The Water Wheel Puppet Theater and Fairy Tale Streets of Chiran

It’s a sweltering summer in Kagoshima, but I endure the heat so I can explore Chiran’s historic samurai village. The thoroughfare of immaculate zen gardens, private estates, and tea houses was once the property of Japanese warriors, or bushi, who provided protection to locals and grew green tea for profits. 

The quiet streets, with their stone fences and Edo-era homes, lack telephone wires, electrical lights, or any fixtures from our modern age. The neighborhood is exquisitely preserved and remains like a doorway into the country's past. 

During World War II, Chiran housed one of Japan's largest airfields, where over 1,000 kamikaze pilots gave their lives to the Imperial Japanese Army. The town recognizes this tragic history with an incredible museum and citywide memorials that champion peace and commemorate the lives lost. Stone obelisks, each dedicated to a kamikaze pilot, line the town's main street where a stream flows alongside laundry mats, suburban homes, and convenience stores. Koi fish peck at the surface as tiny water wheels revolve with quiet perseverance. Reaching above Japanese pines, a watermill grinds wheat flour into udon for hungry locals at a family restaurant. 

With its spellbinding samurai district and magnificent natural landscape, Chiran is like a fairy tale. I'm even more certain of this as I visit Toyotamahime shrine, where an annual puppet show materializes out of the magic of Edo era mechanics and the flow of Chiran's river.

Walking down the narrow steps into Chiran's Water Wheel Karakuri Ningyo Theater, I feel like I am crawling inside the interior of a cuckoo clock. A tiny toy boat glides above my head from a wooden chain as I shimmy through a wall of hand-carved gears and oscillating cloth strings. Through a window I can see the water wheel faithfully spinning outside, setting thousands of pulleys, gears, and ropes into synchronized motion. Underneath the stage, with the creaking sound of do-it-yourself machinery, I have the sense that the entire theater is inching forward across the Pacific. It's like the bilge of a steamboat or a lost contraption in Willy Wonka's factory. 

Above my head, there's a war breaking out. This year's show is a reenactment of The Battle of Ichi-no-Tani, where Kojiro shoots his legendary bow and arrow, samurai clash, and an anthropomorphized octopus happily swings his tentacles to prerecorded music. 

The last time Chiran's Water Wheel Karakuri Ningyo Theater performed this production was in 2005. They have a repertoire of 11 shows and present just one a year during the second week of July. 

Other stories include the tale of Peach Boy, also known as Momotaro, and a fantastical myth about moon-dwelling rabbits. Each production has a script that resembles an engineer's blueprint, filled with notes, diagrams, and pictorial specifications. 

It's not just a matter of taking the puppets off the shelf and following these century-old instructions. Throughout the year the large studio on the shrine's grounds stays busy as volunteers fabricate new set pieces, puppets, and mechanisms for the summer production. 

Modifications are encouraged—as long as electricity isn't involved. Perhaps due to the scarcity of water wheel theaters, the group escapes the rules and customs usually ascribed to festival karakuri ningyo. Instead of a cohesive traditional aesthetic, the design of the show is like patchwork, stitching together 18th-century puppets, paper mâché, plastic tarps, and repurposed gardening supplies.

In 17th-century Japan, these robotic spectacles were more prevalent. Shrines across Japan housed water wheels specifically for operating automated puppet shows. A few hours north of Tokyo, Kiryu City held annual competitive festivals where robotic puppets reenacted famous legendary wartime battles without any human exertion. Today, many of the water wheels stand motionless in shrines across Japan, mementos of a bygone era of hydromechanical ingenuity. As of 2017, only two operational water wheel theaters remain, both of which are in Kagoshima: Takeda Shrine in Kaseda, and here, Toyotamahime Shrine in Chiran. 

A group of about thirty members gather around a long table, or chabudai, and pass around adzuki bean popsicles. It's almost a scorching 40 degrees Celcius, but no one is complaining. The weather forecast predicted rain, but there's not a cloud in sight. 

As a precaution, a tent covers the seating area filled with children, families, and older residents who have attended this annual performance for their entire lives. The two-minute show plays on a rotation for the whole day as townspeople snack on onigiri, pray at the shrine's altar, and catch up on the lives of their neighbors. 

