Theatre
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki
曾根崎心中
Chikamatsu Monzaemon · 1703
Synopsis
Tokubei, an orphan clerk in his uncle's oil shop, loves Ohatsu, a courtesan of the Temma house. His uncle wants him to marry his wife's niece and has already handed the dowry to the young man's stepmother; Tokubei refuses, loses his position and has to return the money. He recovers it, then lends it to his friend Kuheiji, who denies the debt, accuses him of having forged his seal and has him beaten, according to a reading blog that presents Kuheiji as a character invented by the author.
Context
The play was first staged on 20 June 1703, a month after the real double suicide that inspired it, which took place on 22 May; it is seen as the author's first play about merchant life and the first about a lovers' suicide. The British encyclopedia says it was written in about two weeks and makes it the model for his other domestic tragedies; a reader's note specifies that it was given as an interlude after a longer historical play. It opens the first volume of René Sieffert's translation.
Who it is for
A short play in three scenes, over one day and one night, for anyone who wants to discover Japanese puppet theatre through its bourgeois side.
Prizes and reception
A play that the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto restaged for bunraku, presented in Paris at the Théâtre de la Ville in 2013.
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The pages consulted to check this page.