The Love Suicides at Amijima

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The Love Suicides at Amijima?????

• By Chikamatsu Monzaemon
• ??????

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(No Transcript)
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Chikamatsu Monzaemon

• 1653-1725
• Sugimori Nobumori, a son of samurai
• Japanese dramatist of joruri (puppet theater
  Bunraku)
• Japanese Shakespeare(?)
• Approx. 20 domestic plays (giri/duty
  ninjo/feelings 60 history plays
• Kyojitsu Hiniku-ron The Doctrine of the
  Inter-space of the skin membranes between unreal
  and real being

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The Love Suicides at Amijima

• Written in 1720
• What is double suicides?
• Shinjuu ?? heart inside
• ? Shinjuu-date ??? to do ones duty
• To commit a double suicide to do ones duty or
  save ones honor
• written oath, pledging, tattooing, cutting off a
  pinky (? yakuza), or ones hair, etc.
• the relation of husband and wife is for two
  existences, ? the relation between husband and
  wife continues into the after life.
• Double suicides were banned in 1722

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Amida Buddha (????)

• The Latter Day of the Law (Mappoh)
• "The end is coming!" On December 31, 999, many
  people in Christian Europe fearfully anticipated
  the catastrophic end of the world and the
  judgment of their souls. But as Pope Sylvester II
  conducted midnight mass in the Vatican, nothing
  happened.
• A half-century later, the similar millennium
  fear swept Buddhist Japan. Many believed that the
  year 1052 marked the first year of "the Latter
  Day of the Law," a period in which they expected
  the world to be lost to suffering and chaos. As
  aristocratic rule was collapsing and the warrior
  class was gaining more influence, Japanese
  society at the time was in turmoil.

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• For the next several centuries, as war, famine
  and pestilence continued to rack the country,
  many Japanese were convinced that they were
  indeed living in the Latter Day of the Law.
• This apocalyptic frenzy in medieval Japan was
  based on the concept of the three time periods
  of Buddhismthe Former (??), Middle (??) and
  Latter Days of the Law (??) (of Shakyamunis
  teaching). These are the three consecutive stages
  into which the time after the Buddhas death is
  divided. There are several views on the length of
  these three periods. Many Buddhists, including
  Tien-tai, Dengyo and Nichiren Daishonin,
  adopted the explanation found in the Sutra of the
  Great Assembly, which describes five consecutive
  five-hundred-year periods following Shakyamunis
  death. The first two five-hundred-year periods
  are regarded as the Former Day of the Law, the
  following two five-hundred-year periods as the
  Middle Day of the Law, and the fifth
  five-hundred-year period as the beginning of the
  Latter Day of the Law, which continues
  indefinitely.

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Donald Keene (1922-)

• Columbia University (1942)
• Studied Japanese, became an intelligence officer
  during WWII
• Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at
  Columbia University
• The plays of Chikamatsu were the most difficult
  works I have translated.
• ?Lost in translation, or gain in translation
  (handouts)
• ?the kake-kotoba (pivot word)

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A famous example of Kakekotoba used in a poem
by Ono no Komachi

• Hana no iro wa utsurini kerina itazurani
  Wagami yo ni furu (? to fall old)nagame
  seshimani (? looking out long rain)
• translation
• The color of the flower so beautiful has
  faded away in vain while I pass my days,
  looking out on the long rain pensively.
• -- Kimi matsu yama to wait pine tree ?

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Womans obligation (giri)

• Koharu is obliged by her giri to Osan as a woman
  to give up Osans husband (Jihei).
• Later, Osan in turn is moved by giri to Koharu,
  and urges her husband to ransom Koharu, though
  she knows it can only lead to her own
  unhappiness.
• Jihei and Koharu in their final moments together
  talk NOT of their love but of their giri to Osan,
  and they make elaborate arrangements to die in
  separate places so as NOT to offend her.

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Bunraku (Ningyo Joruri) The Puppet Theater

• Video
• Representational Theater
• Stanislavsky, Actors Studio (James Lipton),
  Marlon Brando, audience-ignored
• Presentational Theater
• A total theater aural visual, oneness of
  actors and audience, audience-oriented
• Kabuki, Bunraku (puppet), Shakespeare, etc.