Chikamatsu Monzaemon

Verified Timeline

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 Monzaemon is central to Japanese theater history as the preeminent dramatist of bunraku and kabuki. His domestic tragedies (sewamono), especially The Love Suicides at Amijima (1721) and The Courier for Hell (1711), are considered the core of his artistic achievement, praised for their deep portrayal of commoners and the passions of the human heart. His historical romances (jidaimono) are viewed less positively, though The Battles of Coxinga (1715) remains praised and ran for seventeen months, becoming the classical model for later history plays. His dramatic theory, preserved in a posthumous preface to Hozumi Ikan’s Naniwa Miyage (1738), rejects strict imitation of reality, arguing that "Art abides in the narrow gap between the flesh and the skin, the real and the unreal." His works have been adapted into films by Kenji Mizoguchi (Chikamatsu Monogatari, 1954) and Masahiro Shinoda (Shinjū: Ten no Amijima, 1969), and into opera by Mayako Kubo (Osan, 2005). Chikamatsu's legacy endures as the defining figure of Japanese puppet theater and a master of tragic love stories.

Did You Know?

• Chikamatsu's real name was Sugimori Nobumori.
• His father lost his office as a medical doctor to a daimyō and became a rōnin (masterless samurai).
• Chikamatsu's pen name is thought to derive from the Gonshō-ji temple in Ōmi Province.
• His play The Battles of Coxinga (1715) ran for seventeen months and became the classical model for later history plays.
• Chikamatsu died on January 6, 1725, in either Amagasaki, Hyōgo, or Osaka.