Exploring the Masterpieces of Japan's Greatest Playwright, Chikamatsu Monzaemon

[@MrsTavington]

Thank you for this great and informative video! I love this channel. :D This video is great to learn about many plays at once by the same playwright.

[@kagamisan9952]

Kezori is a really interesting work you did really good and I would like to see similar coverage on other great writers

[@ebizoxiichikawa8071]

こんにちは、私のファンです。投稿のコメントを見ようとしているので、あなたのコメントに惹かれました。もしあなたがこれを受け取ったら、友情を交換したいと思います. いつもあなたの愛と敬意で私を支えてくれてありがとう。

[@brittnar]

wonderful coverage. thank you

[@JokerMxyzptlk]

I think this is one of my favorite videos so far. Something about this particular body of work really stood out to me. I want to read more about this man's life and work. I wonder why they don't perform ALL of it. In America we seem to be desperate to dredge up old properties to peddle to new audiences. We constantly recycle anything with name recognition into some kind of ersatz bauble for mass consumption, meanwhile great works like this collect dust.

[@ebizoxiichikawa8071]

こんにちは、私のファンです。投稿のコメントを見ようとしているので、あなたのコメントに惹かれました。もしあなたがこれを受け取ったら、友情を交換したいと思います. いつもあなたの愛と敬意で私を支えてくれてありがとう。

[@maviojordangomesrosa2467]

A curious fact about the plays written by him is that if you look at the video, they have as main actors mostly actors from the Narikomaya/Yamashiroya houses (Sakata Tōjūrō IV and his son Nakamura Ganjirō IV) and from the Matsushimaya house (Kataoka Nizaemon XV and Kataoka Ainosuke VI). Based on what was shown in the video I have some doubts: 1. Do you know if by chance Komochi Yamanba would be a sequel to Kuruwa Bunshō? I ask because both main onnagata characters are courtesans, both have similar names (Ogiya Yugiri from Kuruwa Bunshō and Oginoya Yaegiri from Komochi Yamanba) and in the case of Oginoya Yaegiri, she wears a kimono with a design similar to the paper kimono worn by Fujiya Izaemon (protagonist of Kuruwa Bunshō) 2. Recently I researched Goruden Kombi ("Golden Combination"), which are successful acting duos (onnagata/tachiyaku). From what I researched, several pairs of actors make up this list: Iwai Hanshirô V/Matsumoto Kôshirô V, Onoe Baikô VI/Ichimura Uzaemon XV, Onoe Baikô VII/Ichikawa Danjûrô XI and Bandô Tamasaburô/Kataoka Nizaemon. Of the actors of the current generation (Danjuro XIII, Ainosuke VI, Kazutaro, Koshiro X, etc.), which of them make up a Goruden Kombi?

[@KabukiInDepth]

Chikamatsu lived and worked in Osaka, so it is understandable that the Kamigata families have stronger ties to his plays, although some roles (such as Kezori) are associated to Tokyo actors. 1. I haven't had the chance to read to full play, but as far as I know, there is no relationship between the two characters, although there might be some suggestions, in the same way that New Year plays in Edo often hinted at the Soga brothers, even if the play had nothing to do with them. If I learn more about the full play I'll let you know! 2. That's a good question. I'm afraid that at the moment there is no pairing that comes close. Ainosuke and Kazutarō were promising, but they perform less frequently now. The Danjūrō / Kotarō and Kankurō / Shichinosuke duos are perhaps the most promising, but they are all a long way off from being goruden kombi, in my opinion.

[@maviojordangomesrosa2467]

@@KabukiInDepth Speaking of Ainosuke VI, do you have any information about his performance as Kuruwa Bunsho's Fujiya Izaemon at Kabuki-za? How was the critics' evaluation?

[@KabukiInDepth]

Everything I've read so far is positive, but only time will tell. Ainosuke and Tamasaburō are already scheduled to appear in August at the Minami-za, and the continued support of Tamasaburō really carries a lot of weight, so in my opinion everything is looking good for him. I look forward to know what roles he will be playing in July in Osaka and in December at the Minami-za kaomise, and if he will be headlining again at the Kabuki-za in late 2023 / early 2024.

[@minn7657]

​@@KabukiInDepth Do you know if the August program at the Minami-za will be run for a month or is it going to be a shorter special program?

[@KabukiInDepth]

The dates have not been announced yet, but based on previous years, it most likely will be a full month of performances. Last year, for example, it lasted from the 2nd to the 28th.