During most karakuri ningyo shows in Japan, the audience waits with rapt attention for the puppet to perform its final transformation or an awe-inspiring feat. However, Chiran's performance is less demanding.  The show's repetition and partnership with the natural world create a performance that blends seamlessly into the landscape. The sound of the rotating water wheel, the squeaking gears, and the pulsating movement of a sword-wielding puppet all mingle with the everyday melody of life. It's impossible for me to tell the difference between the call of the summer's cicadas and the hum of winding springs. 

When leaving Chiran, I feel like I understand the formula behind this town's magic. It's a community that preserves its extraordinary Edo Era history, while it also acknowledges and transforms tragedy into a call for peace. It merges the natural world into everyday life. The puppet performance coordinates with nature, art, and history. Observing the small town gathering at the local shrine to watch their shared mythologies conducted by a river and 300-year-old mechanics is one of the most moving experiences I've had in Japan. Chiran's Water Wheel Theater accomplishes something remarkable. Like the city itself, it reminds us that by finding harmony with our past and the natural world, we can live in the magic of our present. 

Youkiza Puppet Company, Four Centuries of Breaking Rules & Pulling Strings

Sayoko Yamaguchi in performance of 'Pelléas et Mélisande' at Youkiza, 1992.
via Japan Times, 2015.

Masahiro Matsuda-san takes me backstage at Nose Joruri Theater, one of the largest joruri companies in Japan. The theater sits just north of Osaka City, a few miles from Mt. Nose and the remarkable Myokensan Temple. Matsuda-san, who was recently appointed director of the theater company, is faced with the challenging task of raising attendance during a time when visitor numbers are steadily shrinking. He has tried to modernize the production's promotional ads by featuring puppets in spacesuits or black and white cinematic poses more reminiscent of Casablanca than Chikamatsu with little results. Backstage, he holds up the wooden kashira of a female puppet. With the pull of a string, she transforms into a demon with horns sprouting from her head, her mouth in a dangerously fanged grin.

A few months earlier, Matsuda-san had the puppet-makers change the color of her mouth from black to a vibrant  blue. This seemingly insignificant choice, the interior color of a puppet's mouth, went too far. Patrons were upset and Matsuda-san found more trouble than he expected. Things were changing too fast.

Traditional Japanese performance, from Noh to Bunraku, is often marked by this strict adherence to historical custom. Ritual is pivotal and anything divergent can be interpreted as disrespectful to the ancestors who practiced before. The national arts are not just entertainment, but an expression of what it means to be Japanese. So when I attended a production of Doll's Town, an original show by Japan's oldest puppet company, Youkiza, I was left totally bewildered. The production traveled between decades, activated magic lanterns for illuminated explosive air raids, featured humans and puppets interacting in Andy Kaufman Howdy Doody intimacy, and set fire to one of the leading characters.

via Europe Magazine, 2011. 

http://eumag.jp/spotlight/e1116/

Started by Magosaburou Youki in 1635, today the company is led by Magosaburou XII, who generously invites me to his studio to explore. Surrounded by marionettes, magic lanterns, and hot coffee in Youkiza's beautiful West Tokyo studio, I have just one question for Magosaburou-san. How does Tokyo's oldest puppet troupe become one of the city's most ambitious and daring theater companies?

At its conception, Youkiza originally performed Buddhist parables with marionettes, each puppet manipulated by seventeen strings attached to a flat control paddle known as a teita. At its center, the teita had a small see-saw-like bar that operated the puppet's head and feet. The puppet's neck was attached to the body through a knob known as a choi. With the assistance of a skilled puppeteer, the choi string brought the puppet to life, creating realistic breath and head movement that, along with the teita, have become synonymous with the company.    

via http://www.youkiza.jp 

During the heyday of itinerant puppet performances in Edo Japan, about five perecent of companies performed with marionettes. However, Youkiza stood out for other reasons. It was one of the first ningyo companies to adopt the collaborative support of a narrator and shamisen player, and they frequently commissioned original plays from contemporaries, including the Edo Era cult figure Hiraga Gennai, who wrote the satirical essay On Farting. Sure, Youkiza did the quintessential Chikamatsu tragedies, but the puppet theater also produced many unknown works before plays gained wide popularity through kabuki and ningyo joruri houses. A fan of these stringed spectacles, the Tokugawa government supported Youkiza throughout the Edo period. Nonetheless, the company faced serious economic challenges that worsened as the Meiji era dawned and shogun rule collapsed. By 1866, Youkiza almost disappeared.

