In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

446Comparative Drama that its meaning in context can be correspondingly elusive, even unrecoverable. She concludes with four alternative readings ofthe same records and, in her helpful overview of the evidence, manages to undermine traditional claims that Midsummer Watch pageants were transferred to the Lord Mayor's Show at the time of (and because of) Henry VIII's break from Rome. By reinstating terminological uncertainty in the process of documentary interpretation, and by reminding us of lacunae in the records on which we depend, she provides a valuable caveat for everyone working in the field. This admirable volume, consistently clear, authoritative and, in many respects, a primer for the analysis of civic ritual and drama, is all the stronger for having such a warning at its heart. JOHN J. McGAVIN University ofSouthampton Jane Marie Law. Puppets ofNostalgia: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the Japanese Awaji Ningyo Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp. xiii + 322. $35.00. Compared with Noh, Kyogen, and Kabuki, the three most popular traditional Japanese performing arts, ningyö jöruri, the puppet ballad tradition, is virtually unknown to foreigners. Ningyö jöruri developed as an independent dramatic form generally known as Bunraku, now regarded as a representative art form that has helped to introduce Japanese culture in a wider sense. In the 1940s ningyö jöruri was on the verge of extinction due to a campaign throughout Japan to obliterate what were seen as irrational traditions and to Westernize the culture. Fortunately, the Education Ministry together with local movements worked to preserve traditional theater: a special training center was founded by the government, and it has been producing excellent puppeteers ever since. Today ningyöjöruri thrives and enjoys tremendous prestige; at the National Theater in Tokyo, for instance, it is performed almost daily and attracts even the younger generation accustomed to films and television. Jane Marie Law here examines the origins and formation of ningyö jöruri, an area still subject to much dispute. Her interest lies in "showing how the traditions of religious puppetry and non-ecclesiastical worship have been continually reconstructing the past and forging new identities and traditions." She focuses our attention on Awaji, a small island in the Japan inland sea near Kobe and a center for puppetry from at least the sixteenth century. The author argues that the most sacred rite of Awaji puppetry was the Sanbaso ritual, where deities in the other world take the form of old men and visit men this world. This purification rite (to cleanse homes, remove pollution, and invite good luck) is the core of religious puppetry in Japan. Awaji puppeteers travelled all Reviews447 over Japan performing the Sanbaso, many of them settling in other regions and starting their own puppetry troupes, though still considering themselves "Awaji puppeteers." Present-day scholars have succeeded in reconstructing the Awaji ningyö tradition; Law, who has been involved in the reconstruction, has discovered that Awaji ningyö tradition grew out of an appeasement ritual dedicated to a deity called Ebisu, who was worshipped at the Nishinomiya shrine. Viewing puppetry theater through its ritual origins, she shows the variety of religious uses of puppets in Japanese religion to mediate the dichotomies of order and chaos, purity and pollution, danger and safety, good and evil, the human and the divine. Puppets in the shape of the human become the vessels in which the sacred forces came to dwell and challenge the boundaries between the human and the divine. Law pays particular attention to the development ofritual specialists in Kadozuke ("arts attached to the gate") performance, in which itinerant puppeteers unleash spiritual powers for revitalizing the home and control the potentially dangerous forces through their performance. The puppeteers who symbolize the frightening aspects ofsacredness and pollution become outsiders, outcasts, the Other. The author argues that the existence of this ritual system carried out by outcasts challenges the common assumption in ritual theory that posits "a sacred system of meaning" as the basis for ritual efficacy—a system she traces to the early Japanese creation myths such as the eighth-century mythical narratives , the Kojiki and Nihongi. Chapter 3 focuses on the sea deity Ebisu and his shrines, chiefly the Nishinomiya shrine (located...

pdf

Share