Masterpieces of Chikamatsu

The Japanese Shakespeare

Robert Nichols, Asataro Miyamori

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136913426
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

This is a selection of the best plays of Chikamatsu, one of the greatest Japanese dramatists. Master of the marionette and popular dramas, he had, until the publication of this book, remained unknown to western readers owing to the difficulty of translating the work into English. The introduction provides a comprehensive survey of the history of Japanese drama which will assist the reader in better understanding the plays.

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

I LITERATURE AND THE POPULACE IN OLD JAPAN

DURING the middle and latter part of the archaic period of Japanese history (660 B.C.—A.D. 700) the entire people, high and low, were in the habit of composing poems of various types under the impulse of momentary emotions. Emperors and noblemen, peasants and fishermen, were alike poets, in the widest interpretation of the term. Love was the theme of most of the poems and next in importance to love came war and wine. These poems were transmitted orally, since the Japanese possessed no characters by which to commit their language to paper. Somewhere about the fourth century A.D., Chinese characters, having been introduced as a partly phonetic and partly literal transcription of speech,¹ the whole forming an extremely complicated process, the educated classes began to write their poems, inaugurating thus a great advance in Japanese culture. To acquire the mastery of thousands of the cumbrous ideographs now introduced, however, demanded hard study, and the recording of poems was lacked a school education.² As a result, while verse-making consequently beyond the capacity of the populace, who was less practised by the populace, it became more and more an aristocratic accomplishment.

During the Nara Period (709–784), when the Emperors ruled at Nara, the study of Chinese literature and the writing of Chinese became very much the vogue among the leisured classes. This circumstance raised the literary standard far higher than before, and consequently there grew up a literary circle composed of court nobles and ladies and other persons of rank. Other classes of the population, on the contrary, almost entirely abandoned the production of literary compositions. The writing of poems, particularly odes of thirty-one syllables, was the most important literary accomplishment of this period; and it was then that the famous anthology Manny

Sit

or “The Collection of A Myriad Leaves” was compiled. The actual number of poems assembled in this work is four thousand, four hundred and ninety-six, of which four thousand, one hundred and seventy-three consist of odes of thirty-one syllables. Among the six hundred and thirtyone writers of the selections there are seventy poetesses and a certain number of persons of humble station. At the beginning of the Heian Period (794–1186), so called because the Emperors resided at Heian, the present Kyoto, two systems of syllabary, the ninety-five characters of which are much simplified forms of complicated Chinese ideographs, came into use. Their introduction enormously facilitated writing, and gave a great impetus to literary activity, although pedantic persons continued to record their poems in Chinese characters according to the complicated process above mentioned even to as late a date as the end of the Yedo Period (1603–1868).¹ The practice of writing stories, diaries, accounts of travel and miscellanies was added to the art of versification. The most eminent masterpieces of this period are The Story of Genji, a novel; The Pillow Sketches, a miscellany; The Collection of Odes Ancient and Modern and An Anthology for All Ages. Nevertheless, authorship still remained the province of a small group of persons of rank, which now included Buddhist priests. It is worthy of note that in the above two periods, and particularly during the Heian, woman’s social standing was high, and the sexes mixed freely in social intercourse. Women figured prominently in literature and a number of brilliant authoresses appeared, among whom the most celebrated were Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Sh

nagon (the respective writers of The Story of Genji and The Pillow Sketches, above mentioned) and Akazomé Emon and Izumi Shikibu, all court ladies.

The next period worthy of mention is the Muromachi Period (1338–1565) during which the Ashikaga Shoguns, the de facto rulers, had their seat at Muromachi, Kyoto, while the powerless Emperors dwelt in gilded captivity. The representative masterpieces of this period are the no plays (lyric dramas) and kyogen (comic interludes), both of which were monopolized by the Shoguns and the samurai, to the exclusion of the populace.

This state of affairs underwent a considerable modification during the Yedo Period (1603–1868), when the Tokugawa Shoguns ruled at Yedo, the present Tokyo. After a long period of anarchy, the nation enjoyed under this régime a profound peace, and the government encouraged the study and printing of Chinese classics and the propagation of Confucianism. One result of these new conditions was a general extension of education, based upon the Confucian doctrines. Higher education, it is true, was confined to the samurai, priests and physicians, and the education imparted at the terakoya (common schools) was far from satisfactory; but there is reason to believe that many scholars of Chinese and Japanese classics kept private schools in Kyoto, Osaka and Yedo, amongst the pupils of which were to be found the sons of merchants and sometimes of peasants. Thus a portion of the populace was enabled to gain access to that treasury of knowledge from which they had been excluded for more than ten centuries. Yet another important consequence of the peaceful Shogunate régime was the steady growth of national wealth and prosperity. Cities and towns throughout the land grew opulent and a rich merchant class came into existence. In Osaka, the greatest centre of commerce, there were numerous millionaires, to whom samurai and daimio turned for financial assistance, insomuch that Gam& Kumpei, a celebrated scholar and patriot, is said to have exclaimed, “When the rich Osaka merchants become angry the daimio of all Japan tremble”.

There was, however, another side to the Shogunate’s administration—its extreme despotism. The people at large experienced the tyranny which a saying, almost proverbial in the days of the Shogunate, ironically deno...

Table of contents

• PREFACE
• A LETTER FROM DOCTOR SHŌYŌ TSUBO-UCHI, THE BEST AUTHORITY ON JAPANESE DRAMA.
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• THE ALMANAC OF LOVE
• FAIR LADIES AT A GAME OF POEM-CARDS
• THE COURIER FOR HADES
• THE LOVE SUICIDE AT AMIJIMA
• THE ADVENTURES OF THE HAKATA DAMSEL
• THE TETHERED STEED