A female reviews adult fantasy puppet walking fantsy unravels or collapsing into tears is even more graceful than an actual woman. "Coming to life without aping life is at the heart of Bunraku. Narrator Toyotake Rosetayu, another leading artist on the tour, demonstrates how he might impersonate a samurai, using a loud voice full of macho bravado, then explains, "No real samurai ever spoke that way He'd be too exhausted to get through a single day. I exaggerate and distort the speech to express the samurai's inner qualities. " The great 18th century Bunraku playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon summed it up: "Art exists in the slender margin between the real and the unreal. "In fact, Bunraku's actual coup de theatre is its blatant flouting of realism, its daredevil theatricality, which turns the "willing suspension of disbelief" into a high-wire act The puppeteers make no effort to be inconspicuous. True, they are clad head to toe in black, which according to Japanese theatrical convention means they don't exist But the lead manipulator for each puppet is not hooded. The audience can watch his focus and concentration as he projects life into his character. His face is, as it were, in the audience's face. A photograph of Bunraku shows a stage crowded with men in black, dwarfing a few puppets But for spectators at a performance, something else happens The manipulators don't exactly disappear. They seem instead like the puppets' servants, or else the puppets seem to drag them around.

And the presence of the puppeteers puts the characters into high relief amy brown fantasy . They become, in Grilli's phrase, "more than real. "Puppetry existed in Japan as early as the Heian period (794-1185) Itinerant puppeteers performed in temples finale fantasy . Like many of their cohorts around Asia and Europe, they were social outcasts, considered the lowest of the low. In the early 17th century, some joined their work with a lively form of narration called joruri and the music of the newly imported three-string samisen fantasy kommander . These elements became so central that many people feel the main star of Bunraku is the tayu, who narrates the story and speaks for all the characters. Chikamatsu Monzaemon also wrote for the Kabuki, with some of his plays thriving in both forms The two theater styles cross-pollinated fantacy . Some of the larger-than-life gestures in Kabuki reflect the movements of puppets. And Bunraku actors perform a version of kabuki's mie -- freeze-frame poses that cap intense emotional moments. Just how deep this cross-breeding runs can be seen in the final scene of the play "Oshichi's Burning Love -- The Fire Watch Tower," which will head the program in L. A. This tear-jerker climaxes with Oshichi, the young heroine, climbing a fire alarm tower to ring a false alarm -- a capital crime -- to save her lover. Her ascent became such a Bunraku favorite that to this day, the Kabuki version often plays it as faux Bunraku: When the Kabuki Oshichi climbs the tower, black-clad "puppeteers" come onstage and pretend to manipulate her. One way or another, in short, humans are still modeling their behavior on Bunraku. --Bunraku: The National Puppet Theatre of JapanWhere: Aratani / Japan America Theatre, 244 S San Pedro St. , L. A. When: 8 p. m Thursday and Friday, 2 and 8 p. m SundayPrice: $58 to $100Contact: (213) 680-3700.

On April 18, 1943, Besby Frank Holmes climbed into his P-38 and joined 15 other Lightning fighters that took off from Guadalcanal on a more than 400-mile flight to Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. Their mission: To intercept and destroy the plane carrying Japanese Adm art fantasy . Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor. American cryptographers had cracked a new Japanese naval code, and a message had been intercepted revealing that Yamamoto would be flying in a medium attack bomber from the Japanese base at Rabaul on East New Britain to Bougainville with a six-fighter escort April 18 fynal . The message even included the time of arrival. "Granted, it was a wild gamble with many odds against success," Holmes recalled in "Aces Against Japan II," a 1996 book of oral histories by Eric Hammel, "but most of us were pretty good gamblers by then, having gambled our lives on the early days of the invasion of Guadalcanal finel . And won. "Holmes, who received the Navy Cross and a place in World War II history for his role in the successful mission to shoot down Yamamoto, died of a stroke July 23 at a hospital in Greenbrae, Calif He was 88 amy brown . A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, he lived in San Rafael. A San Francisco native who was credited with shooting down five enemy planes during World War II, Holmes was involved in the war from the start. Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, found the 24-year-old 2nd lieutenant in a Honolulu church, despite having spent the previous night at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and overindulging in sweet rum drinks while on a blind date. "I was praying to God that my headache would go away when the first bombs fell," Holmes recalled in the first volume of "Aces Against Japan" in 1992. Mass ended abruptly. Holmes and a fellow lieutenant wound up commandeering a civilian's Studebaker Champion and driving to an airstrip at Haleiwa on the north end of Oahu. At one point, as he ran toward his P-36, a Japanese dive bomber strafed the dirt airfield about 45 yards away, and Holmes fired back with a . 45-caliber pistol. Still in the brown pinstriped suit and green tie that he had worn in church, Holmes spent 30 minutes flying over the island in an unsuccessful search for Japanese planes while avoiding fire from U. S.

servicemen on the ground. In the ensuing months, Holmes served with the 67th Pursuit Squadron, flying P-39 and P-400 fighters against Japanese Zeros during the Guadalcanal campaign Fantasy . Then came the mission to get Yamamoto, Japan's premier naval strategist and commander in chief of the imperial navy's combined fleet. Maj . John Mitchell led the 16-plane mission, which took off from Guadalcanal at 7:15 a. m fanal . on Palm Sunday Fantasy - yahoo . Leading the four-plane "killer section" that would attack Yamamoto's plane was Capt Thomas G Lanphier Jr The other pilots were Holmes and 1st Lts Rex T Barber and Raymond K fantasy film Fantasy - wikipedia . Hine. As the American planes turned into the coast of Bougainville at 9:35 a. m. , one of the 16 pilots broke radio silence to announce, "Bogies! 11 o'clock high!"Instead of a single Japanese bomber as anticipated, however, there were two identical twin-engine bombers, dubbed Bettys, at 4,000 feet, with six Zero fighters about 1,500 feet above them. Unable to determine which bomber carried Yamamoto, they would have to go after both. Holmes, however, was unable to jettison his drop tanks and turned southeast to shake them off, according to a 2003 account of the mission in the journal Air Power History . As procedure dictated, Holmes' wingman, Hine, followed him . That left Lanphier and Barber to initially deal with the two bombers and their six fighter escorts. In the ensuing action, Barber and Lanphier fired at one of the bombers, which crashed on the island -- the bomber that was later acknowledged to be carrying Yamamoto. In the meantime, according to the 2003 account, Holmes and Hine attacked the other bomber, which had flown out over the sea. Barber joined the attack, and the bomber crashed into the sea It had been carrying Yamamoto's chief of staff, Vice Adm. Matome Ugaki, who was able to make it ashore with two other seriously wounded survivors. Controversy still persists over whether Barber or Lanphier deserves sole credit for destroying Yamamoto's aircraft. Fantasy tickets And although Holmes was originally given full credit for downing the second bomber, Barber later claimed the kill. Barber told the Houston Chronicle in 1993 that Holmes did not damage the bomber enough to down it "I came in and finished it off," he said.