen players.

27 Amparo Adelina Umali II, ‘Performance Traditions in Japan and the Philippines: The Role of the Academe and LGU in Preserving and Transmitting Cultural Heritage’, Suki: The Official Newsletter of Japan Foundation Manila, 16, 3 (February 2013) pp. 11–13, here p. 13.

28 Eimi Tagore-Erwin, ‘Contemporary Japanese Art: Between Globalization and Localization’, Arts and the Market, 8, 2 (2018), pp. 137–51, here p. 148.

29 Ingrid K. Williams, ‘Japanese Island as Unlikely Arts Installation’, New York Times, 26 August 2011, TR8.

30 Kwon, ‘A Position of Elsewhere’, p. 155.

31 Junko Kondo, ‘Revitalization of a Community: Site-Specific Art and Art Festivals. A Case Study of Art Site Naoshima’, MA thesis, University of Jyväskylä, 2012, p. 110.

32 Williams, ‘Japanese Island as Unlikely Arts Installation’.

33 Kondo, ‘Revitalization of a Community’, p. 50.

34 Law, Puppets of Nostalgia, p. 134.

35 Hiroshi Sambuichi, Sambuichi and the Seto Inland Sea (Tokyo: Toto Publishing, 2016), p. 224.

36 Ozaki Ayumi, ‘Sensaina ningyōdzukai ni miryō Naoshima de onna bunraku no kōen’, Asahi Shinbun, 19 May 2019, p. 23.

37 Akihiro Odanaka, ‘English Reader's Guide to Kōzō Yamaji's Paper: The Relationship between Japanese Folk Performing Arts and Theaters’, English Journal of Japanese Society for Theatre Research, 2, 1 (2021), pp. 3–9, here p. 3.

38 Andō Tadao's structures on Naoshima are considered representative of the ‘architecture of stillness’. Werner Blaser, ‘Tadao Ando Architect & Associates: Chichu Art Museum, Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan’, in Suzanne Grueb and Thierry Grueb, eds., Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts, Projects, Buildings (Munich: Prestel, 2006), pp. 26–31, here p. 26.

39 Morris-Suzuki, ‘Liquid Area Studies’, p. 217.

40 Ken Aoo, ‘The Role of Civil Society Sector in the Development of Art-Driven Regional Social Innovation: The Case of Benesse Art Site Naoshima and Art Setouchi’, Sustainability 2021, 13 (2021), pp. 1–14, here p. 4.

41 Ibid., p. 6.

42 Umali, ‘Performance Traditions in Japan and the Philippines’, p. 11.

43 Rina Jimenez-David, ‘Artistry and Memory’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11 February 2013.

44 Kwon, ‘A Position of Elsewhere’, p. 153 (emphasis in the original).

45 Barbara C. Adachi and Joel Sackett, Backstage at Bunraku: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Japan's Traditional Puppet Theatre (New York: Weatherhill, 1985), p. 57.

46 ‘Women Breathe Life into Bunraku Puppets’, Art Setouchi, 26 October 2018, at https://setouchi-artfest.jp/en/blog/detail140.html (accessed 4 May 2023).

47 Private email correspondence with Ōkishi Noritaka, 16 May 2023.

48 For examples, see Caroline Chia, ‘“Negotiation” between a Religious Art Form and the Secular State: Chinese Puppet Theater in Singapore and the Case Study of Sin Hoe Ping’, Asian Ethnology, 76, 1 (2017), pp. 117–44; Matthew Isaac Cohen, ‘Global Modernities and Post-traditional Shadow Puppetry in Contemporary Southeast Asia’, Third Text, 30, 3–4 (2016), pp. 188–206; and Diana Looser, ‘Spiral Time: Re-imaging Pacific History in Michel Tuffery's First Contact Multimedia Projection Artwork’, Performance Research, 19, 3 (2014), pp. 37–42.

49 Morris-Suzuki, ‘Liquid Area Studies’, p. 216.