Download The Love Suicides at Amijima

Dr. Theresa Thompson
ENGLISH 2130
Fall 2012
CHIKIMATSU MONZAEMON, THE
LOVE SUICIDES AT AMIJIMA
18th-c. Japanese Theater
Four forms
•  kabuki, noh, kyogen, and bunraku.
Bunraku / ningyo joruri
•  Puppet Theater developed during the Edo Period of Japan. (Norton 45-46)
Sewa-mono: sub-genre of Bunraku
•  domestic dramas focused on the lives of commoners.
•  Chikimatsu Monzaemon wrote the first sewamono for the Bunraku. (Norton 47)
Japanese Motifs
Giri
•  Sense of duty to another that arises through social interaction. (Norton
56-57, 61-62)
Shinju: Two major categories
•  Johshi: Mutual suicide agreement by lovers in order to prove the
genuineness of their love. (Norton 68)
•  Oyako-shinju: parent-child suicide.
“Repeated birth
generates an
interconnected web of
life which, according
to the Buddhist
precept of
harmlessness, must be
respected” (Chapple
143).
"intentional action”
universal law of
cause and effect,
generated not only
by physical action
but by thoughts
and words.
When life stops,
karmic energy rematerializes in
another form.
Radical non-dualism
• No eternal soul;
beingness is compounded
of five skandhas that fly
apart at death.
• No creator deity.
Involves the
interdependent nature
of all being.
Karma
Dukkha
dissatisfaction,
stress,
suffering.
Impermanence
Reincarnation
Existence
Mahayana Buddhism
No form / no nonform; No mind / no
non-mind; No
good / no notgood; no self / no
not-self; no god /
no not-god; No
soul / no not soul
Social Contexts
The
Floating
World
Courtesans and Geisha
Shinto
Ethics
Sex, love, lust (51)
Social Order (55)
Family (60, 65)
Marital duty (60-61, 63, 64)
Ian Buruma says "Never in the history of
mankind have prostitutes played such a
prominent and important part in the
culture of a nation as the courtesans of
Edo."
Not “common” prostitutes: Sangoro’s
“confession” (Norton 67).
Bakhtin’s Chronotope: timespace convergence.
Lovers Road
Lovers road: begins with two
people together;
“I don’t want to die” (53)
they experience a series of events
that serve only to keep them apart
(time and space don’t change
them);
Tahei (Norton 49, 59, 66)
their roads reconverge and we get
union.
Divorce & reunion (65, 68, 71)
Michiyuki
Lovers Road to Death
convention of Japanese drama in
which a character’s thoughts /
feelings are evoked through the
places she / he visits on a journey.
Road to death: bridges (69-70)
Journey suggests
spiritual transformatioin.
Crows: psychopomps (72)
Oneness: Namo Amida Butsu
(Norton 73)
Sources Consulted
Donald A. Shively. “The Love
Suicide at Amijima: A Study of
Japanese Domestic Tragedy by
Chikamatsu Monzaemon.” Ann
Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1991
[1953]: 173.
Amidism
Pure Land Buddhism
Amitabha Buddha’s
Pure Land and Emptiness
(Norton 70-71)
Journey to the Pure Land