It was the ninth Magosaburou Youki who brought new life to the troupe by reinvigorating the risk-taking penchant that was at the heart of Youkiza. He radically eliminated the tayu and shamisen, brushed up on his storytelling chops, and manipulated the 17-string marionettes while delivering the puppets' dialogue himself. When speaking about Magosaburou Youki IX, Magosaburou-san grins widely across the table, weaving tales about the puppeteer's rebellious escapades, including the introduction of the Magic Lantern, or Utushi-e, into the company's repertoire. The IX performed these illuminated spectacles across the city, including Tokyo riverbanks, where fishing boats were repurposed as puppet stages, and crowds gathered outdoors to witness the astonishing mystical lanterns illuminating keyholes into colorful new worlds.

via http://www.youkiza.jp 

During Youkiza's 2017 production of Doll's Town, three puppeteers emerged operating magic lanterns projecting slides of fighter jets. Through the lantern's internal mechanisms, the glowing illustrations were transformed into crimson explosions. It's a two-hundred year old technique created by light, lenses, and just a few glass slides - but the moment is surprisingly effective, perhaps even more effective than actual footage.

via http://www.youkiza.jp

It's an odd paradox that this artifice feels more sincere than reality. As I bring up this conundrum to Magosaburou-san, he pushes his coffee to the side and waxes poetic. For Magosaburou-san, the tools of the puppet theater, from marionettes to magic lanterns, activate an audience's dormant curiosity. These limitations of the physical object are metaphysical invitations for a viewer to engage his or her imagination and enter head first into the world of the play.

via http://www.youkiza.jp 

At the end of the 19th century, these techniques were just as effective, as Magosaburou Youki IX's innovative introduction of magic lanterns and new performance methods contributed to the rise of Youkiza's popularity. The company worked feverishly in Japan's yose, a type of Japanese Vaudeville. They performed alongside musical acts, magicians, and comedic storytellers known as rakugo. However, despite this success, the company continued to face obstacles, from internal family conflict between Magosaburou IX and his son, Youki Isse (Magosaburou X), the rise of the film industry, and the devastation of World War II, which left much of Youkiza's Edo era puppets and magic lantern equipment destroyed. 

Via the Tokyo Arts Council
https://www.artscouncil-tokyo.jp/

However, for Youki Isse, the 21st century's economic and existential challenges inspired him to question the role of Youkiza in a rapidly changing Japan. Like his father fifty years earlier, Isse wasn't satisfied with the company's work. He wanted to diverge from the world of yose and experiment with large-scale productions, dramatic works, and broadcast television. While Isse's defiance led to serious paternal conflict that lasted decades, he led Youkiza into a fruitful collaboration with NHK, Japan's public broadcasting network. Under industrial lighting, where puppet faces cracked and set piece were set aflame, Youkiza produced one of the first broadcasted puppet shows in Japan. The live televised performances garnered national attention and newfound support for the company, leading to an era of large-scale theatrical productions and new contemporary work. Establishing Youkiza's place in modern Japan, all with the same puppet fabrication and manipulation techniques from the last three and half centuries, Isse was eventually granted the Magosaburou title by his father.

via http://www.youkiza.jp

Two generations later, Magosaburou XII shares so much in common with his ancestors it feels like they are at the table with us. Like his forefathers, Magosaburou-san didn't have any toys. As children, the Youki line was only allowed to play with marionettes. By four, they all made their stage premieres, performing marionettes alongside fathers and grandfathers. But most similarly, he has pushed the company in new directions, producing Japanese kabuki classics, the radical works of Artaud and Jean Genet, international collaborations, and original shows that explore post-war and post-bubble Japan.  As an artist who developed in the 1970s, Magosaburou-san found inspiration in Tokyo's radical underground  theater movement, ultimately incorporating the spirit of Shüji Terayama and Juro Kara into his Edo era company. This has shaped a contemporary Youkiza that offers a rare reflection into both modern and traditional Japan. 

via Blog of Sakate.
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/sakate2008/m/201603

