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Japanese Political Theater in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context

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New contributions published in English about Edo Period theater have been declining during the last decade, so Japanese Political Theater in the 18th Century is welcome indeed. The basic premise of the book is that during the Edo Period urban commoners were interested in contemporary political issues and events and enjoyed seeing them dramatized in plays. The authors have chosen to address puppet plays written and performed in Osaka – plays which were first performed over a seventy-year span, between 1714 and 1783.

In the preface the authors elucidate the political, economic and social situation in Osaka, and in the introduction they analyze how puppet plays were written, produced, and presented on stage. Following the introduction one chapter each is then devoted to eight major puppet plays of the era. Analysis of the plays is broad-ranging. How the plays present contemporary social and political issues is only one aspect of the introductions to the plays, and in some cases, other themes and concerns overshadow the authors’ interest in the play’s political implications. Japanese Political Theater is useful when read straight through, or in sections if one is seeking information or insights about specific plays.

The plays that receive chapter-length analysis are the following:

• The Battles of Coxinga (Kokusen’ya kassen) Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1714)

• A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dôman (Ashiya dōman ōuchi kagami) Takeda Izumo I (1734)

• Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy (Sugawara denju tenarai kagami) Takeda, Miyoshi, Namiki (1746)

• Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees (Yoshitsune senbon zakura) Takeda, Miyoshi, Namiki (1747)

• The Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Kanadehon chūshingura) Takeda, Miyoshi, Namiki (1748) • The Genji Vanguard in Omi Province (Omi Genji senjin yakata) Chikamatsu Hanji (1769) • Mt. Imo and Mt. Se Precepts for Women (Imoseyama on’na teikin) Chikamatsu Hanji (1771) • Travel Game while Crossing Iga (Igagoe dōchū sugoroku) Chikamatsu Hanji (1783)

Osaka was a unique city during the Edo Period. It was a commercial metropolis, with a population of predominantly commoner merchants and craftsmen. Samurai presence was thin, although most top-tier samurai needed to broker their rice in the city. The book’s focus is on historical plays, most of which fea-ture samurai as their major characters, so it is important to understand that the playwrights’ understanding of samurai, and of Japanese history in these plays, represent the point-of-view of non-samurai looking back at Japan’s past—and sometimes also at the present.

Japanese Political Theater in the 18

th

Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays

in Social Context

By Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai. Routledge: London and New York, 2021.

Reviewed by Laurence Kominz

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Chapter One analyses the dramaturgy of 18th century puppet plays—they were fusions of text,

vocalization, instrumental music, and puppet movements, supplemented by the simple scenery of the stage. Bunraku is first and foremost a vocal narrative art, and the authors analyze narrative structure, and act/scene structure. A phenomenon newly introduced to Western readers is the importance of punning, not only in character naming and to foster entertaining word play in the text, but even inspiring the cre-ation of entire plays. Several examples are elucidated, including Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s The Courtesans in Shimabara and the Battle of Frogs. The primary raison d’etre of the play is the place name “Shimabara.” It is the name of the licensed pleasure district in Kyoto, and separately it is a loca-tion in Western Kyushu where a large-scale Christian insurrecloca-tion took place in 1637. These two places share nothing but their name, but that was enough to inspire Chikamatsu to create an original story inter-mingling denizens of the two separate and unrelated worlds.

In Chapter One the authors explain how in his very first puppet play (The Soga Heir, 1683) Chikamatsu created and organized the juxtapositions of historical and contemporary characters and set-tings that he and later puppet playwrights would continue to use, enabling them to write about both the past and Japan’s contemporary present in the same play.

Chapter Two continues to explore Chikamatsu’s work, focusing on his most successful history play, The Battles of Coxinga. This play is presented in the context of Chikamatsu’s ongoing exploration of contemporary political and social issues in his puppet plays, ranging from the capricious policies of the controversial Shogun Tsunayoshi, to the sensational revenge of the 47 ronin of the Akō domain, to a rash of love suicides among urban commoners.

The Battles of Coxinga was different from Chikamatsu’s other plays in several respects. It was international in focus, and rather than reflecting what was well known locally and had taken place very recently, it fictionalized recent historical events outside of the country that Japanese commoners were largely unaware of. The hero, Coxinga, was a half-Japanese half-Chinese aristocrat who fought for the Ming forces that resisted the Manchu (Ch’ing) conquest of Southeast China. Coxinga established his own kingdom on Taiwan that lasted for several decades, and he even defeated a Dutch army that tried to take the island. In the fictitious plot of Chikamatsu’s play, Coxinga leads his armies to victory on the mainland, and helps to reestablish the Ming Dynasty in the whole country.

