Kagura, Chaban, and the Awaji Puppet Theatre: A Literary View of Japan's Performing Arts

Abstract

“That night, a blind singer recited a Michinoku ballad to the accompaniment of his lute. He performed not far from where I was trying to sleep, and I found his loud, countrified falsetto rather noisy … But then I realized how admirable it was that the fine old customs were still preserved in that distant land.” In writingThe Narrow Road of the Interior (Oku no hosomichi, ca. 1694), from which these lines are taken, the poet Bashō (1644–94) recalled a trip he had taken a few years earlier through Japan's northeast—what he referred to as “that distant land.” In the work Bashō reflects on the past as it survives in the present, on places made famous by poets of earlier times, and on the traditional performing arts that live on in such places. Even today Japan's northeast is known as a region where many traditional performing arts are still preserved.