[In this excerpt, Gerstle discusses two of Chikamatsu's later works, Yosaku from Tamba and The uprooted pine. Gerstle considers the plays as unique examples of the Kabuki and sewamono genres, focusing on the somewhat problematic “happy” endings and the details of the plays' performances. This essay originally contained ideographic characters, which have been silently removed for this reprinting.]

Illusion for romance … is an order of existence that is best called alienation. Most romances end happily, with a return to the state of identity, and begin with a departure from it. Even in the most realistic stories there is usually some trace of a plunge downward at the beginning and a bounce upward at the end. This means that most romances exhibit a cyclical movement of descent into a night world and a return to the idyllic world, or to some symbol of it like marriage.

Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture

YOSAKU FROM TAMBA

Seven of Chikamatsu's contemporary-life dramas have happy endings.¹ Most critics, Japanese and other, however, have considered these happy endings anything but felicitous. No one has felt comfortable with these “problem” plays with their seemingly contrived and unsatisfactory finales. Unlike most sewamono which depict a current happening such as a love suicide or a murder, these dramas are based on factual incidents of a generation or more ago drawn from contemporary ballads or works of fiction. Another distinguishing feature of these dramas is that the male protagonist, in most instances, is of a higher social status from those in love-suicide plays.² These “comic” plays are generally about the same length as the late love-suicide dramas but shorter than the history plays of Chikamatsu's mature period. Most have a three-maki form similar to the love-suicide genre, but have happy endings in common with the history plays. They do not fit neatly into any category.

Since these works contain elements of love suicide, adultery, (Kabuki) yatsushi, and crime plays, a thorough study of this group would demand more space than this one chapter. I have chosen two to discuss, Tamba Yosaku matsuyo no Komurobushi (Yosaku from Tamba, 1708) and Yamazaki Yojibei nebiki no kadomatsu (The Uprooted Pine, 1718), because they are in English translation and because they are fascinating dramas.

The yatsushi (disguise) convention, fundamental in these two plays, is similar to the tragi-comedy of Elizabethan theater or the Western genre of romance, in which the main character or characters fall on hard times and are brought to the edge of disaster, but are, in the end, always restored to their rightful high position in society. In Western romance, in particular, the similarity is striking; protagonists are invariably of the upper class and experience a loss of identity and social status until the conclusion of the tale. Although there are many differences between these unrelated traditions, many aspects of Western romance are evident as well in Chikamatsu's plays. In The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance,³ Northrop Frye describes the fundamental movement of romance as a descent into a demonic world followed by an ascent to an idyllic paradise—a pattern found also in Jōruri. His analysis of the theme of descent in romance as a “coming down from a state of innocence or freedom into a ‘prison house,’ as Wordsworth calls it, of corruption or confusion”⁴ describes accurately the situation of the male figure in Chikamatsu's plays.

Yosaku from Tamba begins in a daimyo's palace, where a wedding party is about to depart for Edo. The lord's ten-year-old daughter is to be married, but the little girl has no intention of going. Sankichi “the wild one,” an eleven-year-old packhorse driver, is called in to play a game (fushigoto song) about traveling to Edo. After his entertaining show, the girl is cheered and ready to depart. Shigenoi, the girl's nurse, rewards the boy and during the encounter realizes that he is her son who had been evicted from the palace many years earlier due to his father's (Yosaku's) profligacy. She wants to accept this little ruffian as her son, but is blocked by her duty to her lord; Sankichi's presence would shame the girl and ruin the wedding plans. The parting of this pair is the climax of maki i.

Maki ii is set along the Tōkaidō road to Edo. Here we meet Koman, a low-level prostitute who is in love with Yosaku, a former samurai reduced to being a packhorse driver. She is poor and has a father in debtor's prison. Yosaku reveals that he has lost a large amount of money and his horse at gambling. The villainous Hachizō demands the horse, and, to save Yosaku, Koman gives Hachizō her hard-earned savings, which had been intended for her destitute father's welfare. Yosaku later asks Sankichi (whom he does not realize is his own son) to steal money for him. The boy tries, but is caught and roughly kicked unnecessarily by Hachizō. Sankichi refuses to accept the pardon which Shigenoi's pleadings get for him, and instead kills Hachizō because of the shame brought on by the beating. He is then led away to prison. When Yosaku returns and learns of the terrible happenings, he and Koman set out to end their lives as penitence for having killed the boy.

