Chikamatsu Monzaemon

Lore & Background

Chikamatsu was born Sugimori Nobumori to a samurai family. There is disagreement about his birthplace. The most popular theory suggests he was born in Echizen Province, but there are other plausible locations, including Hagi, Nagato Province. His father, Sugimori Nobuyoshi, served as a medical doctor to the daimyō Matsudaira in Echizen. His mother was the daughter of Okamoto Ichiku, a physician to the Echizen domain, and Chikamatsu’s younger brother later became the physician and medical author Okamoto Ippō. Chikamatsu’s father lost his office and became a rōnin, a masterless samurai. At some point in his teens, between 1664 and 1670, Chikamatsu moved with his father to the imperial capital of Kyoto, where he served for a few years as an obscure page for a civil noble family. He published his first known literary work during this period, a haiku that appeared in 1671. After he served as a page, he next appears in records of the Gonshō-ji temple in Ōmi Province, in present-day Shiga Prefecture. The temple has long been suggested as the origin of his pen name Chikamatsu, a kun reading of 近松. With the 1683 Kyoto production of his puppet play about the Soga brothers (The Soga Successors or The Soga Heir; Yotsugi Soga), Chikamatsu became known as a playwright. Chikamatsu also wrote plays for kabuki theatre between 1684 and 1695, most of them intended for performance by the famous actor Sakata Tōjūrō (1647–1709). From 1695 until 1705, Chikamatsu wrote almost exclusively kabuki plays, after which he abruptly and almost completely abandoned the genre. In 1705 or 1706, Chikamatsu left Kyoto for Osaka, where puppet theater was even more popular. Chikamatsu's popularity peaked with his domestic plays about love suicides and with the blockbuster success of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, but patrons' tastes later turned to more sensational, gore-filled spectacles and cruder antics. Chikamatsu's plays fell out of use, and the music itself was lost for many of them. He died on January 6, 1725, in either Amagasaki, Hyōgo, or Osaka. Currently, 130 plays have been verified as Chikamatsu’s work, and another 15, mostly early kabuki works, are suspected to also have been penned by him.

Reader's Guide

Chikamatsu's dramatic theory is preserved chiefly in the preface to Hozumi Ikan’s Naniwa Miyage, published posthumously in 1738. In an interview recorded therein, Chikamatsu rejects strict imitation of reality, arguing that 'Art abides in the narrow gap between the flesh and the skin, the real and the unreal.' The passage has been interpreted as a theory of realism contrasting conceptual realism, which evokes emotion through action, dialogue, social role, and plot, with surface realism, which risks seeming vacant or eerie when it only imitates outward appearance. Chikamatsu's bunraku (jōruri) pieces, of which 24 are sewamono (domestic plays), came to be regarded as high literature in the Meiji and Taishō eras. Many have argued that his genius was 'his masterful depiction of the passions, obsessions, and irrationality of the human heart.' While Chikamatsu's jidaimono (history plays) were considered more important in his own time, the domestic tragedies are now 'the main focus of critical attention and the more frequently performed', praised as deeply drawn in their portrayals of commoners. The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703), one of the earliest domestic plays in puppet theater, was a hit that revived the fortunes of the Takemoto Theater in Osaka. The Love Suicides at Amijima (1721) is generally regarded as the greatest of his domestic plays, though The Courier for Hell (1711), The Uprooted Pine (1718), and The Woman-Killer and the Hell of Oil (1721) have also been praised as works 'of exceptional power'. The Battles of Coxinga (1715) ran for seventeen months and became the classical model for later history plays; it remains in the repertoires of both the bunraku and kabuki traditions.

Did You Know?

• Chikamatsu's real name was Sugimori Nobumori, and his pen name likely came from the Gonshō-ji temple in Ōmi Province, whose name can be read as 'Chikamatsu'.
• His father lost his position as a medical doctor to a daimyō and became a rōnin (masterless samurai).
• Chikamatsu's first known literary work was a haiku published in 1671.
• The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703) was a hit that revived the fortunes of the Takemoto Theater in Osaka.
• The Battles of Coxinga (1715) ran for seventeen months and remains in the repertoires of both bunraku and kabuki.