Today, the company is designated a "National Selected Intangible Folk Cultural Property" and a "Tokyo Municipal Intangible Cultural Property," however, Youki-san admits he faces pushback from cultural institutions. As one of the oldest surviving theater companies in Japan, officeholders, cultural ambassadors, and bureaucrats want him to stick to tradition. But what if your tradition survived by taking risks and challenging the status quo?

via @ihajiro. https://twitter.com/ihajiro

I ask Magosaburou-san what kind of work he hopes Youkiza will produce in the future. "I can't really know and I don't really care," he responds. "As long as they keep using the same puppet techniques, I'm ok." And how can he care? In order to survive, it's about answering the question that every Magosaburou Youki has asked for the last 375 years. "What Does it mean to be Japanese in this moment... and this moment... and this moment..." It's a question that never gets old. 

For more information about Youkiza, visit their website at: 

http://www.youkiza.jp

From Takayama's Spring Festival to an Extraterrestrial Ritual: The Shared Awe of the Crowd

Last November, I made my first visit to Hida Takayama to witness the god of luck, Hotei, balance two tiny acrobats on his shoulders and dance above an audience of expectant tourists. Many of us waited for hours, fiddling with digital cameras, snacking on onigiri, and gazing up at the empty stage anticipating the entrance of one of the world's most famous Edo era robots.

Accommodating over a thousand visitors into the shrine took some serious maneuvering, highlighted by the fall out between an enraged elderly man swinging a tripod and the tripod's owner, a photographer who arrived late and jockeyed through the crowd to set-up front row center.

After police officers removed the suspect from the shrine accompanied by the gentle applause from the grandmother to my right, things settled down as we stood shoulder on top of shoulder, heads tilted skyward, waiting patiently in puppet idolization.

After Hotei's performance, the small city of Takayama, filled with Sake factories, robotic puppets, and one of the best hamburger shops in Japan, had me hooked.

Just a few months later, I hopped on a JR Expressway bus and headed back. As the driver travelled through the winding Hida mountains during a small snow storm I was excited to return without the throngs of festival goers and packed itinerary. During my second trip, I found a quiet town in the grip of winter as I carefully balanced across ice-covered sidewalks to cozy-up in the karakuri ningyo cultural archives belly full of Hida beef.

My third visit to Takayama was three months later in April during Sanno Matsuri. Takayama's fall and spring festivals are both enormous celebrations, each with their own ensemble of elaborate floats, or yatai. They each attract thousands of visitors from across the world, filling the streets with 18 foot floats adorned in glowing lanterns, dancing teenagers manipulating wooden lion heads, and a contagious chaotic euphoria.

This year, for the first time in Takayama's history, an additional festival is scheduled in May to celebrate the designation of the yatai as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Treasure. The ten yatai from the fall festival, Hachiman Matsuri, will wake from their hibernation, decamp from their garages, and roam the streets of Takayama at the same time as the thirteen yatai of Sanno Matsuri. It's hard to believe, but this event will attract even more people than the annual festivals, which already feel beyond capacity.

To navigate through Takayama's main street during a matsuri means relinquishing all autonomy and giving-in to the dense tussle of the crowd. As someone who tends to avoid any event with more people than a weekly book-club meeting, I am bewildered by those who willingly attend overcrowded events, from pop-star studded concerts to professional sports games.

The next morning the three yatai with karakuri ningyo travelled over Takayama's famous Nakabashi bridge and met at the city center.

Caked in sunscreen, I spent hours scoping out a spot near a roasted rice ball vendor, Jinya Dango. It was just as crowded as the previous evening, but as the yatai arrived and the puppets emerged, we relaxed into a pleasant anticipation.

Photograph by William F. Condee

As the February snow thaws from Gifu Prefecture, Sanno Matsuri brings forth three puppets that embody the essence of spring's arrival - transformation. With the opening of a mysterious box, a young boy transformed into an old man, an angry dragon burst from a cage, and a fan-dancing woman mutated into a wild lion. With each transformation, the crowd gasped in unison. Similar to my experience in the fall, the karakuri ningyo are some of the best in Japan.

On the second day of Sanno Matsuri, the procession of yatai was cancelled due to rain. However, the karakuri ningyo puppeteers agreed to perform inside the yatai garages. I made my way through the historic streets of the east district to watch one of the performances.

