A Study Of Kihachiro Kawamoto’s Puppet Drama The Records Of Three Kingdoms

Kihachiro Kawamoto is a very famous Japanese puppet designer and animation master,he paid more attention to the cultural exchange between China and Japan during his life.And he had created many profound meaning and poetic animated short film in different periods.The themes of these works are generally selected from the stories recorded in Japanese ancient books,Chinese classical literature,anecdotes about the Edo period or modern novels,etc.Accordingly,Each animation pursues the expression of spiritual level very much.In the early 1980 s,the puppets in the “Romance of Three Kingdoms”,which is broadcast by the long-running NHK live station,are also involved in his design.It is worth mentioning that the puppets in the Romance of Three Kingdoms’ s drama are very realistic,and they have prominent characters.And it may showed intensely "Chinese style." On the one hand,it used the traditional Chinese stick puppet techniques to create the role of the drama.On the other hand,The performance of puppet characters in the play is also very similar to the Chinese traditional puppet show and depend on the performance ability of the puppetmaster.Not only that,some deep philosophical thoughts and Chinese culture are also displayed in this drama.This essay is not only focused on studying the influence of “Romance of Three Kingdoms”in Japanese culture,but also the artistic value of this puppet drama.And though finding the difference between puppet drama and stop motion animation,studying the origin of Kihachiro Kawamoto ’s design style,the historical values of "Romance of Three Kingdoms" in Japanese localization and other aspects just like the screen elements or the expression of the lens language in the drama,I can deeply understand the Kihachiro Kawamoto’s Puppet drama“Romance of Three Kingdoms”.