Wondrous brutal fictions: eight Buddhist tales from the early Japanese puppet theater

Abstract

R. Keller Kimbrough, trans., Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from Early Japanese Puppet Theater New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. 288 pages. $55.00. isbn 978-0-231-14658-6.Any student or scholar of Japanese literature or drama will know something about joruri puppet theater (now known as bunraku), be it plays of Chika- matsu Monzaemon (1653-1754), often considered greatest playwright of genre if not of Japanese theater in general, or masterpieces of golden age of joruri (c. 1730-1760) such as Sugawara denju tenarai lagami (Sugawara's secrets of calligraphy, 1746) and Kanadehon Chushingura (The treasury of loyal retain- ers, 1748), which, like many successful joruri plays of period, also became staples of kabuki repertoire. Thanks to work of Donald Keene (1961) and C. Andrew Gerstle (2001), joruri of Chikamatsu in particular has long been accessible to English-language readers. Chikamatsu is not only recognized for introduction of contemporary-life (sewamono) into joruri, he is cred- ited with revolutionizing genre itself. Modern scholars have seen fit to make a distinction between joruri proper and early period of genre, which has come to be known as ko-joruri (old joruri). The dividing line is considered to be play Shusse Kagekiyo (Kagekiyo victorious), written by Chikamatsu in 1685 for chanter Takemoto Gidayu (1651-1714).This focus on Chikamatsu and relegation of all that came before him to a sub-category has meant that early history of joruri has remained a territory little explored, save by a small number of specialists. In English, only monograph on subject is Charles J. Dunn's The Early Japanese Puppet Drama (1966), published almost a half-century ago. Ishii's study (1989) of related genre of sekkyo-bushi subsequently added greatly to our knowledge of puppet theater of early and mid seventeenth century. Dunn's work introduces only two pieces in full transla- tion, however, and Ishii's contains only short summaries of five key sekkyo texts, leaving reader hungry for more examples of these fascinating narratives.Now in R. Keller Kimbrough's Wondrous Brutal Fictions reader has eight full translations of texts of early puppet theater. The pieces are: Sansho dayu, Karukaya, Shintokumaru, Oguri, Sayohime, Aigo-no-waka, Amida no munewari (Amida's Riven Breast), and Goo-no-hime. The text of earliest, Karukaya, dates from 1631, while latest plays translated are from editions of 1670s. As Kim- brough explains in his introduction, commercial puppet theater in seven- teenth century consisted of two streams. The one now referred to as ko-joruri arose from earlier story-telling and puppetry traditions, which with addition of recently imported shamisen for musical accompaniment coalesced at beginning of Edo period into a popular entertainment. The other, sekkyo or sekkyo-bushi, emerged from a tradition of lay Buddhist story-telling focused on, as Kimbrough puts it, the workings of karma and miraculous origins of celebrity Buddhist icons (1). Sometime around beginning of seventeenth century, per- formers of these sermon ballads, as term sekkyo-bushi is often translated, also began using puppets to illustrate their narratives. At first various instruments were used as musical accompaniment, but eventually sekkyo performances, too, adopted shamisen. For decades two arts competed with one another, as is illustrated in present work's introduction by reproduction of woodblock prints show- ing ko-joruri and sekkyo theaters side by side in theatre districts of both Edo and Kyoto in 1660s (4-5).Eventually, especially after development of new, more secular joruri rep- resented by plays of Chikamatsu, sekkyo tradition went into decline and in eighteenth century ceased to exist altogether. …