Creating Worlds: Well-Being through Japanese Otome Bunraku

Article Information

Creative Arts Educ Ther (2021) 7(2):216–229 DOI: 10.15212/CAET/2021/7/19

Creating Worlds: Well-Being through Japanese Otome Bunraku

Abstract

There is a type of puppet animation that appeared to suggest itself as a therapeutic medium at the London School of Puppetry. However, the repair of emotional chasm with new health, which might be physical, mental, or spiritual, was not what was intended. The school was offering an introduction to an artistic phenomenon from Japan called otome bunraku or “maiden’s doll theater,” but common to all participants, the result of performing this type of puppetry was an unexpected and profound sense of well-being. This feeling challenges anything the puppet alone offers to a puppeteer, and as an alternative, points to other possibilities of focusing on the puppeteer instead as a playfully disruptive, interruptive, creative, expressive and skillful presence. It argues that the nature of the puppeteer’s presence revealed in otome bunraku is a unified mind and body manifested in the manipulation of these puppets. A person reaches a physical and social realization of what well-being means through an experience of “being other” and therefore by creating other worlds in the process of puppetry.

Keywords: puppeteer, puppetry, otome bunraku, well-being, other, phenomenology, body

摘要

在伦敦木偶学院, 有一种木偶动画将其视作一种治疗媒介。然而, 以新的健康状态(可 能是身体、心理或精神上的健康)来修复情感鸿沟并不是其目的。学院对来自日本的 被称为乙女文楽或“少女的玩偶剧场” 的艺术现象进行了一次介绍, 参与者们普遍认 为, 表演这种木偶戏能够给人带来一种意想不到的、深刻的幸福感。这种感觉是对木偶 本身给予木偶师的任何东西的挑战, 作为一种替代, 它指向了关注木偶师身上的其他可 能性, 而不是作为一种有趣的破坏性、干扰性、创造性、表现性和技巧性的存在。文章 认为, 在乙女文楽中所揭示的木偶师存在的本质是在操纵这些木偶时表现出的统一的思 想和身体。一个人通过“成为他者” 的体验, 并因此通过在木偶戏的过程中创造其他 世界, 在身体和社会层面上实现对幸福含义的认识。

关键词： 木偶师, 木偶戏, 乙女文楽, 福祉, 他者, 现象学, 身体。