"The Theater Lives" - Puppet Plays in Rural Japan

This half-hour documentary made by NHK in 1984 focuses on the mountain village of Kisawa in Japan's Tokushima Prefecture and the villagers' annual performance of puppet plays, a tradition since the early 19th century. Many village residents participate in different ways, from designing the scenery and costumes to crafting the puppets to handling the puppets in performance to performing the songs and music accompanying the show. We see the life of the village and the harvesting of citron fruit for its juice, followed by the careful, deliberate preparations for the play, including a visit to Minasuke Oe, described as "Japan's foremost master in the art of carving puppet heads." We see an old street performer who goes from village to village putting on one-man puppet performances for the children and schooling the aspiring performers in the art of puppet handling. We see a little of the performance too, a play described by the English narrator this way: "The play is a tragedy about warriors in medieval Japan. It's a well-known story, very popular among Japanese." It would have been nice if he could have identified it for us. There are very beautiful shots of the picturesque mountain scenery around the village.