Introduction
Movies, akin to any other form of art, have been part of our lives since first black and white movie appeared on the big screen. The Chinese and Japanese actors have been strongly engaged in acting for a long time, with their movies carrying important facets of social, cultural, political and even economic concepts these movies reflect important problems in the lives of people (Shirane, 233).
Apart from the themes presented by dramas and movies, the form and style of art have also been important parts of movies. Among the common traditional art elements that the Chinese and Japanese movies and plays demonstrate is the art of chanting in the puppet theatre (Shirane, 233).
This form of puppet art dominated Japanese and Chinese acting styles throughout the history. Double Suicide is a 1969’s movie that Shinoda Masahiro produced specifically to demonstrate the 1721’st puppet play. Central to exploring the issue of the puppet art, this essay makes a movie analysis of the Double Suicide to provide a comprehensive insight into the art of the Japanese puppet theatre.
The Character of Shinoda
Shinoda Masahiro, with the help of Chikamatsu Monzaemon, developed this movie purposely to demonstrate the elements of 1721 puppet play, popularly described as Bunraku in Japanese art. Double Suicide is one of the unique Japanese films whose stylization across all levels of the actions remains exquisitely persistent (Rutherford, par. 1).
Double Suicide puts more emphasis on the aspects of artifice or stage tricks where the Bunraku puppet theatre dominates throughout the play from the first scene. Following the pre-modern Japanese style developed by Monzaemon Chikamatsu, Double suicide is a film based solely because on the puppet theater styles.
According to Rutherford, “Double Suicide adopts the conventions and style of these almost life-size wooden puppets, with their visible, black-clad, hooded puppeteers, into the form of the film.” (par.3). The most dominant and emphatic self-importance aspect of Double Suicide is the Kurogo, who present themselves as puppeteers covered and unmasked.
Shinoda’s Double suicide film tends to transform the Japanese form of acting from the traditional puppet theatre style to the modern cinematographic design (Ebrey, 295).
The main characteristic argument distinguished in the movie that surrounds Bunraku theatre is the presence of disagreement involving social commitments within the Japanese societies, also known as giri and the ninjo that describes personal desires.
As demonstrated by Rutherford, “Shinoda uses the theatrical impulse here to stage a drama of the overwhelming, excessive power of eroticism to rupture the stultifying, quotidian demands of social convention.” (par. 6).
The techniques of using reflections of the wooden puppets and hooded puppeteers and replacing them with the human actors demonstrate crucial transformation from the traditional performance techniques to the contemporary cinematic practices of the modern Japanese art (Cornyetz, 102).
By only replacing the traditional wooden puppets with human beings, and ensuring that the movie follows that pre-modern Japanese drama style initiated by Chikamatsu, the movie only changed the style but remained thematically significant.
Being one of the four foremost innovative Japanese directors of the modern wave of movie and film stylization developed between the 1950s and 1960s, Shinoda maintained the major concepts of the story to ensure that the latest transformations of the movie does not contradict the initial storyline of the film (Shirane, 236).
Shinoda only employed few techniques in stylization and transformation of the traditional aesthetics into the modern art, leaving the major components of the story in its original foundational story.
The story came right during the advent of political transformations in Japan that involved using cinemas as new tools or weapons to condemn political repressions (Ebrey, 295).
The connection of the new wave film to the political situation in the country resulted in the ranking this movie as one of the political-aesthetical Japanese films. Using humans to represent mere puppeteers and linkage of the story directly to the important political issues gave the viewers and the film fans a better view of the story.
The art of puppet theatre in Double Suicide
Double suicide is a film that can provide an understanding of the traditional Japanese performance arts of the late 1960s and the aesthetics that indicated the ironical quotations (Cornyetz, 106). The initial form of the Japanese performance involved deviations between the character’s speech and the original film script.
The art of using the wooden puppets and the hooded puppeteers in the film really creates an enthusiasm in this Bunraku puppet drama where the black masqueraded actors appear dressed in black clothes (Rutherford, par. 4). Throughout the movie, Bunraku, the relentless focus of the film, dominates all the critical scenes of the movie.
The Kurogo was the figurative element in the story, who acted as the main character that constantly assisted the live performances. The Kurogo play an important role as they represent the ghostly images commonly described as the hands of fate that direct the two lovers to their death fate.
Using the puppet theatre (Bunraku), where Kurogo images appeared in several scenes, presents a great reflection to the film’s storyline (Ebrey, 295). Double Suicide presents the story of a rich mercantile named Jihei who was not capable of paying his lover’s arrears.
There is also a Koharu, who is the person responsible for leading the two lovers to making a suicide decision known as the Shinju, with the notion is that these lovers will finally meet in the next life. With the designed Kurogo in the movie, Shinoda was able to demonstrate the story of the film (Rutherford, par. 4).
Despite the fact that the Kurogo only applied best in theatrical demonstrations, but not in real films, they represented almost true human images that caused anxiety, fear, and enthusiasm that really overwhelmed the viewers (Cornyetz, 106). The stagehands role of the Kurogo showed the disruptive power that demonstrated their role as the fate deciders who manipulated almost all the performances in the film.
Conclusion
Double Suicide is one of the earliest Japanese movies, which can best describe the evolution of the theatrical performances in the Japanese acting practice.
Dubbed as the new wave of movie production that emerged during the 1950s and 1960s, Shinoda artistically managed to make significant transformation of characters in the movie, replacing the traditional wooden puppets, black attired, covered puppeteers with the real human actors.
Adopted from the traditional Japanese drama, the movie emphasizes on Japanese stage deception that used the Bunraku puppet theaters in acting. Despite re-inventing modern means of presenting the movie, Shinoda ensures that several original facets of the film remain untouched and presents the intended theme.
The transformation of the movie comes when the transformations in the acting realm were receiving substantial attention. In essence, the film transformed when the Japanese cinemas were becoming increasingly important tools of political struggle, thus, remaining classified as the political-aesthetical films.
Works Cited
Cornyetz, Nina. “Gazing Disinterestedly: Politicized Poetics in Double Suicide.” A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 12.3 (2001):101-127. Print.
Ebrey, Patricia. Pre-Modern East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
Rutherford, Anne. Double Suicide and the fetishism of space. 2013. Web.
Shirane, Haruo. Early Modern Japanese Literature, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print.