Originally, the term Bunraku referred only to the particular theater established in 1805 in Osaka, which was named the Bunrakuza after the puppeteering ensemble of Uemura Bunrakuken (植村文楽軒, 1751-1810), an early 18th-century puppeteer on Awaji, whose efforts revived the flagging fortunes of the traditional puppet theater.
Biwa-cho is the home of the Tonda Traditional Bunraku Puppet Troupe, a troupe founded in the 1830s in the tradition of Bunraku puppetry.
Concerned by falling audience numbers and a lack of young people taking up bunraku, Yoshida combined the ancient art form with his love of rock music, which he combined for a 1980 adaptation of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (Sonezaki Shinjū) with the music written and performed by Japanese rock musician Ryudo Uzaki, and occasionally with a live orchestra.
The original puppeteers of Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe were trained in Japan by members of three traditional Bunraku puppet troupes: the Tonda Puppet Troupe, founded in the 1830s in Shiga Prefecture, Japan; and the 300-year-old Kuroda Puppet Troupe and the Imada Puppet Troupe of Iida, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.
After returning to Japan he took over the Japan Mime Studio where he incorporated older more established movement based theatre forms of his country, such as Noh, Kyogen, Bunraku, Kabuki and Japanese traditional dance, into his work and teaching of mime.
He was the first non-Japanese to train and perform in Japan as a traditional puppeteer in the style of puppetry commonly known as Bunraku or ningyō jōruri, making his stage debut in 1994 with the 170-year-old Tonda Traditional Bunraku Puppet Troupe in Shiga Prefecture.