bunraku in film

[Aaron Gerow]

>I was just thinking about this film because I watched Kuroki's Ryoma 
>Ansatsu last night. The scene where the woman narrowly escapes by 
>jumping out of a second story window into a riotous crowd chanting Ee 
>ja nai ka reminded me of a kind of mirror image of the great ending of 
>Awa no musume, where the bad guys get swept up in and trampled by a mob 
>dancing the crazy awa odori.

Markus, are you talking about Makino Masahiro's 1941 _Awa no odoriko_? 
Sounds like the same ending, but you list a different title. If it is the 
Makino film (which is a great film, by the way), it features less 
classical bunraku than travelling story tellers who use small puppets. In 
a film which storytelling is itself interrogated, it is a great effect.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
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JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
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