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Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu: The Love Suicides At Sonezaki, The Battles of Coxinga, The Uprooted Pine, The Love Suicides At Amijima
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) wrote some 130 plays, chiefly for the puppet theater, many of which are still performed today by puppet operators and Kabuki actors. The plays included in the volume—three of the most popular domestic dramas and one history play—provide a representative selection of Chikamatsu’s work for Western readers. In his introduction to the translations, Dr. Keene provides the reader with the background essential for an understanding of Chikamatsu’s work. He discusses customs and beliefs in Chikamatsu’s time, their reflection in the behavior ofhis characters, and the essential features of Japanese drama as they developed entirely independently of foreign influence. The four plays included in the book •“The Love Suicides at Sonezaki”•“The Battles of Coxinga”•“The Uprooted Pine”•“The Love Suicides at Amijima”
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1721
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About the author
Chikamatsu Monzaemon
95 books25 followersBorn in Japan in 1653 with the name of "Sugimore Nobumori", Chikamatsu Monzaemon was to become perhaps the greatest dramatist in the history of the Japanese theatre.
Chikamatsu is said to have written over one hundred plays, most of which were written for the bunraku or puppet theatre. His works combine comedy and tragedy, poetry and prose, and present scenes of combat, torture, and suicide on stage. Most of Chikamatsu's domestic tragedies are based an actual events. His Sonezaki shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki), for example, was based on reports of an actual double suicide of the apprentice clerk and his lover.
But he wrote some famous historical plays, too.
In 1705, Chikamatsu moved to Osaka where he became a writer for Takemoto Gidayu's puppet theatre and remained here until his death in 1725.
Chikamatsu is said to have written over one hundred plays, most of which were written for the bunraku or puppet theatre. His works combine comedy and tragedy, poetry and prose, and present scenes of combat, torture, and suicide on stage. Most of Chikamatsu's domestic tragedies are based an actual events. His Sonezaki shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki), for example, was based on reports of an actual double suicide of the apprentice clerk and his lover.
But he wrote some famous historical plays, too.
In 1705, Chikamatsu moved to Osaka where he became a writer for Takemoto Gidayu's puppet theatre and remained here until his death in 1725.
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September 8, 2024
چیکاماتسو مونزائمون از معروف ترین نمایش نامه نویسان ژاپنی در قرن شانزده و هفده بوده..
آثار چیکاماتسو منحصراً برای نمایشهای عروسکی نوشته شده بود، اما در کابوکی هم از آنها استفاده میشد!
زمانی ژاپنی ها، چیکاماتسو رو به عنوان شکسپیر ژاپنی به دنیا معرفی کردن که با این کار لطمه ی زیادی به اعتبار و جایگاه اون وارد شد.
در واقع به رغم ارزشِ بالایِ آثارِ چیکاماتسو در دنیای تئاتر و نمایش، چون این نمایشنامه ها برای تئاتر عروسکی نوشته شده ان و کاملا حس و حال و اوضاع ژاپن رو-طی سالهایی که چیکاماتسو در اونها زندگی میکرد- نشون میدن هیچ وجه اشترکی بین آثار این هنرمند و شکسپیر وجود نداره!
علاوه بر اون، ژاپن طی اون سالها هیچ رابطه ای با باقی کشورها نداشت(جز چین و هلند، اون هم با شرایطی خاص و به صورت محدود) و امکان اینکه نویسندگانی مثل چیکاماتسو با نویسنده های غربی و اروپایی و آثارشون آشنا بشن و از اونها الهام بگیرن وجود نداشته...
توی این کتاب چهارتا از آثار معروف چیکاماتسو آورده شده که همگی راجع به خودکشی های عاشقانه و جنگ ها و سلحشوری های سامورایی ها هستن.
در واقع تمامی آثار چیکاماتسو حول محور همین موضوع ها-که به خوبی تصویر ژاپن رو در اون دوران ترسیم میکنن- نوشته شده ان و گیشاها حضور پررنگی در تقریبا همه ی آثار این نویسنده دارن..
در انتهای کتاب و بخش ضمیمه ها هم، توضیحِ کوتاهِ نسبتا خوبی راجع به نمایش عروسکی آورده شده.
میتونید با سرچ کلمات ningyō jōruri و bunraku در یوتیوب، ویدیوهایی از این نوع نمایش سنتی اصیل ژاپنی ببینید و بیشتر باهاش آشنا بشید..
آثار چیکاماتسو منحصراً برای نمایشهای عروسکی نوشته شده بود، اما در کابوکی هم از آنها استفاده میشد!
زمانی ژاپنی ها، چیکاماتسو رو به عنوان شکسپیر ژاپنی به دنیا معرفی کردن که با این کار لطمه ی زیادی به اعتبار و جایگاه اون وارد شد.
در واقع به رغم ارزشِ بالایِ آثارِ چیکاماتسو در دنیای تئاتر و نمایش، چون این نمایشنامه ها برای تئاتر عروسکی نوشته شده ان و کاملا حس و حال و اوضاع ژاپن رو-طی سالهایی که چیکاماتسو در اونها زندگی میکرد- نشون میدن هیچ وجه اشترکی بین آثار این هنرمند و شکسپیر وجود نداره!
علاوه بر اون، ژاپن طی اون سالها هیچ رابطه ای با باقی کشورها نداشت(جز چین و هلند، اون هم با شرایطی خاص و به صورت محدود) و امکان اینکه نویسندگانی مثل چیکاماتسو با نویسنده های غربی و اروپایی و آثارشون آشنا بشن و از اونها الهام بگیرن وجود نداشته...
توی این کتاب چهارتا از آثار معروف چیکاماتسو آورده شده که همگی راجع به خودکشی های عاشقانه و جنگ ها و سلحشوری های سامورایی ها هستن.
در واقع تمامی آثار چیکاماتسو حول محور همین موضوع ها-که به خوبی تصویر ژاپن رو در اون دوران ترسیم میکنن- نوشته شده ان و گیشاها حضور پررنگی در تقریبا همه ی آثار این نویسنده دارن..
در انتهای کتاب و بخش ضمیمه ها هم، توضیحِ کوتاهِ نسبتا خوبی راجع به نمایش عروسکی آورده شده.
میتونید با سرچ کلمات ningyō jōruri و bunraku در یوتیوب، ویدیوهایی از این نوع نمایش سنتی اصیل ژاپنی ببینید و بیشتر باهاش آشنا بشید..
March 27, 2013
"She gnashes her teeth in woe." - Yes, there's a lot of that.
"No matter how far we walk, there'll never be a spot marked 'For Suicides'. Let us kill ourselves here." - Oooh, go on then.
"The Love Suicides at Sonezaki": Tokubei's in love with local tart-with-a-heart Ohatsu and he's refusing to marry a Miss Respectable. Sadly, he's managed to lose the dowry his family accepted from Miss Respectable's parents and since he can't pay it back and since he doesn't want to marry her ... love suicide's the only option.
"The Battles of Coxinga": It's the 18th century version of a Power Rangers episode. There's even a scene where everyone is really big and can talk to each other across mountain ranges. Unlike an episode of the Power Rangers, however, it includes a court noble performing an emergency Caesarian on the recently deceased Empress and then stuffing her with the body of his own son that he's just killed. The characters get themselves into some terrible messes; at one point honour seems to bind everyone to kill everyone else before killing themselves. They work it out and it seems that, actually, they can all stay alive. But then two of them kill themselves anyway.
"The Uprooted Pine": The weird thing here is that everyone seems to like Yohei, who fucks off to Tokyo to earn his fortune after framing his new best friend's boyfriend for the attempted murder of local Mr Unpopular.
"The Love Suicides at Amijima": The Masterpiece. There's a fair bit of faffing around. The wife's position seems to be: "Oh, I intervened because I thought you and that prostitute were going to commit a love suicide. But now I see that she's going to kill herself, I insist you get back together with her and have a love suicide."
Great bitchy apology: "Thank you. How understanding you are, Okiku! Forgive me, please, for having so often held your beloved husband in my arms and slept with him."
"No matter how far we walk, there'll never be a spot marked 'For Suicides'. Let us kill ourselves here." - Oooh, go on then.
"The Love Suicides at Sonezaki": Tokubei's in love with local tart-with-a-heart Ohatsu and he's refusing to marry a Miss Respectable. Sadly, he's managed to lose the dowry his family accepted from Miss Respectable's parents and since he can't pay it back and since he doesn't want to marry her ... love suicide's the only option.
"The Battles of Coxinga": It's the 18th century version of a Power Rangers episode. There's even a scene where everyone is really big and can talk to each other across mountain ranges. Unlike an episode of the Power Rangers, however, it includes a court noble performing an emergency Caesarian on the recently deceased Empress and then stuffing her with the body of his own son that he's just killed. The characters get themselves into some terrible messes; at one point honour seems to bind everyone to kill everyone else before killing themselves. They work it out and it seems that, actually, they can all stay alive. But then two of them kill themselves anyway.
