Tsukioka Settei (1726-1786) was a Japanese print-maker and painter of the Kyoto Kano school. This painting depicts a pair of Bunraku, traditional Japanese puppet theater, performers. One performer operates the puppet (in current practice, the norm is for three puppeteers to operate a single puppet) while the other plays the shamisen, or three-stringed lute. In Bunraku, text is sung or spoken to the accompaniment of a shamisen while the puppets interpret the action of the story.
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