The Timeless Wonder of Fusuma Karakuri

Five years after the end of World War II, citizens in Osaka gathered at Japan's first America Fair, where visitors explored scaled-down recreations of the Statue of Liberty and Mt. Rushmore. In Tokyo, onlookers gawked as live bikini clad models posed in department store windows while the sounds of Thelonious Monk and Stan Getz made their way across the country's radio waves.

Japan in the 1950s. The Atlantic. Mar. 12, 2014. (link)

Against the sounds of modern jazz and the whirlwind of General MacArthur’s Japanese reconstruction, the country witnessed a decline in traditional performance, specifically those art forms that stemmed from Shinto ritual, such as ningyo joruri. In post-war Japan, many linked Shintoism to Japan's pre-war militarism, and, as a result, puppet shows and traditional festivals, such as Nagoya Matsuri, were discouraged or banned. 

However, in 1951, during this new era of bikinis and home television sets, a small town in the mountains of Shikoku gathered together to rebuild a theater dedicated to a lost form of Japanese entertainment - fusuma karakuri.

Fusuma karakuri, or, as it’s known on Awaji island, dogugaeshi, features hand-painted panels, or fusuma-e, that slide in and out of a proscenium, twist in unison, and glide up and down to create intensifying stage murals that reach deeper and deeper into the playing space.

Similar to Kyogen, it was known as maku-ma, or a “between curtain show,” often performed after a Noh or ningyo joruri performance. After spending hours ensnared in the complex stories of Japanese dynasties and the linguistic cartwheels of the tayu, fusuma karakuri provided a mental recess. With only the strum of the shamisen, it activated a new part of the audience members’ minds where plot was cast aside for the magic of moving images. A mural depicting rabbits bounding across ocean waves glides across the stage to reveal a magnificent dragon while abstract floral patterns gently transform into a bamboo forest.

Transformation, or hayagawari, plays an essential part in noh, kabuki, and ningyo joruri performance. One of the most popular shows on Awaji island was Tamamonomae asahi no tamoto, where the performer is both puppeteer and magician, transforming costumes and characters seven times in one short act. Almost half of karakuri ningyo performances hinge on this moment of transfiguration, from a shinto priest turning into a miniature shrine to a graceful fan dancer morphing into an unruly lion.
When successful, these moments of transformation instantaneously alter the audience, leaving them in a state of awe. Fusuma karakuri is a celebration of this wonderment, a form of entertainment that connects audiences to that realm of surprise over and over again, tugging audiences through time and space.

In the 1930s, fusuma karakuri was a popular past-time in Tokushima, but today only five fusuma karakuri companies remain active in Japan, performing just once a year during fall and spring festivals. The only exception is Awaji Ningyo Za who has daily performances at the end of daily ningyo jouri shows.

This puppet company has modernized the fusuma karakuri technique by creating an aluminum fly-system on wheels. The fusuma-e are controlled by nylon string, carabiners, and puppeteers in the wings who slide the panels from the left and right.

Awaji Ningyo Za has sped up the the timing of a traditional show, and the modern contraption limits the movement witnessed in farm theaters such as Inukai Noson and Ono Sakura no Butai.

It was at Inukai Noson Butai's November festival where I first came across fusuma karakuri. I was immediately captivated and bewildered. As I watched the paper doors slide in and out of the proscenium to the sounds of the shamisen, I was in a state of disequilibrium. “How are they moving the images? Where's the story? What exactly am I looking it?” This chatter soon quieted down into a mollified acceptance, like the moment you give into a dream. I was hooked.

The next annual festival was in Kamiyama, about 30km from Tokushima City. After three months of e-mails, telephone calls, and assistance from my translator and friend Tatsuo Yasuda, I found myself riding a bicycle through the mountains of Kamiyama in total darkness as a river's resonant stride guided me back to the center of the road. As I held up my iPhone for light, I caught the glow of the theater, Ono Sakura no Butai, resting above the town’s Myozai district. Out of breath, Tatsuo and I climbed the stone steps to the rear of Tenno shrine, where the small wooden stage met us underneath a blossoming sakura tree.

