Bunraku--Traditional Puppet Plays

Well, it’s exactly a month before I leave Japan and before I go, I want to cram as much Japanese culture as I can into my life. That’s why I went to bunraku today.

Bunraku is the traditional Japanese puppet play. However, these are not for children!  The stories are complex, filled with meaning, and really, really bloody. Having always wanted to see bunraku after attending a lecture with Professor Charo D’Etcheverry of UW-Madison that had movie clips, I finally saw it today.

 

It was excellent. First we were treated to a class-only introduction to bunraku by the head of the National Bunraku Theater and his wife who translated. Since bunraku is a man-only world, she really stressed that she was there in a non-official capacity. But oh, it was fun. The headman showed us how the puppets work and gave demonstrations. Each of the “main character” puppets requires three people to operate it! The main guy does the head and right arm, and then there’s a guy for the left arm and a guy for the feet! Though, to be fair, the women dolls don’t really have feet unless they’re part of the story. Be sure to check out the videos I shot during the explanation--they're really cool!

Also the heads are amazing, with several different knobs that you can push to make the head bob up and down, make the eyes turn left/right/crossed, raise the eyebrows, narrow the eyebrows, and even move the mouth! Some special women puppets have a small nail sticking out of their mouth so that when they weep, they can hold a kimono sleeve to their face (a typical sign of crying dating to around the Heian Era (794-1185).

Crying into her sleeve

Biting her sleeve in torment

I'm making her wave at you!

The bunraku play itself was pretty epic. There were two plays—both part of longer plays. The first one was about a samurai who had disgraced himself and was now living with his loyal retainers. In the way of all plays like this there were swords, there was death, there was mistaken identity, and, of course, there was the selling of a woman into a brothel (I swear, it’s much better than this, but it’s late and I’m doing this for the shock value).

The next play really took my breath away. It was the story of a merchant daughter living in the court who discovered a plot against her lord by her arch enemy who beat her with a dirty shoe (which is kinda like throwing someone in manure and ordering them to eat it, by the standards of that time). In order to prove that she is not making it up, she kills herself and then her maid (of samurai blood) goes mad and murders the arch enemy and proves to the lord that treachery is among his men (and women).

Watching the puppets is a mesmerizing experience—once you get into the flow of it, you ignore the people playing the puppets and the puppets become people themselves. According to the master, it takes around 40 years to master the playing of a puppet. AMAZING. The sheer artistry of the puppets awes me. On stage, the puppets were so skillfully manipulated to show various emotions and they MOVED LIKE HUMANS. If I wasn’t so in awe, it would be eerie.

One of the main characters, the maid who avenges her mistress, was so realistic I wept when she wept, grew angry when she did and generally fell in love with all of her kimono which matched so well. My favorite part was when she made tea—it really looked as if she was a person and not a doll, moved by men.  And of course there was the dialogue “Oh, but better than kabuki, I love bunraku. It’s the best”—nothing like self promotion to help you do better!

Another thing about this play is the fact that all of its characters, heroes and villains are women. And, of them, most of them are servants to the lord/lady. It is no coincidence that this is put on during spring, during the time that most servants would have time off during the Edo Period when this was super popular. And the fact that the main heroine was a woman of merchant blood; no use hiding that this was also playing to the powerful-growing merchant mass during the Edo Period. I really enjoyed this play.

After the play was over (4 ½ hours), we got the chance to go backstage! It was wonderful to see all the scenery and man, oh man, what a nice stage it was. There was so much space for scenery and stuff and the props! Oh, they were gorgeous!

The special shoes worn by the head doll players that elevate them slightly

The Fires of Mount Hiei

Okay, so Mount Hiei has no fires—but let me tell you, as I walked up it, I felt fire in every single muscle in my body plus my lungs! Yes, that’s right, I climbed a mountain today. It took around three hours to get to the top (due to a couple of friends and I trying to make sure the stragglers didn’t get completely lost) and it was steep, steep, steep!

There were forty of us climbing the mountain

STEEP!

STEEP!

Originally, it was said to be pretty easy, but due to the flow of various people (mostly monks who lived at the temple at the top) basically wore the paths down to this:

The way they helped stop erosion in the paths was pretty interesting, a use of what I’ve seen for hills near roads with the addition of wire and staples, if you can believe it. I can’t wait to get back to the US and check out how paths are saved from erosion there—I wonder if there’s any difference…

So yes, I have been bitten by the hiking bug. Despite my wheezing attempts and running out of water (thanks Sharon for sharing!) along with the beautiful weather of what felt to be 80 degrees Fahrenheit and the blazing sun—I was told that I resembled a “cute tomato”—I had just about the time of my life.  The higher we went up the mountain, the more impressive trees and greenery we saw.

The view from the first cable car landing

I learned to love roots and rocks with all my life. I would have been dead without them! The way up was pretty well worn, but I got some interesting pictures of root systems and moss.

When we stopped for lunch, it was at a wonderful outcropping that showcased the valleys and the nearby Lake Biwa. Not as big as the Great Lakes, Lake Biwa is one of Japan’s big lakes.

Right off in the distance was Lake Biwa--it looked like a piece of the sky!

Then we headed to Enryakuji Temple—the temple of the warrior monks! Located right in between the prefectures of Kyoto and Shiba, this is where the warrior monks (who terrorized towns until Oda Nobunaga razed the entire temple + surrounding foliage to the ground around the 1500s) worked and lived. It was very pretty, if also with some steep architecture.

The main temple was so gorgeous, I couldn’t take pictures. Nothing would have done it justice, plus the monks asked all visitors not to. The hardwood floors were as smooth as silk by the countless feet that had traversed them before me (we had to take off our shoes, you see). Along the outdoor corridors to the main temple, various school children’s calligraphy was displayed—it was beautiful~! Inside the temple, monks were chanting and the scent of incense filled the air. Sitting seiza, I was seized by the urge to leave the darkened inside and revel in the weather and the beauty of the outside temple.

Super steep steps I sprinted up

Lake Biwa again

From the cable car landing

And then I decided that I should walk down the mountain as well. I had cooled off by then and, though tired, thought to make the two hour walk with the teacher. And we started off. We passed a temple where the “marathon monks” train. In fact, they were training as we visited!

This training is extremely brutal, including walking the equivalent of two marathons along really bad mountain paths per day while fasting, not drinking, and not sleeping for nine days. This also includes drawing water from a well and bringing it up a dangerous set of stairs (where one of our number fell and twisted her ankle and had to be brought to the cable car at the top of the mountain) to offer it to the Buddha. If these tasks cannot be completed, the monk will kill himself. This is pretty dangerous—just last year a monk got killed by a wild boar while walking along the path.

The steps they walk up while fasting for the nine days

With this information conveyed, our teacher led us down a treacherous path. It was really narrow and really beautiful. To keep my balance, I mostly kept my camera in my backpack, but I took a few pictures. Unfortunately, the scenery was much of the type that you had to be there to appreciate it, because a camera lens cannot give it its due glory.

I was seriously afraid that I would fall a couple of times!

Fortunately, we did not run into any wild boars.  By this time my legs were wobbling from exhaustion and we finally made it to the train station.

 

It had been a long day: we started around 9:30ish and finished at 5:45~! Oy!