Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Plays
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Chikamatsu Monzaemon, in Four Major Plays, examines the impact of the class system on male-female relations among average citizens of Japan (focusing on the merchant class) in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Chikamatsu was among the first major Japanese writers to use as his subject the lives of the common people, as well as a contemporary setting in which to examine those lives and their hardships. In the two "love suicides" poems in the current volume, the playwright examines the tragic outcome of love hindered by class requirements. While the period was marked by artistic and cultural flowering, the lives of the merchant class remained constricted by class expectations imposed by a strict militaristic and bureaucratic society. The impact of this class structure and its related standards for behavior on the lives and relationships of the common people, especially romantic relationships between men and women of different social standing, serves as a major focus of Chikamatsu's plays. Chikamatsu's The Love Suicides at Sonezaki is an earlier play than The Love Suicides at Amijima. The latter play shows the playwright's growing skill as an artist, particularly in the increased complexity of his characters and their relationships, although the plot of the two plays is quite similar. The plays reflected Chikamatsu's determination and growing ability to portray to his audiences the lives of characters to whom that audience could relate emotionally and psychologically. Ch
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Chikamatsu continues:
"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 (40).
Here one sees the suffering caused by the class system on both the emotional and the professional level. Not only is the protagonist forced to hide his love for Ohatsu, not only is about to be forced to marry a woman he does not love, but he is also shown to be a young man whose talents are not being exercised because of the constrictions of the class system.
Immediately, then, in the title and in the opening lines of the play, the theme is established: the average people suffer personally, romantically, socioeconomically, and professionally as a result of the class-based standards imposed on them by tradition and by the militaristic, moralistic and bureaucratic powers-that-were. The audience is immediately aligned with the protagonist and his circumstances.
The uncle and master of the protagonist is the character representing those powers at the levels of work and family. The dedication of Tokubei to his uncle demonstrates that he is hardly a revolutionary in these matters. He is torn between his duty to family and traditi
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1550
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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