It’s here I get to know the director of Sakura no Butai, Ogawa Kazkiyo. Ogawa-san is a generous mentor who is both intimidating and big-hearted. He speaks with deliberate and piercing gestures, commanding attention and thoughtfully answering my endless questions. He perfectly sums up the experience of fusuma karakuri to wave watching: captivating, meditative, and rhythmic. Like other forms of puppetry in Tokushima, I try to find its connection to religious ritual, but Ogawa-san quickly extinguishes this argument. There isn’t one. Fusuma karakuri is entertainment, a type of diversion that thrived in Kamiyama at a time when Japanese identity, specifically shintoism, was disoriented.

Ogawa Kazkiyo

Unlike many forms of traditional Japanese theater, such as Noh and bunraku, fusuma karakuri is easily accessible. It is language-less and doesn’t require prerequisite knowledge to fully appreciate. But it’s also for these reasons I’m surprised fusuma karakuri isn’t more widely celebrated. Even in the Japanese theater community there's a lack of familiarity. As I told Japanese friends I was headed to Tokushima to study "fusuma karakuri,” which translated to "mechanical sliding panel,” most assumed I was learning how to build automated doors. Fusuma karakuri is slighly more recognizable when it's called by its other name, dogugaeshi, especially on Awaji island. Yet, despite its accessibility and uniqueness, it remains a brief footnote in Japanese performance history.

In 2003, puppeteer Basil Twist embarked on a project sponsored by The Japan Foundation that realized a contemporary fusuma karakuri production that captured the essence of the traditional art form. Basil’s production premiered in 2004 and has been performed across the globe since 2014, raising awareness about the medium. However, Basil Twist's production, titled Dogugaeshi, shares the same name of the tradition. Given the lack of documentation and research on traditional dogugaeshi, a Google query only wields results regarding Twist's production, further obscuring fusuma karakuri's role as a valuable traditional Japanese performance.

This year’s performance at Ono Sakura no Butai will feature two scenes from international artists Andrea Dezsö and Adam Avikainen, who were inspired by fusuma karakuri during their time at Kamiyama's Artist in Residency program. As Ogawa-san mentions these artists he beams with excitement. He is proud to have their work in his show, and he spends a lot of time sharing their work with visitors and audiences. He is eager to explain Avikainen's inspiration for his pieces Curry Typhoon and Turkey Earthquake (making curry during a typhoon and cooking turkey during an earthquake respectively).

Adam Avikainen's Curry Typhoon. 

Photos of Andrea Dezsö line the dressing room wall. Over the last few years, Ogawa-san incorporated Dezsö's pieces as one of the final fusuma-e in the performance. According to Kamiyama's Green Valley Artist Residency, "this may be the first fusuma-e screens used in a performance in Kamiyama since 1930".

Andrea Dezsö's fusuma-e of human emotions ki, do, ai, and raku  (joy, anger, pathos, and humor)

Similar to ningyo joruri, a successful fusuma karakuri performance requires a intuitive connection between puppeteers. To make this a bit more complicated than your typical puppet show, your partner is standing 30 feet away on the opposite side of the stage. These puppeteers must find a shared breath and united rhythm as they pull strings, tie-off rope, grab painted doors, and twist bamboo rods.

During a performance there is a conductor who leads the puppeteers’ movements with the hyoshigi, two pieces of wood that are clapped together. Since fusuma karakuri has no human actors on the stage, mistakes are easily noticeable and can easily disrupt the rhythm. This makes the need for harmony between puppeteers even more critical. To help guide the process, Ogawa-san created a script that organizes all 241 panels, dictating their placement and movement.

The script also illustrates Ogawa-san’s process as a director of fusuma karakuri. He must take in account the way different movement can effect an image’s meaning. Although it makes things more complicated, he insists that the ten panels that compose a resting tiger must all be removed from stage right. “You can’t see a tiger split in the middle,” he insists. Ogawa-san is constantly considering how the movement and order of these images change context and alters the viewer’s experience.

After rehearsal at Sakura no Butai, we sit around a table eating American chocolate I brought from home. I ask about the puppeteers’ day jobs. There are two farmers, a machinist, a councilman, a florist, a house wife, and a metadata specialist. For one of the older puppeteers, this will be his 30th year performing fusuma karakuri.

