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Chushingura

Kanadehon Chushingura (A Treasury of Loyalty of Loyal Retainers or The Story of the Forty-Seven Samurai) is the most popular play in the history of Japanese theatre, first performed in 1748. It is a work of fiction, but the details of the story are often confused with those of a real event, the Ako Incident (1701-3), on which it is commonly thought to be based.

Rise of the Puppet Theatre

After the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the 17th century, peace came to Japan after a century and a half of civil war. The population quickly rose, and towns expanded. Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and Osaka especially grew rapidly, and in these cities, a new kind of urban culture developed that reflected the values of the townspeople. Included in this were two new forms of theatre. One was kabuki, which used actors, and the other was bunraku, a form of puppet theatre. In the European tradition, puppets are thought of as being children’s entertainment, but in Japan, puppet theatre developed as a highly refined art form.

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