Izumo himself brought a new element to the partnership of Gidayū and Chikamatsu. With the production and tremendous success of the period play Emperor Yōmei and the Mirror of Craftsmen (Yōmei tennō no shokunin kagami) in the last month of 1705, the first play under Izumo as the manager of the Takemoto, came increasingly elaborate stage props and more extravagant stage tricks with puppets. It is from around this time that the puppeteer Tatsumatsu Hachirōbei won fame for his depiction of female characters. Chikamatsu’s work with kabuki actors had involved him deeply in stage practice and the realistic portrayal of characters. Izumo therefore encouraged him to turn to the potential of puppets and to create scenes with spectacular stage action and sophisticated props, thereby heightening the theatricality of his work.
Izumo’s theatrical genius was credited for the unprecedented success of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, suggesting that he collaborated closely with Chikamatsu in the play’s production. The unprecedented seventeen-month run of The Battles of Coxinga in late 1715 ushered in a golden age of jōruri writing that lasted until the end of that century. The play was immediately performed in kabuki theaters around the country, and it has remained in the repertoires of both traditions. Its success also made it the classical model for later jidaimono. But while kabuki pushed Chikamatsu toward the increasingly realistic depiction of character in the contemporary-life plays, Izumo pulled him toward spectacular theatricality in acts 2 and 4 of the history plays. Thus Chikamatsu’s mature-period plays thrive on the tension between fantastic spectacle and theatricality in acts 2 and 4 and the intensely realistic tragedy of act 3.
In Souvenirs of Naniwa (Naniwa miyage, 1738), which describes his conversations with his disciple Hozumi Ikan about his method of giving life to inanimate puppets, Chikamatsu frequently used the term jō (feeling or passion), which he considered the “basis of writing.” The word jō is also fundamental to Confucian thought, which places human passions in conflict with the rules and morals of a civilized society. Many have commented that Chikamatsu’s true genius was his masterful depiction of the passions, obsessions, and irrationality of the human heart. Perhaps because he wrote for puppet theater, Chikamatsu also emphasized the need for realism (jitsuji) in the depiction of characters; that is, their words must suit their station and rank. Chikamatsu also stressed pathos (urei, aware), which refers to the tragic climactic moments in jōruri. He often dramatized a tragic conflict between jō and giri (rational behavior, principle), which is best regarded as a tension between desire and reason, between our natural, “animal-like” instincts and our rational, “civilized” mind with its rules, morals, and responsibilities inculcated by society. Chikamatsu’s works are distinguished by a persistent view (perhaps unorthodox for the time but reflected in the views of the Kyoto philosopher Itō Jinsai) of human desires as natural and essentially good. Without the tempering of ethics, however, excessive passion inevitably leads to tragedy.
Jōruri must be understood in a musical context. One of Takemoto Gidayu’s metaphors for jōruri was the stream with its “rapids and quiet pools”; that is, the action is propelled by different types of language and presentation. Gidayū saw the rapids as the dramatic moments in which the dialogue and action are quick and lively. By contrast, the quiet, deep pools are the songs, when the action stops and depth is achieved through lyrical and melodic power. The basic principle is having the chanter move between and among a relatively realistic declamatory “spoken” style with no musical accompaniment and various levels of “song” style accompanied by the three-string shamisen, in both the dialogue and narrative sections. This rhetorical technique of constantly shifting between lyrical and dramatic voices for emphasis and effect is the essence of jōruri chanting.
Even though Chikamatsu wrote for both jōruri chanters and kabuki actors, his thirty kabuki plays were printed only in illustrated summary editions (e-iri kyōgenbon). His more than ninety jōruri plays, however, were printed in full at the time of their first performance at Osaka’s Takemoto Theater. Regardless of Chikamatsu’s high stature as the preeminent writer in the theatrical traditions of both bunraku and kabuki, few of his plays were regularly performed after his death. In fact, many were rewritten, and it is clear that his plays were a model for playwrights and later fiction writers, particularly in the early-nineteenth-century popular fiction genres of yomihon, gōkan, and ninjōbon.
