Backstage at Buranku

A friend kindly offered to introduce Sam and me to a friend of hers who was a Bunraku puppeteer. We visited him backstage at the National Theatre. We got to tramp all over the stage and even hold a puppet - just 10 minutes before the curtain went up.

On stage before curtain-up. Neither the stage nor the brown-painted parts
are visible from the audience.

Sam is standing in the puppeteers' trough. To his left is the audience.
Along the front edge of the stage there is 3 feet of masking so
the puppeteers are only visible from mid-thigh up.

In the dressing room. Puppeteers are responsible for dressing their own
puppets but there is a professional seamstress for helping with new costumes

The puppeteers wear different-height clogs to give the characters different
prominence on stage. 

The woven patches muffle the clogs on the wooden stage.

The major characters are operated by 3 puppeteers each. The most junior
operates the feet while the left hand is operated by the middle-ranking puppeteer.

The female puppets don't actually have feet or legs so the illusion is
created by using the hands underneath the kimono.

The senior puppeteer (the only one not hooded on stage) operates the
head and the right arm.

The right arm.

Female puppets have a needle in their mouth. The kimono can be hooked
on to it to give the impression it is being chewed. This is a typical thing
for a Japanese girl to do and might represent shyness, bashfulness, worry &c.