"The Uprooted Pine": The weird thing here is that everyone seems to like Yohei, who fucks off to Tokyo to earn his fortune after framing his new best friend's boyfriend for the attempted murder of local Mr Unpopular.
"The Love Suicides at Amijima": The Masterpiece. There's a fair bit of faffing around. The wife's position seems to be: "Oh, I intervened because I thought you and that prostitute were going to commit a love suicide. But now I see that she's going to kill herself, I insist you get back together with her and have a love suicide."
Great bitchy apology: "Thank you. How understanding you are, Okiku! Forgive me, please, for having so often held your beloved husband in my arms and slept with him."
Read
February 5, 2016Chikamatsu is a little like the Japanese Shakespeare. His work was groundbreaking and deeply influential in its time. But he wrote mainly for a type of puppet theater that went out of style for the most part (or out of business) and so his works haven't been remembered and produced to the same extent.
I only read parts of the book's introduction and the first play, mainly because the book is a bit mildewed (allergies.) I really enjoyed what I read and hope to find a copy that's in better shape. And I'd be interested in reading an in-depth history of Bunraku, the kind of puppet theater that Chikamatsu wrote for.
To quote Wikipedia: "His most famous plays deal with double-suicides of honor bound lovers."
The play I read, the first one in the book, is also his most famous, about two lovers who fall into complicated and untenable circumstances and in order to keep their honor and leave their problems behind, commit double-suicide.
It was interesting reading and trying to imagine what the staging might look like. There are some cool photos online of Bunraku and clearly the play has also been adapted for theater with live actors.
On a muppet wiki page there's some interesting discussion of the connection between traditional puppet theater like Bunraku, and Jim Henson's muppets.
http://misc.thefullwiki.org/Bunraku
I bet a graphic history of puppet theater would be pretty cool.
I only read parts of the book's introduction and the first play, mainly because the book is a bit mildewed (allergies.) I really enjoyed what I read and hope to find a copy that's in better shape. And I'd be interested in reading an in-depth history of Bunraku, the kind of puppet theater that Chikamatsu wrote for.
To quote Wikipedia: "His most famous plays deal with double-suicides of honor bound lovers."
The play I read, the first one in the book, is also his most famous, about two lovers who fall into complicated and untenable circumstances and in order to keep their honor and leave their problems behind, commit double-suicide.
It was interesting reading and trying to imagine what the staging might look like. There are some cool photos online of Bunraku and clearly the play has also been adapted for theater with live actors.
On a muppet wiki page there's some interesting discussion of the connection between traditional puppet theater like Bunraku, and Jim Henson's muppets.
http://misc.thefullwiki.org/Bunraku
I bet a graphic history of puppet theater would be pretty cool.
August 21, 2015
A TOP SHELF review, originally published in the August 21, 2015 edition of The Monitor
Of all the dramatists of Japan, Monzaemon Chikamatsu is widely regarded as the greatest; his work on a par with that of Shakespeare, Sophocles or Miller. Writing with no foreign influences during a cultural flowering at the turn of the 18th century, Chikamatsu has bequeathed us a startlingly modern tragedy infused with the mores of his time and country.
Originally produced as a joruri or puppet play in 1721 before being adapted for kabuki performances with live actors, “The Love Suicides at Amijima” relates the doomed relationship of Koharu, a 19-year-old prostitute and Jihei Kamiya, a paper merchant with two children.
Married to his cousin and childhood sweetheart, Osan, Jihei finds himself caught between two loves. On the one hand, he cares about his children and desperately needs his wife. Though her father deeply disapproves of his son-in-law’s philandering ways, Jihei clings to Osan, unwilling to abandon her to crushing fate.
On the other hand, Jihei has spent 29 months in an intense affair with Koharu, swearing that he will find a way to ransom her from the houses of ill repute that virtually own her. But, despite his wife’s frugality, his business is on the brink of insolvency.
The lovers’ solution is to pact suicide.
As the play opens, an arrogant rival merchant named Tohei has determined to outwit Jihei and ransom Koharu first. The young woman, unaware that Jihei has followed her to a “date,” confides tearfully to her samurai client that she wants neither to be with Tohei nor to kill herself with her lover. After a violent confrontation between the Samurai, Jihei and Tohei (who has also tracked Koharu down), the samurai reveals himself to be Magoemon, Jihei’s older brother.
Ashamed and angry at Koharu’s betrayal, Jihei rejects her vehemently as a conniving wench and throws back at her the 29 love letters she has sent him — one for each month of their relationship.
Ten days later, Jihei is moping about his home when his mother-in-law/aunt and brother come around, suspicious that the rumors circulating about Koharu’s impending ransom must have something to do with him. Osan defends her husband, affirming that he has definitively broken up with the prostitute, but the couple realizes that Tohei must finally have made his move.
Jihei is furious, ostensibly because Tohei will now publicly ridicule Jihei and damage his honor among merchants. Osan reveals to him that she begged Koharu in a letter to feign disinterest in Jihei so that he would turn away from suicide. Because this ransom by a man she doesn’t love will lead to Koharu’s suicide, Osan urges her husband to take their meager savings and rescue the girl. He is distraught at how this arrangement will marginalize his wife, but he agrees.
Their strange plan is interrupted by the arrival of Osan’s father, who sees confirmed for him all of his daughter’s sacrifices and humiliations. He drags her away, insisting Jihei file for divorce.
Abandoning his children, Jihei manages to get his beloved away from the brothel. After crossing many bridges and working up their courage, the two stop in Amijima, at the Daicho Temple, where in brutal and poetic fashion they carry out their fatal vow.
It is interesting to note that the events in these three acts take place over ten days in the tenth month, called kannazuki (month of no gods) because it is when the Shinto deities turn away from earth to meet in heaven. The implications are clear.
Blending coarse humor, poetic narrative and realistic dialogue in a way that transcends the artifice of both puppetry and opera, underscoring the empty tragedy of life itself, “The Love Suicides at Amijima” lingers in the mind like Jihei’s corpse, swinging at the end of his lover’s sash on a cold November morning.
Of all the dramatists of Japan, Monzaemon Chikamatsu is widely regarded as the greatest; his work on a par with that of Shakespeare, Sophocles or Miller. Writing with no foreign influences during a cultural flowering at the turn of the 18th century, Chikamatsu has bequeathed us a startlingly modern tragedy infused with the mores of his time and country.
Originally produced as a joruri or puppet play in 1721 before being adapted for kabuki performances with live actors, “The Love Suicides at Amijima” relates the doomed relationship of Koharu, a 19-year-old prostitute and Jihei Kamiya, a paper merchant with two children.
Married to his cousin and childhood sweetheart, Osan, Jihei finds himself caught between two loves. On the one hand, he cares about his children and desperately needs his wife. Though her father deeply disapproves of his son-in-law’s philandering ways, Jihei clings to Osan, unwilling to abandon her to crushing fate.
On the other hand, Jihei has spent 29 months in an intense affair with Koharu, swearing that he will find a way to ransom her from the houses of ill repute that virtually own her. But, despite his wife’s frugality, his business is on the brink of insolvency.
The lovers’ solution is to pact suicide.
As the play opens, an arrogant rival merchant named Tohei has determined to outwit Jihei and ransom Koharu first. The young woman, unaware that Jihei has followed her to a “date,” confides tearfully to her samurai client that she wants neither to be with Tohei nor to kill herself with her lover. After a violent confrontation between the Samurai, Jihei and Tohei (who has also tracked Koharu down), the samurai reveals himself to be Magoemon, Jihei’s older brother.
Ashamed and angry at Koharu’s betrayal, Jihei rejects her vehemently as a conniving wench and throws back at her the 29 love letters she has sent him — one for each month of their relationship.
Ten days later, Jihei is moping about his home when his mother-in-law/aunt and brother come around, suspicious that the rumors circulating about Koharu’s impending ransom must have something to do with him. Osan defends her husband, affirming that he has definitively broken up with the prostitute, but the couple realizes that Tohei must finally have made his move.
Jihei is furious, ostensibly because Tohei will now publicly ridicule Jihei and damage his honor among merchants. Osan reveals to him that she begged Koharu in a letter to feign disinterest in Jihei so that he would turn away from suicide. Because this ransom by a man she doesn’t love will lead to Koharu’s suicide, Osan urges her husband to take their meager savings and rescue the girl. He is distraught at how this arrangement will marginalize his wife, but he agrees.
Their strange plan is interrupted by the arrival of Osan’s father, who sees confirmed for him all of his daughter’s sacrifices and humiliations. He drags her away, insisting Jihei file for divorce.
