2007 Reports

Final Performance Report: Preserving and Making Accessible the Barbara C. Adachi Collection of Bunraku, Japanese Puppet Theater

Heinrich, Amy Vladeck

Columbia University Libraries received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year project to organize, preserve, and make accessible the Barbara C. Adachi Bunraku (Japanese Puppet Theater) Collection. The Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection, given to Columbia’s C. V. Starr East Asian Library in 2000, is one of the most extensive collections in the world documenting this rich performance tradition. The collection spans the 1960s through the 1990s and consists of more than 13,000 slides and nearly 7,000 black-and-white photographs of rehearsals, performances, and workshops, as well as theater programs in Japanese and English, texts of the plays performed, and audio recordings of interviews with masters of the modern Japanese puppet theater.