Maki iii begins with their journey to death, but, when they stop to die, samurai catch up with them, interrupting their plans. The young princess, upon learning the background of Yosaku and Sankichi, pardons father and son as well as Koman. Yosaku is restored to samurai status, and at the end of the play Yosaku and Koman lead a dance in which the tale is of the play, Love Suicides at the Sunken Well, performed the year before.

Yosaku from Tamba has remained alive on the Kabuki and Bunraku stages to the present day. After Chikamatsu's lifetime, however, the play was staged as part of another longer revision Koi nyōbō somewake tazuna (A cherished wife and colored reins, 1751), but many of the dramatic scenes of the original, including the one of the encounter of Shigenoi and her long-lost child Sankichi, were incorporated virtually unaltered. These scenes have been praised by modern critics from Tsubouchi Shōyō to Donald Keene. None, however, has liked either the fanciful ending, a deus ex machina happening in which the young princess saves Yosaku and his lover Koman from the jaws of death, or the final “Yosaku odori” dance, which everyone contends has nothing to do with the drama. Donald Keene, following the line of Japanese critics, decided not to include this dance in his English translation. Therefore, although many have praised parts of it, all have considered the work as a whole flawed.

Critics and editors have been uneasy with this play and often tried or wished to alter it. The editors of one of the earliest annotated editions of this work, in Chikamatsu no kenkyū (A study of Chikamatsu, 1900), mistakenly believed that the final dance was appended to the play during its revival to give a lively ending.⁵ Accordingly, they did not provide annotation for this portion. Wakatsuki Yasuji says that he considered the ending unnatural, but the earlier part masterfully written.⁶ In an Iwanami edition of Chikamatsu's plays,⁷ the editor criticizes the work, saying that, although there are many fine parts, overall it is not one of Chikamatsu's better dramas, and that the fanciful ending is like a children's fairy tale. He criticizes the final dance as well, saying that it is only a summary of the play Love Suicides at the Sunken Well and is like “bamboo grafted to a tree.” Hirosue, in a more detailed critique, follows these earlier scholars in praising some parts and in condemning the happy ending because it destroys the unity of the tragedy.⁸ He suggests that this play has two separate themes: Shigenoi's dilemma of being caught between love for her child and duty to her lord and Yosaku and Koman's love story. Hirosue blames Chikamatsu for failing to write a tragedy suiting Hirosue's own definition, and fails to approach the play on its own terms. To gain a perspective on the problem of this work, however, we need to discover what kind of play Chikamatsu was attempting to create. What dramatic conventions brought the drama to a happy conclusion?

Although the editors of Chikamatsu no kenkyū had their doubts about the final “Yosaku odori” dance, they felt the structure, beginning and ending with the princess, to be well ordered and symmetrical.⁹ Hirosue suggests that one should compare it to Kabuki or Jōruri history plays,¹⁰ although he himself does not follow this wise suggestion. The play's symmetry, Hirosue's idea of two themes, and his suggestion of comparing Yosaku to Kabuki and jidaimono, offer some directions on how to approach this drama. Let us first look at the play's sources.

