Corona epidemic （and now the return flight to Tokyo is uncertain because of the inability to fly over Russia）.To begin with, what is Japanese puppet theater? Until now, research on Japanese puppet theater has focused heavily on a single company. Bunraku, which reached its creative peak in the 18th century with the advent of the scriptwriter Chikamatsu Monzaemon, the "Shakespeare of Japan," is certainly a representative of Japanese puppet theater and stands out worldwide for its unique style of puppet manipulation, in which three people manipulate a single puppet. Even today, Bunraku has one of Japan's five national theaters as its exclusive theater. Bunraku garners attention not only in terms of practical support, but also in scholarship. Detailed research has been conducted on the history of script formation, textual criticism, company history, and political and social analysis. Philosophical analysis has also been conducted, as in the case of Roland Barthes, who considered Bunraku to be a special form of theater with a fragmentary nature, which requires the simultaneous reading of three ecritures: the puppets, the puppeteer, and the narrator.Nevertheless, Bunraku is not the only puppet theater that has existed in Japan. Japanese puppetry is far more diverse. As in Europe, puppet troupes have existed in every city and town, and the diversity increased even more since the early 20th century.The landscape of Japanese puppetry changed decisively in the early 20th century. The script, stage design, acting methods, and even who was on the stage and what audiences wanted were greatly diversified. At that time, there were also changes in actorsʼ theater caused by the influx of Western theater. But the changes in puppet theater, while closely related to those in the actorʼs theatre, are not exactly the same. This is because it was primarily visual artists, not performing artists, who began creating new puppet theater in Japan in the early 20th century. The changes in Japanese puppetry parallel the emergence of artistic puppetry in various parts of Europe. There is a clear relationship of influence.As far as I have seen, the earliest Japanese magazine article on European puppet theater was published in 1905 in the most famous theater magazine of the time, "Kabuki". This is an anonymous article in issue 57. It includes a general statement ― 522 ―― 522 ―
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