Purcell-Gates, L (2024) 'Yūrei and puppetry in Japanese ghost stories.' In: Orenstein, C and Cusack, T, eds. Puppet and spirit: ritual, religion, and performing objects. Volume II Contemporary branchings: secular benedictions, activated energies, uncanny faiths. Routledge. ISBN 9780367713799 (Forthcoming)
Abstract
Kaidan, Japanese spirit or ghost stories, have long been performed using puppets and performing objects. Yūrei (spirits) in these stories manipulate perceptions of human and spirit bodies in order to resolve the unfinished business that keeps them trapped in the kono-yo, the world of the living. These perceptual manipulations echo (mis)perceptions of animacy in puppetry, in which the puppet body reads simultaneously as self-animated and as animated by the puppeteer. By examining two twenty-first-century kaidan theatrical productions that use puppetry alongside theatrical and filmic kaidan drawn from the Edo period through the present, I trace layers of misperception around human, puppet, and spirit bodies in kaidan performances. I examine resonances between these misperceptions and confusion around bodies that frequently occurs in kaidan, in which spirits often disguise themselves as living humans, raising questions and stoking uncertainties over what is a living human body and what is a spirit body.
| Item Type: | Book Chapter or Section |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Bath School of Music and Performing Arts |
| Related URLs: | |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Sep 2024 09:50 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Sep 2024 11:54 |
| URI / Page ID: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/16461 |
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