Japan Society Oct. 8, 2024 Digital Program

National Bunraku Theater

Tue. Oct. 8, 2024 7:30p.m.

MyTix View Program
Wed. Oct. 9, 2024 7:30p.m.

View Program

National Theatre's *The Love Suicides at Sonezaki*. Photo by Tomoko Ogawa

Terrace Theater

Runtime

1 HOUR AND 20 MINUTES
Presenting Sponsor
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Program

The Fire Watchtower

Scene from Date Musume Koi no Higanoko (Oshichi, the Greengrocer’s Daughter)

Tayu/Chanters:

Toyotake Todayu

Toyotake Yoshihodayu

Toyotake Sakijudayu

Shamisen:

Tsuruzawa Seishiro

Tsuruzawa Kantaro

Tsuruzawa Seiin

Puppeteer (Oshichi):

Main Puppeteer:
Kiritake Monyoshi (Oct. 8)
Yoshida Minotaro (Oct. 9)

Left Puppeteer:
Yoshida Minotaro (Oct. 8)
Kiritake Monyoshi (Oct. 9)

Foot Puppeteer:
Toyomatsu Seinosuke (Oct. 8 & Oct. 9)

Get to Know Bunraku Puppet Manipulation

Demonstration:

Yoshida Minotaro (Oct. 8)

Kiritake Monyoshi (Oct. 9)

Intermission

The Forest by the Tenjin Shrine

Scene from Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki)

Tayu/Chanters:

Toyotake Todayu (Ohatsu)

Toyotake Yoshihodayu (Tokubei)

Toyotake Sakijudayu

Shamisen:

Tsuruzawa Seishiro

Tsuruzawa Kantaro

Tsuruzawa Seiin

Puppeteer (Tokubei):

Main Puppeteer: Yoshida Tamasuke

Left Puppeteer: Kiritake Monyoshi

Foot Puppeteer: Yoshida Tamanobu

Puppeteer (Ohatsu):

Main Puppeteer: Yoshida Minoshiro

Left Puppeteer: Yoshida Minotaro

Foot Puppeteer: Toyomatsu Seinosuke

Script and Composition: Matsunosuke Nozawa

Choreography: Ryunosuke Sawamura

Scenery Supervision: Kiritake Kanjuro

Art Director: Kazuo Oga

Scenery Production: Shimpei Yamada (Representative of Aozora, Ltd.)

Scenery Co-Production: Dehogallery, Inc.

Stagehands/ Assistants:

Kiritake Kansuke

Yoshida Tamanobu

Yoshida Tamayuki

Toyomatsu Seinosuke

Production: National Theatre (Japan Arts Council)

Technical Support: KANSAI BUTAI Co. Ltd., Aozora, Ltd.

Patrons are requested to silence cell phones and other electronic devices during performances.

The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in this venue.
Program order and artists are subject to change.

Acknowledgements

The U.S. tour of National Bunraku Theater is produced by Japan Society under partnership with Japan Arts Council, which is supported, in part, by Japan Cultural Expo 2.0, All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., Kikkoman Corporation and Suntory Holdings Limited. Support for Japan Society’s organization of this U.S. tour is provided by the John and Miyoko Davey Foundation and Takenaka Corporation.

President’s Note

Message from the President of Japan Arts Council

Thank you very much for coming to see the National Theatre's bunraku theater production, brought to the U.S. by Japan Arts Council for the first time. The Council is an umbrella organization that manages Japan’s national theaters, including the National Theatre in Tokyo and the National Bunraku Theatre in Osaka. At each of these theaters, we are proud to offer the public a variety of traditional Japanese performing arts programs, including bunraku theater.

Ningyo joruri bunraku is one of the representative forms of Japanese traditional performing arts, and is designated as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. Tayu (or, chanters) and shamisen players perform music with an exquisite yet dynamic quality, while three puppeteers manipulate one puppet with their highly advanced techniques to express the subtle changes in the characters' emotions.

Today’s performance includes scenes from two select masterpieces of classic bunraku repertoire: The Tenjin no Mori ( The Forest by the Tenjin Shrine ) scene from Sonezaki Shinju ( The Love Suicides at Sonezaki ) and the Hinomi Yagura ( The Fire Watchtower ) scene from Date Musume Koi no Higanoko ( Oshichi, the Greengrocer’s Daughter ) . In The Love Suicides at Sonezaki , beautiful, animated scenery created by OGA Kazuo, who has worked on the background art of many world-renowned anime masterpieces such as Princess Mononoke and In This Corner of the World , will be projected onto the stage. Please enjoy this production that integrates two genres of Japan's proud creativity: bunraku and anime.

