Hiroshi Sugimoto/Courtesy of Odawara Art Foundation)
Bunraku is a form of puppet theater most associated with the city of Osaka. Puppeteers devote themselves to their craft for their whole lives. Classically, the chief puppeteer would be fully viewable on stage as he manipulated the controls for the full-body puppets, which are about half life-size. But in this production at the Rose Theater, in the Time Warner Center, all the puppeteers were sheathed in black coverings. (Bunraku puppeteering is traditionally only for men, but still, at the curtain when all the performers could finally be seen, it was surprising to see no women at all.)

In Japan, Bunraku performances typically last 3-4 hours, but this one was a mere 2.5 hours. The story is a compelling one, holding much of the dramatic pull that Shakespeare achieved in Romeo and Juliet. But in all honesty, I found the puppet part of the show to be the least interesting. They did not move much, and if there was fine movement being achieved in the puppets' delicately carved faces and hands, it was hard to see at the distance of the audience in the Rose.

The most compelling part of the performance were the six shamisen players and the four narrators, known as tayu. The shamisen is a 3-stringed instrument played with a plectrum, which offers a sound completely identifiable with Japan. In Bunraku, the shamisen players are on  stage with the puppeteers, but they cannot see the action of the puppets. The narrators sit with the shamisen players and also face out to the audience, unable to see the puppets. Apparently this tension between the puppeteers and the musicians/narrators not being able to see each other, but trying to stay in sync, is what contributes partly to Bunraku's appeal.

Other instruments could be heard throughout the evening--a bell, a stick rapping something, a drum. But these all emanated from a shrouded perch at stage right, in complete darkness, while the shamisen players and narrators sat on the stage in a well-lit substage, sitting on small stools.

Hiroshi Sugimoto/Courtesy of Odawara Art Foundation)

The English supertitles projected near the ceiling were hard to read, so even though the performance is in Japanese, it was the voices of the narrators, sometimes singly, sometimes in chorus, that conveyed the depth of the drama and emotions throughout, overshadowing the slowly-moving puppets for most of the evening.

That is, until the final scene. Under cover of darkness in the middle of the forest, Tokubei and Ohatsu embrace and express their undying love for each other. When the time comes near dawn to follow through on their pledge, Tokubei wields a sharp razor and attempts to slit his beloved's throat, but he botches it and does not make a clean cut. He watches her suffer and tries again. When she slumps over, dying but still alive, he cuts his own throat so that the two of them can take their last breaths together in this lifetime. It was a stunning scene, and as the lights on stage began to dim, I suddenly realized how gripped I was by the tragedy, not thinking for a moment that I was watching puppets. I was watching love.