Taiwanese Shadow Puppetry: From Mituo, the 'Shadow Puppet Cradle,' to Kominka's Saru-Kani Gassen

30-second overview: Taiwanese shadow puppetry (commonly called "monkey-skin theater," 皮猴戲) has been rooted in Mituo, Kaohsiung for over two hundred years. A traditional puppet theater combining light, shadow, carving and music, all surviving troupes today are in Kaohsiung. In 1937, the Kominka movement banned performances; the Donghua Shadow Puppet Troupe's predecessor, the "Taiwan All-Color Skin-Theater New Troupe," performed the Japanese folk tale Saru-Kani Gassen (猿蟹合戰) in Japanese. With the help of Japanese folklorist Yamanaka Noboru, it was selected as the "First Service Corps" — allowing the six-generation lineage to continue to today.

Mituo, Kaohsiung — a small town that grew along the fish farms — is called by Taiwanese the "shadow puppet cradle." Numbers back up the title: from the late Qing through the early Republican era, shadow puppet troupes in the Mituo, Kangshan, Luzhu area numbered in the hundreds¹. Today that number has shrunk to just a few, but the Donghua Shadow Puppet Troupe is still here — counting from Zhang Zhuang in the Qing Jiaqing reign, this family has passed shadow puppets down for six generations².

Master A-wan's Legend and Mituo's Reality

Shadow puppetry is something old in Taiwan, so old that its origin has become a legend.

⚠️ Historical boundary note: The "Master A-wan came with Koxinga" story below is a legend circulated within the Hokkien immigrant community; academic research has yet to find historical documents to directly verify it. The earliest documentary record of Taiwanese shadow puppetry is the 1819 "Reconstruction Stele" at Pujidian Temple in Tainan — already a century and a half after Koxinga entered Taiwan (1661)¹.

According to legend, Master A-wan, a shadow puppet artist from Chaozhou, crossed the sea with Koxinga's army, then settled in Mituo, passing his craft to five disciples³⁴. The story is unverifiable, but Mituo is indeed the heartland of Taiwanese shadow puppetry — that much is beyond doubt. Taiwanese shadow puppetry came from the Chaozhou system on China's southeast coast; from music, vocal style to the Chaozhou dialect mixed into the scripts, traces of the homeland remain¹.

📝 Curator's note: Master A-wan's story cannot be academically verified, yet it is how a community tells itself its own roots. The function of legend is identity; the function of historical record is verification — each has its purpose.

Japanese Suppression: The Puppets Put on Japanese Faces

In 1937, the Sino-Japanese War broke out, and the Japanese colonial authorities pushed the Kominka (皇民化) movement in Taiwan. Traditional opera faced suspension. For the world behind the curtain to keep existing, it had to learn to speak Japanese⁵.

Japanese folklorist Yamanaka Noboru, simultaneously head of the Kōminhōkōkai Kaohsiung Branch Cultural Section and a researcher of Taiwanese folklore, intervened at this critical moment⁶. He approached the most renowned troupe at the time — the Donghua Shadow Puppet Troupe's predecessor: the "Taiwan All-Color Skin-Theater New Troupe," led by three generations of grandfather, son and grandson — Zhang Chuan, Zhang Jiao, and Zhang De-cheng⁶.

Under the Japanese arrangement, Zhang Jiao and Zhang De-cheng adapted the Japanese folk tale Saru-Kani Gassen (さるかにがっせん); the script was written by the Japanese side, and performances switched to Japanese⁶. Because the troupe could perform in Japanese, it was selected as the "First Service Corps," touring seventeen sites across Kaohsiung Prefecture⁶. Another shadow puppet troupe that failed to transition in time could only barely sustain itself as the "Second Service Corps."

Continuing to perform depended on knowing how to change a face without losing oneself. After the war, Zhang De-cheng restored "Taiwan All-Color Skin-Theater New Troupe" back to "Donghua Shadow Puppet Troupe" — the Japanese signboard came down, and the puppets spoke Hokkien again².

Local Evolution of the Puppets: From Ox Cart to Dedicated Stage

Taiwanese shadow puppetry brought the technical traditions of Chaozhou — and then grew into its own form on this land.

Early performance stages were wood scaffolds erected on ox carts, performing wherever they traveled. Lit by oil lamps, the puppets danced behind a white cloth screen; the unstable flame gave the images a tremor that no machine could replicate¹. Later the oil lamps were replaced by electric bulbs, the ox carts by fixed stages; performances changed from seated to standing, and the white shadow screen grew larger than before¹.

The puppets themselves evolved from plain paper carvings to gradual use of water buffalo hide, developing the distinctive "double-bevel eye" cut that gave flat puppets a three-dimensional feel¹. Zhang Jiao, in the late Japanese colonial period, was the first to make the puppets vividly colored and switched to electric lighting — in an era of intensifying visual competition, these changes kept traditional art visible⁷.

Three Troupes, Three Modes of Inheritance

The few surviving shadow puppet troupes in Taiwan are uniformly in Kaohsiung⁸.

Donghua Shadow Puppet Troupe is the longest-surviving family lineage. Counting from Zhang Zhuang's "Dexing Troupe" in the Qing Jiaqing reign, through Zhang Wang, Zhang Chuan, Zhang Jiao, Zhang De-cheng, down to the sixth-generation Zhang Pu-guo today². In 2020, Zhang Pu-guo's puppet-making technique was registered by the Kaohsiung City Government as "Preserver of Shadow Puppet Making Technique"².

Yongxingle Shadow Puppet Troupe originated from Mituo's Dingyancheng — a typical family troupe, continually refining carving techniques and performance details⁸⁹.

Fuxingge Shadow Puppet Troupe was founded by Zhang Ming-shou, who studied under multiple masters and preserved the core techniques of Chaozhou shadow puppetry¹⁰.

📝 Curator's note: Three troupes each carry on their inheritance, each guarding different technique boundaries. Taiwan doesn't have one shadow puppet theater — it has three slightly different living traditions, all concentrated within a few-dozen-kilometer radius of Mituo, Kaohsiung.

Light and Shadow Remain, the Stage Has Shrunk

Taiwanese shadow puppetry walked out from the fish farms of Mituo. In the Qing era it was the bustle of hundreds of troupes at temple squares; under Japanese rule it was the pressure of donning Japanese-language masks to survive; after the war it was the gradually thinning family inheritance.

When Zhang De-cheng died in 1995, more than seventy years had passed since his first performance. When he left, the surviving shadow puppet troupes in Taiwan could be counted on one hand, but his descendant Zhang Pu-guo continues to make puppets and continues to perform. The screen is still there, the light is still there, the shadows are still moving.

Further reading

• Taiwanese Glove Puppetry — Another traditional puppet theater that endured Kominka suppression, TV bans, and commercial transformation in Taiwan; the two are the twin lineages of Taiwan's traditional puppet arts
• Taiwan Temple Festivals and Zhentou Culture — Shadow puppetry was originally performed at temple squares; temple festivals are the common starting point for all of Taiwan's traditional performing arts
• Hakka Culture and Language — Another facet of southern Taiwan's ethnic culture, sharing the same southern Taiwan cultural ecosystem with the Hokkien shadow puppet tradition

References