Bunraku narrator Sumitayu, national treasure, Dies at 93

April 29, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese human national treasure Takemoto Sumitayu, narrator of traditional "bunraku" puppet plays, died of pneumonia at a hospital in the western city of Osaka on Saturday. He was 93.

The bunraku performer, whose real name is Kinichi Kishimoto, was named Sumitayu VII in 1985 and designated as a living national treasure in 1989.

His adoptive father, Sumitayu VI, was also a government-designated national treasure. Such parent-child designations were unprecedented in the world of bunraku.

He started a career as a bunraku narrator at a relatively old age in 1946. But he attracted attention from the beginning, as the first-ever university graduate among bunraku performers.

He has since established a reputation for his ability to play a variety of bunraku characters with emotional expressions.

After suffering a stroke in 2012, he retired from the bunraku theater in May 2014. In November that year, he was awarded the Order of Culture for the first time as a member of the bunraku world.

Sumitayu showed his presence by criticizing cutbacks and a freeze on subsidies for bunraku sought in 2012 by then Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. Jiji Press