In this seminar, I would like to talk on the topic of puppets which I have wanted to analyze and discuss for some time. It may have some relevance for the purpose of this seminar. However, as I have been pointing out during the course of the previous seminars, I cannot quite understand what 'character' is. In many cases, characters seem to refer to those that appear in animations which are made substantial as if alive and attract people's attention. By way of experiment, I did an internet search and found a website showing a popularity poll of characters featuring in the works of Miyazaki and Takahata of Studio Ghibli. There was a character called Pazu of 'Laputa: Castle in the Sky'. People seem to know a great deal about these things. I do not quite understand what new significance it has apart from the fact that it is a large industry. Are they new and interesting because they are popular or because they are non-human artificial characters? But there were such characters in novels of the past too. However, when I watched the popular television show 'Train Man', I noticed that many people really like figures related to characters. When I saw how people collect these and have them lined up on display, I thought that I could contribute some ideas to the Seminar on Character Creativity in so far as I can relate the discussion to puppets as I have been going to bunraku theater for a long time. This is how I came to join the seminar by Nozaki-san's recommendation.

　

 I have been watching bunraku for almost half a century, though I prefer puppet joruri (dramatic narrative chanted to a samisen accompaniment) to puppets and I am more of a specialist on joruri. However, when I went to see the performances, people would be using puppets, and since I have continued to go frequently to watch puppet joruri ever since I was involved in the stage settings of bunraku as a university student, I think I have sufficient knowledge of bunraku as an amateur.

 What has puzzled me for many years about bunraku is the relationship between the puppeteer and the puppet. It would be fairly easy to comprehend if it were a technique by which a human being moves a puppet to make it look as if it were alive. But it is not like that. On a bunraku stage, three people move here and there with the puppet in front. It appears to be an art form where the people on stage are a disturbance. The main puppeteer sometimes appears dressed in black or comes to the front in a fine costume. Audiences and critics of the past used to criticize the puppeteers for coming out in front, but I do not agree. I think the puppeteer appears in front for a good reason. Very often, the puppeteer purposely appears in a grand kamishimo (ceremonial dress) shouting 'yah' in the most important scene. Moreover, in some programs, the other two puppeteers appear wearing a gorgeous kimono and kamishimo of the same design as the main puppeteer. This is not because the program is in modern style but because it is a program with three puppeteers. One of the things I have wondered about for many years is why the puppeteer appears in front when he is a disturbance.

 Next, let me talk about the movement of the puppets. I think this will be related to discussion on robots and so on. The puppets moved by puppeteers do not imitate human gestures. Their movements are in modular forms. For example, in the case of hands, there is a certain number of ways of moving the right hand, and the same applies to the left hand, legs, neck and shoulders. In other words, the puppet's movements are created by combining a number of patterns. Thus, the puppet does not imitate, for example, the ordinary human movement expressing pondering. To express the puppet pondering, one from a set of patterns of hand movement is chosen and used. At least, human movements are not simply copied, and several patterned movements are combined.

 I have another simple question and that is about how the puppeteer's face comes to resemble that of the puppet. For example, Naniwa no Jo (better known by the name of Bungoro), who lived till he was almost 90 years old, was famous as a puppeteer of female puppets. This old man's facial expression seemed to resemble the face of Yaegaki hime (Princess Yaegaki), the puppet for which he was the puppeteer. However, Bungoro was not required or expected to act the part of the princess, but was required to move the puppet Yaegaki hime. So it might be possible that each time he moved the puppet he moved it as if he were the princess herself and his face came to resemble the puppet's face. If that were the case, then it would be bizarre, since rather than the human being moving the puppet of the princess to look like a real princess, the princess that is being moved influences the puppeteer and infuses a soul into the human being. It is not that the human being infuses a soul into the puppet, but the puppet infuses the soul of the princess into the human being and the face of Bungoro the puppeteer becomes like the face of the princess.

 At first, I said it would be easy to understand if we simply think that puppets had no soul and did not move, so living human beings moved these objects to make them look alive; but in fact something quite the opposite is happening here. This is a simple question that we all have. We realize this at about the second time we see a puppet joruri performance. I think there is a greater problem here concerning puppets in general than just about answering the question about puppeteers in bunraku.

