The love affairs of Princess Joruri seem to have been the impetus that started a great flood of ballad-dramas about the time of O-Kuni, for there existed in this early period a thousand red or blue covered books in which was written the story acted out by the dolls and illustrated by wonderful drawings of strange heroes and heroines.
To Menukiya Chosaburo is attributed the distinction of founding the first doll-theatre. He obtained the services of a man in Nishinomiya, a village near Osaka, who knew how to make puppets, and started to move them to express the emotions of the different ballad plays. He first performed in Kyoto, and had the honour of being summoned before the Emperor. Such was the dignity of the early puppets. With Kabuki, the Doll-theatre came in after years to be despised, being considered as something low and vulgar.
Female minstrels, or Joruri Katari (lit., to speak Joruri), made their appearance about the same time as O-Kuni in Kyoto, and two of them were famous, Rokuji Namuyemon and Samon Yoshitaka. In an old book there are pictures of these river-bed entertainments in Kyoto, and on a screen belonging to the Keicho period, when O-Kuni was active, there is depicted one of the first Joruri theatres conducted entirely by women. The tayu, or minstrel, sat on a platform higher than the stage on which the dolls were handled. The puppets had no hands or legs, and the hands of the women manipulators were not seen. Those who strummed the samisen were also women. But when the women’s stage, or Onna Kabuki, was found to be the source of moral corruption and was prohibited, the women of the Doll-theatre likewise came under the ban and were obliged to go out of existence.
Kyoto continued to be the centre of the doll performances, which spread to the surrounding towns and were well received in Osaka. Every class of the people patronised this new form of entertainment.
The rise of the Doll-theatre to public favour was the result of the relation of the dolls and minstrelsy. They had existed separately for many years. Before Joruri was born, there were blind minstrels who sang their ballads, accompanying themselves by scratching the ribs of their fans to mark the rhythms. These blind men were called zato, and frequented the compounds of shrines and temples, or stationed themselves on street corners, putting up an awning for protection, and reciting their ballads to all who would stop to listen. Sometimes they were asked to help to entertain at feasts, but generally they wandered about from place to place, staying at mean inns, giving entertainments for the guests, thereby earning a lodging, and at other times singing short pieces to make their livelihood. They came to be regarded as beggars, and were looked down upon accordingly.
Strolling puppet players there were also, with boxes suspended by cords around their necks. They displayed their dolls on the top of the box which formed a miniature stage for the movements of the little figures.
In the fullness of time the dolls and minstrels approached each other, instead of leading separate existences. But it was music that brought them together. The introduction of the samisen from the Loo Choo Islands, by way of the port of Sakai, near Osaka, shortly before O-Kuni’s appearance, was the medium that united these workers in the sphere of puppetry. By the end of the sixteenth century, this combination had produced the popular music-ballad drama called Joruri, which at one time threatened to completely overwhelm Kabuki in the estimation of the people.
The initial stages of the Doll-theatre development are very interesting, for the conventions evolved at this time were appropriated by the real actors and may be seen upon the modern stage of Japan. The first ballad plays in which the dolls performed harped on one motive, the efficacy of I prayer to gods and Buddhas. The stage technique in use at this time was especially adapted to display before a wondering audience appearances of gods, phantoms, apparitions, and ghosts, and many ingenious contrivances were invented to suit these supernatural visitors, while the plots of the plays were moulded so that the various stage tricks in connection with the godly and ghostly personages could be carried out.
During the vogue of the doll-ballads, with the answering of prayer for plots, elaborate machinery came into use for the manipulation of grotesque characters which were neither man nor beast, god nor demon, strange creatures created that machinery might give them life. Conjuring also played its part in astonishing the audiences of those days, and there was a period when the most ingenious devices were planned, in which water was used, the characters of the stories disappearing into waterfalls, floating on lakes, and even moved by water power.
Then followed an outburst of the military spirit in Joruri, and the answered-prayer balladry took a secondary place. It was the adventures of the great warrior Kimpira, the incarnation of courage, slayer of devils and demons, that captured the popular fancy. The exploits of brave men were of more interest than the ghostly and godly pieces, and Kimpira overshadowed all the rest.