On Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016, we held a puppet-show workshop at Hanawa-machi in Fukushima.
The participants consisted of 36 pupils, 1st through 6th graders, living in Hanawa-machi. The pupils who had volunteered for the workshop were called the “Hanawa Taken-tai (Expedition Team)”, and the fiscal year 2015 was their 9th and last time. That is why they all participated with much enthusiasm and energy.

The story of the puppet show was written based on a legend of the lake, which has been handed down in Hanawa-machi from the distant past. The characters involve Hachiman-Taro-Yoshiie, 3 kappas (river monsters in Japanese folklore) and a big white dragon.
”When Yoshiie was traveling through Hanawa-machi, he came across a large lake. When he approached the lake, he saw a swirling shadow! So Yoshiie climbed to the top of Mt. Yumihari, one of the highest in Hanawa-machi, and shot an arrow at the shadow. Then, a small kappa came out and cried, “Stop! Please help us fight the dragon together.” It also called on the children to make puppets of their friends to help save them. The children worked together and made puppets, which became their friends. Then, in the latter half of the play, 2 elder-brother kappas came out and said that the dragon was actually not a bad one. They asked that the arrow shot by Yoshiie be pulled out from the dragon. When the brother kappas chanted a magic spell, a big white dragon emerged and the children pulled out the arrow. At the end, Yoshiie suggested that they should have a festival to express their joy and everyone danced in a circle and partied. All is well that ends well!”

The workshop was an hour and a half long, but since there were comments such as “Time seemed to fly” in the questionnaires, everyone must have been focused and enjoyed the show. In the questionnaires, there were many positive comments, such as “Had lots of fun” and “The staff helped us a lot”. The fact that the children enthusiastically took part and had a great time was very inspiring and gave the members of the Taikan Taiken (Feel & Experience) Lab a sense of accomplishment, and it also had an interactive synergy effect that was uplifting to all of us. The preparations were hard and obviously quite tough for the students of the lab, but when it was over, we all went home to Tsukuba with a pleasant sense of fatigue and a big smile.
(Ono)

On Dec. 9, the Taikan Taiken (Feel & Experience) Lab held a workshop at Ohzone Children’s Center in Tsukuba city.
In preparation for the workshop, we carried out research to understand the characteristic of the children’s center, the age group of the children, as well as the elements that distinguish the area. Based on our findings, we combined the locality, creativity and physicality of the Yatabe district in Tsukuba to come up with a storyline for a puppet show.
In deciding on the storyline, we chose the character, Iiduka Igashichi, an inventor who actually lived in Tsukuba in the Edo Period, and with reference to what we had learned from our visit to the Yatabe Local History Museum, we talked about adopting such key words as “Oda Castle”, “Japanese clocks”, “Karakuri puppets (traditional Japanese mechanized puppets)” as sub-themes.
In the end, we chose to start the story off by relating that an essential part of Igashichi’s Karakuri puppet, which is his creation, had been stolen, and that the villagers decided to make Karakuri puppets of their own to try and help Igashichi. Preparations for the performance started by practicing with the puppets, creating sound effects, choosing materials for making the puppets, checking safety concerns, getting ready for ways to engage with the children, and making use of the experiences that were acquired through the workshops.
The children at the Ohzone Children’s Center were very lively and they were very enthusiastic in their response to the puppet show and making of the puppets. In the scene where they sneak into the thieves’ lair, the children seemed to enjoy the thrill of dodging obstacles in the dark.
Through our experience in conducting workshops, members of the team discovered that games and creative means of expression might lead to emotional care in dealing with children, who are, unlike adults, harder to communicate with words alone. (Nagata, MC1 at School of Art & Design)