　

 A literary critic called Roland Barthes has perceptively analyzed Japan in his book Empire of Signs. This book is part of a splendid series by various writers and intellectuals of France and Europe making books including pictures and photographs of their fields of specialization. Novelists do not necessary write novels. For instance, one novelist I like called Le Cl'ezio presents photographs of his experiences of going to the Indians in South America. Empire of Signs is famous for being written by Roland Barthes and for the fact that he wrote that the imperial palace is a great empty center in Japan. Some people have quoted descriptions from this book at second hand, saying, 'the emperor is an empty place rather than substance in Japan and is rather like the place where bicycle spokes come together and good for governing Japan as a country.' But no Japanese person has seriously discussed the book itself. Nevertheless, I think this book is unusual and worth noting at least as a book that represents the extraordinarily sharp intuition of Roland Barthes. For example, there is a section on making tempura that seems to be written playfully. Even though he might have been playful, it contains his power of intuition and the essay presents itself as a wonderful parody. Among the various significant parts of the book, there is about a ten-page description of bunraku. I do not know how many times Barthes has seen bunraku but I, as one who has been watching bunraku for many years, am astounded by the astuteness of his insight. Let me give two examples of what I am referring to. First is about 'the manifestation of both the gesture and action on stage'. This refers, for example, to the gesture of the puppet Ohboshi Yuranosuke, a character in Chushingura (the real name is Ohishi Kuranosuke but it becomes Ohboshi Yuranosuke in the stage version), when the puppeteer moves it. However, the puppeteer does his best as a puppeteer to enact the role of Ohboshi Yuranosuke. In terms of Shakespeare's play, the bodily movement befitting Hamlet is gesture, and the enactment by Nakadai Tatsuya, who is happily acting as the one well-fitting the role, is action.

 For example, there is a famous play called 'Death of a Salesman' in which the main character walks three steps forward, suddenly turns around and transforms into who he was 30 years ago. He walks three steps, turns around and says, 'Oh, Bob' or something and changes into Bob's father as a young man who used to try to train the 18 year old Bob in American football. To put it simply, in the case of theater, the action/acting must not be perceived. The audience must see the gesture of Hamlet walking anxiously and not the action of Nakadai Tatsuya walking three steps right and left. However, in the case of bunraku, the gesture and action are both revealed. In other words, while the puppeteer is doing his action in a certain way, what is happening to the puppet is that it makes gestures in another way feeling ruefully about the hard-heartedness of the man while turning its back. Roland Barthes says that it is strange for the audience to see both actions and gestures and that he does not know of any such theatrical performance. In ordinary puppet theater, the puppeteers are hidden as much as possible. That is to say, the action is hidden out of sight. In the case of bunraku, gestures and actions are both revealed on stage. Another point he makes is that 'we tend to think that we instill a soul into something that does not have one, but that is not the case'. I do not know whether he is correct, but he has a rather good point. In other words, if a puppet is to be manipulated to make it look alive, you should move it as if it were alive. However, the size of the puppet is small, its feet cannot be seen and the puppet only moves like a puppet. We see the puppet of Ohboshi Yuranosuke making the gestures of Ohboshi Yuranosuke, and we do not see it as if it is really a living human being. Roland Barthes writes that this is not the aim of the theater in the first place.

 I think this would be a theme of this seminar. Europeans are concerned about the problem of the soul. I am a Catholic living in a peripheral region like Japan, so I understand the problem fairly well. For example, in the ballet Coppelia, it is rather frightening when the doll Coppelia often turns into a real human being. That is to say, the soul should be given only by God and it is blasphemous for man to imbue the soul into something. For example, the more Sony's Aibo and Honda's Asimo move realistically, people tend to think that they are trying unconsciously to imbue the soul into them, but that is in fact not the case. In other words, they say that they are not trying to imbue a soul into things that do not have a soul and bring them to life.

 These two ideas are both similar to mine, so I commend them. That is to say, as I said just now, you will never think, 'I made a mistake; I thought it was human.' The puppets are not intended to appear human in the first place. We see how the puppet moves in a combination of patterned movements and get the feeling that we are seeing Ohboshi Yuranosuke. There is never a chance that we are tricked into thinking that Ohboshi Yuranosuke was there or a human being acted as Ohboshi Yuranosuke because bunraku does not intend to imbue a soul into the puppet.

 What it is doing is that the puppeteer clearly is battling to do something as living human being like ourselves, in a sense which is different to the western concept of the soul. The puppet is moving as something without a soul, but if we use the Japanese expression, the puppeteer grasps Ohboshi Yuranosuke's inner strength as a human being and represents the character of Ohboshi Yuranosuke. He does not intend to imbue a soul in the puppet and turn it into a human being, but he does try to represent Ohboshi Yuranosuke with a character. He does not try to create a human being but is trying to create a fictional Ohboshi Yuranosuke. I think this idea can be used in our approach to character creativity in this seminar.