Chikamatsu monzaemon biography sample
•
Chapter 4--Renaissance--CHIKAMATSU MONZAEMON (1653-1725)
We are still in Kyoto, where Japanese literature has been from its beginnings a thousand years earlier, but now in a much more stable environment than Chomei's, as we enter "The Floating World" of Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868). I choose Chikamatsu because he is the greatest dramatist of this Tokugawa Period, probably of Japanese literature--and that's where the literary action is in this period. Chikamatsu is even sometimes called the "Japanese Shakespeare," though he is certainly not that. He has nothing of the range through comedy, tragedy, and history of Shakespeare, or of Shakespeare's language complexity (but, then, neither does anyone else in world literature). No, once the Japanese discovered Shakespeare in the late 19th century, Shakespeare han själv became the Japanese Shakespeare, so that you can no doubt see as much Shakespeare in Tokyo as in London
•
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (Japanese: 近松門左衛門; real name Sugimori Nobumori, 杉森信盛) (1653 – 1725) was a Japanesedramatist of jōruri, the form of puppet theater that later came to be known as bunraku, and the live-actor drama, kabuki. Chikamatsu is considered the Japanese “Shakespeare” for his assortment of plays staged by puppets in the early era of bunraku stage plays. He wrote both historical romances (jidaimono) and domestic tragedies of love and duty (sewamono). Over one hundred ten joruri (puppet plays) and thirty kabuki plays are attributed to Chikamatsu, and he had a profound influence on the development of the modern Japanese theater. He was the first author to create plays that not only showed off the skill of the puppet operator, but had literary merit of their own.
Chikmatsu wrote plays mainly for theaters in Kyoto and Osaka, most of them notable for their double-suicides.
•
Chikamatsu Monzaemon: The Tenderness and Severity of Japan’s Master Dramatist
Inviting Compassion
It is 300 years since the death of Japan’s great playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724), known for the enduring appeal of his works in kabuki and bunraku puppet theater. Chikamatsu’s world can be both tender and severe, as I will introduce with reference to individual plays.
For example, there is Chikamatsu’s bunraku play Keisei hangonkō, which was first performed in 1708. A part of the work is still staged today in kabuki and bunraku under the name Domo mata (trans. by Holly Blumner as Matahei the Stutterer, part of The Courtesan of the Hangon Incense).
Text from The Courtesan of the Hangon Incense written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon himself, which was donated to the city of Amagasaki in Hyōgo Prefecture. (© Kyōdō Images)
The protagonist is an artist called Ukiyo Matahei, who has a speech impediment that prevents him from speaking smoo