The Hero Arrives

The hero has arrived to vanquish the dragons unwittingly summoned. They are fighting, the dragons breathing fire and the hero with his sword.

On a side note, from a technical theatre perspective, this was awesome to see. There is a man in a kimono patterned like the dragon scales, who looks out beneath the dragon head. The head itself, though, is manipulated with his hands, just like what you think of when you think of puppetry.

This dragon in particular is more "crude" than the other, but shows the function even better (and made a great "clapping" sound when the dragon snapped it's jaws, which the other did not - I think it added so much to the sense of it being pissed off)

More from this shoot

My images from the Beppu Sentoumyou festival (1,000 candles, I believe) in Beppu Park. There was a performance before the actual Sentoumyou festival that we were lucky enough to catch. While there were no words, and we do not know the traditional Japanese characters being played, we could kind of figure it out as it went along, because fundamentally, I think all puppetry and masked characters share very common archetypes, even across cultures. (At least, that's what my Theatre education taught me.)

Beppu Sentoumyou Festival : November 3, 2012
Beppu-shi, Oita-ken, Kyushu, Japan
　別府市　　　大分県　　　九州　　日本