Shinju Ten no Amijima ('The Love Suicide at Amijima'- 心中天網島) (kabuki )
Links
Biography:
The University of Virginia online wrote about this play, its background and its significance:
"Shinjû Ten no Amijima (The Love Suicides at Amijima), written and produced in 1720, is among the finest of all jôruri (puppet) plays, and possibly the best of the shinjûmono (love suicide) genre of fifteen or so plays written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). The play is representative of the first popular culture of Japan which flowered during the Genroku period (ca.1680-1730). If Ihara Saikaku (1642-93) and Matsuo Bashô (1644-94) epitomized the rise of popular novels and poetry, respectively, then Chikamatsu was the colossus of theatre. All three wrote for and about merchants, who were transforming Japan into a market society focussed on large cities. Although the merchants controlled the nation’s commerce, the government retained unchallenged political authority based on Confucian notions intended to safeguard the warrior ideals of the samurai from base notions of money. In practice, the government separated the districts in which the merchants and samurai were permitted to live. Furthermore, it licensed pleasure quarters on the fringe of each major city to provide the merchants with temporary escape from the social restrictions imposed by the government. Young girls were sold into the pleasure quarters for the equivalent of lifetime contracts, but some merchants inevitably fell in love. There were only two paths to freedom from the pleasure quarters: ransom of the courtesan’s contract or absconding to commit love suicide. In such instances, ninjô (“passion”) conflicted with complex giri (“duties” or “obligations”) to family.
The play splendidly depicts such conflict, which was common to all of the shinjûmono and to many jôruri and kabuki plays of the Edo era (1600-1868) when Japan isolated itself from almost all other nations. Kamiya Jihei, a seller of paper, loves a young courtesan in the pleasure quarters, Koharu, and also his wife, Osan. Jihei is an anti-hero; a weak man unable to choose between two women. Chikamatsu further complicates matters by creating a relationship of mutual obligation and respect between Koharu and Osan. Jihei’s quandary is brought to a head by his father-in-law, Gozaemon, who forcibly removes Osan from the family home and leaves behind her two children. The loss of Osan removes the choice between the two women and Jihei is released to play out the consequences of his love for Koharu. He cannot afford the ransom to purchase her freedom from the pleasure quarters, so the two lovers abscond. In the poetic, closing act, a michiyuki (“[final] journey”), Koharu and Jihei make their way to the place of their suicide. This michiyuki arouses intense sympathy for the pair of lovers in a manner uncommon to Japanese theatre.
Shinjû Ten no Amijima, in common with other theatre of the Genroku era, was heavily influenced by popular Buddhist morality plays which had dominated popular theatre during the preceding centuries. If Confucianism provided the ethical basis for giri, then Amida Buddhism supplied the religious basis. Amida Buddhism prescribed that individuals who believed in the saving grace of the saint, Amida, would be reborn in paradise. Thus, Chikamatsu’s characters continually concern themselves with thoughts of karma (i.e. the effect that actions in the present life will have on reincarnation in the next) and salvation. The concept of the michiyuki is also fundamental in this regard. The purpose of the michiyuki is for the lovers to travel to their death and thus reach Amida’s paradise. In accordance with the concept of Amida Buddhism, Chikamatsu creates a dance journey where the lovers progressively find release from everyday concerns or giri so that they may enter paradise. However, Chikamatsu symbolically indicates that the path to paradise for Jihei and Koharu will not be simple. The lovers travel east, whereas Amida’s paradise is in the west! They commit suicide, which normally disqualifies an offender from rebirth! They die apart: Jihei stabs Koharu on the riverbank and then hangs himself from a sluice with Koharu’s sash. Lastly, Koharu’s final words concern her duty to Osan, rather than Jihei."
