Love Suicides at Sonezaki By Chikamatsu Monzaemon

1. Love Suicides at Sonezaki By Chikamatsu Monzaemon Left: The famous scene where Ohatsu sits on the porch talking to her employer, hiding her lover under the porch floor and behind her skirts. Notice the strong expressiveness of the puppets. You can see the chief puppeteer in the background. http://www.glopad.org/pi/en/image/1005921 Courtesy of The Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection, C.V. Starr East Asian library, Columbia University.

2. Bunraku http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/bunraku.gif • As you saw in the video, Bunraku is the traditional puppet theatre of Japan. • The puppets are 4-5 feet tall and required three puppeteers to operate. • The faces can be manipulated to show expression, moving eyes, raising eyebrows, and opening mouths. However, there is no attempt to move the mouth in time to the words the way the Muppets do. • In fact, the puppeteers do not speak the words. The script is recited by a chanter, accompanied by the music of the shamisen. The chanter acts out all the parts, reading directly from the script. • Interestingly, the puppet theatre is the most “realistic” style of traditional Japanese drama. http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/puppetfaces.gif Top: Puppeteers and puppets onstage. Center: A puppet head’s many expressions. Bottom: The chanter and shamisen player. http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/shami01.jpg

3. http://www.glopad.org/pi/en/image/10059551 As you can see, the puppets are capable of expressing powerful emotion and skilled performers can move them in astonishingly lifelike ways. Courtesy of The Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection, C.V. Starr East Asian library, Columbia University.

4. Bunraku Theatre Courtesy of The Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection, C.V. Starr East Asian library, Columbia University. http://www.glopad.org/pi/en/image/1006675 • This diagram show the layout of a Bunraku stage. There are 3 partitions: • At the front of the stage to hide the man opening the curtain. • One in front of the sunken stage area, to hide the bodies of the puppeteers. • A raised platform that represents the interior of a house or building. • The chanter and shamisen player perform on a rotating platform at the right. This way chanters can be changed without interrupting the performance.

5. Courtesy of The Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection, C.V. Starr East Asian library, Columbia University. http://www.glopad.org/pi/en/record/digdoc/1005802 Here you can clearly see how the rear stage area is sunken below the front stage. In this view the puppeteers are performing a scene inside the building set. Notice the platform shoes used to raise performers operating the head and body above those who work the puppets’ feet.

6. Bunraku Theatre Here is the view from the audience. You can see how the partitions hide the performers’ bodies. The sets are fairly realistic. The chanter an shamisen player are on the right. Courtesy of The Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection, C.V. Starr East Asian library, Columbia University. http://www.glopad.org/pi/en/record/digdoc/1006547

7. Chikamatsu http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/bunraku.gif • Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) is Japan’s most important playwright. In fact, he is often referred to as the “Japanese Shakespeare.” • He wrote plays for the Kabuki theatre for a few years, but became frustrated with the tendency of Kabuki actors to ad-lib and improvise, ignoring his carefully-crafted scripts. • He switched to writing for the Bunraku puppet theatre, where the chanter reads directly and faithfully from the script. • His puppet plays were huge hits, saving the financially strapped puppet theatre and making Chikamatsu famous. • His plays often focus on the lives of regular city people. His characters find themselves trapped between duty and desire, society’s needs vs. their individual needs, with tragic consequences. • Chikamatsu is the first important writer to treat regular people, rather than just kings and heroes, as worthy subjects for tragedy. • Love Suicides at Sonezaki was his first big hit. Although based on an actual event, the play inspired many couples to take their own lives. In fact, the Shogun banned performances of the play for several years. http://de.academic.ru/pictures/dewiki/67/Chikamatsu2.jpg Chikamatsu Monzaemon statue in Chikamatsu Park, Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.

8. Suicide • Suicide has long been seen as shameful or sinful in Western culture. This is not the traditional Japanese view, however. • Bushido, the samurai code of honor held that death was preferable to dishonor. If a samurai faced a situation where there was no way to proceed and preserve his honor, suicide was seen as an honorable way out. • The samurai way of suicide was called seppuku or hara-kiri. It involved cutting across one’s stomach: a painful and brutal death. One could not show any reluctance or fear when committing seppuku. • In fact, warriors went to great effort to show how calm they were as they prepared for death, often writing death poems just before stabbing themselves. • The courage and self control required to perform this grisly ritual made it more honorable to the samurai. Every samurai warrior carried two swords: a long one for fighting enemies, and a shorter one for use in seppuku. An old painting shows a samurai about to stab himself. Note writing brush and poem at his foot. http://sadame.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/01seppuku.jpg

9. The Pure Land • During the Tokugawa period, this idea of suicide as an honorable solution to an impossible situation spread from the samurai down to the merchant classes and “Floating world” • It was combined with the popular ideas of Pure Land Buddhism. • Pure Land Buddhism preached that people who believed in Amida Buddha and repeated the nembutsu prayer often enough would spend the afterlife in a heaven called the Western Paradise or Pure Land. • Young lovers committing suicide together believed that by ending their lives for the pure motive of love they would ensure their rebirth together in the Pure Land. • In the play you will see Tokubei reciting the nembutsu and the lovers will discuss this idea. • We see such ideas continuing in Japanese history, from the Kamikaze pilots of WWII to the president of a Japanese airline who reisgned after a plane crashed. • Please note: I am NOT recommending this point of view to anyone. I want you all to live to be very old. But these cultural ideas are important to understanding the play. The Ushiku statue of Amida Buddha stands 89 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. http://z.about.com/d/buddhism/1/0/N/4/-/-/UshikuAmidaBuddha.jpg

10. Sources http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/bunraku.gif Chen, Kenneth K. S. Buddhism: The Light of Asia New York: Barron’s, 1968 De Bary, William Theodore, editor The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan New York: Vintage, 1969 Heine, Steve “Japanese Religion and Politics” lecture presented July 21, 2008 at the Florida Seminar for Teaching on Asia at the University of Florida. “Introduction to Bunraku” Japanese Performing Arts Resource Center (JPARC)http://www.glopad.org/jparc/?q=en/adachi/intro Keene, Donald, editor Anthology of Japanese Literature New York: Grove Press, 1960 Keene, Donald Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 Murphey, Rhoads East Asia: A New History, 4th Edition New York: Pearson, 2007 Turnbull, Stephen Warriors of Medieval Japan London: Osprey, 2005 “What is Bunraku?” http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/Drama4.htm http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/shami01.jpg