In a narrow alley, surrounded by only a hundred or so spectators, I watched the same performance as the previous afternoon. The show is based on a Japanese tale about a young boy who welcomes a drunk old man into his home, suspects him of being a dragon, locks him inside of a box, and drops him off near the Japanese sea. Filled with vengeful rage, the old man transforms into a dragon and breaks from the boy's makeshift cage. The two puppets are skillfully operated by 32 strings running through the the extended stage, or toi track, by six puppeteers hidden underneath. 

Even though I knew what to expect, I couldn't help but join in with the collective gasp as the dragon burst forth and launched confetti into the air. Afterwards, I thought about the previous morning when this same moment of wonder was shared amongst thousands. Despite having spent the last twenty-four hours begrudging my fight through the crowds, I missed sharing this show with the enormous mass of visitors. Even though these performances are for the gods, there's something about reacting to transformations with thousands that makes them feel like a mystical event.

Takayama's karakuri ningyo performs the impossible - it unites crowds of strangers into one shared moment of awe. I left the garage with a newfound empathy for those who enjoy the thrill of attending a World Series.

A few weeks later I'm in the hometown of Mt. Fuji, where the theater director Kuro Tanino premiered a new work, Moon, at the Shizuoka World Theatre Festival. Last year I wrote about Tanino's production Avidya: No Lights Inn, and I spent the winter months of 2017 interning with his company, Niwa Gekidan Penino, as they remounted the production Darkmaster at Komaba Agora Theater in Tokyo. Now in Shizuoka, I found Tanino skipping the conventional stage for an environmental experience that transformed the city's famous open air theater into an extrasolar planet complete with a cast of five little people in spacesuits and a make-shift moon-landing set reminiscent of Tom Sach's Space Program.

Photograph by Chiye NAMEGAI.
Shizuoka World Theatre Festival. Kuro Tanino's Moon. 2017. 

Each show welcomed a substantial audience of about four hundred as they made their way through the performing arts park towards a massive collection of astronaut helmets. Adorned in these stellar costumes, the enormous crowd followed the cast through the woods, collected geometric sculptures, and assisted in the creation of a celestial monument at the peak of the massive outdoor theater.

Photograph by Chiye NAMEGAI. 
Shizuoka World Theatre Festival. Kuro Tanino's Moon. 2017. 

Mame Yamada, who also played the lead in Avidya: No Lights Inn, sat at the monument's apex as hundreds of spectators stared up at his tiny figure with anticipation. Towering above, with his long hair, short stature, and hypnotizing movements, Mame-san felt like a space-age deity or a living version of Takayama's mystical puppets.

Photograph by Chiye NAMEGAI. 
Shizuoka World Theatre Festival. Kuro Tanino's Moon. 2017. 

The enormous mass of space helmets, continually intensified the stage images. By interacting with other audience members, transforming the environment, and staring reverently skyward at a three foot astronaut standing on a geometric shrine, Moon felt more more like a extraterrestrial matsuri than experimental theater. 

There are many moments of awe-inspiring spectacle in the performance, including a dance scene with music played solely from a collection of amplified Gamboys. With an enormous float designed by German theatre artist Caspar Pichner, the event culminated with the transformation of the outdoor theater into a grand celestial view. As if watching Earth rise from the surface of the moon, the entire audience of space-helmet clad visitors quietly took in the stage.

Photograph by Chiye NAMEGAI. 
Shizuoka World Theatre Festival. Kuro Tanino's Moon. 2017. 

Takayama matsuri and Tanino's Moon are two rituals developed centuries apart. They don't ask us to identify with their characters, but create an environment where we identify with each other. During both experiences, I recognized my shared impulses with other audience members, and entered into a sort of group consciousness often overlooked in the darkness of a conventional theater seat.

In the performance of Moon I attended in Shizuoka, the experience ended with an awesome but somber image - the Earth is an unsettling foggy tint, no longer inhabitable, void of its natural green and blue wonder. Yet, it's still an uplifting conclusion. The audience emerged from the other side, together, looking down at the Earth's surface in a shared silent stupor. We've learned how to be with each other.

For more information regarding Kuro Tanino and Niwa Gekidan Penino: http://niwagekidan.org/english