This play was part of the formation of a new, widely shared sense of Japan’s place in East Asia. Elite samurai intellectuals like Yamaga Sokō were creating the ethical foundations of Japanese national-ism, and Chikamatsu did the same for commoners by presenting an adventure drama on stage. In Coxinga Chikamatsu showed Japan and Japanese as the equals of China and the Chinese, and like them, the Japanese were superior to the continental barbarians – in this play the Manchus of the Ch’ing Dynasty. Japanese are depicted as virtuous people who uphold honor and loyalty and who understand and avoid shame. Barbarians are inferior to Japanese because they are shameless. Additionally, Japanese are superior and unique because they worship and are aided by Japan’s Shinto gods.

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months was a more typical life-span for a new play), and inducing Chikamatsu to write two sequels. Although they were not as popular or successful as the initial play, Chikamatsu continued to explore dif-ferences in Japanese and Chinese national ethos, and the last play in the trilogy made reference to controversial monetary and trade policies recently instituted in Japan.

The political focus of the next two plays in the list above (Ashiya Dōman and Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy) is on fraught relations between the Imperial Court (the Emperor) and the Shogunate. Both plays are set in Japan’s pre-medieval Heian Era, but have scenes that seem very con-temporary, and both reflect medieval, feudal values. In the Edo Period, the Shogunate dominated the Imperial court and there was little room for pushback by the Emperor (until the 1850s), but occasional friction did occur. Ashiya Doman hints at conflict over the control of calendrical policy. The play’s plot centers on a succession dispute among court astrologers—magicians who are responsible for divination and calendrical matters. This is not the central theme or appeal of the play, however. The hallmark of this play is the love of Kuzunoha, a fox in human guise, for her beloved husband—the astrologer Abe Yasuna—and for her child.

Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy is by the three-author team (Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shôraku, Namiki Senryû) that epitomize the “Golden Age of Puppet Theater,” when bunraku eclipsed the popularity of kabuki in the Kansai, and the only successful kabuki plays were spinoffs of bunraku masterpieces. Sugawara centers on a disputed Imperial succession and suggested a recent actual dispute in which a female Emperor briefly acceded to the throne. The titular character in the play, Sugawara Michizane, became the Shinto deity Tenjin-san, and in the Edo Period as well as today Tenjin is one of the most fervently and frequently worshipped gods throughout the country.

The story of Michizane’s life was known to all Japanese. He was a renowned scholar and poet, and tutor to the Emperor. In 901 he was unjustly accused of aspiring to usurp the throne, and was banished to Kyūshu by the evil and conspiratorial Fujiwara Shihei (Tokihira). Before Michizane died in exile a mira-cle occurred—his beloved plum tree in Kyoto uprooted itself and flew all the way to Kyushu to be with its master. After his death in 903 storms, floods and thunderbolts beset the Capital, damaging the Imperial Palace and Shihei’s compound. The astrologers concluded that Michizane’s spirit was raging in righteous revenge. To calm his spirit, Michizane was posthumously pardoned, promoted, and deified, becoming Tenjin-san, the god of scholarship.

The playwrights retold the well-known story, and added three new fictional characters, young and handsome samurai retainers with names based on three trees in a famous poem by Michizane: plum, cherry, and pine. Each retainer’s character and fate were based on a few words associated with his tree in the poem. The relationships of the three samurai to their three masters—Michizane (Plum), an Imperial Prince (Cherry), Shihei (Pine)—are entirely feudal in nature, reflecting lord-vassal bonds of the medieval period.

The authors of Japanese Political Theatre make the point that in this play Michizane is a surrogate for the Emperor himself. It reflects what Japanese commoners thought about the Emperor during the Edo Period: he was virtuous and aloof from hurly-burly political strife, but likely to be dominated by

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conniv-ing rulconniv-ing elites.

To me the most surprising assertion in this chapter is a reinterpretation of the most famous line in the play, spoken by Matsuōmaru (Pine) when he is forced to choose righteousness over loyal service to his evil lord, and redeem his honor by killing his own young son. Matsuōmaru says, “Miserable is the task of lowly servants” (p. 96). Every previous interpretation has seen this as a critique of the cruelty of the samurai’s obligatory uncritical service to his lord, or service to honor, even if it means sacrificing the life of an innocent child. The authors of Japanese Political Theater write, however, that “lowly people hope that their insignificant acts are reflected on the mirror of their sovereign.” (p. 96). It is hard to understand what this really means, but I think that this interpretation overstates the role of the Emperor-Sugawara figure in the play. The inhumanity of feudalistic fealty is another central theme in the play, and it is embodied in the relationships between the three triplets and their disparate masters.

Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees (1747) doesn’t refer to a contemporary political event. Rather, it is an exploration of commoners’ understanding of and attitudes toward the history of the Genpei War. Medieval literary works were history for Edo Period commoners: The Tale of the Heike and the Taiheiki in particular. In The Thousand Cherry Trees we see a common phenomenon in 17th and 18th

century popular literature—the fictional rewriting of history. These revisions were recognized as fic-tional, but they were even more enjoyable than medieval originals because they were romanticized and personalized, and commoners were brought into the story to interact with historical samurai heroes. More than anything, rewriting history in this way gave commoners a sense of agency in and control over a past in which they had in fact played no part at all.

The third blockbuster hit by the Takeda, Miyoshi, Namiki play writing trio, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Chūshingura) (1748) is the most popular and influential play of the Edo Period. A dramatiza-tion of the famous revenge of the 47 Akō ronin in 1703, Chūshingura is dedicated in its entirety to telling and embellishing the account of this vendetta. The authors disguised the contemporary incident by setting it in the mid-1300s, and by changing the names of the protagonists.

The chapter on Chūshingura begins with a very useful explanation of context— the relationship between the Shogunate and the semi-independent feudal domains (han) scattered all over Japan.

Commoners’ fascination with the Akō vendetta was immediate. They recognized it as an heroic and virtuous but illegal rebellion that directly flaunted the authority of a Shogun whom they loathed. Because it was a sensational event from the day it took place, playwrights in kabuki and puppet theater attempted to stage the story or parts of the story right away. But plays were banned or suppressed during the reign of Shogun Tsunayoshi who had been very close to the villain of the story. Japanese Political Theatre does not elucidate the process of the story’s evolution on the stage, with many versions attempted and presented, that culminated with the definitive dramatization in 1748. This process has been explained in detail by James Brandon in Chūshingura: Studies in Kabuki and Puppet Theater (1982).

The authors of Japanese Political Theatre explain that the essence of the popularity of the definitive version of the vendetta, Kanadehon Chūshingura, lies in the interactions between fictitious commoner

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characters and the historically-based samurai characters. Service on pain of death, either to family honor or to one’s lord, is what makes samurai special and exotic to commoner viewers. But at the same time that samurai are exoticized, they are brought closer to commoners by the human weaknesses that they share. Most of the samurai characters in the story are not paragons…it is easy for all in the audience to understand them when they are moved by romantic love or by love of family, or by lust or material greed. Lust and greed are the primary attributes of the samurai villains in the play, and they cause suffer-ing for everyone else in the story…much as this sort of behavior by commoners in real life causes suffering for their commoner friends and families. In addition, the playwrights “mercantilized” the story when they presented it to Osaka merchants. For example, all three samurai suicides in the play—by Enya Hangan, Hayano Kampei, and Kakogawa Honzō—were dictated by financial failures. The first and third were the unwitting consequence of bribery gone wrong, and Kampei’s suicide was fallout from his wife’s selling herself into prostitution to procure precious funds to support the vendetta. The one fictional merchant who was added to the story is every bit as heroic and self-sacrificing as Oboshi Yuranosuke, the paragon samurai leader of the vendetta. As the authors of Japanese Political Theatre put it, this is an Osaka view of Edo politics.

The personalization of the vendetta story, focusing on the hardships suffered by several of the pro-tagonists, opened up the Chūshingura world to further expansion down through the years. Any and all minor characters could become the protagonists of “fill in the blank” spin-off versions of the tale. And in fact this is what has been done, almost yearly, on stage, and in the post-war era in TV and in film, from the mid-18th century until today.

The last three plays treated in the book are by Chikamatsu Hanji (1725-1783), the finest playwright of the late 18th century. Hanji chose his pen name in homage to Chikamatsu Monzaemon, with the name

Hanji (“half”) indicating that he thought he could never rival his illustrious namesake. Hanji made sev-eral innovations in dramaturgy, including in the relationship between the chanter and shamisen player, and in plot structure. In the latter his biggest change was to increase suspense and surprise by using reversals of plot direction, and hidden character identities. As the authors state, “we sometimes feel lost in a maze peopled with spies, substitutes, and mysterious persons with secret purposes.” (p. 157)

In The Genji Vanguard in Omi Province (1769) Hanji broached the always sensitive topic of the sieges of Osaka Castle in 1614 and 1615. In these sieges, Tokugawa forces destroyed the Toyotomi fam-ily, and took sole control of Japan. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa Shogun, used various underhanded means to achieve victory, and this was forbidden ground for books and plays. The populace of Osaka identified with the defeated Toyotomi clan. A play that could avoid censorship and speak to this sentiment was likely to do very well at the box office. But it was risky. One of Hanji’s Osaka siege plays was banned for too obvious anti-Tokugawa sentiment. The Genji Vanguard was able to run because its anti-Tokugawa messages were more opaque. The only scene from this play that is performed today is done almost exclusively in kabuki versions—“Moritsuna’s Camp,” with its suspenseful and moving head inspection scene.