This performance is also part of the activities of the Japan Cultural Expo, aiming to spread the appeal of Japan’s arts and culture to people around the world. We hope that you are fascinated by Japanese culture through today's experience and motivated to visit Japan, and that you will appreciate the entire scope of the art of bunraku in its home country.

Finally, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to Japan Society and those who provided their tremendous efforts in making this performance possible.

Sincerely,

President Hasegawa Signature.jpg

HASEGAWA Mariko

President

Japan Arts Council

National Theatre

Meet the Artists

Program Notes

Date Musume Koi no Higanoko **(Oshichi, the Greengrocer's Daughter)**

This play, co-written by Sensuke Suga and Wakichi Matsuda in 1773, drew inspiration from an actual incident in 1683, in which a girl who fell in love with a temple page committed arson to see him again and was sentenced to death.

Play Synopsis : Oshichi, the daughter of a vegetable store owner in Edo, falls in love with a temple pageboy named Kichisaburo. The pageboy’s master was forced to commit hara-kiri (or, ritual suicide) for losing a treasured sword, leaving Kichisaburo responsible for locating the item or else following his master to the grave. Oshichi finds out that her unwanted fiancé Buhei has stolen the sword.

In tonight’s climactic The Fire Watchtower scene, knowing that false fire alarms are an act punishable by death, Oshichi climbs the watchtower and beats the fire drum in a desperate attempt to open the city gates to inform her lover of the sword’s whereabouts.

Sonezaki Shinju **( The Love Suicides at Sonezaki )**

Sonezaki Shinju premiered at the Takemotoza Theater in Osaka in 1703. It was written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653 – 1725), who is regarded as one of Japan's greatest dramatists. The story was adapted from an actual double suicide incident that took place only a month before the premiere. Because of its enormous success, not only did the theme of "double suicide" turn out to be a popular theme for both puppet and kabuki theaters, but suicide attempts became popular among lovers and rapidly grew to become a social problem – so much so that the work was temporarily banned by the Shogunate government in 1722. In addition to its status as one of the most popular works of bunraku, Sonezaki Shinju is significant as it established a new genre of plays, called sewa-mono, depicting the contemporary life of commoners, in contrast to the pre-existing jidai-mono genre that recounts historical stories.

Play Synopsis : Tokubei, a clerk at a soy sauce shop in Osaka, falls in love with the courtesan Ohatsu. Tokubei hopes to buy Ohatsu her freedom, but his uncle and employer, who desires for Tokubei to marry his wife’s niece, forces Tokubei’s stepmother to accept a dowry for an arranged marriage on Tokubei’s behalf. When Tokubei rejects the marriage, he is disowned and ordered to pay the dowry back. Although he is able to get the money back from his stepmother, he lends the entire sum to his friend Kuheiji at his friend's begging under a loan agreement saying that the full amount is due in a few days. When Tokubei requests the now-overdue loan, Kuheiji denies the existence of any such debt and publicly humiliates Tokubei as a liar. With no hope of freeing Ohatsu and having been falsely disgraced as a swindler, Tokubei conveys to Ohatsu his determination that there is no means of relief from their torment other than ending their lives together.

In tonight’s featured culminating scene, The Forest by the Tenjin Shrine, the couple, in the hopes of being reunited in the afterlife, flees into the woods in Sonezaki to make their move…

If you are having suicidal thoughts, please speak with the national suicide hotline or a mental health professional immediately, and do not try to manage these feelings on your own.

Free and confidential support is available at the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline:

About Bunraku

The Origin and Evolution of Bunraku

The word "Bunraku" is conveniently used to refer collectively to Japanese traditional puppet theater, especially for productions that incorporate the three-person puppet manipulation technique that Bunraku is most known for. However, precisely speaking, "Bunraku" is a proper noun traced back to the name of a company/theater established in Osaka by an impresario and joruri * chanter (or, tayu ), Uemura Bunraku-ken, at the turn of the 19th century. This theater company flourished until the days led by Bunraku-ken III; however, after the early 20 ^thcentury, the operation of the Bunraku theater experienced a period of financial difficulty and waning support amidst rapid societal changes. Despite this, the theater found ways to survive even through WWII, and maintained its status as a genre of high cultural import, having the honor of Japan’s Emperor himself in attendance at a Bunraku theater performance in 1947. In 1955, the Japanese government designated Bunraku as an Important Intangible Cultural Asset. In 1972, the National Theatre (established in Tokyo in 1966) launched a program to train professional Bunraku performers in each of the three critical Bunraku roles: tayu, shamisen accompanists, and puppeteers. In 1984, The National Bunraku Theatre opened in Osaka, the city where it originated, as a successor to the original Bunraku theater. In 2008, UNESCO designated Bunraku as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a status shared with noh and kabuki.

