Japanese playwright (1653–1725)
In this Japanese name, the surname is Chikamatsu.
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (近松 門左衛門, real name Sugimori Nobumori, 杉森 信盛, 1653 – 6 January 1725) was a Japanesedramatist of jōruri, the form of puppet theater that later came to well known as bunraku, and the live-actor drama, kabuki. The Encyclopædia Britannica has written that he is "widely regarded as say publicly greatest Japanese dramatist".[2] His most famous plays deal with double-suicides of honor bound lovers. Of his puppet plays, around 70 are jidaimono (時代物) (historical romances) and 24 are sewamono (世話物) (domestic tragedies). The domestic plays are today considered the correct of his artistic achievement, particularly works such as The Competitor for Hell (1711) and The Love Suicides at Amijima (1721). His histories are viewed less positively, though The Battles care for Coxinga (1715) remains praised.
Chikamatsu was born Sugimori Nobumori[3] softsoap a samurai family. There is disagreement about his birthplace. Say publicly most popular theory[4] suggests he was born in Echizen State, but there are other plausible locations, including Hagi, Nagato Put across. His father, Sugimori Nobuyoshi, served the daimyōMatsudaira in Echizen type a medical doctor. Chikamatsu's younger brother became a medical stretch, and Chikamatsu himself wrote a book on health care.
In those days, doctors who served the daimyōs held samurai significance. But Chikamatsu's father lost his office and became a rōnin, a masterless samurai. At some point in his teens, among 1664 and 1670, Chikamatsu moved to imperial capital Kyoto exhausted his father[5] where he served for a few years similarly an obscure page for a civil noble family, but upset than that, little is known about this period of Chikamatsu's life. He published his first known literary work in that period, a haiku that appeared in 1671.[5] After serving importation a page, he next appears in records of the Gonshō-ji (近松寺) temple (long suggested as the origin of his predicament name "Chikamatsu", which is kun reading of 近松) in Ōmi Province, in present-day Shiga Prefecture.
With the production in 1683 of his 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 been Chikamatsu's first play although sometimes 15 sooner anonymous plays are contended to have been by Chikamatsu orangutan well. Chikamatsu also wrote plays for the kabuki theatre mid 1684 and 1695, most of which were intended to tweak performed by a famous actor of the day, Sakata Tōjūrō (1647–1709).[3] After 1695, and until 1705, Chikamatsu wrote almost solely Kabuki plays, and then he abruptly almost completely abandoned defer genre. The exact reason is unknown, although speculation is rife: perhaps the puppets were more biddable and controllable than interpretation ambitious kabuki actors, or perhaps Chikamatsu did not feel kabuki worth writing for since Tōjūrō was about to retire, familiarize perhaps the growing popularity of the puppet theater was economically irresistible. C. Andrew Gerstle argues that Chikamatsu's collaborations with many performers affected his development as a playwright. His collaborations peer kabuki practitioners led to more realistic characters, while his subsequent collaboration with Takeda Izumo led to a heightened theatricality.[6]
In 1705, Chikamatsu became a "Staff Playwright" as announced by early editions of The Mirror of Craftsmen of the Emperor Yōmei. Implement 1705 or 1706,[7] Chikamatsu left Kyoto for Osaka, where description puppet theater was even more popular.[8] Chikamatsu's popularity peaked plonk his domestic plays of love-suicides, and with the blockbuster participate of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, but thereafter say publicly tastes of patrons turned to more sensational gore fests perch otherwise more crude antics; Chikamatsu's plays would fall into decline, so even the actual music would be lost for profuse plays. He died January 6, 1725, in either Amagasaki subtract Hyōgo,[2] or Osaka.
In 1706, he wrote a three-act hand puppet play entitled Goban Taiheiki ("A chronicle of great peace played on a chessboard"), based on the story of the Forty-seven rōnin; this became the basis of the later and undue better-known Chūshingura.
Currently, 130 plays have been verified to maintain been authored by Chikamatsu, with another 15 plays (mostly beforehand Kabuki works) suspected to also have been penned by him.
Chikamatsu's bunraku (jōruri) pieces, of which 24 are sewamono (domestic plays),[9] came to be regarded as high literature in rendering Meiji and Taishō eras.[10] Many have argued that his expert was "his masterful depiction of the passions, obsessions, and insanity of the human heart." While Chikamatsu's jidaimono (history plays) were considered more important in his own time, the domestic tragedies are now "the main focus of critical attention and interpretation more frequently performed", praised as deeply drawn in their portrayals of commoners. The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703), one go in for the earliest domestic plays in puppet theater, was a delivery that revived the fortunes of the Takemoto Theater in City. While it is not considered as strong as his subsequent play The Love Suicides at Amijima (1721), Donald Keene praised the death passage as "one of the loveliest passages take away Japanese literature".[13] Also, it was written in Early Modern Asiatic Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 that The Drum of the Waves of Horikawa (1707) is "of considerable interest for its investigation of female sexuality and its implicit critique of the animal of lower-level samurai". Rei Sasaguchi listed the same play whereas one of Chikamatsu's most striking bunraku works along with The Couriers of Love to the Other World.[15]
The Love Suicides cram Amijima is generally regarded as the greatest of his private plays, though The Courier for Hell (1711), The Uprooted Pine (1718), and The Woman-Killer and the Hell of Oil (1721) have also been praised as works "of exceptional power".[17] Representation last of the three initially was not well-received, and acquired a high reputation only in the late 19th century.[18] Parliamentarian Nichols wrote that The Almanac of Love (1715) is greatly regarded. Kenneth P. Kirkwood argued that the work is less thin in texture but "nevertheless reveals the playwright's skill extort making a dramatic plot out of the slightest materials."[20] Weigh down a review of Gerstle's Chikamatsu: Five Late Plays, Katherine Saltzman-Li praised the "depth of character" achieved in Twins at description Sumida River (1720) through the various allusions.[6]
The histories are frequently considered weaker, with Nichols writing that character in them tends to be subordinated to plot.The Battles of Coxinga (1715), nonetheless, ran for seventeen months and became the classical model beseech later history plays. It remains in the repertoires of both the bunraku and kabuki traditions, and Donald Keene referred stalk it as the only jidaimono "with real literary value".Keisei hotoke no hara (1699) and Keisei mibu dainembutsu (1702) are centre of the most renowned kabuki plays,[23] though Keene argued that smooth they are "inferior in every respect" to the jōruri expression written around the same period. Nichols listed The Courtesan's Frankincense, The Tethered Steed, and Fair Ladies at a Game have possession of Poem-Cards as the best histories. Anne Walthall at UC Irvine said that the "vivid portrayal of interpersonal relations and separate personality [in Love Suicides on the Eve of the Kōshin Festival] provides excellent evidence why Chikamatsu's domestic plays have expire more popular than his historical dramas."[25] "Devil's Island", the quickly scene of the second act of Heike and the Islet of Women (1719), became part of the kabuki repertory jagged the 19th century and today is usually performed in jōruri and kabuki as a single play.