INTRODUCTION

Japanese Traditional Puppets

The purpose of the Millennium Gallery exhibitions organized by the Macau Foundation for Cooperation and Development is to serve the public of Macau and its visitors by providing different exhibitions, as I very much believe that the notion of culture should be understood as a vast concept, rather then an elitist one.

People are both the originators of culture and their inheritors. Therefore the importance of the Past is to bring to the present topics for evolution.

This is the first of two traditional puppets exhibition, the second one being Chinese traditional puppets scheduled for December.

The importance of a puppet exhibition in Macau arises from the fact that it has never been presented before in their inactive state. These Japanese Puppets, called Ninjyo Joruri, are traceable back to China, though they have been active in Japan since the 17th. Century.

The visitors will therefore be able to view with utmost care the quality of craftsmanship of these actors who now rest lifeless, yet presenting a commanding presence and significance of the characters that were imparted to each of them.

However, I would like to recall that puppets have a very peculiar characteristic: created by man, they lay lifeless when not in use. Yet it is man who gives them life, operating a resurrection process whenever they knowledgably manipulate them into being alive once more, performing a symbolic divine act of life giver.

While in the western world, puppets slowly took the place of jesters - the only ones who could tell the blunt truth to kings – in the East their purpose was and still is different. This is very well explained by Anthropologist Carlos Morais José in his article on this catalogue.

What is apparently a complicated wooden doll dressed in either complex or simple clothes, it is basically both a substitute of man as an actor, and a projection of a certain character possessing specific characteristics, that conveys a presence very much unique in the theater of life.

I surely hope that this exhibition will stay in everyone’s mind until the three shows where the public of Macau will be able to see their resurrection to life.

António Conceição Júnior