two two-person shi-shi did a languorous dance on the open field in front of the small shrine. This event had the true feeling of a local festival for villagers who gathered, with no paparazzi, and a very celebratory atmosphere. On January 5, I was able to attend, for the second time, the annual Hyakutayū event at Nishinomiya shrine, where the hakomawashi bless the shrine priests as well as onlookers with their Ebisu puppets. I was invited to join the priests, the hakomawashi, and members of Ebisu-za, another puppet troupe that also performed that day with their own Ebisu show, at a special post-ritual lunch. On the way to Nishinomiya, a stop at Dōjōji temple in Wakayama introduced me to the temple priest, Ono Shujo, who we saw twice perform Dōjōji’s scroll story, a version of Musume Dōjōji, once in English and once in Japanese. He spent the day with Holman, an old friend of his, and me sharing his insights into his tradition and reflecting on how he works with the performing objects, the scrolls, that are central to his storytelling.Among other events I was able to attend in later months were the Oneri festival in Iida City, where every size and shape of shi-shi comes out to dance, even an orange and black striped tiger “shi-shi” [fig.8]. The Sado festival being cancelled, I went instead to the popular dashi festival in Takayama. Although visitors were discouraged from attending, because of COVID precautions, and rain threatened to cancel everything, in the end many dashi were pulled through the streets, and the famous karakuri figures did their performances for spectators from within their shelters. At Kitano shrine in Tokyo, I witnessed their 800-year-old Ta-Asobi, where a straw doll covered in striped cloth plays a central role in the event’s acting out of the many stages of rice cultivation. Also in Tokyo, Professor Mari Boyd introduced me to the famous Youkiza marionette theatre. The company graciously allowed us to watch rehearsals as they devised their new production based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and we enjoyed this novel performance when the show premiered in Shimokitazawa. Boyd and I also attended a performance of Hitomiza’s accomplished otome bunraku troupe.FINAL DAYSIn the spring of 2022, as my time in Japan was drawing to a close, - 73 -
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