[@JokerMxyzptlk]

So first yugiri was a character in the puppet / kabuki play "yugiri no naruto" but then they stopped doing that play and a separate writer made the play "kuruwa bunsho" that kept the yugiri character and one of the dances from the original play? Was it common for different writers to borrow characters?

[@KabukiInDepth]

Actually, the background is even more fascinating! Yūgiri was a real high-ranking courtesan from the Shimabara district in Kyoto. She was extremely popular and famous in the city, but she fell ill and died in the 7th day of the New Year of 1678, still in her 20s. The event shocked the city, and Chikamatsu wrote a play on the subject for Tōjūrō the next month, Yūgiri Nagori no Shōgatsu ("Seventh Anniversary of Yūgiri's Death"). After that, plays about Yūgiri became extremely popular, and in fact it became a tradition for every theatre in Kyoto and Osaka to start the season with a play about her, leading to hundreds of plays written about her over the centuries. The importance of Chikamatsu's 1712 drama Yūgiri Awa no Naruto is that it showed the meeting between Yūgiri and her lover Izaemon in the now-called Yoshidaya scene, which was later imitated by many playwrights in their stories about the courtesan. The dance drama Kuruwa Bunshō was one of many revisions of this scene, but the script and music became so popular that it never stopped being performed. It is a bit old, but I have a video explaining Kuruwa Bunshō which might give you more context: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIHXqWl-ec2qjZo Interestingly, in 2005, Sakata Tōjūrō IV revived the play that Chikamatsu wrote for Tōjūrō I in 1678, so we now have two different plays about Yūgiri in the repertoire. Characters in general were most often drawn from historical sources, and dramatists continued to revise and adapt their stories in increasingly more complex and refined versions. The best example of this are the plays about the Soga brothers, and those set during the Genpei war.

[@JokerMxyzptlk]

@@KabukiInDepth thank you very much for explaining! So of the 100s of plays about her created, only 2 are still performed? Kuruwa bunsho and the revived original? Do most of the plays still exist on paper at least?

[@KabukiInDepth]

Now that I think of it, in addition to Kuruwa Bunshō and Yūgiri Nagori no Shōgatsu, there is also the Kamigata play Ninin Yūgiri ("The Two Yūgiri"), revived in 1965 by Utaemon VI from, I believe, a 1797 long drama. There is also a dance, known simply as Yūgiri, set to Kiyomoto music, which dates from 1863, although that is technically not kabuki. Tamasaburō performs it in his old Kabuki Dance DVD. As for the scripts, most have definitely not survived. Texts from bunraku plays are an exception, because by its very nature the chanter used a written script which was usually published and preserved, but that is not the case for the vast majority of kabuki plays. In some cases, summaries of the plots were published, sometimes in the format of illustrated books (kyōgenbon), and many of those still survive in editions from the Edo period. The National Diet Library has many of those, scanned in their online database.

[@JokerMxyzptlk]

@@KabukiInDepth damn it's sad to think of whole plays just gone from the world

[@ericpan4790]

@@JokerMxyzptlk Yūgiri Awa no Naruto was actually revived by Sakata Tojuro when he was Senjaku II as a part of the Chikamatsu-za performance in 1989. Tojuro played Izaemon and Sawamura Sojuro IX played Yūgiri. Although I don't know much about this production, based on the photographs I've seen, I can tell that Tojuro wore a different kamiko for the Yoshida scene (different color, different pattern, different obi from Kuruwa Bunsho). For Sojuro, his uchikake is also also very distinct in terms of the pattern (I've never seen anyone else wear the same pattern before, it is different from the one his brother Sawamura Tojuro had worn, as well as the one Sojuro himself wore when he played Yūgiri with his father when he was young).

[@JokerMxyzptlk]

Also I love the bunraku! And I love the history of Koxinga! Is this play anywhere online with subtitles?

[@KabukiInDepth]

I'm afraid not. There is a Kabuki Kool episode covering the play, and a video of one great production from the 1950s used to circulate KZbin. I'm trying to find a recently released DVD of one of the latest Kabuki-za productions, and if I get it I'll make sure to cover the play in more depth. Donald Keene's book, mentioned in the information box, translates the bunraku play in full, if I remember correctly.

[@ebizoxiichikawa8071]

こんにちは、私のファンです。投稿のコメントを見ようとしているので、あなたのコメントに惹かれました。もしあなたがこれを受け取ったら、友情を交換したいと思います. いつもあなたの愛と敬意で私を支えてくれてありがとう。

[@sasesasoski5725]

We can't watch any of the plays of Chikamatsu on youtube?? Such decline of culture i see...