Abandoning his children, Jihei manages to get his beloved away from the brothel. After crossing many bridges and working up their courage, the two stop in Amijima, at the Daicho Temple, where in brutal and poetic fashion they carry out their fatal vow.
It is interesting to note that the events in these three acts take place over ten days in the tenth month, called kannazuki (month of no gods) because it is when the Shinto deities turn away from earth to meet in heaven. The implications are clear.
Blending coarse humor, poetic narrative and realistic dialogue in a way that transcends the artifice of both puppetry and opera, underscoring the empty tragedy of life itself, “The Love Suicides at Amijima” lingers in the mind like Jihei’s corpse, swinging at the end of his lover’s sash on a cold November morning.
July 17, 2013
"THE LOVE SUICIDES AT AMIJIMA" OF CHIKAMATSU, "ROMEO AND JULIET" & THE ARCHETYPE OF THE STAR-CROSSED LOVERS IN WORLD LITERATURE—FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
For most of us in the West, when we think of the idea of "star-crossed lovers" or of the love suicides of doomed lovers the first image that comes to our minds is that of the tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet of Shakespeare. When we then attempt to take in the similar traditions of other cultures, such as the immortal Japanese play, "The Love Suicides at Amijima" by the great 17th Century Japanese playwright Chickamatsu Monzaemon, our first reaction is to see it as "The Japanese Romeo and Juliet," and we may be forgiven our presumption by realizing the universality of egocentrism such that Japanese readers may regard Romeo and Juliet as the Western Amijima, Arabic or Iranian readers as the Western "Layla and Majnun." In truth all of these works are the product of the universal Collective Unconscious manifesting itself in its innumerable variations on the themes of fundamental archetypes and patterns in World Literature, here the universal Archetype of The Star-Crossed Lovers, and which Archetypes are shared by all of us as the common heritage of mankind.
WHAT IS AN ARCHETYPE?
C.G. Jung identified as "Archetypes" enduring dynamic symbolic complexes charged with energy in the human psyche which mediate and help transcend the inextricable contradictions and limitations of human existence, and which serve to enhance psychic wholeness, growth, and the powers of greater life itself. Archetypes recurrently irrupt from latent unconsciousness into living human consciousness in the form of dreams and as recurrent motifs expressed in literature, art, religion and myth serving as guides and healers towards grater life. Archetypes are generally manifested in the three major forms of characterological personas, situational motifs and oppositional symbolic patterns.
Examples of archetypal characterological personas charged with the immense hidden energies of the Collective Unconscious would include:
1. The Hero--who typically struggles against inimical and powerful forces beyond his control;
2. The Scapegoat--an animal or more likely a human whose ceremonial sacrafice or expulsion expiates some taint or sin afflicting the community;
3 The Outcast--a figure banished from a human community
4. The Devil--Evil incarnate, inimically opposed to human well-being;
5. The Earthmother--symbol of fruition, abundance and fertility;
6. The Star-Crossed Lovers--These lovers represent the element of Doom in erotic love relationships, implying that whatever forces determine their fate, the lovers are not and ultimately cannot be in essential control of them. These overpowering forces may include "fate" or "the stars," the internal irresistable and ultimately lawless forces of libido, lust and love, the countervailing overweening powers of society,family, social repression, convention social duty, and perhaps even the power of Death itself.
Examples of Situational Archetypal Motifs would include:
1. The Quest--a search for something or a powerful talisman which will restore fertility to a wasted and blighted land;
2. The Task--to save the kingdom, win a fair lady or perform some superhuman deed;
3.The Journey--usually to find some vital information or truth;
4. Death & Rebirth
Sybolical Archetypal oppositional patterns might include:
1. Darkness & Light
2. Water & Desert
3. Heaven & Hell---Man has traditionally associated places not accessible to him as the dwelling places of the hidden primordial powers that govern his world, as exemplified by the Heaven and Hell.
Since Archetypes emerge from and express the universal Collective Unconscious of humanity as they deal with the uneradicable contradictions and limitations of the human condition, they occur in all cultures and at all times in human history, though shaped in specific expression by each cultural tradition and historical context in its own way.
THE ARCHETYPE OF THE STAR-CROSSED LOVERS IN WORLD LITERATURE
The Archetype of the Star-Crossed Lovers appears in World Literature from earliest antiquity. A famous example at the center of Homer's Iliad, is the fated love of Helen of Troy and Paris, forbidden by Helen's marriage to Menalaus, which ends in Paris' death and the destruction of his homeland Troy. Also, in Ovid's Metamorphoses we encounter the figures of Pyramus and Thisbee, two Babylonian lovers frequently used in Shakespeare, who, like Romeo and Juliet kill themselves out of frustrated love.
Similar stories abound, as in the case of Hero and Leander at the Dardanelles, in which Leander perishes swimming the straits with the guidance of a lantern in the night lit by Hero, until bad winds and weather extinguish the lamp and he drowns. In Celtic mythology, the tale of Tristan and Isolde follows similar lines with Tristan, a faithful Knight of King Mark sent to bring Mark's new bride from Ireland to Cornwall. Isolde however, falls in love not with King Mark but with Tristan and they drink of a magic love potion binding them together body and soul. The lovers cannot keep apart until King Mark to save the honor of himself and the kingdom must banish Tristan to France where Tristan dies of separation from Isolde, resulting in her own love suicide. This also serves as model for other stories of ill-fated lovers, such as the Arthurian legend of the love of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenevire.
In non-Western traditions similar expressions of the Star-Crossed Lovers appear, such as Nizami's famous Persian tale of "Layla and Majnun," popularized in Arabic, Persian, Indian and Islamic Literature. There Layla and Majnun are inextricably in love, but Layla's father refuses to allow them to marry, citing Majnun's poverty and his reputed mental illness arising from his excessive love for Layla. Layla is forced to marry another wealthy suitor and Majnun is reduced to wandering in the wilderness, Heathcliff-like, inscribing poems to Layla on rocks and the walls of her home. Finally he dies from grief causing her to do so at the same time.
In Chinese Literature similar tales are abundant, such as the fate of Imperial Consort Yang Gui Fei celebrated in Bai Juyi's "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" in which the Imperial lovers' excesses threaten the downfall of the Tang Dynasty such that the Emperor Xuanzong is forced by his army to have her executed to save the Empire. The fabled doomed love of Liangshan Bo and Zhu Yingtai, Ovid-like, ends in their being transformed into butterflies to be united in spirit. Another celebrated case is the ill-fated love of Jia Baoyu and his sickly cousin Lin Daiyu in Cao Xueqin's immortal classic "The Dream of the Red Chamber," another case in which love's consummation in marriage is blocked by Lin's poverty and ill health, causing her to waste away and die, blighting both lives.
Other cases of the appearance of the Star-Crossed Lovers Archetype are those of Goethe's "Sorrows of Young Werther," Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" and "Lady Chatterly's Lover."
THE LOVE SUICIDES AT AMIJIMA BY CHIKAMATSU
"The Love Suicides at Amijima" tells the story of two ill-fated lovers, Jihei, a married unsuccessful merchant of commercial Osaka, and Koharu, a beautiful courtesan for whom he has contracted a fatally intense love attraction, and from whom his love is reciprocated, but a love which can never be fulfilled due to his marriage and family and her indentured status as a paid courtesan.
Unlike Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, who begin their story in youthful innocence and exuberant hope, Jihei and Koharu begin Chikamatsu's play in a state of hopelessness that is never relieved. As the play opens they have exchanged vows to commit mutual suicide together when an inevitable opportune moment arrives. Their fate is sealed from the outset, and the drama consists less in their attempting to change it for the better, as do Romeo and Juliet, but in how the attempts of all those around them who represent "rationality," control,social duty and convention, foremost Jihei's loyal wife Osan and their children, Jihei's brother and extended family all attempt and ignominiously fail to divert the lovers from their doom.
The characters are portrayed in a thoroughly realistic manner as Jihei appears not the ideal tradesman of Osaka but rather one of the unsuccessful members of a profession that demanded a high level of diligence, reputation and devotion, exhibiting a weak, conflicted and vascillating nature, though ultimately devoted to his passionate but hopeless love to Koharu. Chikamatsu explains that even the love of a prostitute is deep beyond measure, a bottomless sea of affection that cannot be emptied or dried. The action is relieved by episodes of humor and insight into personalities and human foibles. Practically, Jihei is surrounded by "love" ----love between man and woman, husband and wife, father and children, younger brother and elder brother, but none of these conventionalized loves can rise to the reality of his true love for Koharu.
