Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context by Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai

Abstract

Reviewed by: Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context by Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai Satoko Shimazaki Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context. By Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021. 246 pages. ISBN: 9780367150624 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai's Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context is a welcome addition to the small library of monographs on early modern Japanese theater and, specifically, studies of bunraku. Focusing their attention on historical and political plays, the authors discuss various bunraku period pieces (jidaimono) beginning with Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Kokusen'ya kassen (The Battles of Coxinga), first staged in 1715, and ending with Igagoe dōchū sugoroku (Travel Game while Crossing Iga) by Chikamatsu Hanji, which was first staged in 1783. Along the way, they cover plays by Takeda Izumo I; collaborations between Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shōraku, and Namiki Senryū (Sōsuke); as well as earlier plays by Hanji. They trace the trajectory of the [End Page 130] puppet theater from its golden age to the beginning of its decline in Osaka as kabuki came to dominate. The study of bunraku period plays has seen renewed interest in Japan in the last decade with the publication of several monographs wholly or partially devoted to the topic, including Itō Risa's Ningyō jōruri no doramatsurugī (The Dramaturgy of Bunraku; 2012); Hara Michio's Chikamatsu jōruri no sakugekihō (Dramaturgy in Chikamatsu's Bunraku; 2013); and Han Kyoung Ja's Chikamatsu jidai jōruri no sekai (The World of Chikamatsu's Bunraku History Plays; 2019)—all of which build on Uchiyama Mikiko's seminal Jōrurishi no jūhasseiki (The Eighteenth Century in the History of Bunraku) from 1989. The focus of Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century on period plays gives sustained attention in English to works that have been taken up only now and then in translation and critical studies by authors such as Donald Keene, James Brandon, C. Andrew Gerstle, and Stanleigh H. Jones. The meanings of bunraku that the authors explore are distinct from those we might find in Chikamatsu's domestic dramas (sewamono), which still play an outsize role in shaping the image of the art in English-language contexts, perhaps partly because their concise, tightly structured, and poetic nature makes them more accessible and thus a familiar feature in surveys of early modern literature. Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century discusses well-known plays such as Kanadehon chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers; 1748), but also plays that are less familiar in English such as Ashiya Dōman ōuchi kagami (A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman; 1734) and Ōmi Genji senjin yakata (The Genji Vanguard in Ōmi Province; 1769). The authors argue that "bunraku theatre, despite its aspect as popular entertainment, was often a place for playwrights to manifest their political concerns" and a space of "reflection of the audience's expectations" (p. xvi). At first glance, this countercultural interpretation might seem to follow a well-trodden path in Tokugawa theater studies, recalling writings by Donald Shively that portrayed kabuki theater as a forum for popular resistance against censorship and governmental regulation.1 Analysis of this sort in previous English-language scholarship has tended to focus, however, on the dynamic within the administrative city of Edo as the center of political power and has never fully addressed bunraku, which saw its most dynamic developments four hundred kilometers west in Osaka. Despite drawing heavily on the world of the warriors and on contemporary political material, bunraku may have been shielded by sheer distance from the sort of scrutiny to which kabuki was subject. Odanaka and Iwai home in on this possibility and cultivate a focus on Osaka as a methodology, emphasizing the city's economic significance as an essential non-samurai center in the Tokugawa political body. The preface and introduction position "the rising economic power of the merchants" against the "sovereignty of the warriors" (p. xvi). Exploring the geographical division of Osaka into administrative spaces and areas of economic activity...