They share memories from their youth at the theater, where the community gathered to watch outdoor movies, have picnics, and experience the captivating tradition. 

During the 1950s, as a golden age of cinema dawned and the future was broadcasted on television sets across Japan, a small town in the rural mountains of Shikoku came together to rebuild a fusuma karakuri theater. Today, as we're surrounded by smartphone screens and digital media, the wooden theater underneath a blossoming sakura tree, where a metadata specialist and farmer move painted panels in and out of proscenium, feels radically innovative. Fusuma karakuri reminds us that our sense of awe is not always tethered to the future - the past is still filled with wonder.

For more information on:

Ono Sakura no Butai

Inukai Noson Butai

Awaji Ningyo Za

Kamiyama's Artist in Residence

Andrea Dezsö

Adam Avikainen

Basil Twist's Dogugaeshi

Uncovering the Puppet Rituals of Tokushima

Outside the Tokushima Prefecture Museum, Kazuhide Tsujimoto stands by an ashtray checking his watch. With stylish leather loafers, sunglasses, and an intimidating poker-face stare, Tsujimoto is not what I imagine when I think “hako-maswashi ritual puppeteer.” He abruptly ashes his cigarette and heads to his hatchback. I have trouble keeping up, his pace steadfast, his eyes fixed ahead at something unseen. Tsujimoto is clearly on a mission. 

Hako-mawashi often refers to the nomadic puppet performance performed in rural cities across Japan, specifically on the Shikoku and Awaji islands. These puppeteers, or dokumbo-mawashi, would travel with boxes strapped around their necks that served as both storage and a miniature stage. The earliest puppets were bodiless heads on wooden rods. Eventually, these figures transformed into larger costumed puppets that were transported in crates and carried from bamboo poles. Hako-mawashi certainly speaks to the inherent transient lifestyle of puppeteers, but it’s far more than traditional street theater. Hako-mawashi is a missing link, a part of performance history that uncovers the puppet’s mystic powers. It's a doorway between puppetry and the gods. 

Photograph by Alípio Padilha. (Website / FB ) 

Hako-mawashi is rooted in religious ceremonies performed in shrines during Japan’s Edo era. One example is Sanbasō-mawashi, where a puppeteer manipulates a Sanbasō puppet through a series of ritual choreography until it enters into a mystical trance. This trance is marked by the puppet’s eyes rotating upward through a mechanized trick head, or gabu. Once the puppet is in this transcendent state, he adorns a black mask, and shakes a suzu bell, performing a purification rite. Other types of hako-mawashi include ebisu-kaki, where a puppet of god Ebisu sings songs, requests a little sake, and grants good fortune. 

Via Awa Deko Hakomawashi Hozonkai, Kazuhide Tsujimoto

One of the most comprehensive English-language books I've found on hako-maswashi is Jane Marie Law's Puppets of Nostalgia. In the text, she writes:

”These wandering puppeteers...performed an essential ritual function. They mediated the boundaries between the distinct but sometimes overlapping worlds of sacred forces and human beings, order and chaos, life and death, fertility and infertility. Their ritual performance served to usher in the new year, purify dwellings for another season, and revitalize sacred forces in the community."

Eventually, these traveling dokumbo-mawashi teamed up with storytellers (tayu) and roaming musicians, giving rise to ningyo joruri and, in the 19th century, Bunraku puppetry.

Working as a puppeteer in Tokushima during the Edo era was like being an actor in Astoria, Queens today. Documents from the early 1800s illustrate a population where over twenty percent of citizens worked as puppeteers.

Photograph by Alípio Padilha. (Website / FB ) 

Puppeteers had a vital role to play in Japanese life. They were ritualistic shamans who could appease the unknown and dispel the impurities of the past. Without them, crops wouldn't harvest and the natural world remained untamable. However, since these puppeteers dealt in a realm of enchantments and pollution, they were considered unclean, and were edged out of towns into their own outcast neighborhoods.

Tokushima and Awaji were filled with these misfit districts until the early 20th century when the hako-mawashi practices almost vanished due to burgeoning entertainment and the strain of World War II. Ultimately, a post-war environment emerged that frowned on ritualistic customs.