He tries to control his overpowering passionate love for Koharu----in fact, a part of him desires nothing more than to live up to what society expects of him as a husband and father. Torn between the two opposing worlds of duty (giri) and passionate private desire (ninjo), Jihei is forced over and over to reject his home and family. Like any other human nature, Jihei's nature is impulsive and changeable. He begs Gozaemon, Osans father who threatens him with divorce and bankruptcy over the affair, to let him stay with his wife Osan. In his quickness of tongue, his impulsiveness and his fear of being shamed in public, Jihei represents a typical representative of inconstant males so vividly portrayed by western female songstresses like Joni Mitchell: "Be careful now - when you court young men: They are like the stars On a summer morning, They sparkle up the night, And theyre gone again----Daybreak---and gone again." Under pressure from his wife and family, Jihei attempts to give up Koharu, but ultimately finds it impossible. In the end, Jihei's love for Koharu makes a double suicide seem as the only course open to him.
Part of the pathos of the tragedy comes from our admiration for Jihei's wife Osan, who appears as a plausibly ideal and admirable wife, forgiving Jihei and Kohatsu, seeking to protect her children and family, taking the strong initiative to ask Kohatsu to give up Jihei to protect his children and family. When Koharu is threatened with disaster Osan even makes great sacrafices to raise money for her, though a rival, acting with great strength, courage and honor. But Jihei's love is fatally unaffected by his wife's virtues, and he is impelled further and further towards his hopeless love for Koharu and its inevitable consequence of self-destruction.
In the end, Jihei and Koharu resign themselves to their fate and to each other, setting off in the night to commit suicide together, justified in their hopeless love and expectation that they will be together in future lives and reincarnations even if their love is impossible in this life and world. A main theme of The Love Suicide at Amijima is that marriage and living out social conventions and roles does not equal happiness and love. This can be seen during the play through Osan’s self-sacrifice and Jihei ultimately choosing a tragic death with Koharu instead of living with Osan.
It is not coincidental that "The Love Suicides at Amijima" found birth in the Japanese Bunraku "puppet theater," though it also is performed by live actors in the Kabuki theater as well. McLuhan famously stated that "the medium is the message," and the telling of Chikamatsu's story via the strings of puppets emphasizes the hidden strings of forces beyond our control which may well take over our destinies. Von Kleist's famous essay, "On the Puppet Theater" and its uncanny effects makes the same point in our Western tradition.
LOVE AND DEATH: CHANCE, FATE, EROS & THANATOS
One of the teasing and maddening perplexities of Romeo and Juliet is the knife-edge balance of seeming chance on which their fates depend and ultimately turn. "If only" comes repeatedly to mind: If only Juliet had awoken from the potion ten minutes earlier; if only Romeo had known she was not dead but only drugged; If only Friar Laurence's messenger had got to Romeo in time! Similar operations of seeming chance operate in the Love Suicides: If only Osan had discovered Jihei's absence on the fatal night an hour earlier she might have intercepted him and prevented the suicide. Yet part of the mastery of both Shakespeare and Chikamatsu lies in how these seemingly chance events reveal the workings of inexorable hidden forces that ultimately cannot be either eliminated or controlled. If they do not work their will in one chance event they will through another until they have worked out the character's fate.
The point is that there really are latent forces immensely greater than the individual wills or ego-consciousness of Romeo, Juliet, Jihei, Kohatsu and the reader or spectator which are poised to take over their lives, and potentially our lives. What are these forces? Eros, libido, sexuality, overwhelming sensuality and passion rooted in our DNA and the forces of life within and beyond individual consciousness and control is one such force that can become a law and destiny for any individual. To put it rather crudely, when men "think with their dicks" it is often biological "life force" which is doing the thinking for them, a force unfortunately indifferent to their individual destinies and wholly willing to ruthlessly make "puppets" of them, or even hurl them into disaster and death for its own greater ends. For both parties to a fatal passion, that passion, as the cliche would have it, is "bigger than both of us."
Another such "superforce" is death, or Thanatos as Freud expressed in in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," or the fact that the Darwinian-driven life force is using each of us for its own ends, like God's invisible hand working the puppet strings of our lives, rather than each of us using life for our own ends, and of which our own little lives and deaths are but part of a much greater "master plan." The desire for death is also the deisre for peace and escape from the pain and travail of troubled life. Who is using whom? In the greater scheme of things Life will prove Master, and Death will prove Master over each of us, try as we may to overmaster their powers for our own egocentric aims. It is the Archetypes that reveal and catalyze these latent and inexorable contradictions in human life and brings them to light. However we struggle for our own ends we discover, and the Archetypes disclose, that we are in fact inevitably and inexorably serving ends beyond ourselves.
THE PERVERSE CONNECTION BETWEEN LOVE AND DEATH: VAMPIRES, ZOMBIES & LOVERS SUICIDE PACTS, AND DEATH AS THE PRICE OF SEX
Our movies and media are strangely pervaded by the onmipresence of a fatal intertwining of sex and death: Twilight vampires enmeshed in the net of passion and blood-death, and zombies crazed for the blood of life. Sex and death have a number of connections other than having been taboo topics in polite company and controversial subjects in school curricula. As is the case with many taboos, both can lead to fetishes and eroticisms, and their mere mention holds shock value for young adults.
Few question that life's greatest drives are to reproduce and to avoid death. Yet the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the French social theorist Michel Foucault argued that the two are fused, that the death instinct pervades sexual activity—--a connection easily seen by such a Frenchman as Foucault whose language frames orgasms as "petit mort," or "little-deaths." As in the "Play it Again Sam" song of Casablanca, love and sexuality have always been a case of "do or die," from the upstream spawning quests of anadramous salmon to modern film.
It has been often observed that death is the price multicellular creatures must pay in order to reproduce. The biologist William Clark observed, "Obligatory death—as a result of senescence (natural aging)—may not have come into existence for more than a billion years after life first appeared. This form of programmed cell death seems to have arisen at about the same time cells began experimenting with sex in connection with reproduction." Perhaps one legacy of this original immortality is the telomerase, the so-called immortality enzyme, found within the cells of testes and ovaries. Absent from normal cells that age and die, telomerase is what allows cancerous cells to reproduce without limits. Sexuality, followed by human individuation may have been the "original sin" against the primitive amoeboid immortality of undifferentiated binary fission as a means of reproduction, along with the later adoption of a murderous carnivore diet and evolutionary ethos.
Humanity is not immune from this law of death as the cost of sex. This toll for reproduction has particularly been borne by women. Unlike at the start of the twenty-first century, when women held a seven-year life-expectancy advantage over males in developed nations, historically, because of their high maternal death rates, women were the shorter-lived sex. The era of AIDS reinforces the notion that the sex act itself may be the cause of death. Perhaps in the evolutionary scheme sexuality, like the Pentagon in times of budgetary retrenchment, adopts a scheme of "up or out" as a corollary to "do or die" whereby sex and love, if not fulfilled in fruitful union and evolutionary potential, press inexorably towards necessary death as the default reset position. Perhaps Romeo and Juliet, Jihei and Kohatsu fulfill another Archetype, the Scapegoat, to tragically purge the gene pool for more viable options, yet in their deaths, ironically, inspire us towards the roots of greater life. Perhaps ironically also, it is in the moment when forces greater than ourselves take over and even end our lives, that we so often find the potential for essential alignment with those forces that lends transcendent meaning to our lives, often expressed through Archetypes and myth.
The composition of my own recent novel, Spiritus Mundi, is rooted in the exploration of Archetypes, most notably those of The Quest, in this case the Quest to save humanity from destruction in WWIII and the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. In it the protagonist Sartorius overcomes the urge to suicide and finds inspiration in love for the Anima figure of his beloved Eva, who accompanies him on his Quest. I invite you to look into Spiritus Mundi, Romeo & Juliet and the Love Suicides at Amijima to explore the world and power of Archetypes in World Literature.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit...
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr...
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
For most of us in the West, when we think of the idea of "star-crossed lovers" or of the love suicides of doomed lovers the first image that comes to our minds is that of the tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet of Shakespeare. When we then attempt to take in the similar traditions of other cultures, such as the immortal Japanese play, "The Love Suicides at Amijima" by the great 17th Century Japanese playwright Chickamatsu Monzaemon, our first reaction is to see it as "The Japanese Romeo and Juliet," and we may be forgiven our presumption by realizing the universality of egocentrism such that Japanese readers may regard Romeo and Juliet as the Western Amijima, Arabic or Iranian readers as the Western "Layla and Majnun." In truth all of these works are the product of the universal Collective Unconscious manifesting itself in its innumerable variations on the themes of fundamental archetypes and patterns in World Literature, here the universal Archetype of The Star-Crossed Lovers, and which Archetypes are shared by all of us as the common heritage of mankind.
WHAT IS AN ARCHETYPE?
