I was fortunate in 2021-22 to receive a research fellowship from the Fulbright Foundation that allowed me to spend nine months in Japan doing research on puppetry. My proposal was to investigate forms of traditional puppetry used within ritual contexts—at festivals, in worship, or for giving blessings. While I love the Osaka ningyō jōruri or bunraku tradition, I knew, or at least suspected, that Japan was also home to a wide variety of other kinds of puppets, manipulation methods, and performance contexts that were less known abroad and that others, as well as I, would be interested in knowing more about. I also have a broader interest in the ways puppets act as mediators between the human and divine in various cultures. The recently published, two volume collection, Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects, which Tim Cusack and I have co-edited, gathers over thirty essays from scholars and artists across the globe on this subject, looking at different models in diverse cultural and religious contexts. I have written articles on the Indian tholpavakoothu, shadow puppet tradition of Kerala, which is done annually for the goddess Bhadrakali in special houses built specifically for these performances on the grounds of temples throughout the region. I have also written about the wonderful hakomawashi performers in Tokushima [fig.1], whom I was introduced to some years ago by kuruma ningyō master Nishikawa Koryū V while working with him and US puppeteer Tom Lee on their collaborative project, Shank’s Mare. I was completely captivated by the wonderful performers of this art, Nakauchi Masao and Minami Kimiyo, who spend several months each year on a kadozuke to roughly 1000 houses, many in remote mountain areas, to bless people and their homes with their puppets of Okina, Senzai, Sanbasō, and Ebisu. I was also impressed with Tsujimoto Kazuhide, a scholar of the form who works closely with the hakomawashi and who has devoted his life to learning about this art, teaching others about it, and amassing an enormous collection of regional puppets, so many that he has now opened his own museum ◉特集Ⅱ Exploring Japan’s Diverse Puppet HeritageClaudia Orenstein「日本の多彩な人形芝居を訪ねて」クラウディア・オレンスティン（対訳78頁）- 64 -
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