Общество "Россия-Япония":
http://ru-jp.org/

Yuri Kuzhel
PhD (Literature)

ORIGIN OF JAPANESE THEATRICAL PUPPETS

In their evolution, the puppets of the Japanese Bunkaru theater have covered a long way-from simplistic effigies involved in ritual to sophisticated dolls showing human feeling onstage. The puppet is a child whose birth has crowned the doll maker's quest for a harmonious form. The Japanese puppetry is a plastic art carrying in it the national cultural tradition.

The Bunkaru theater (also known as ningyo joruri) took shape in the 17th and the 18th centuries, and its aim was to convey religious meaning through artistic form. The prehistoric Japanese believed the world to be populated by supernatural forces influencing all aspects of human life, and they tried to control or propitiate those forces through ritual, so as to ensure the well-being of their community. We have only a vague idea of what the early Japanese civilization's spiritual life may have been like, but we know for sure that it was governed by magic and that doll-like figures were an essential magical tool.

The use of dolls in Japanese magical practices is closely associated with Oharai, the ritual form of purification performed by Shinto priests. A wooden stick symbolizing a bridge between the humans and the supernatural realm was used in that ritual along with other objects, and miko priestesses were invited as the vehicles for transmitting divine messages to people.

The stick eventually evolved into a doll, taking on the shape of the human body surmounted by a head (hence the name hitogata, or human form). The doll was conceived as a plastic symbol, an abstraction, a metaphor of humanity. Naturalistic or stylized, it could come into contact with the human being through similarity of the physique. In prehistoric Japan, all objects created by people, including sculpted doll-like figures, were considered sacred and charged with magical powers. They were seen as intermediaries in contacts between gods and man or even as the incarnation of a god or spirit. Being plastic representations of abstract ideas, sculptures always found themselves among the chief attributes of magic.

In Japanese funeral rites, haniwa clay figurines were used. Initially, these were involved in cults held by priests. Later on, they replaced human sacrifice in noblemen's tombs (5th-6th centuries). There is an obvious connection between the realm of haniwa and Shinto mythology.

The haniwa figures represented many different personages, ranging from priests and priestesses to warriors to musicians to clowns to commoners. All those characters were sculpted in motion: a miko priestess performing a ritual, a warrior preparing himself for combat, a musician playing the koto, etc. Most of the haniwa figures boast balanced composition and precise rendition of gesture. The objects they hold-like a ribbon ornamented with mountain symbols, a string of sacred magatama gems, and a sacral mirror-as well as their tense attitudes indicate readiness for contact with the divine.

The ample material collected on the haniwa makes it possible for present-day scholars to relate this type of tomb sculpture to the Bunkaru puppetry. Not just because one of the haniwa's names-tsuchiningyo-contains the word "puppet." More importantly, in comparison with other examples of early Japanese sculpture, the haniwa figures display more detailed treatment of the facial features-carefully molded mouths, eyes, eyelids, and noses; eyebrows suggested by clay ropes attached to the basic shape… Besides, there is a great diversity in the shape of the eyes and in their position with regard to the nose. All this helped achieve in the haniwa the remarkable liveliness of facial expressions, making it a powerful source of inspiration for puppet builders of succeeding periods in human history. Thus, the face modeling traditions of the haniwa figures continued into the Middle Ages.

The haniwa figurines and the doll-like sculptures of the Jomon Period (4th-3rd centuries B.C.)-likely prototypes of the Bunkaru puppets-were made for ritualistic uses. Those inanimate objects were brought alive by a priest so that they could act in ritual as intermediaries between people and supernatural forces.

In ancient times, the doll was believed to have a strong magical content. It embodied man's idea of the mysterious. A successor to the ritual doll, the theatrical puppet never lost its connection with cult, in neither ideology nor imagery.