Karakuri: the robots of yesteryear

Robots greatly fascinate the Japanese - witness the popularity of Asimo, the recent development of a robot sommelier, and the yearly robot tournaments where amateurs and robot specialists pit their creations against each others’. You can see this love for all things mechanical in the karakuri, the wooden automata popular in the Edo period.

Karakuri are mechanized puppets constructed from wood and other materials. With gears, string, and springs, the masters of this art created delicate mechanisms that powered these to do a variety of tasks. The butai karakuri are created for use in the theater. In the 16th and 17th centuries artfully-designed karakuri would act out scenes as a chanter tells the story to the samisen accompaniment. Because of the limits to what they can do, artisans developed the human-manipulated puppets for use in what then became Bunraku theater.

Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of karakuri on different levels of the festival floats, performing scenes from mythology or legends. These are called Dashi karakuri. The Aichi and Gifu prefectures are noted for their preservation of this kind of automatons. One can see them in Gifu’s Takayama Festival which is held twice a year.

The most intricate karakuri are the zashiki karakuri and are meant for household use. The Chahakobi ningyo, or tea-serving doll, is dressed in a silken kimono and lovingly made to bear a serene visage. It will receive a cup of tea from its owner and serve it to a guest. Once the cup is emptied and placed on the tray in the puppet’s hands it turns, returning to the owner. Other zashiki like the arrow-shooting boy are purely for entertainment.

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Posted September 12th, 2006 by geisha |