Feature Extraction of Cooperative Manipulation in Bunraku Puppets

Abstract

"Bunraku" is Japanese traditional theater that consists of three elements; music by a shamisen player, story by a narrator "Tayu" and Bunraku puppet drama. Each Bunraku puppet is manipulated by three puppeteers. Nonverbal information that one of three puppeteers "Omo-zukai" (the main puppeteer)use, make myriad and realistic movement of Bunraku puppet possible. The information is called "Zu". It is estimated that the nonverbal information "Zu" contain the factor to enable realistic cooperative manipulation by multiple persons. The aim of this research is to determine the mechanism of cooperative manipulation in Bunraku. In this paper, feature of Bunraku puppet movement was extracted by focusing attention on "Hodo" (a part of "Zu"). And relationship of Extracted feature to movement of "Hidari-zukai" (the left puppeteer) that follows movement of "Omo-zukai", was analyzed. According to the result, it has been found that movement of "Hidari-zukai" is composed of three phases.