Two scholars, Kuroki Kanzō and Suwa Haruo, have investigated the background of the “Yosaku” theme.¹¹ Though the factual origins of the character Yosaku are obscure, numerous songs, dances, and Kabuki plays bear his name. A poem from an early ballad to which Chikamatsu alludes in the michiyuki states: “Yosaku from Tamba was a horse driver, but now he's a sworded samurai from Edo.” This song appears before and after the time of Chikamatsu's play in different collections of songs. Another song that Chikamatsu quotes in the michiyuki is about Koman: “When she thinks of you, Yosaku, / The shining sun clouds over— / Is that shower of tears / From Koman of Seki?”¹² Suwa suggests that these two stories, one about Yosaku, the other about Koman—originally separate tales—were joined together before Chikamatsu's time,¹³ but he offers no evidence. The Kabuki repertoire contains numerous examples of Yosaku plays before Chikamatsu's version, but only one of these is extant today. In an earlier play, dating from 1677 (no longer extant), the actor Arashi San'emon is described as having played the role of Yosaku in the yatsushi manner.¹⁴ All the other examples of Yosaku plays too are in the yatsushi pattern: Yosaku loses his high samurai status, falls into the low life of the pleasure quarter, and is eventually restored to his rightful position at the end. The extant play by Tominaga Heibei, Tamba Yosaku tazuna obi (Tamba Yosaku and a sash for reins, 1693),¹⁵ a typical example of the yatsushi genre, is a fanciful drama that obviously had the most direct influence on Chikamatsu's work.

This Kabuki play is divided into three acts, with a variety of scenes. Shuzen (later Yosaku), the heir of his household, has a scheming stepmother whose insidious machinations are the source of many troubles. The stepmother tries, through various means, to destroy any heirs of Shuzen so that her own child can succeed to the household. When Shuzen's consort, Okiku, becomes pregnant, the stepmother has a yamabushi priest cast a curse to keep the child from being born. Okiku, evicted from the house by the stepmother, is wandering about the country at the beginning of Act I. Two servants accidently find her on their way to pray to Jizō for Shuzen's official wife, Oroku, so that she might conceive an heir. Okiku tells them her sad story, rips apart her protective charm, and collapses. From within her womb, the child's voice explains that a yamabushi's curse is blocking his birth. In the next scene, the stepmother has Okiku killed, and from the woman's slashed neck the boy is supernaturally born. In the third scene, the stepmother has Shuzen disinherited, and he becomes a horse driver with the new name of Yosaku. He appears with the child, accompanied by the spirit of the deceased Okiku which has taken a temporary human form. Yosaku helps a stranger called Hannojo in his attempt to exact revenge upon his father's murderer. The man Hannojo seeks is the evil yamabushi who cast the curse on Okiku.

In Act II, Oroku, who has fled from the stepmother, meets Yosaku and the child. Hannojo conveniently forgets Yosaku's earlier favor and tries to wrest Oroku from Yosaku. Oroku helps the injured Yosaku to flee from Hannojo. The couple want to commit suicide, but, when a priest tells them of Hannojo's approach, they are unable to complete their plans. During the ensuing fight, Yosaku's young son manages to kill Hannojo. In the final Act III, the stepmother plots to make Yosaku commit suicide, but she is captured instead. The ending is a victorious dance and triumphant march into Edo. And, at that point, there is the famous line about Yosaku having been a horse driver, but now being a samurai in Edo.

This brief outline reveals some of the antecedents for Chikamatsu's characters and dramatic incidents. Kuroki suggests that Hannojo is Chikamatsu's Hachizō, and Okiku is Koman.¹⁶ Oroku could be an antecedent for Shigenoi, and Okiku's child, who had such an unusual birth, is comparable to Sankichi, “the wild boy.” In both plays the son kills his father's enemy. There is even a scene in the Kabuki where the pair Yosaku and Oroku contemplate suicide. This Kabuki play is obviously Chikamatsu's major source for Yosaku from Tamba.

Before examining Chikamatsu's work in relation to these antecedents, we should note what happened to the Yosaku legend after Chikamatsu. Kuroki explains that, although the later “Yosaku” Kabuki plays remain close to Chikamatsu's version, they are invariably expanded and changed into oiesōdō yatsushi, of the type before Chikamatsu's play.¹⁷ In Jōruri as well, the tendency, as Toita Yasuji has pointed out,¹⁸ is for the plays to follow the yatsushi pattern of a fall from a higher status at the beginning and a return to that status at the end. The version most popular on the Kabuki or Bunraku stages today, Koi nyōbō somewake tazuna, dates from 1751. It is a long vendetta play in the jidaimono style, although it is a revision of Chikamatsu's sewamono play. Chikamatsu's play is exceptional in its attempt to bring the material into the sewamono genre, however, it does not seem odd if it is seen as a Kabuki-style sewamono.

