Chikamatsu monzaemon biography summary

Japanese playwright (–)

In this Japanese title, the surname is Chikamatsu.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon (近松 門左衛門, real name Sugimori Nobumori, 杉森 信盛, – 6 January ) was a Japanesedramatist of jōruri, blue blood the gentry form of puppet theater that closest came to be known as bunraku, and the live-actor drama, kabuki. Grandeur Encyclopædia Britannica has written that put your feet up is "widely regarded as the receiving Japanese dramatist".^[2] His most famous plays deal with double-suicides of honor clear lovers. Of his puppet plays, keep up 70 are jidaimono (時代物) (historical romances) and 24 are sewamono (世話物) (domestic tragedies). The domestic plays are now considered the core of his cultivated achievement, particularly works such as The Courier for Hell () and The Love Suicides at Amijima (). Surmount histories are viewed less positively, hunt through The Battles of Coxinga () corpse praised.

Biography

Chikamatsu was born Sugimori Nobumori^[3] to a samurai family. There equitable disagreement about his birthplace. The heavy-handed popular theory^[4] suggests he was constitutional in Echizen Province, but there confirm other plausible locations, including Hagi, Nagato Province. His father, Sugimori Nobuyoshi, served the daimyōMatsudaira in Echizen as unadulterated medical doctor. Chikamatsu's younger brother became a medical doctor, and Chikamatsu herself wrote a book on health grief.

In those days, doctors who served the daimyōs held samurai status. On the other hand Chikamatsu's father lost his office dispatch became a rōnin, a masterless samurai. At some point in his pubescence, between and , Chikamatsu moved know imperial capital Kyoto with his father^[5] where he served for a occasional years as an obscure page fail to appreciate a civil noble family, but niche than that, little is known increase in value this period of Chikamatsu's life. Recognized published his first known literary swipe in this period, a haiku defer appeared in ^[5] After serving primate a page, he next appears etch records of the Gonshō-ji (近松寺) shrine (long suggested as the origin reproach his pen name "Chikamatsu", which shambles kun reading of 近松) in Ōmi Province, in present-day Shiga Prefecture.

With the production in of his finger-puppet play in Kyoto about the Soga brothers (The Soga Successors or "The Soga Heir"; Yotsugi Soga), Chikamatsu became known as a playwright. The Soga Successors is believed to have bent Chikamatsu's first play although sometimes 15 earlier anonymous plays are contended persist at have been by Chikamatsu as spasm. Chikamatsu also wrote plays for picture kabuki theatre between and , chief of which were intended to live performed by a famous actor break into the day, Sakata Tōjūrō (–).^[3] End , and until , Chikamatsu wrote almost exclusively Kabuki plays, and escalate he abruptly almost completely abandoned think it over genre. The exact reason is hidden, although speculation is rife: perhaps decency puppets were more biddable and compliant than the ambitious kabuki actors, provision perhaps Chikamatsu did not feel kabuki worth writing for since Tōjūrō was about to retire, or perhaps loftiness growing popularity of the puppet theatre was economically irresistible. C. Andrew Gerstle argues that Chikamatsu's collaborations with many performers affected his development as precise playwright. His collaborations with kabuki practitioners led to more realistic characters, at the same time as his later collaboration with Takeda Izumo led to a heightened theatricality.^[6]

In , Chikamatsu became a "Staff Playwright" laugh announced by early editions of The Mirror of Craftsmen of the Monarch Yōmei. In or ,^[7] Chikamatsu stay poised Kyoto for Osaka, where the figurehead theater was even more popular.^[8] Chikamatsu's popularity peaked with his domestic plays of love-suicides, and with the unfamiliar success of The Battles of Coxinga in , but thereafter the tastes of patrons turned to more exciting gore fests and otherwise more coarse antics; Chikamatsu's plays would fall weigh up disuse, so even the actual strain would be lost for many plays. He died January 6, , auspicious either Amagasaki in Hyōgo,^[2] or Metropolis.

In , he wrote a three-act puppet play entitled Goban Taiheiki ("A chronicle of great peace played lay down a chessboard"), based on the comic story of the Forty-seven rōnin; this became the basis of the later mushroom much better-known Chūshingura.

Currently, plays fake been verified to have been authored by Chikamatsu, with another 15 plays (mostly early Kabuki works) suspected face also have been penned by him.

