Day 28: November 14th

Today was a big day for team Cesario! Joe had lunch with the president of Kansai University, which he will write more about later.

As for me, I got to go to see a performance of Bunraku at Japan's National Bunraku Theater here in Osaka. Bunraku is traditional Japanese puppet theater. The puppets are about half life size and require 3 puppeteers to move them. One puppeteer moves the legs, one moves the left arm, and one (the lead puppeteer) is in charge of the head and right arm. The leg-man and left arm-man wear black hoods and black outfits so you don't notice them. The head puppeteer, however, wears an outfit like this:


The whole story is sung by a chanter who kneels off to the side of the stage and chants all of the different voices and narration. He is accompanied by a shamisen player (that's a 3 stringed Japanese instrument -- the sound is quite unique). I had an excellent seat in the 3rd row, practically next to the chanter and musician. These guys work HARD. The chanter practically shouts non-stop for the whole story, and the shamisen player grunts along with his music. But of course, the real action is on the stage. The movements of the puppets were really quite extraordinary. I was amazed at how the puppets' wooden hands could be so expressive. Some of the puppets have moveable eyebrows and mouths as well, adding to the emotion they can convey. Here is a picture from the program. Unfortunately, they were quite strict about no photograpy in the theater.


The first story began at 4pm and the first intermission was around 6:15. By that point I was quite hungry, and I went to the lobby hoping for a concession stand of some sort. They were selling small snacks, but no one was buying because, of course (!), everyone else had come with lovely pre-packed dinners. Nice bento boxes of rice, pickles, fish and veggies. I ate two of Archer's fruit bars from the diaper bag! Then it was back to the show for another 2 hours of Bunraku. The whole program let out around 8:20. It was a long and highly memorable night.

Afterwards, I walked through the Dotombori neighborhood again. After the highly cultured theater, the neon, loud music, and throngs rowdy teenagers seemed even more foreign.