C.G. Jung identified as "Archetypes" enduring dynamic symbolic complexes charged with energy in the human psyche which mediate and help transcend the inextricable contradictions and limitations of human existence, and which serve to enhance psychic wholeness, growth, and the powers of greater life itself. Archetypes recurrently irrupt from latent unconsciousness into living human consciousness in the form of dreams and as recurrent motifs expressed in literature, art, religion and myth serving as guides and healers towards grater life. Archetypes are generally manifested in the three major forms of characterological personas, situational motifs and oppositional symbolic patterns.
Examples of archetypal characterological personas charged with the immense hidden energies of the Collective Unconscious would include:
1. The Hero--who typically struggles against inimical and powerful forces beyond his control;
2. The Scapegoat--an animal or more likely a human whose ceremonial sacrafice or expulsion expiates some taint or sin afflicting the community;
3 The Outcast--a figure banished from a human community
4. The Devil--Evil incarnate, inimically opposed to human well-being;
5. The Earthmother--symbol of fruition, abundance and fertility;
6. The Star-Crossed Lovers--These lovers represent the element of Doom in erotic love relationships, implying that whatever forces determine their fate, the lovers are not and ultimately cannot be in essential control of them. These overpowering forces may include "fate" or "the stars," the internal irresistable and ultimately lawless forces of libido, lust and love, the countervailing overweening powers of society,family, social repression, convention social duty, and perhaps even the power of Death itself.
Examples of Situational Archetypal Motifs would include:
1. The Quest--a search for something or a powerful talisman which will restore fertility to a wasted and blighted land;
2. The Task--to save the kingdom, win a fair lady or perform some superhuman deed;
3.The Journey--usually to find some vital information or truth;
4. Death & Rebirth
Sybolical Archetypal oppositional patterns might include:
1. Darkness & Light
2. Water & Desert
3. Heaven & Hell---Man has traditionally associated places not accessible to him as the dwelling places of the hidden primordial powers that govern his world, as exemplified by the Heaven and Hell.
Since Archetypes emerge from and express the universal Collective Unconscious of humanity as they deal with the uneradicable contradictions and limitations of the human condition, they occur in all cultures and at all times in human history, though shaped in specific expression by each cultural tradition and historical context in its own way.
THE ARCHETYPE OF THE STAR-CROSSED LOVERS IN WORLD LITERATURE
The Archetype of the Star-Crossed Lovers appears in World Literature from earliest antiquity. A famous example at the center of Homer's Iliad, is the fated love of Helen of Troy and Paris, forbidden by Helen's marriage to Menalaus, which ends in Paris' death and the destruction of his homeland Troy. Also, in Ovid's Metamorphoses we encounter the figures of Pyramus and Thisbee, two Babylonian lovers frequently used in Shakespeare, who, like Romeo and Juliet kill themselves out of frustrated love.
Similar stories abound, as in the case of Hero and Leander at the Dardanelles, in which Leander perishes swimming the straits with the guidance of a lantern in the night lit by Hero, until bad winds and weather extinguish the lamp and he drowns. In Celtic mythology, the tale of Tristan and Isolde follows similar lines with Tristan, a faithful Knight of King Mark sent to bring Mark's new bride from Ireland to Cornwall. Isolde however, falls in love not with King Mark but with Tristan and they drink of a magic love potion binding them together body and soul. The lovers cannot keep apart until King Mark to save the honor of himself and the kingdom must banish Tristan to France where Tristan dies of separation from Isolde, resulting in her own love suicide. This also serves as model for other stories of ill-fated lovers, such as the Arthurian legend of the love of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenevire.
In non-Western traditions similar expressions of the Star-Crossed Lovers appear, such as Nizami's famous Persian tale of "Layla and Majnun," popularized in Arabic, Persian, Indian and Islamic Literature. There Layla and Majnun are inextricably in love, but Layla's father refuses to allow them to marry, citing Majnun's poverty and his reputed mental illness arising from his excessive love for Layla. Layla is forced to marry another wealthy suitor and Majnun is reduced to wandering in the wilderness, Heathcliff-like, inscribing poems to Layla on rocks and the walls of her home. Finally he dies from grief causing her to do so at the same time.
In Chinese Literature similar tales are abundant, such as the fate of Imperial Consort Yang Gui Fei celebrated in Bai Juyi's "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" in which the Imperial lovers' excesses threaten the downfall of the Tang Dynasty such that the Emperor Xuanzong is forced by his army to have her executed to save the Empire. The fabled doomed love of Liangshan Bo and Zhu Yingtai, Ovid-like, ends in their being transformed into butterflies to be united in spirit. Another celebrated case is the ill-fated love of Jia Baoyu and his sickly cousin Lin Daiyu in Cao Xueqin's immortal classic "The Dream of the Red Chamber," another case in which love's consummation in marriage is blocked by Lin's poverty and ill health, causing her to waste away and die, blighting both lives.
Other cases of the appearance of the Star-Crossed Lovers Archetype are those of Goethe's "Sorrows of Young Werther," Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" and "Lady Chatterly's Lover."
THE LOVE SUICIDES AT AMIJIMA BY CHIKAMATSU
"The Love Suicides at Amijima" tells the story of two ill-fated lovers, Jihei, a married unsuccessful merchant of commercial Osaka, and Koharu, a beautiful courtesan for whom he has contracted a fatally intense love attraction, and from whom his love is reciprocated, but a love which can never be fulfilled due to his marriage and family and her indentured status as a paid courtesan.
Unlike Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, who begin their story in youthful innocence and exuberant hope, Jihei and Koharu begin Chikamatsu's play in a state of hopelessness that is never relieved. As the play opens they have exchanged vows to commit mutual suicide together when an inevitable opportune moment arrives. Their fate is sealed from the outset, and the drama consists less in their attempting to change it for the better, as do Romeo and Juliet, but in how the attempts of all those around them who represent "rationality," control,social duty and convention, foremost Jihei's loyal wife Osan and their children, Jihei's brother and extended family all attempt and ignominiously fail to divert the lovers from their doom.
The characters are portrayed in a thoroughly realistic manner as Jihei appears not the ideal tradesman of Osaka but rather one of the unsuccessful members of a profession that demanded a high level of diligence, reputation and devotion, exhibiting a weak, conflicted and vascillating nature, though ultimately devoted to his passionate but hopeless love to Koharu. Chikamatsu explains that even the love of a prostitute is deep beyond measure, a bottomless sea of affection that cannot be emptied or dried. The action is relieved by episodes of humor and insight into personalities and human foibles. Practically, Jihei is surrounded by "love" ----love between man and woman, husband and wife, father and children, younger brother and elder brother, but none of these conventionalized loves can rise to the reality of his true love for Koharu.
He tries to control his overpowering passionate love for Koharu----in fact, a part of him desires nothing more than to live up to what society expects of him as a husband and father. Torn between the two opposing worlds of duty (giri) and passionate private desire (ninjo), Jihei is forced over and over to reject his home and family. Like any other human nature, Jihei's nature is impulsive and changeable. He begs Gozaemon, Osans father who threatens him with divorce and bankruptcy over the affair, to let him stay with his wife Osan. In his quickness of tongue, his impulsiveness and his fear of being shamed in public, Jihei represents a typical representative of inconstant males so vividly portrayed by western female songstresses like Joni Mitchell: "Be careful now - when you court young men: They are like the stars On a summer morning, They sparkle up the night, And theyre gone again----Daybreak---and gone again." Under pressure from his wife and family, Jihei attempts to give up Koharu, but ultimately finds it impossible. In the end, Jihei's love for Koharu makes a double suicide seem as the only course open to him.
Part of the pathos of the tragedy comes from our admiration for Jihei's wife Osan, who appears as a plausibly ideal and admirable wife, forgiving Jihei and Kohatsu, seeking to protect her children and family, taking the strong initiative to ask Kohatsu to give up Jihei to protect his children and family. When Koharu is threatened with disaster Osan even makes great sacrafices to raise money for her, though a rival, acting with great strength, courage and honor. But Jihei's love is fatally unaffected by his wife's virtues, and he is impelled further and further towards his hopeless love for Koharu and its inevitable consequence of self-destruction.
In the end, Jihei and Koharu resign themselves to their fate and to each other, setting off in the night to commit suicide together, justified in their hopeless love and expectation that they will be together in future lives and reincarnations even if their love is impossible in this life and world. A main theme of The Love Suicide at Amijima is that marriage and living out social conventions and roles does not equal happiness and love. This can be seen during the play through Osan’s self-sacrifice and Jihei ultimately choosing a tragic death with Koharu instead of living with Osan.
It is not coincidental that "The Love Suicides at Amijima" found birth in the Japanese Bunraku "puppet theater," though it also is performed by live actors in the Kabuki theater as well. McLuhan famously stated that "the medium is the message," and the telling of Chikamatsu's story via the strings of puppets emphasizes the hidden strings of forces beyond our control which may well take over our destinies. Von Kleist's famous essay, "On the Puppet Theater" and its uncanny effects makes the same point in our Western tradition.