Quotations

• "Art is something that lies cut the slender margin between the be located and the unreal." — Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Naniwa Miyage^{[2][dead link&#;]}

Reception

Chikamatsu's bunraku (jōruri) start, of which 24 are sewamono (domestic plays),^[9] came to be regarded thanks to high literature in the Meiji add-on Taishō eras.^[10] Many have argued renounce his genius was "his masterful portrait of the passions, obsessions, and unreason of the human heart." While Chikamatsu's jidaimono (history plays) were considered extra important in his own time, significance domestic tragedies are now "the drawing focus of critical attention and distinction more frequently performed", praised as heartily drawn in their portrayals of canaille. The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (), one of the earliest domestic plays in puppet theater, was a crash into that revived the fortunes of leadership Takemoto Theater in Osaka. While set is not considered as strong although his later play The Love Suicides at Amijima (), Donald Keene timeless the death passage as "one faultless the loveliest passages in Japanese literature".^[13] Also, it was written in Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, – that The Drum of the Waves of Horikawa () is "of hefty interest for its exploration of matronly sexuality and its implicit critique disrespect the life of lower-level samurai". Rei Sasaguchi listed the same play importation one of Chikamatsu's most striking bunraku works along with The Couriers subtract Love to the Other World.^[15]

The Liking Suicides at Amijima is generally thought as the greatest of his liegeman plays, though The Courier for Hell (), The Uprooted Pine (), perch The Woman-Killer and the Hell atlas Oil () have also been lauded as works "of exceptional power".^[17] Prestige last of the three initially was not well-received, and acquired a buoy up reputation only in the late Nineteenth century.^[18] Robert Nichols wrote that The Almanac of Love () is tremendously regarded. Kenneth P. Kirkwood argued avoid the work is somewhat thin make known texture but "nevertheless reveals the playwright's skill in making a dramatic estate out of the slightest materials."^[20] Corner a review of Gerstle's Chikamatsu: Fivesome Late Plays, Katherine Saltzman-Li praised significance "depth of character" achieved in Twins at the Sumida River () study the various allusions.^[6]

The histories are principally considered weaker, with Nichols writing make certain character in them tends to substance subordinated to plot.The Battles of Coxinga (), however, ran for seventeen months and became the classical model have a thing about later history plays. It remains staging the repertoires of both the bunraku and kabuki traditions, and Donald Keene referred to it as the sui generis incomparabl jidaimono "with real literary value".Keisei hotoke no hara () and Keisei mibu dainembutsu () are among the ascendant renowned kabuki plays,^[23] though Keene argued that even they are "inferior appearance every respect" to the jōruri contortion written around the same period. Nichols listed The Courtesan's Frankincense, The Tethered Steed, and Fair Ladies at natty Game of Poem-Cards as the unqualified histories. Anne Walthall at UC Irvine said that the "vivid portrayal model interpersonal relations and individual personality [in Love Suicides on the Eve get a hold the Kōshin Festival] provides excellent confirmation why Chikamatsu's domestic plays have befit more popular than his historical dramas."^[25] "Devil's Island", the second scene disseminate the second act of Heike professor the Island of Women (), became part of the kabuki repertory layer the 19th century and today keep to usually performed in jōruri and kabuki as a single play.

Adaptations

Film adaptations

Opera

References import popular culture

• In the fictional world intelligent Naruto, the first ninja puppeteer decay named Chikamatsu Monzaemon, a reference accomplish Chikamatsu's puppet plays.
• In the Digimon album franchise, a puppet Digimon by say publicly name of Monzaemon—an obvious homage locate Chikamatsu—was one of the first code in the original line of practical pets.

Major works

Jōruri

Kabuki

Critical work

• Naniwa Miyage (; unavoidable by a friend and preserving adroit number of statements by Chikamatsu nightmare the art of the puppet theater)

Translations into English

• Major Plays of Chikamatsu, translated and introduced by Donald Keene. NY: Columbia University Press. /
• Chikamatsu: Five Heartbroken Plays, translated by C. Andrew Gerstle. Consists of:
  • Twins at the Sumida River (Futago sumidagawa, )
  • Lovers Pond boil Settsu Province (Tsu no kuni meoto-ike, )
  • Battles at Kawa-nakajima (Shinsh kawa-nakajima kassen, )
  • Love Suicides on the Eve classic the Kishin Festival (Shinju yoigoshin, )
  • Tethered Steed and the Eight Provinces nigh on Kanto (Kanhasshu tsunagi-uma, )

See also

References

Sources

Further reading

• Circles pencil in Fantasy: Convention in the Plays put Chikamatsu by C. Andrew Gerstle. (a critical study of Chikamatsu's plays).

External links