This last New Year season, Tsujimoto trudged through miles of snow, visiting hundreds of houses, and performing hako-mawashi’s ebisu-kaki ritual for residents. When areas of Shikoku face a poor harvest or drought, Tsujimoto is called to perform these rites for the distressed towns.

Yet, when you ask him about his occupation, he won't say “puppeteer.” “Scholar,” he responds, silently giving credit to the giants before him. It’s these giants who seem to fill Tsujimoto’s thoughts. I sit in his studio, piled high with countless books and hundreds of puppets by one of Japan’s most famous puppet-makers, Tengu Hisa.

Tengu Hisa carved beautiful wooden heads, or kashira, that are immediately recognizable for their craftsmanship and large size. These puppets, many of which mirror the puppets used in Edo era hako-mawashi performances, are larger than traditional Bunraku puppets. Despite being much heavier than their puppet descendants, they are only manipulated by a single puppeteer. 

The Tengu Hisa name has continued for three generations, and, today, at the foot of Tokushima’s majestic Mt. Bizen, sits Tengusa Hisa’s original studio and home preserved as a museum.

I stand outside the museum snapping photos of the quiet neighborhood. With narrow streets and farmland filling most of the area, it’s hard to imagine this district teeming with hundreds of puppeteers. Even here, standing in one of the centers of hako-mawashi, the art form feels just out of reach.

I turn to ask Tsujimoto a question, but before I say anything I realize he’s already made his way back to the car, lighting a cigarette while eyeing the road in his rear view mirror.

This afternoon, we meet at a primary school in the center of rural Shikoku. Middle school students fill into a recreation room as Tsujimoto and his two assistants, Masako Nakauchi and Kimiyo Minami, unpack the hako-maswashi boxes. For the audience of adolescents, Masako and Kimiyo perform examples of hako-mawashi, such as ebisu-kaki, Sanbasō rite, and a short ningyo joruri show.

Today’s demonstration ends with Tsujimoto, who looks out at the group of over one hundred middle school students with an unexpected smile. He seems like a different person in front of the group, comfortable and cool, emphatically delivering his closing remarks. Tsujimoto is doing everything he can to pass his passion on to these students, urging them to recognize the importance of Japan’s artistic history before it’s too late. This is far from a lecture, but an act of transference.

My translator paraphrases, “Tsujimoto feels like most Japanese university students who study art know Picasso and Van Gogh, but know nothing about traditional Japanese art. Those who study theater know Shakespeare, but not Noh.”

Tsujimoto grimaces.

“Foreigners care more about Noh than those who study in Japan," he adds.

As Tsujimoto continues, I think about him alone at the wheel, traveling through the roads of Tokushima witnessing a town forget. Today, he does everything he can to help the city remember.

When it seems like Tsujimoto is about to say goodbye, he stops for a moment, his speech growing more serious.

“His grandmother was a puppeteer,” my translator explains. “But she faced, you know, discrimination?"

Discrimination is a word I I hear a lot when it comes to life as a puppeteer during the Edo Period. I nod.

“When her children were born she was afraid they would face the same fate, so she cast her puppets into the river, hoping her children would have a better future.”

Today, with his studio filled with puppets, books, and a career built on preservation of this endangered traditional art, it feels like Tsujimoto is treading in that river, piecing together fragments of those lost puppets. Like the Shinto priests before him, delivering their puppets into other-worlds, Tsujimioto is wading in a realm we can no longer see: the past.

After the lecture, Tsujimoto sits in the school principal’s office chatting over coffee. He looks gleeful, and, for the first time since I’ve been around him, relaxed. He leans back and smiles.

As the children return to their classes, we pack up Tsujimoto’s van, carrying Tupperware containers to the trunk, where Tsujimoto meticulously organizes them. I return to the gymnasium to make sure nothing was left behind. When I return, Tsujimoto has already left. I look across the parking lot to see the rear of his van, traveling down the road, vanishing into the horizon.

For more information about Kazuhide Tsujimoto: 

Website: EN / JP. 
Facebook Page

Book: Awa no dekomawashi.

For more information about hako-maswashi and ritual puppetry in Tokushima and Awaji, I can't recommend Jane Marie Law's book enough:

Puppets of Nostalgia: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the Japanese "Awaji Ningyō" Tradition