Hanji’s most frequently performed play, in both bunraku and kabuki theaters, is Mt. Imo and Mt. Se, Precepts for Women (1771). Early in this chapter the authors present the political situation of that time.

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Controversies included the promotion of skilled administrators over those with hereditary position, and radical experiments with fiscal policy—the taxation of commodities other than rice to raise Shogunal revenue. Upheavals at the national level contributed to financial crises among the puppet theaters in Osaka. This is fascinating information, but the authors do not make it clear where we see these particular crises reflected in the play itself.

On a very broad level a theme shared between the polity and the play might well be “the transgres-sion of norms.” In the play we see this as “eros working against male dominated society.” (p. 167) Following in the path of his forebears Hanji fused romance and carnal desire with political ambition in the crises that take place on stage. For the title of the play, and to create a story of romantic love torn asunder by family feuding, Hanji appropriated and transgressed the ancient myth of Mt. Imo (Wife Mountain) and Mt. Se (Husband Mountain). He associated his fictional family strife, and the love of Hinadori and Koganosuke, with the Genta Affair of 1767 in which a brother killed his sister for falling in love with a boy from an “enemy” clan (p. 180). The touching, romantic tragedy of young lovers in the play is embedded in a power struggle at the center of realm in the mid 600s between the evil Soga clan, led by usurper Soga no Iruka, and the Fujiwara family.

The last play addressed in the book represents the crisis that the puppet theater faced at the end of the 18th century. Hanji wrote Travel Game while Crossing Iga the year that he died (1783), and the

pup-pet theater would never again see a playwright with his skill or his stature. Kabuki was entering its golden age, replete with innovative staging and super-star actors, but puppet theaters were struggling to stay afloat. Puppet theaters used various measures to attract audiences. They revived plays by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, they presented programs of dramatic acts from different plays (the midori pro-gram), and they borrowed what they could from kabuki plays.

For Travel Game, Hanji adapted a pre-existing kabuki play to the puppet stage, and the play was from a quintessential kabuki genre. It was a “succession dispute” play (oiemono) about strife in a medium-stature Edo Period samurai clan. One feature of Travel Game that points toward new thematic development in Edo Period theater is the debunking and de-valorization of blood revenge. Irony and dis-tancing prevent the viewer from empathizing with heroic characters—in fact there are no clear “heroes” and no clear mission for the characters to undertake. No one resembles the virtuous and successful Oboshi Yuranosuke of Chūshingura who unifies and inspires a group of men to fight for a righteous cause.

The concluding chapter of the book continues the description of the decline of puppet theater. Though it weakened, it never ceased production. The authors tell us that puppet theater continued its oblique presentations of contemporary political events, citing the clearest example in Ehon Taikōki, which in 1799 referred to the assassination of the Shogun’s chief advisor, Tanuma Okitsugu. Toward the end of the conclusion the authors state that with the coming of European foreigners to Japan, the tradi-tional approach of disguising current events by setting them in Japan’s past could no longer be used. Bunraku could not be topical in its new material for the remainder of the Edo Period. The last part of the final chapter focuses on Japan’s late Edo Period contacts with the West rather than on the puppet theater per se. The summing-up of all of the arguments made in the play analyses in previous chapters is quite

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apt: “Through its use of puppets Bunraku could represent both reality and allegory and much more. The play is fantasy, burlesque, and infantilism, all while maintaining criticism of human acts in society.” (p. 212).

The entire book is persuasive in making the point that despite the need to bend over backwards to avoid draconian punishment by an autocratic regime, playwrights and producers of the puppet theater were able to refer to political controversies and scandals on stage, and use this content as entertaining thematic material during the 18th century.

Laurence Kominz (Ph.D. Columbia University) is Professor of Japanese at Portland State University, teaching on Japanese drama and pre-modern literature. He publishes on the literature, history, and performance of kabuki, kyô-gen, bunraku, and noh. Books include: Mishima on Stage: The Black Lizard and Other Plays, The Stars who Created Kabuki, and Avatars of Vengeance: Japanese Drama and the Soga Literary Tradition. Kominz teaches and directs student performances of kyôgen (traditional and original plays) and kabuki. Recent kabuki projects include The Sardine Seller’s Net of Love (Willamette Univ. / 2010), The Medicine Peddler (PSU / 2012; Colorado College / 2014), The Revenge of the 47 Loyal Samurai / 2016, and The Castle Tower and The Puppeteer / 2017). Between 2017 and 2019 Professor Kominz led PSU student performances of kabuki and kyōgen in Kanazawa, Niigata, Missouri, Massachusetts, and Victoria, Canada.

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