before their other puppet plays as part of their New Year event and have a lovely rehearsal area and outdoor performance venue. My November trip also included visiting the wonderful otome bunraku exhibit taking place at the time at Osaka Daigaku. I was accompanied by otome bunraku performer Kiritake Masaya, and Professors Hayashi Kimiko Suzuki and Shizuo Goto, who were involved with the exhibit and very helpful in explaining the details of the tradition’s history and accoutrements to me. They have recently published a book of essays on the material in the exhibit. When I first arrived in Tokyo that September, I visited the wonderful artists at PUK puppet theatre, who welcomed me and introduced me to the puppet producer and researcher Yamaguchi Yoko. Yamaguchi’s research interests dovetailed with my own, and we have helped each other and collaborated in numerous ways ever since. In late November, she and I traveled together to Sado Island, eager to see the three different forms of traditional puppetry reputed to be there. We were hosted on Sado by Aida Tadaaki, a local rice farmer who is also an oni-daiko performer and devoted to Sado’s local folk arts and to promoting tourism on the island. I had met Aida some years previously when he and his oni-daiko troupe visited with the Japanese program at my institution, Hunter College in New York City, where I teach in the Theatre Department. He had subsequently helped me and a colleague in the Japanese program organize a study abroad program for our students that was meant to take place on Sado but was cancelled due to the pandemic. For Yoko and my visit, Aida offered a packed schedule of agricultural and art events. Only on arriving in Sado did we find out he had cast us as sample tourists in a promotional video he was making to attract visitors to Sado, promoting the island’s status as a GIAHS, Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. While we didn’t originally understand why our time on Sado to research puppetry began with visiting a sake brewery, an oyster harvesting boat, picking vegetables at a farm, and being given a sushi-making lesson, it all came together when we brought out the food we had made from locally sourced ingredients to serve the oni-daiko troupe that came and performed for us, and the video cameras, at the lake house where we stayed. Aida makes the connection between local agricultural and arts practices.- 70 -
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