[Introduction to Chikamatsu by C. Andrew Gerstle]
THE LOVE SUICIDES AT SONEZAKI (SONEZAKI SHINJŪ, 1703)
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki was first performed in 1703 at the Takemoto Theater in Osaka by an all-star cast: Takemoto Gidayū and Tanomo as the chanters, Chikamatsu Monzaemon as the playwright, and Tatsumatsu Hachirōbei as the puppeteer. The result was a hit that revived the theater’s fortunes. The Love Suicides at Sonezaki is based on an actual incident that had occurred just one month earlier. The largest soy sauce merchant in Osaka, with twelve clerks (tedai), including Tokubei, the son of the owner’s brother, had decided to marry his adopted daughter to Tokubei and make him the head of his branch store in Edo, but Tokubei had fallen in love with Ohatsu, a prostitute in the Shimabara licensed quarter in Osaka who was about to be ransomed by another customer. Unable to remain together, Tokubei and Ohatsu committed double suicide in the Sonezaki Forest in Osaka. Chikamatsu’s play follows the general outlines of the scandal, with which the contemporary audience was already familiar, and maintains the same names.
Kabuki in the Kyoto-Osaka area had already developed the contemporary-life (sewamono) genre which staged sensational current incidents such as double suicides and murders. Chikamatsu wrote The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, one of the earliest sewamono in puppet theater, in such a way that the audience deeply sympathized with the plight of the shop clerk and the low prostitute and placed the drama in the social and economic fabric of everyday urban commoner life in Osaka. Chikamatsu deepened the tragedy by adding the incident about the money that the owner offers for the dowry and that Tokubei’s mother accepts (meaning that Tokubei must marry the owner’s daughter or be dishonored) and adding the character of Kuheiji, the oil merchant, who swindles Tokubei out of this money and forces the issue.
Chikamatsu’s contemporary-life plays do not glorify the kind of merchant values (such as prudence, thrift, ingenuity) found in Ihara Saikaku’s Japan’s Eternal Storehouse. Instead, Chikamatsu, who was originally from a samurai family, stresses samurai values (loyalty, devotion, self-sacrifice, honor), which urban commoners had absorbed into their own ethics. The double suicide thus becomes not simply a love suicide but the redemption of name and honor. The stress on samurai values deepens the tension within Tokubei between giri (his responsibility and duty to his shop master) and ninjō (human desire), with the tragedy arising from the fact that both giri and ninjō can be fulfilled only in death.
The double suicide has a simple three-part structure: the young townsman falls in love with a lowly prostitute; the young man then falls into financial difficulties, which prevent their union in society; and the young man joins the prostitute in death. Chikamatsu added the michiyuki, the poetic travel scene, which derives from medieval nō drama and transforms the final journey into a lyrical movement, as well as the suggestion that the dying protagonists will be reborn together and achieve buddhahood, a convention found in medieval religious narratives. The michiyuki serves both to pacify the spirits of the dead (chinkon)—the ghosts of the dead lovers who have been recalled to the stage—and to give the star players (the chanter, the puppeteer, and the playwright) a chance to display their artistic skills, especially the music and the chanting, all of which transforms the double suicide into a sorrowful but beautiful moment.
The opening scene, which consists chiefly of an enumeration of the thirty-three temples of Kannon in the Osaka area and is no longer performed in jōruri and kabuki, has been omitted.
CHARACTERS
TOKUBEI, aged twenty-five, employee of a soy sauce dealer
KUHEIJI, an oil merchant
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br /> HOST of Tenma House, a brothel
CHōZō, an apprentice
OHATSU, aged nineteen, a courtesan
The grounds of the Ikudama Shrine in Osaka.
CHANTER:
This graceful young man has served many springs
With the firm of Hirano in Uchihon Street;
He hides the passion that burns in his breast
Lest word escape and the scandal spread.
He drinks peach wine, a cup at a time,
And combs with care his elegant locks.
“Toku” he is called, and famed for his taste,
But now, his talents buried underground,
He works as a clerk, his sleeves stained with oil,
A slave to his sweet remembrances of love.