The structural characteristics of a yatsushi drama are similar to the history play: both begin and end in the same place after a journey through a lower world of trials and tribulations. The protagonist, in this case Yosaku, loses his samurai status and must endure many sufferings and indignities as a horse driver before returning to his rightful status. Within the yatsushi genre, the convention of a happy resolution is completely acceptable to Kabuki or Jōruri audiences. The problem, if one considers this play in those terms, is that Chikamatsu has mixed two quite different genres and not completely succeeded (at least from a reader's viewpoint) in his attempt to bring them together satisfactorily. The play is a conventional mélange of the yatsushi and love-suicide play. The two famous poems correspond to these two different genres. In the first, the horse driver who becomes a samurai again is from the yatsushi tradition; in the second, the lowly prostitute Koman who weeps for Yosaku, suggests the love-suicide genre.

The conventions, upon which these two plays rest, are not only different but are in opposition, because the love-suicide play demands factual realism, namely suicide, while the yatsushi play demands a restoration of the main characters to their former social status, whether the ending is realistic or not. At the heart of this conflict is the dilemma of the samurai Yosaku, whose duty on the one hand is to his lord only, but who must contend on the other with his love for Koman which demands fulfillment in death. Yosaku must stay alive for duty, and he must die for love and for his son whom he believes he has murdered. Chikamatsu further bolsters this opposition by having the women in Yosaku's life represent two extremes of duty: Shigenoi to a lord and Koman to love. Between these two paragons flounders a weak, frivolous Yosaku; even his name “Date (dandy) no Yasaku” reflects his personality. As in other plays, Chikamatsu juxtaposes themes from maki to maki to put this opposition in relief. Maki i, which takes place at the daimyo's residence, reaches its climax with Shigenoi's struggle to overcome her natural feelings of love for her long-lost child in order to remain dutiful to her lord. Maki ii, in contrast, is set along the Tōkaidō road, where the main figures are the raw and lusty characters of the working classes. The dilemma centers on Koman, who gives up all her savings to preserve Yosaku's honor, and, in so doing, condemns her father to die in a debtor's dungeon. Yosaku, on the other hand, inadvertently causes the death of his own son Sankichi. Maki iii, then, contains alternately both of these themes of samurai duty and love suicide; the michiyuki is like that of a love suicide, but the following scene focuses on the question of a samurai's duty. The final “Yosaku odori” dance returns the action to the love-suicide theme. Although this juggling of themes appears somewhat awkward from a critical point of view, it is interesting to see how the playwright was trying to reconcile the two contrasting themes and conventions.

In Chikamatsu's history plays, the drama returns to the place of origin after a journey through a dark world of suffering. The experience ideally will change the characters and audience, giving them new insights into the ways of mankind. Since Yosaku, too, returns to his origins as a samurai, we can expect that Yosaku will be somewhat altered by the end of the play.

The ideal samurai is a selfless warrior who devotes himself solely to his lord without thought to personal glory or disgrace. Such a code, however, denies natural human feelings. In maki i this dilemma is exemplified in the encounter of Shigenoi and Sankichi. Sankichi, a “natural” boy, cannot comprehend his mother, who speaks double talk—although she is his mother, she is now no longer his mother. When Shigenoi offers Sankichi money even though she no longer openly considers him to be her son, Sankichi refuses to take money from “strangers.” Resolute in his attitude, he is a kind of noble savage who lives by a “natural” code of honor, straightforward and from the heart. The figure of Sankichi, acknowledged by those around him as a true samurai, gives the audience an enlightening perspective on the samurai class as a whole. Yosaku, in contrast to both these characters, appears as a dishonorable figure who has wronged them due to his profligacy. Before Chikamatsu's play begins, Yosaku has already lost his high samurai position due to his uncontrollable passions. Not until the final scene when he denies himself completely, including his desire to die, does he regain his former status.