Joruri * and Puppet Theater

Bunraku performance is based on joruri, a stylized narrative chanting form that is thought to have begun in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the practice of three-stringed shamisen instruments accompanying the chanter became standardized, making great strides for joruri both musically and literarily. Ningyo (or, puppet) theater, meanwhile, has a much longer history likely starting in Japan’s ancient Heian period (794–1185) or even earlier. It is said that the first use of joruri in ningyo theater was in the late 16th century.

Combining the two elements of puppetry and joruri, a literary term called ningyo joruri, became a sophisticated form of theatrical performance. Its popularity was attributed to two geniuses in their respective crafts: the narrative chanter Takemoto Gidayu (1651-1714), who ran the Takemoto-za Theater in Osaka, and the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). Their abundant collaborations gave birth to the megahit Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki), which premiered in 1703 and comprises one of tonight's featured scenes.

Chanter ( tayu ) and Shamisen

The tayu 's job is to provide a narrative, describe scenes, and convey the lines and emotions of each character in the play. Often, a tayu must use different tones and adjust the timbral quality of their voice to distinguish between different characters. Shamisen accompaniment enhances each emotion and mood and provides dramatic emphasis. They always sit in a kneeling position on the stage left, on a platform built as their exclusive performing space.

Bunraku Puppetry

Although Bunraku is famous for its three-person manipulation, this unique technique was invented about 70 years before Umemura Bunraku-ken started his puppet theater. The innovation is said to have first appeared in 1734 at Takemoto-za Theater in a scene from Ashiya Doman Ouchikagami. However, it took some time to further develop and improve this skill/training-demanding operation, and, by the late 18th century, the technique was formalized into the style Bunraku puppeteers use today.

Three puppeteers work in tandem to manipulate a single puppet. The lead puppeteer, called omo-zukai (or, main operator), operates the puppet's head and the right arm; a second puppeteer, called hidari-zukai (or, left operator), operates the left arm; and a third puppeteer, called ashi-zukai (or, foot operator), operates the legs. They must carefully coordinate their movements to ensure that the puppet’s gestures and attitudes appear realistic.

Bunraku puppets are made of a head (kashira), which is carefully handcrafted by designated master puppet makers, along with a trunk and limbs. The lead puppeteer selects which head to use for the role. The hair of each puppet is made and maintained by a wigmaker specifically trained to care for Bunraku puppets. After the wig is dressed, the costume is sewn onto the frame of the puppet, and the limbs are attached, the head is finally inserted into the shoulder piece of the body. Female puppets have no legs, as the movement of the legs is forged by moving the hem of the kimono.

Visit National Theatre’s “Invitation to Bunraku” website for more information:

Staff

Kennedy Center Dance Programming Staff

Director, Dance Programming

Jane Raleigh
Assistant Manager, Dance Programming

Malik Burnett
Assistant Manager, Dance Programming

Mallory Miller
Intern, Dance Programming

Tierney Solmo
Senior Press Representative, Non-Classical

Brittany Laeger
Public Relations Coordinator, Non-Classical

Miles Newton
Vice President, Marketing

Derek Johnson
Manager, Marketing

Chenay Newton

Kennedy Center Executive Leadership

President, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing ArtsDeborah F. Rutter

Vice President, Public RelationsEileen Andrews

Chief Information Officer Ralph Bellandi

Interim Vice President of Human Resources LaTa'sha M. Bowens

Senior Vice President, MarketingKimberly J. Cooper

Executive Director, National Symphony OrchestraJean Davidson

Senior Vice President, Artistic PlanningMonica Holt

Chief Financial OfficerStacey Johnson

Vice President, EducationJordan LaSalle

Vice President, Government Relations and ProtocolLaurie McKay

Senior Vice President, DevelopmentLeslie Miller

General Director, Washington National OperaTimothy O’Leary

Vice President, FacilitiesMatt Floca

Executive Vice President & General CounselAsh Zachariah

Staff for the Terrace Theater

Theater Manager Xiomara Mercado*

Head Usher Randy Howes

Production Manager Rich Ching

Master Technicians Dustin Dunsmore and Susan Kelleher

Box Office Treasurer Ron Payne

*Represented by ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.

Steinway Piano Gallery is the exclusive area representative of Steinway & Sons and Boston pianos, the official pianos of the Kennedy Center.

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The box office at the Kennedy Center is represented by I.A.T.S.E, Local #868.

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The technicians at the Kennedy Center are represented by Local #22, Local #772, and Local #798 I.A.T.S.E., AFL-CIO-CLC, the professional union of theatrical technicians.