Today he makes the rounds of his clients
With a lad who carries a cask of soy:
They have reached the shrine of Ikudama.
A woman’s voice calls from a bench inside a refreshment stand.
[OHATSU]1: Tokubei—that’s you, isn’t it?2
CHANTER: She claps her hands, and Tokubei nods in recognition.
[TOKUBEI]: Chōzō, I’ll be following later. Make the rounds of the temples in Tera Street and the uptown mansions and then return to the shop. Tell them that I’ll be back soon. Don’t forget to call on the dyer’s in Azuchi Street and collect the money he owes us. And stay away from Dōtonbori.3
CHANTER: He watches as long as the boy remains in sight, then lifts the bamboo blinds.
[TOKUBEI]: Ohatsu—what’s the matter?
CHANTER: He starts to remove his bamboo hat.
[OHATSU]: Please keep your hat on just now. I have a customer from the country today who’s making a pilgrimage to all thirty-three temples of Kannon. He’s been boasting that he intends to spend the whole day drinking. At the moment he’s gone off to hear the impersonators’ show,4 but if he returns and finds us together, there might be trouble. All the chair bearers know you. It’s best you keep your face covered.
But to come back to us. Lately you haven’t written me a word. I’ve been terribly worried, but not knowing what the situation might be in your shop, I couldn’t very well write you. I must have called a hundred times at the Tanba House, but they hadn’t had any news of you either. Somebody—yes, it was Taichi, the blind musician—asked his friends, and they said you’d gone back to the country. I couldn’t believe it was true. You’ve really been too cruel. Didn’t you even want to ask about me? Perhaps you hoped things would end that way, but I’ve been sick with worry. If you think I’m lying, feel this swelling!
CHANTER: She takes his hand and presses it to her breast, weeping reproachful and entreating tears, exactly as if they were husband and wife. Man though he is, he also weeps.
[TOKUBEI]: You’re right, entirely right, but what good would it have done to tell you and make you suffer? I’ve been going through such misery that I couldn’t be more distracted if Bon, New Year, the Ten Nights, and every other feast in the calendar came all at once. My mind’s been in a turmoil, and my finances in chaos. To tell the truth, I went up to Kyoto to raise some money, among other things. It’s a miracle I’m still alive. If they make my story into a three-act play, I’m sure the audiences will weep.
CHANTER: Words fail and he can only sigh.
[OHATSU]: And is this the comic relief of your tragedy? Why couldn’t you have trusted me with your worries when you tell me even trivial little things? You must’ve had some reason for hiding. Why don’t you take me into your confidence?
CHANTER: She leans over his knee. Bitter tears soak her handkerchief.
[TOKUBEI]: Please don’t cry or be angry with me. I wasn’t hiding anything, but it wouldn’t have helped to involve you. At any rate, my troubles have largely been settled, and I can tell you the whole story now. My master has always treated me with particular kindness because I’m his nephew. For my part, I’ve served him with absolute honesty. There’s never been a penny’s discrepancy in the accounts. It’s true that recently I used his name when I bought on credit a bolt of Kaga silk to make into a summer kimono, but that’s the one and only time, and if I have to raise the money on the spot, I can always sell back the kimono without taking a loss. My master has been so impressed by my honesty that he proposed I marry his wife’s niece with a dowry of two kanme and promised to set me up in business. That happened last year, but how could I shift my affections when I have you? I didn’t give his suggestion a second thought, but in the meantime my mother—she’s really my stepmother—conferred with my master, keeping it a secret from me. She went back to the country with the two kanme in her clutches. Fool that I am, I never dreamed what had happened. The trouble began last month when they tried to force me to marry. I got angry and said, “Master, you surprise me. You know how unwilling I am to get married, and yet you’ve tricked my old mother into giving her consent. You’ve gone too far, master. I can’t understand the mistress’s attitude either. If I took as my wife this young lady whom I’ve always treated with the utmost deference and accepted her dowry in the bargain, I’d spend my whole life dancing attendance on her. How could I ever assert myself? I’ve refused once, and even if my