LOVE AND DEATH: CHANCE, FATE, EROS & THANATOS
One of the teasing and maddening perplexities of Romeo and Juliet is the knife-edge balance of seeming chance on which their fates depend and ultimately turn. "If only" comes repeatedly to mind: If only Juliet had awoken from the potion ten minutes earlier; if only Romeo had known she was not dead but only drugged; If only Friar Laurence's messenger had got to Romeo in time! Similar operations of seeming chance operate in the Love Suicides: If only Osan had discovered Jihei's absence on the fatal night an hour earlier she might have intercepted him and prevented the suicide. Yet part of the mastery of both Shakespeare and Chikamatsu lies in how these seemingly chance events reveal the workings of inexorable hidden forces that ultimately cannot be either eliminated or controlled. If they do not work their will in one chance event they will through another until they have worked out the character's fate.
The point is that there really are latent forces immensely greater than the individual wills or ego-consciousness of Romeo, Juliet, Jihei, Kohatsu and the reader or spectator which are poised to take over their lives, and potentially our lives. What are these forces? Eros, libido, sexuality, overwhelming sensuality and passion rooted in our DNA and the forces of life within and beyond individual consciousness and control is one such force that can become a law and destiny for any individual. To put it rather crudely, when men "think with their dicks" it is often biological "life force" which is doing the thinking for them, a force unfortunately indifferent to their individual destinies and wholly willing to ruthlessly make "puppets" of them, or even hurl them into disaster and death for its own greater ends. For both parties to a fatal passion, that passion, as the cliche would have it, is "bigger than both of us."
Another such "superforce" is death, or Thanatos as Freud expressed in in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," or the fact that the Darwinian-driven life force is using each of us for its own ends, like God's invisible hand working the puppet strings of our lives, rather than each of us using life for our own ends, and of which our own little lives and deaths are but part of a much greater "master plan." The desire for death is also the deisre for peace and escape from the pain and travail of troubled life. Who is using whom? In the greater scheme of things Life will prove Master, and Death will prove Master over each of us, try as we may to overmaster their powers for our own egocentric aims. It is the Archetypes that reveal and catalyze these latent and inexorable contradictions in human life and brings them to light. However we struggle for our own ends we discover, and the Archetypes disclose, that we are in fact inevitably and inexorably serving ends beyond ourselves.
THE PERVERSE CONNECTION BETWEEN LOVE AND DEATH: VAMPIRES, ZOMBIES & LOVERS SUICIDE PACTS, AND DEATH AS THE PRICE OF SEX
Our movies and media are strangely pervaded by the onmipresence of a fatal intertwining of sex and death: Twilight vampires enmeshed in the net of passion and blood-death, and zombies crazed for the blood of life. Sex and death have a number of connections other than having been taboo topics in polite company and controversial subjects in school curricula. As is the case with many taboos, both can lead to fetishes and eroticisms, and their mere mention holds shock value for young adults.
Few question that life's greatest drives are to reproduce and to avoid death. Yet the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the French social theorist Michel Foucault argued that the two are fused, that the death instinct pervades sexual activity—--a connection easily seen by such a Frenchman as Foucault whose language frames orgasms as "petit mort," or "little-deaths." As in the "Play it Again Sam" song of Casablanca, love and sexuality have always been a case of "do or die," from the upstream spawning quests of anadramous salmon to modern film.
It has been often observed that death is the price multicellular creatures must pay in order to reproduce. The biologist William Clark observed, "Obligatory death—as a result of senescence (natural aging)—may not have come into existence for more than a billion years after life first appeared. This form of programmed cell death seems to have arisen at about the same time cells began experimenting with sex in connection with reproduction." Perhaps one legacy of this original immortality is the telomerase, the so-called immortality enzyme, found within the cells of testes and ovaries. Absent from normal cells that age and die, telomerase is what allows cancerous cells to reproduce without limits. Sexuality, followed by human individuation may have been the "original sin" against the primitive amoeboid immortality of undifferentiated binary fission as a means of reproduction, along with the later adoption of a murderous carnivore diet and evolutionary ethos.
Humanity is not immune from this law of death as the cost of sex. This toll for reproduction has particularly been borne by women. Unlike at the start of the twenty-first century, when women held a seven-year life-expectancy advantage over males in developed nations, historically, because of their high maternal death rates, women were the shorter-lived sex. The era of AIDS reinforces the notion that the sex act itself may be the cause of death. Perhaps in the evolutionary scheme sexuality, like the Pentagon in times of budgetary retrenchment, adopts a scheme of "up or out" as a corollary to "do or die" whereby sex and love, if not fulfilled in fruitful union and evolutionary potential, press inexorably towards necessary death as the default reset position. Perhaps Romeo and Juliet, Jihei and Kohatsu fulfill another Archetype, the Scapegoat, to tragically purge the gene pool for more viable options, yet in their deaths, ironically, inspire us towards the roots of greater life. Perhaps ironically also, it is in the moment when forces greater than ourselves take over and even end our lives, that we so often find the potential for essential alignment with those forces that lends transcendent meaning to our lives, often expressed through Archetypes and myth.
The composition of my own recent novel, Spiritus Mundi, is rooted in the exploration of Archetypes, most notably those of The Quest, in this case the Quest to save humanity from destruction in WWIII and the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. In it the protagonist Sartorius overcomes the urge to suicide and finds inspiration in love for the Anima figure of his beloved Eva, who accompanies him on his Quest. I invite you to look into Spiritus Mundi, Romeo & Juliet and the Love Suicides at Amijima to explore the world and power of Archetypes in World Literature.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit...
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr...
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
March 16, 2025
If you told me at the beginning of this semester that I would spend two weeks reading 18th-century bunraku puppet plays, I would have told you that... yeah, you're probably right. That's what a degree in comparative literature will do for you.
And I'm so happy that it did. I shouldn't be surprised, but Chikamatsu's (1653 – 1725) eloquence balances the delicate and the ferocious on a wire as fine as the strings that animate his wooden performers. He writes with grace that I can only glimpse in this translated collection, a grace that makes me wish more than ever before that I could understand Japanese. He conveys a romantic sublime that I simultaneously bask in and chase through the translation.
What I can see are three sewamono plays and one jidaimono (three domestic tragedies and one history, to use the more familiar Shakespearian terms). The jidaimono --The Battles of Coxinga-- showcases a hero's literally epic adventure through occupied China to avenge his family and restore the emperor of the Ming Dynasty to the throne. Chikamatsu's fight scenes astonish with their free-flowing gore and exhilerate with their indisputable stakes, regardless of whether Coxinga's opponent is a tiger or the traitorous Ri Tōten himself. These scenes are well-paced and well-written by themselves; when considering the limitations of their wooden actors, Chikamatsu's savvy stands, unrivaled, atop the metaphorical mountain. Perhaps just as impressively is his ability to so naturally infuse longstanding mythos with Coxinga's adventures. By the end of the play, the two feel inseparable.
The sewamono plays each offer something unique, but The Love Suicides at Sonezaki sets itself apart as my personal favorite. The play has been criticized for its simple plot, but simplicity is its greatest asset. A scene so simple as the two lovers intertwining their bodies in death like a knotted tree strikes with a scandalizing tenderness that I personally will never forget. Especially considering the wood of the tree / puppets, a parallel at once beautiful and grotesque.
Yes, Chikamatsu's sewamono shines through its simplicity. The latter two tragedies, while passionate and daring, overcomplicate themselves and clunkily untangle in final moments of diegetic telling. In other words, the endings read like checklists of after thoughts, items the playwright knew he had to include but didn't know how. I've had thoughts about Shakespeare's "problem plays" similar to my thoughts here, and, based on his tone in the footnotes of these moments, I think translator Donald Keene would agree.
But perhaps we are all missing something. Earlier I expressed that Chikamatsu's writing conveys an elusive romantic quality. Now, I am starting to wonder if perhaps even native speakers feel this way when reading his plays, at once in the sun and in the dark of that quality's name. Maybe it doesn't have a name, or maybe naming it isn't appropriate. Perhaps we are meant to live in the mystery of Chikamatsu's writing that, for the life it summons through his puppets and his puppeteers, remains indescribable.
And I'm so happy that it did. I shouldn't be surprised, but Chikamatsu's (1653 – 1725) eloquence balances the delicate and the ferocious on a wire as fine as the strings that animate his wooden performers. He writes with grace that I can only glimpse in this translated collection, a grace that makes me wish more than ever before that I could understand Japanese. He conveys a romantic sublime that I simultaneously bask in and chase through the translation.
