Suicide in Saikaku's Five Women Who Loved Love

First and foremost, a recapitulation of the way suicide appears in the collection of short stories lends considerable insight into the Japanese attitude toward suicide. Suicide first appears in "The Story of Seijuro in Himeji" when Minakawa kills herself after Seijuro's father finds her engaging in a saturnalia with Seijuro and shames her. She was forced to take up holy orders and rebelled by doing herself in (Saikaku 48). This story demonstrates how it was culturally acceptable to deal with the shame that can often result from love by killing oneself.

Suicide was so common an option for lovers denied their right to love each other at the time that it provides an easy cover for Moemon and Osan, who claim to kill themselves by jumping from on high into a lake (Saikaku 141). Love-related suicide was so commonplace in Japan that many Japanese began to wonder why Kichisaburo "had not tried to follow [Oshichi] in death" after she was killed for attempting to set fire to her home again to attract Kichisaburo (Saikaku 188).

According to Sanderson Beck, in the actual events recounted in "Gengobei, the Mountain of Love," the two lovers kill themselves in a love sui

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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)