The path leading to Yosaku's turnabout is traced in maki ii. Yosaku asks young Sankichi to help him steal some money, unaware that the boy is his son. During the attempt, Sankichi is caught, but is pardoned due to Shigenoi's tearful intervention. All appears well until Sankichi lashes out and kills the villainous Hachizō, who had earlier kicked and insulted him. This action cannot be pardoned, and the boy is condemned to die. Yosaku appears and is willing to take the blame, but his arrival is too late. This turn of events shocks Yosaku and Koman and drives them toward suicide by which they hope to atone for their crime of killing the innocent boy. The final lines of this maki describe the road they will take “Now they will travel the Six Ways with a relay of horses; they will cross the River of Three Roads; and the mountain ahead is not ‘Earth Mountain in between’ of the old song, but the mountain of death. They journey by through-horse to hell, oh world of dreams!”¹⁹ The “Earth Mountain” song, which appeared at the end of maki i, symbolized the sadness and pain that lay between Shigenoi and her child Sankichi and between the opposing forces of love and duty. At the end of maki ii the power of the metaphor is intensified, for it no longer represents just sadness at parting, but the ultimate tragedy of death.

Chikamatsu makes it clear that the journey of the lovers to the site of their suicide is through hell. This pattern is the same as in the michiyuki of love-suicide plays. Yokoyama, in analyzing various love-suicide michiyuki, found this one structurally no different from the others.²⁰ Yūda divides it into five movements.²¹

A. Introduction (Makura) Yosaku's song; dark, downward journey (to Keene, p. 124 “He'll surely stop at Yokkaichi.”)

B. Yosaku and Koman sadly recall their past (p. 125 “We shall bury our fame in Sunken Fields.”)

C. The sad destiny of their pledged love (p. 125 “pine groves of Ano when we pass.”)

D. Vision of death (p. 125 “Her eyes look at him through tears—what was that?”)

E. Prayers and dawning vision of afterworld “Inn of Hundred Delights” (p. 126 “they reach the Pine of a Thousand Kan.”)

In the first movement, Chikamatsu sets the mood of the michiyuki with language such as “this fatal journey down the hill at Sakanoshita” and “hurrying on his pack horse through the late night.” Movement B opens with: “We the sheep for slaughter, must wander through limbo seven times seven days with no stopping place,” which explicitly suggests that the lovers are already dead. In the rest of this movement, Koman, and then Yosaku, recall their past lives. Koman describes her nine years as a courtesan, and Yosaku, the beginnings of their love. But their love will not be fulfilled in this world, and the final image is particularly striking, “We shall bury our fame in Sunken Fields.” The direction of their journey moves ever downward. Movement C is sung in the utazaimon (ballad) style. In it Yosaku and Koman recall the former pilgrimage of love they made along the same road; the intensity of their love unites them. In movement D, the imagery turns morbid as they witness their own corpses, a “hideous spectacle,” and their tombstones as well. The language also suggests that their former pilgrimage to the shrines portended their present journey through hell.

The language of this michiyuki is marvelously intricate. Chikamatsu's metaphor for the pitiful lovers, “a summer cicada that knows neither spring nor autumn,” sets up a temporal sequence, spring, summer, autumn which is analogous to past, present, future. The lovers are looking backward from their present miseries, and this continues until the admonishing phrase, “No, we must not think of the past, never to return.” In the Japanese original it is somewhat clearer, because three sentences in sequence all have omoidasu (recall) as the verb. The next line, about not weeping, is a play on words; it also means the “cawing of crows.” At this startling sound of shrieking crows, they realize fully the proverb about being able to tell the moment of death from the cawing of crows. The language is striking, because the phrase “now I know that it is true” (“ima zo shiru”) can also mean “to comprehend the present moment.” After this the pair see their defiled corpses blocking the road, and at that moment the following line appears, “The past and future are both told by the present.” This journey through the depths of hell and all its misery leads them to the state of mind described by the above line, that is, in Buddhist terms, a state of enlightenment. It is no accident that this moment is followed by the coming of dawn, the symbolic end of their dark journey. In the final movement, Koman envisions a happy future in the next life. The metaphor for this is “the Inn of a Hundred Delights, (where) Kannon and Seishi will take our hands to welcome us aboard a lotus leaf, an inn where you and I are the only guests.” To complete this vision, death is necessary.

