Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu

Excellent piece of literature, and I’m really grateful to have found a copy of this book dur a decent price. And the seller Flip Flop books had a copy of this book in an excellent condition and delivered it within 4 days of ordering, which was really fast. Thank You Flip Flop books for the excellent service.

got it for my college class very interesting plays and the author is like another Shakespeare. I would recommend it

I basically bought this book for a class and did not take the class after all. I didn't get to read the book, but it comes highly recommended from a professor if you like this kind of culture.

I'm glad I finally bought this book.

Thank you! Great quality!

A representative selection of the plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon, the foremost Japanese playwright, translated by the great Japan scholar Donald Keene. This is interesting reading but its probably impossible for modern readers to even approximate the experiece of these plays. They were written originally for puppet theater and from Keene's note, contain a lot of wordplay and allusions that would be difficult to appreciate, particularly in translation. They are probably of limited accessibility to Japanese audiences because the puppet theater technology has changed since the 18th century and some of allusions involve classical Japanese literature.These plays include Chikamatsu's most popular play, the historical drama The Battles of Coxinga, a fantasized account of the career of the Sino-Japanese warlord Zheng Chonggeng, what might be called a domestic comedy involving the pleasure quarter of Osaka, and 2 love suicide plays. These plays involve melodramatic and often highly contrived plots and at least in these translations, some affecting language. In the pleasure quarter and love suicide plays, Chikamatsu protrays relatively ordinary people quite in substantial social and personal dilemmas that must have appealed to the urbanized and diverse audiences of 18th century Japan.

As Keene points out in his introduction, Chikamatsu is no Shakespeare. There is a lack of grand themes and grand people here. Instead, these are (mostly) tiny tragedies, the misfortunes of the common man. Think instead of Arthur Miller.Also: don't be too quick to judge the puppet theatre (jojuri) an inherently second-rate. The use of puppets allowed the playwright a scope of action and violence that would have been impossible, unbelievable or just plain disgusting if performed by live actors. Chikamatsu takes full advantage of the structure of puppet theatre which involved voicing the characters and a narrator-a kind of first, second and third person telling of the drama all at once.These plays are good short introductions to a kind of performance that grew up in isolation from the rest of the world and without any references or debts to Western cultural traditions.Lynn Hoffman, author of the novel bang BANG

The plays are easy to understand for a western reader and the introduction is rich in content. I loved it.