What I can see are three sewamono plays and one jidaimono (three domestic tragedies and one history, to use the more familiar Shakespearian terms). The jidaimono --The Battles of Coxinga-- showcases a hero's literally epic adventure through occupied China to avenge his family and restore the emperor of the Ming Dynasty to the throne. Chikamatsu's fight scenes astonish with their free-flowing gore and exhilerate with their indisputable stakes, regardless of whether Coxinga's opponent is a tiger or the traitorous Ri Tōten himself. These scenes are well-paced and well-written by themselves; when considering the limitations of their wooden actors, Chikamatsu's savvy stands, unrivaled, atop the metaphorical mountain. Perhaps just as impressively is his ability to so naturally infuse longstanding mythos with Coxinga's adventures. By the end of the play, the two feel inseparable.
The sewamono plays each offer something unique, but The Love Suicides at Sonezaki sets itself apart as my personal favorite. The play has been criticized for its simple plot, but simplicity is its greatest asset. A scene so simple as the two lovers intertwining their bodies in death like a knotted tree strikes with a scandalizing tenderness that I personally will never forget. Especially considering the wood of the tree / puppets, a parallel at once beautiful and grotesque.
Yes, Chikamatsu's sewamono shines through its simplicity. The latter two tragedies, while passionate and daring, overcomplicate themselves and clunkily untangle in final moments of diegetic telling. In other words, the endings read like checklists of after thoughts, items the playwright knew he had to include but didn't know how. I've had thoughts about Shakespeare's "problem plays" similar to my thoughts here, and, based on his tone in the footnotes of these moments, I think translator Donald Keene would agree.
But perhaps we are all missing something. Earlier I expressed that Chikamatsu's writing conveys an elusive romantic quality. Now, I am starting to wonder if perhaps even native speakers feel this way when reading his plays, at once in the sun and in the dark of that quality's name. Maybe it doesn't have a name, or maybe naming it isn't appropriate. Perhaps we are meant to live in the mystery of Chikamatsu's writing that, for the life it summons through his puppets and his puppeteers, remains indescribable.
March 16, 2019
Drama and poetry, love and money, anguish and honor. It's not quite correct to say that Chikamatsu's plays have got it all - from this small selection, it seems he had a particular focus on a particular aspect of Japanese urban life, though in "The Battles of Coxinga" his imagination flew much further afield. But in spite of the monochrome cover art and the lack of illustrations, the stories themselves burst with color. With elements of both tragedy and comedy, they are immensely entertaining, all the more so when you remember they were written to be performed by puppets. Though titles like "The Love Suicides at Sonezaki" give away the ending, the stories are still replete with surprises and populated by fascinating characters.
The metatextual elements of translation notes and commentary were also valuable and intriguing. Certainly, it would be very difficult to appreciate the complex wordplay of the original in a mere translation, and a footnote is necessary to explain the relevance of allusions to other plays. But I also noted an occasional strain of condescension from the translator, as though he needed to apologize for the suggestion that puppet theater be treated as literature, or that the moral calculations of the characters might offend an English speaking audience. It comes from the right place, and cultural context is necessary in a book like this, but it can come across as painfully white. Chalk it up to mid-century academics.
On the other hand, the fascination with suicide probably does merit an explanation to Westerners - or more precisely, the forces that leads characters to commit it. At the very least, it is potentially valuable to consider the question of suicide from a different culture's point of view, and to see how culture might create the obligations that impel us to unpleasant actions. After all, there is nothing more universally human than to be trapped by social conventions.
My main regret is that I didn't buy the longer version of this book which apparently exists; after only four plays, my curiosity was not quite satisfied. Likewise, as the translator admits, it is a shame to have to experience these dramas outside of the unique atmosphere of the puppet theater. I found myself picturing human actors in a cinematic context more often than not, and realized that I was not quite getting the complete picture of what a play by Chikamatsu was really like.
The metatextual elements of translation notes and commentary were also valuable and intriguing. Certainly, it would be very difficult to appreciate the complex wordplay of the original in a mere translation, and a footnote is necessary to explain the relevance of allusions to other plays. But I also noted an occasional strain of condescension from the translator, as though he needed to apologize for the suggestion that puppet theater be treated as literature, or that the moral calculations of the characters might offend an English speaking audience. It comes from the right place, and cultural context is necessary in a book like this, but it can come across as painfully white. Chalk it up to mid-century academics.
On the other hand, the fascination with suicide probably does merit an explanation to Westerners - or more precisely, the forces that leads characters to commit it. At the very least, it is potentially valuable to consider the question of suicide from a different culture's point of view, and to see how culture might create the obligations that impel us to unpleasant actions. After all, there is nothing more universally human than to be trapped by social conventions.
My main regret is that I didn't buy the longer version of this book which apparently exists; after only four plays, my curiosity was not quite satisfied. Likewise, as the translator admits, it is a shame to have to experience these dramas outside of the unique atmosphere of the puppet theater. I found myself picturing human actors in a cinematic context more often than not, and realized that I was not quite getting the complete picture of what a play by Chikamatsu was really like.
August 9, 2024
Chikamatsu drámáihoz Shakespeare felől érkeztem: hallottam "A Japán Shakespeare" hírét, de nem találtam tőle semmit magyar fordításban. Angolul kezdtem bele a műveibe, és be kell valljam egy idő után engem ez az egész ledobott.
A cselekmény többnyire a szerelem és a társadalmi konvenciók konfliktusára épül, és tragikus, vagyis a szereplők száműzetése, elítélése és halála/kivégzése a fő irány. Vidám fordulat, ha a végére egy bölcs Buddhista pap inkább apácának/szerzetesnek veszi a jobb sorsra érdemes szerencsétlent, de ez a kivétel. Szóval a szerelem nehéz és élethalál kérdés, eddig oké, mindig minden alapból rómeóésjúliás. Na de ez az állandóan bonyolult, átláthatatlan közösségi és társadalmi hierarchia- és érdekszövedék, ahol mindenki mindenkinek rokona vagy vazallusa, körbetartozás, mindenféle kettős kötések, amikbe kizárólag gabalyodni és fulladni lehet, ezzel semmit sem tudtam végül kezdeni: nem értem. Ráadásul ez a motiváció-rendszer hajtja a cselekményt... Oké, az ókori görög becsület és rituálé is macera a drámákban, de ez jóval macerább. És ahogy a görögöknél, itt is gyakorta nagyon erős érzelmi viharok közepette egészen nyers, bár társadalmilag szabályozott erőszak-kitörésekhez vezet: folyton ütik, rúgják, párbajozzák, túszul ejtik, lincselik, öngyilkolják (stb) egymást, közben különféle felfokozott állapotokban sírnak sokat. Mindez simán csak groteszkül hatna, ha nem volna hozzá ez a roppant illemkódex-tákolmány.
Lehet, hogy el kéne hozzá merülnöm az antik japán közerkölcs témájában, de ahhoz meg már az egész nem ragadta meg annyira a fantáziámat.
A cselekmény többnyire a szerelem és a társadalmi konvenciók konfliktusára épül, és tragikus, vagyis a szereplők száműzetése, elítélése és halála/kivégzése a fő irány. Vidám fordulat, ha a végére egy bölcs Buddhista pap inkább apácának/szerzetesnek veszi a jobb sorsra érdemes szerencsétlent, de ez a kivétel. Szóval a szerelem nehéz és élethalál kérdés, eddig oké, mindig minden alapból rómeóésjúliás. Na de ez az állandóan bonyolult, átláthatatlan közösségi és társadalmi hierarchia- és érdekszövedék, ahol mindenki mindenkinek rokona vagy vazallusa, körbetartozás, mindenféle kettős kötések, amikbe kizárólag gabalyodni és fulladni lehet, ezzel semmit sem tudtam végül kezdeni: nem értem. Ráadásul ez a motiváció-rendszer hajtja a cselekményt... Oké, az ókori görög becsület és rituálé is macera a drámákban, de ez jóval macerább. És ahogy a görögöknél, itt is gyakorta nagyon erős érzelmi viharok közepette egészen nyers, bár társadalmilag szabályozott erőszak-kitörésekhez vezet: folyton ütik, rúgják, párbajozzák, túszul ejtik, lincselik, öngyilkolják (stb) egymást, közben különféle felfokozott állapotokban sírnak sokat. Mindez simán csak groteszkül hatna, ha nem volna hozzá ez a roppant illemkódex-tákolmány.
Lehet, hogy el kéne hozzá merülnöm az antik japán közerkölcs témájában, de ahhoz meg már az egész nem ragadta meg annyira a fantáziámat.
August 4, 2017
These plays are essentially untranslatable, as their most transcendental element is their masterful use of puns and other wordplay, and the effect of a puppet theater is particularly difficult to capture on a page, particularly for a western audience with only a cursory familiarity with the art form. Yet, nonetheless, I found myself happy to have read Keene's excellent translations of Chikamatsu's work, even though I was well aware I was reading but a shadow of the original masterpiece. The world of Tokugawa Japan Chikamatsu so deftly portrays is remarkably fascinating, from its hierarchy of prostitutes, to its views on religion and morality, from its valuation of honor to its macabre fascination with love suicides. Even in a necessarily imperfect translation, this is well worth the read.
