SOURCE: Introduction to The Love Suicide at Amijima: A Study of Japanese Domestic Tragedy by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1991, pp. 3-29.

In this excerpt from the introduction to his translation of The Love Suicide at Amijima, originally published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 1953, Shively provides the cultural background of the story, focusing on the prostitutes of Osaka's “Gay Quarter.” Shively also discusses the cultural role of the theater in Chikamatsu's Japan. This essay originally contained ideographic characters, which have been silently removed for this reprinting.

1. the Theater in the Culture of the Osaka Townsmen

The leading playwright of the Japanese popular drama movement which began in the opening years of the seventeenth century was Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). Of his many plays none is better known today than The Love Suicide at Amijima (Shinjū Ten no Amijima). Written in 1720, it is a mature...