Puppets of Nostalgia [Hardcover]

Jane Marie Law (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 1997

This work examines the ritual origins and religious dimesions of puppetry in Japan. It describes the life, death and rebirth of "awaji ningyo shibai", the unique form of puppet theatre of Awaji Island that has existed since the 16th century. Puppetry rites on awaji helped to maintain rigid purity codes and to keep dangerous spiritual forces properly channelled and appeased. Law conducted fieldwork on Awaji, located in Japan's Inland Sea, over a ten-year period. In addition to being an history and ethnography of this ritual tradition, the book is, at a theoretical level, a study of the process and meaning of tradition formation, reformation, invention and revitalization. It describes the activities of the island's ritual puppeteers and includes an English translation of their performance texts and detailed description of their rites.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 321 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (May 5, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069102894X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691028941
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,221,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A much needed, study of the revival of Japanese folk a art, March 29, 2001

By 

Dr. D. J. Ashmore (Akita, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Puppets of Nostalgia (Hardcover)

Travellers to, and scholars of, Japan have always marvelled at the wonderfully intricate and romantic Bunraku puppet theatre tradition.

However, few writers in the English language have ever gone beyond the form of the art which is known to us today to look at the root and branch of puppet tradition in Japan. Yet, though the Bunraku tradition can be said to be the ultimate evolved form of Japanese puppet art as a whole, in ignoring the traditions which gave raise to it students of the art are unable to appreciate some of the aspects of the art to their fill extent. This is why this work by professor Law is of such great import to the world of Japanese theatre arts. In deconstructing a single puppet theatre tradition - the Awaji Island school (possibly the oldest in Japan and probably the branch of the art from which most if not all later schools emerged) - right down to its most basic elements, the reader is made acutely aware of the fact that puppet arts did not spring into being, whole and immaculate, in the nineteenth century as some descriptions of the rise of Bunraku might have it, neither were they the product of the partnership of Chikamatsu Monzaemon and the Takemoto Theatre as other schools of thought maintain. Professor Law shows her audience quite clearly how and (the probable reasons) why puppet arts became important to the Japanese people and - which is more - why they retained their popularity long into the Early Modern era when such arts were being almost universally discarded or marginalized on the continent. She reminds us of the socio religious aspects of the art which have become so divorced from the very touristy puppet theatre traditions which form the of the Bunraku Association and presents to the reader physical evidence of the survival of other, older traditions which are equally deserving of study as the monotheistic National Puppet theatre (and, one might argue, which are far more deserving of recognition because of the way in which some of these traditions even now teeter on the brink of oblivion - driven there by the academic indifference of a century and more).

In brief then. A most marvellous book, which has opened up the world of Japanese puppet arts in a way never attempted before.

Clearly the most important work in this area of study for many decades.