This “Road of Dreams” michiyuki is concerned only with the love-suicide theme, and as a consequence the story centers on Koman. The following section, which continues until the final dance, returns the pair from the dream world to the samurai world of Yosaku's past, the other theme of the drama. In this section, Yosaku again takes center stage and banishes all desires in preparation to die. His language is Buddhistic: “To banish these delusions we must free ourselves of the cycle of birth and death and pass into Nirvana.”²² Both Yosaku and Koman struggle to abandon their remaining cares in this world; for Yosaku this is concern for the fate of his son, and for Koman it is anxiety for her imprisoned father. In the end, they decide to die for these two: “for my father's sake, for your son's sake, let us plunge into hell!”²³ In the michiyuki, death is necessary for fulfillment of love; here it is atonement for those left behind. But, at this juncture, the pair are captured and their suicide aborted.

In the next scene, the yatsushi-samurai theme reaches its completion. Yosaku's encounter with his childhood friend Sanai is a revealing one. Sanai represents the ideals of the warrior cult, and foremost among them is the edict of absolute loyalty to the samurai's lord. He has come, as the messenger of the young princess (the daughter of Yosaku's former master), to tell Yosaku he has been pardoned and can be a samurai again. Though Yosaku is offered a new life by the young princess, he still wishes to die rather than live any longer with his shame. Sanai reprimands him from the standpoint of his former samurai status and admonishes him for his desire to die in a love suicide. For a samurai, the only honorable death is to die in battle or in an effort to save his lord. Sanai shames him by saying that, if he does not understand the way of the samurai, he is no more than a beast. Sanai's admonitions finally strike home and Yosaku gives up his desire for death with Koman. Sanai, then, gives Yosaku back his samurai status with the line, “You are Yosaku once more,”²⁴ and all the conflicts of the play are resolved—at least those that concern the theme of the fallen figure who eventually returns to his rightful position. However, the other theme, that of the love-suicide story, is left hanging, because the vision Koman experienced in the michiyuki cannot be fulfilled without death.

The content of the “Yosaku odori” dance, which brings the play to a lively end, has nothing to do with the “Yosaku” songs or dances current in Chikamatsu's lifetime. Why would Chikamatsu make the content of a supposedly festive dance the solemn tale of a love suicide? It is not unusual to end a yatsushi play with a dance of celebration because that is the convention; only the content is odd. We do not know how this final dance was staged, but, if we were to give any meaning to the dance in a production today, I would suggest that Yosaku and Koman take the roles of Tokubei and Ofusa, who are the doomed lovers in Love Suicides at the Sunken Well, the subject of the final dance. If we imagine the two performing this dance of death, then it is possible to suggest an interpretation of Chikamatsu's motives for including this subject as the finale. During the dance, the two lovers symbolically complete the love-suicide theme through the medium of art. Seen in this way the final maki appears more balanced; the dream dance of the michiyuki is completed by the final dance of death—a play within a play—and in between these two colorful scenes there is the solemn encounter with the austere world of samurai ethics.

An audience's expectations in watching a Kabuki (or Jōruri) yatsushi play are very different from the expectations in viewing a love-suicide play; at least one today would think that they should be. Yet, the play's popularity seems to suggest that the audiences of Chikamatsu's time saw no incongruities. Perhaps they enjoyed this drama, with its happy ending and mixture of styles, moods, and themes, as a jidaimono or a Kabuki-like play. They, of course, viewed it as theater, not literature.

