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Fujino Bunraku 2002 Ôishi Shrine The Ôishi Shrine is located in the Shinobara community of Fujino, about fifteen minutes' drive from Fujino Station. Prominent signs are posted to Shinobara and the shrine. Entry to performance is free, and food and drinks are sold by various community groups in the vicinity of the shrine. The performances are an outstanding example of new means of preserving traditional Japanese culture, but in a way meaningful to modern sensibilities and not merely antiquarian interests. For a bit more background information about the performances, see my page on Fujino Bunraku 1999, 2000, and 2001. Further details about this year's performance are available at the Fujino Town Offices at 0426-87-2111, (Japanese only). You might also take a look at Kato's Shinobara site for a few photos and descriptions of the performance in Japanese. Access: From Fujino station area: take Highway 20 to the Hizure Iriguchi intersection, cross the Sagami River and head south on Highway 76 for about three minutes. Just two-hundred meters before you reach the Workshop for Art, a small road leads off to the left for Shinobara; it should be marked on this day. Take this road about ten minutes until it comes out onto the main Shinobara road; turn left onto the main road, drive one kilometer to the large intersection; turn right into Shinobara and follow the signs to the Ôishi Shrine. Notes on Haha nasake rakujitsu no ono A widowed woodcutter and charcoal burner named Shinshirô lives deep in the mountain with his two children. Under the severe economic situation of the late Meiji period, the three eke out a miserable existence. The man's daughter is sent out as a servant girl, but she is falsely accused of theft and returns home. Shinshirô has no luck selling his charcoal, and the three are slowly starving. . . How this sad tale unfolds is the subject of the play, which takes some liberty with the recollections recorded by Yanagita Kunio in his Mountain Life. For sake of reference, I've made a rough translation of Yanagita's comments below: "I'm probably the last one who remembers these things, but some thirty years ago, when times were terribly bad, a charcoal burner named Shinshirô, only fifty years of age, lived in the mountains of western Mino. He killed his two children with an axe. "His wife had died long before, and he now had one son some thirteen years old. For some reason, I'm not sure why, he was also taking care of a young girl about the same age as his son, raising them together in his charcoal burning hut in the mountains. I can't even remember the children's names anymore. Anyway, the man had no luck at selling charcoal, and no matter how often he went down to the village, he never came back with even a pint of rice. Even on that last fateful day, he returned home empty-handed, and just as he stared into the faces of his starving children, the setting sun sent its light streaming into the door of the hut. It was the end of autumn. The two children crawled over to where the sun was striking, and they performed some action over and again; when the man went to look at what they were doing, he saw them hard at work, sharpening the axe he always carried to work. They looked up at him and said. "Father, kill us." "They lay down by the hut's door with their heads pillowed upon a log. When he saw them like that, Shinshirô grew faint, oblivious to anything before or after—he just took up the axe and struck off their heads. He couldn't kill himself, though, and was eventually taken and placed in prison. "When the man was about 60, he was pardoned and came out into the world once again, but I don't know how things turned out after that. Due to some special circumstances, I had occasion to read the documents about this case just once. Now, though, the records of that horrible human tragedy are probably now crumbling away somewhere, eaten by worms in a chest."

Free Bunraku Performance: August 17, 2002 Haha nasake rakujitsu no ono (Mother's Compassion and the Axe at Sunset Place: Ôishi Shrine, Shinobara, Fujino Township Date: August 17, 2002, 6:30 P.M. It is late autumn of 1904 in the town of Yamato, Gifu Prefecture. As the sun drops behind the mountains, however, it is not only night that falls . . . This year represents the ninth annual performance of Ningyô Jôruri by Yoshida Kanroku and other members of Japan's National Bunraku Theater. The main piece this year is Haha nasake—rakujitsu no ono, which might be loosely rendered as "Motherly compassion and the axe at sundown." Like last year's piece, Haha nasake is a modern work, written this time by Yoshida Kanroku himself, based—as suggested by the introductory words above—on events that occurred in the town of Yamato, Gifu Prefecture during early winter of 1904. The pathetic story might have been lost entirely to history had it not been for folklorist Yanagita Kunio, who had a chance to view the original court documents, and in 1926 penned a few recollections in his book Yama no jinsei (Mountain Life; see below). Kanroku then wrote the play at the suggestion of residents of Yamato, which also holds annual benefit performances of bunraku (n.b. the Sino-Japanese characters used to write haha nasake can also be read as bojô, the name of a famous local rice wine made in Yamato since 1873). Fujino Bunraku '99 (Sanbasô) Fujino Bunraku '01 (Amanjaku) Fujino Bunraku '01 (Amanjaku) To return to your previous location, use your browser's "BACK" button, or click your heels together three times while saying, "there's no place like home" . . .

Green Gables: A Contemplative Companion to Fujino Township
by Norman Havens nhavens@gol.com
Updated: August 10, 2002

URL: http://www2.gol.com/users/nhavens/htmlfile/joru02-e.html