User:JoeRuri/sandbox/Yoriiza Puppet Theater

Yoriiza Puppet Theater (阿波人形浄瑠璃寄井座, Awa Ningyo Joruri Yoriiza) is one of the oldest of the traditional puppet theaters currently active in Tokushima Prefecture that perform in the style known as ningyo joruri (often now conflated with Bunraku). Yoriiza was founded in the first year of the Kaei Era (1848) as the "Uemura Miyako Tayuza Theater" by amateurs who lived in the Jinryo district of Kamiyama Town. As was common before the mid-twentieth century, originally all of the members of the troupe were male, but in the late 1950s, the troupe regained much lost vitality by incorporating members of the separate women’s puppet association, whom the members of the original troupe had been instructing. From that time on, the troupe adopted the name "Yoriiza Puppet Theater," after the nearby village name Yorii.

Yoriiza possesses a large collection of stage properties and costumes of historical significance, in addition to about 60 carved puppet heads, mainly works of the renowned puppet maker Tenguhisa 1. In 1952, 14 of these heads were designated as Tangible Folk Cultural Treasures by Tokushima Prefecture. Yoriiza performs regularly inside the Prefecture, offering performances at the historic Ono Sakura Rural Village Theater in Kamiyama and several times every month at the Tokushima Prefectural Awa Jurobe Museum and Theater in Tokushima City. Yoriiza also travels outside the Prefecture to offer performances.

Since 2008, Yoriiza Puppet has been actively teaching traditional puppetry to students of the local Jinryo Elementary School in a program to develop the next generation of puppetry artists in a junior troupe that goes by the name of Sudachiza, named for the sudachi citrus fruit for which Kamiyama is the largest producer in Japan.