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

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