Playlist: Tokugawa Japan: Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) – Samurai Playwright

Transcript

Donald Keene: The most famous of these dramatists was Chikamatsu, who lived at the end and functioned mainly at the end of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century.

Chikamatsu himself was a member of the samurai class, but he became a playwright and insisted that his name be attached to his plays. In the past people of the samurai class would have considered that beneath their dignity to be known as a playwright, a demeaning profession. But he was a professional.

His first play about people of his own time, one of the most important plays in the history of Japanese theater, was a play called the "Love Suicides at Sonezaki." The story is that he heard about this event of a young man and a young woman who had committed suicide in the wood at Sonezaki, which is in the city of Osaka. I think this is probably the first time in the history of the drama of the world that an ordinary person, a common man or in this case a man who works in a shop where they sell soy sauce, is made the hero of a tragedy. The heroes of tragedy following Aristotle were generally considered people of superior social status to the audience: a king, prince, general, or someone of that sort was the only kind of person considered to be appropriate for a tragedy. And if commoners appeared on the stage, they were generally in comic parts. The oaf from the country who can never get anything right, and so on. But in the play of Sonezaki Shinju, the participants in the shinju, which is a love suicide, at the end of the play, a man who works in a shop and a prostitute, not a grand courtesan, but an ordinary prostitute, and these two people who might have been thought unworthy to be the hero and heroine of tragedy, at the end by the nobility of their love, their self-sacrificing love, earn our admiration and also our tears.

It's an extremely moving play. A short play, beautifully written. Some of the most beautiful Japanese I know of is in the final scene when the two of them set off for Sonezaki, the wood where they know they are going to die. He is going to be faced with the terrible necessity of killing the woman he loves.

[Excerpt from Love Suicides at Sonezaki]

They cling to each other, weeping bitterly, And wish, as many a lover has wished, That night would last a little longer. The heartless summer night is short as ever, And soon the cock crows chase away their lives...

Donald Keene: The puppet play was such... the Love Suicides at Sonezaki was so popular that Chikamatsu wrote a number of other plays on similar subjects. But eventually the government stepped in because too many young couples were committing suicide. It was a dangerous trend.

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Excerpt from Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, pp. 405-406

Transcript

Robert Oxnam: Chikamatsu wrote his masterpieces for puppet theater, Bunraku, because he found the puppet stage particularly appealing.

Donald Keene: The advantage of the performance of Bunraku is that the puppets, not the human beings, do exactly what the author said. They're unable to improvise or do any of the other things that, say, a Kabuki actor might do. [Kabuki is a traditional Japanese popular drama with singing and dancing in a highly stylized manner.]

Some of the masks are, not masks, the heads of the Bunraku puppets are immobile. They're simply carved and then painted in a certain expression. But this villainous man, Sadakuro, is a particularly interesting sample because although he is a villain, there's no doubt about it, he's also rather appealing. Here he is when he closes his eyes, you can see, we can have him even move his eyebrows. [Sadakuro is a character in the dramatic performance of The Tale of the 47 Ronin.]

There are three men who operate a Japanese puppet — they are about two thirds the size of a human being. One man operates the head, including the movement of the eyes or the mouth, and the body; another man operates the left hand, which is very difficult to coordinate with the right hand; and the third man operates the feet. The man who operates the head, body, and right arm has the most to do and he's often very famous. The other two men tend to be obscured, and they often are, their faces are covered with black hoods, so you can't even see them.

The use of three men to operate a puppet made it possible for the Japanese puppeteers to achieve all kinds of effects that are impossible, either with marionettes, or else with puppets that are operated by only one man. And the most extraordinary effects are sometimes possible, such as agitated breathing, and there are also effects that are impossible for human beings to do. Beautiful turns and exits are possible simply because the puppet doesn't have a spine and doesn't have to worry about breaking its spine. But, in any case, one of the glories of the Bunraku theater is certainly these wonderful carved heads that are treasured. Some of them are centuries old.

Robert Oxnam: While the dramatist Chikamatsu elevated common people to heroes in his plays, another writer, Saikaku, was making them laugh with his cynical portrayals of merchant life.