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Buddhist religion arrived in Japan, with it came written language and many non-native arts & crafts.
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The Japanese traditional dance that has been performed to select elites mostly in the Japanese imperial court, for over twelve hundred years.
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A distinctly Japanese form of culture emerged with its own forms of art, poetry, literature and general aesthetics.
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Bunraku began in the 16th century. Puppets and bunraku were used in Japanese theatre as early as the Noh plays. medieval records prove the use of puppets in noh plays too.
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The period saw the rise of a new merchant middle class. The new audience, the townspeople, wanted a new kind of entertainment. Two remarkable forms of theater evolved, the bunraku puppet theater and the sensational, erotic kabuki.
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While puppetry in Japan goes back at least to the 11th century, modern bunraku takes its name from the Bunraku-za organised in Osaka in the early nineteenth century, and was developed by city-dwelling commoners of the Edo period.
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Kabuki means ‘unusual' or ‘shocking', and it quickly became the most popular form of theatre in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japan.
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Kabuki combines music, drama, and dance. It uses wild costumes and intense choreography. Until the 1680s, real swords were used in sword fights. Kabuki grew out of opposition to the staid traditions of Noh theatre.
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Forced Japan to open up to the outside world. Adopting Western political, juridical and military institutions. Gradually, Western theater, with its stage aesthetics and dramas, was adapted.
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Japan developed a strict social hierarchy. One of it's goals was to eliminate foreign cultural influences and develop native art forms.
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Noh Theatre developed, influenced by zen buddhism. Noh plays typically have protagonist ghosts, demons, or obsessed human beings whose souls cannot find rest.
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He wrote, among other dramas, a collection of modern noh plays in which he captured the spirit of noh in a completely new way.