father were to return from his grave, the answer would still be no.” The master was furious that I answered so bluntly. His voice shook with rage. “I know your real reasons. You’ve involved with Ohatsu, or whatever her name is, from the Tenma House in Dōjima. That’s why you seem so against my wife’s niece. Very well—after what’s been said, I’m no longer willing to give you the girl, and since there’s to be no wedding, return the money. Settle without fail by the twenty-second of the month and clear your business accounts. I’ll chase you from Osaka and never let you set foot here again!” I, too, have my pride as a man. “Right you are!” I answered and rushed off to my village. But my so-called mother wouldn’t let the money out of her hands, not if this world turned into the next. I went to Kyoto, hoping to borrow the money from the wholesale soy sauce dealers in the Fifth Ward. I’ve always been on good terms with them. But as luck would have it, they had no money to spare. I retraced my steps to the country, and this time, with the intercession of the whole village, I managed to get the money from my mother. I intended to return the dowry immediately and settle things for once and for all. But if I can’t stay in Osaka, how will I be able to see you? My bones may be crushed to powder, my flesh be torn away, and I may sink, an empty shell, in the slime of Shijimi River. Let that happen if it must, but if I am parted from you, what shall I do?
Tokubei and Ohatsu, who is weeping bitterly. (Photograph courtesy of Barbara Curtis Adachi Collection, C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University)
CHANTER: He weeps, overcome by his grief. Ohatsu, holding back the welling tears of sympathy, strengthens and comforts him.
[OHATSU]: How you’ve suffered! And when I think that it’s been because of me, I feel happy, sad, and most grateful all at once. But please, show more courage. Pull yourself together. Your uncle may have forbidden you to set foot in Osaka again, but you haven’t committed robbery or arson. I’ll think of some way to keep you here. And if the time should come when we can no longer meet, did our promises of love hold only for this world? Others before us have chosen reunion through death. To die is simple enough—none will hinder and none will be hindered on the journey to the Mountain of Death and the River of Three Ways.5
CHANTER: Ohatsu falters among these words of encouragement, choked by tears. She resumes.
[OHATSU]: The twenty-second is tomorrow. Return the money early, since you must return it anyway. Try to get in your master’s good graces again.
[TOKUBEI]: I want to, and I’m impatient to return the money, but on the thirteenth of the month Kuheiji the oil merchant—I think you know him—begged me desperately for the money. He said he needed it for only one day and promised to return it by the morning of the eighteenth. I decided to lend him the money, since I didn’t need it until the twenty-second, and it was for a friend close
as a brother. He didn’t get in touch with me on the eighteenth or nineteenth. Yesterday he was out and I couldn’t see him. I intended to call on him this morning, but I’ve spent it making the rounds of my customers in order to wind up my business by tomorrow. I’ll go to him this evening and settle everything. He’s a man of honor, and he knows my predicament. I’m sure nothing will go wrong. Don’t worry. Oh—look there, Ohatsu!
CHANTER:
“Hatsuse is far away,
Far too is Naniwa-dera:
So many temples are renowned
For the sound of their bells,
Voices of the Eternal Law.
If, on an evening in spring,
You visit a mountain temple
You will see . . .”6
At the head of a band of revelers
[TOKUBEI]: Kuheiji! That’s a poor performance!7 You’ve no business running off on excursions when you haven’t cleared up your debt with me. Today we’ll settle our account.
CHANTER: He grasps Kuheiji’s arm and restrains him. Kuheiji’s expression is dubious.
[KUHEIJI]: What are you talking about, Tokubei? All these people with me are residents of the ward. We’ve had a meeting in Ueshio Street to raise funds for a pilgrimage to Ise. We’ve drunk a little saké, but we’re on our way home now. What do you mean by grabbing my arm? Don’t be so rough!
CHANTER: He removes his wicker hat and glares at Tokubei.
[TOKUBEI]: I’m not being rough. All I’m asking is that you return the two kanme of silver I lent you on the thirteenth, which you were supposed to repay on the eighteenth.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 37