April 4, 2023
Chikamatsu's 18th-century puppet plays are full of excitement: prostitutes, wars, people poking their own eyes out, on-stage C-section and suicides. Eat that, Punch and Judy!
The plays are also complex, with a host of characters, and complicated, with lots of Japanese puns that are hard to translate. An interesting reflection of life in Japan back then, as some plays were written just a month after the events depicted took place.
A summary of a Kabuki staging of the first play in this collection can be found on YouTube https://youtu.be/YG_lShXr8LA.
The plays are also complex, with a host of characters, and complicated, with lots of Japanese puns that are hard to translate. An interesting reflection of life in Japan back then, as some plays were written just a month after the events depicted took place.
A summary of a Kabuki staging of the first play in this collection can be found on YouTube https://youtu.be/YG_lShXr8LA.
December 1, 2017
After having read so much of Japanese history, prose, poetry and philosophy, I’ve concluded that honor is the paramount force in life among this people. These dramas not only emphasize this quality but also the emotional bent of the culture, where warriors and common folk shed tears when Western heroes and people would consider it a weakness. The status of suicide is incredibly high and romanticized in these plays. Though well crafted, they are queer to Western sentiments.
December 28, 2023
I wish I could read these plays in their original language… The stories were beautiful, and very sad, but I am sure I missed so much of Chimamatsu’s wordplay and rhetoric. Not Keene’s fault, that’s the trouble with translation :)
My favorite play was The Battles of Coxinga. I also enjoyed the introduction and learning about the art of puppet theatre in general. Also, reading what would’ve been “status quo” in 17th century Japan was fascinating.
My favorite play was The Battles of Coxinga. I also enjoyed the introduction and learning about the art of puppet theatre in general. Also, reading what would’ve been “status quo” in 17th century Japan was fascinating.
September 16, 2017
I'm thankful (esp. to Donald Keene) these plays are available in English, so I could find out for myself that reading them just doesn't work for me.
February 17, 2023
I find it very interesting that Japan's Shakespeare wrote his plays specifically to be acted out by puppets. Although many were also adapted into Kabuki theater within his own lifetime.
December 25, 2025
Ok, I only read The Love Suicides At Sonezaki (for class), but they don't have the stand alone of that. Anyway, fascinating peak into Japanese theatrical traditions. Its short, but full of drama.
January 22, 2022
Dubbed by the Japanese as the “Japanese Shakespeare” Chikamatsu Monzaemon is the most famous Japanese dramatist, whose plays offer a vivid representation of a unique period in Japan and have a special importance among the dramas in the history in that they constitute the first tragedies written about common people. Chikamatsu wrote mostly for Bunraku, or Japanese puppet theater, shifting from traditional Kabuki theater dissatisfied by the liberties taken by the actors; while on the other hand the set limitations of the puppet theater (like the number of heads available for puppets, often limiting the array of emotions possible to be displayed, or changes brought to the modern theater that have affected most aspects and intents of the original work) hindered his text when it comes to it’s performing values, and gave them more of a literary value - a testimony for his mastery of language, subtlety and imagination, especially evident in michiyuki or the description of nature in a journey scene that posses complexity and eloquence that equal achievements of poetry. Chikamatsu wrote sewamono or tragedies based on real incidents known to contemporary audiences, about ordinary, socially humble people who are driven by overpowering emotions to risk and suffer death; and jidaimono or historical works, filled with larger-than-life demonstrations of loyalty, courage, and heroics. Heroes of Chikamatsu’s domestic plays were the samurai (often of the lower rank and their issues arising from being obliged to serve the shogun and therefore get separated from the family), the farmers (their poor living conditions and loyalty to their masters limiting their prosperity), merchants and artisans (getting prominence in his time and becoming the widest audience) often involved with prostitutes (which reflected conditions in then society, as the gay quarters were the center of urban life), little men whose dreams and aspirations are doomed to frustration, as Chikamatsu was striving to represent that sufferings of all people were equally worthy. However, Chikamatsu was not interested in writing about social struggles, but about individuals and their unique struggles (often caused by their weaknesses as humans); he satirized the class divisions as well as the extravagance of the shogun. Majority of his works where love-suicides plays for which he drew inspiration from the accounts of real events, transforming the pathetic, trivial and fickle details into literature, while simultaneously developing and creating complex, serious and evolving characters. Chikamatsu followed Confucian principles like propriety, loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and righteousness and often conflicted Japanese aspects of morality giri (obligation) and ninjō (human feelings that conflict social obligations) - giri representing the sense of honor, and fulfillment of obligations towards one’s family, class, superior, while ninjō serves as a buffer balancing the duties of giri.
"Love suicides at Sonezaki" - poetic and emotional story enriched with a literary powerful michiyuki about love suicides of lovers whose trust in the human righteousness and honor gets brutally betrayed. 4⭐
"Uprooted pine" - Chikamatsu’s cheerful play about ransoming of a prostitute, about honor, giri, among friends and family, human kindness, filial piety, loyalty, filled with wealthy metaphors (shogi board, mouse trap). 4⭐
"Love suicides at Amijima" - another love suicide play, focusing on a loyalty of a betrayed wife and her sense of giri. Lovers being unable to live together in this world, following Buddhist principles, decide to join each other in the other world. 4⭐
"The Battles of Coxinga" - exceptional jidaimono, written in the Tokugawa period of Japanese isolation, when exotic destinations were popular and covers the topic of Mongol invasion in China and battles of Ming dynasty’s warrior Coxinga and his efforts to restore their rule. Filled with extraordinary feats of heroism, especially among female heroes, loyalty and tactical wit, interwoven with Confucianism, mythology, supernatural elements and pathos. 5⭐
"Love suicides at Sonezaki" - poetic and emotional story enriched with a literary powerful michiyuki about love suicides of lovers whose trust in the human righteousness and honor gets brutally betrayed. 4⭐
"Uprooted pine" - Chikamatsu’s cheerful play about ransoming of a prostitute, about honor, giri, among friends and family, human kindness, filial piety, loyalty, filled with wealthy metaphors (shogi board, mouse trap). 4⭐
"Love suicides at Amijima" - another love suicide play, focusing on a loyalty of a betrayed wife and her sense of giri. Lovers being unable to live together in this world, following Buddhist principles, decide to join each other in the other world. 4⭐
"The Battles of Coxinga" - exceptional jidaimono, written in the Tokugawa period of Japanese isolation, when exotic destinations were popular and covers the topic of Mongol invasion in China and battles of Ming dynasty’s warrior Coxinga and his efforts to restore their rule. Filled with extraordinary feats of heroism, especially among female heroes, loyalty and tactical wit, interwoven with Confucianism, mythology, supernatural elements and pathos. 5⭐
October 30, 2010
This book is composed of the 4 very famous plays by Chikamatsu in Japan. The plays written are often used to compare with Shakespeare's plays partly because the four major plays are about tragic (love) stories. I really like the book because by reading it, I learn a lot about the Japanese culture. This book truly embodies the society and the idea of Japan in Chikamatsu's time. One of the major aspect of that society is prostitute, feudal society, tragic loves. It was touching because of the love stories and the classical love stories(eastern) are different from the western love stories. The loves under Chikamatsu are more involved with feelings, virtue, social obligation, and reputation. They were also more dramatic that at the end lovers end up killing themselves together.
January 13, 2010
I only read one of the plays for a class on modernity in Japanese literature but it actually made me tear up a bit! It was The Love Suicides at Sonezaki and told the story of a merchant and a prostitute who fell in love but had to commit seppuku for love and in order to save face. This was written for the puppet theater and it's overly dramatic to make up for the lack of live actors so there's a lot of weaping and wailing. The love between the two characters is apparent though even with it being such a short play. I enjoyed it and didn't feel like it was a chore to read. This is only the second puppet play I've read but so far I haven't been disappointed!
Read
April 17, 2022*The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (Sonezaki Shinjū) 1703
The Battles of Coxinga (Kokusenya Kassen) 1715
The Uprooted Pine (Nebiki no Kadomatsu) 1718
The Love Suicides at Amijima (Shinjū Ten no Amijima) 1721
The Battles of Coxinga (Kokusenya Kassen) 1715
The Uprooted Pine (Nebiki no Kadomatsu) 1718
The Love Suicides at Amijima (Shinjū Ten no Amijima) 1721
July 18, 2009
Love it or hate it, great classic Japanese tales of guilt, love, lust, and--oh--so much drama.
Read
February 14, 2011poop on keene.
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