Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu

Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu collects English translations of plays by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, the Japanese playwright who lived from 1653 to 1725 and who is generally considered the greatest writer of the Japanese theatrical tradition. Chikamatsu wrote primarily for the puppet theatre that became the jōruri and later the bunraku tradition, and his plays were also widely adapted for the kabuki stage during his lifetime and after.

The four plays included in such a selection typically come from the substantial body of more than one hundred works that Chikamatsu produced during his long career in Kyoto and Osaka. The selection usually includes The Love Suicides at Sonezaki of 1703, the play that essentially created the sewamono or contemporary domestic tragedy as a major Japanese theatrical genre. Other plays often included are The Battles of Coxinga, a historical drama set in seventeenth century China and Japan, The Love Suicides at Amijima, and various of the other domestic tragedies that ended with the kind of double suicide that became one of Chikamatsu’s central themes.

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki was based on an actual double suicide that occurred in Osaka in 1703, just weeks before Chikamatsu adapted the events into the play that opened later the same month. The speed of the composition and production reflects the close relationship between Chikamatsu’s theatrical work and the actual urban life of the merchant cities of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Japan. The play follows the love between Tokubei, a young clerk in an oil shop, and Ohatsu, a courtesan in the licensed quarter, who together commit suicide when the circumstances of their lives make it impossible for them to be together openly.

Donald Keene is the principal modern translator of Chikamatsu into English and the various Keene translations are the standard versions in English language theatrical and academic use. The translations capture the formal beauty of the original verse and prose passages while making the plots accessible to English speaking readers without specialist preparation in Japanese theatrical convention.

The collection runs several hundred pages depending on the selection. For readers approaching Japanese theatrical tradition, Chikamatsu is essential. The plays pair naturally with the noh tradition that preceded him and with the kabuki adaptations that continued his work after his death.