THE UPROOTED PINE

Yamazaki Yojibei nebiki no kadomatsu (1718), translated by Keene as The Uprooted Pine, engenders less animosity among critics, because it does not have a mixture of contrasting genres evident in Yosaku from Tamba. It is Chikamatsu's finest example of a happy-ending sewamono play. In terms of the kinds of characters portrayed, it is similar to Yodogoi shusse taki nobori (A carp's successful climb up the waterfall), Yūgiri Awa no Naruto (Yūgiri and Izaemon), and Kaion's Wankyū sue no Matsuyama (Wankyū and Matsuyama); each has as its protagonists wealthy merchants: Yodoya Katsujirō, Fujiya Izaemon, and Wan'ya Kyūemon (or Wankyū), respectively. Each heir to an Osaka fortune fell in love with a courtesan of the highest rank and became so dissolute that he was disinherited. In the plays, at least, each of the figures is restored to his full inheritance in the end. The three high-level courtesans—Azuma, Yūgiri, and Matsuyama—were famous throughout Japan. The model is the Kabuki yatsushi drama. In particular the Yūgiri-Izaemon story, depicted in Yūgiri Awa no Naruto, was important to Chikamatsu during his Kabuki-playwriting period, because Sakata Tōjūrō, for whom Chikamatsu wrote most of his plays, gained his fame with the Izaemon role as his trademark. Many of Chikamatsu's Kabuki have a similar theme. The pattern has three acts, with the middle one taking place in the pleasure quarter, where the rich young man, now in the disguise (yatsushi) of a poor wretch, meets his lover after a long lapse. Each accuses the other of neglect or infidelity, both relate the troubles they have been through, and a tender reconciliation follows.

The woman figures in the four plays are all courtesans of the highest class in the pleasure quarter. Courtesans were of two major classes: mise-jorō (hashi-jorō), common prostitutes who populate the love-suicide plays and who are forced by poverty into the calling; and age-jorō, women trained for many years in conversation and in cultural arts such as music, poetry and dance. The age-jorō class, consisting of various gradations of rank, leads up to the highest tayū, the class of the women in these four plays. These women had the right to pick and choose their customers. The traditional geisha of modern times are similar to the age-jorō courtesans, because they are trained from an early age as entertainers, not as prostitutes, although they would be dependent on a patron or patrons for financial security. In Chikamatsu's time, few women reached the tayū level. Those who did were renowned throughout Japan for their charm and sophistication.

The Uprooted Pine begins during New Year festivities in the pleasure quarter of Osaka. Azuma, the reigning queen of the quarter, is a courtesan of the highest rank. An old woman approaches in an attempt to convince Azuma to meet briefly with her son Yohei, who adores Azuma, but who is too poor to afford a meeting. Azuma pities him and offers money, which he at first refuses, but finally accepts with the intention of using it to build a fortune and then repay her kindness by freeing her to become the wife of her lover Yojibei. Azuma also kindly gives him one of Yojibei's robes. The rich, drunken villain Hikosuke accosts Azuma, but is warded off by Yohei. Then Yojibei arrives and hears of Yohei's defense of Azuma; they become sworn brothers. In the final scene of maki i, Hikosuke mistakenly attacks Yohei, who is wearing Yojibei's kimono, thinking it to be Yojibei. But in the ensuing fight Hikosuke is stabbed by Yohei, who flees in order to make his fortune. Yojibei is captured instead and accepts the blame for the crime.

Maki ii is set at Yojibei's father, Jōkan's, house, where Yojibei is held prisoner, The father is a rich, miserly merchant; the father-in-law Jibuemon, a kind-hearted samurai. Jōkan is portrayed until the end of maki ii as extremely cold-hearted and unwilling to part with even a copper to save his son. Azuma comes surreptitiously to visit Yojibei, but meets instead an angry Okiku, Yojibei's wife. Okiku, however, finally won over by Azuma's resolve to kill herself for love, lets the courtesan into the house. In the final movement of maki ii, Jōkan reveals that he has in fact been trying to save Yojibei, and that he is willing to sacrifice himself by taking the blame for Yojibei's escape from the house. In the end, he forces Yojibei to flee, driving Yojibei—caught between Azuma and love of family—to madness.

Azuma and Yojibei's michiyuki opens maki iii. Theirs is a circular journey of madness with neither destination nor goal. The last part of maki iii returns to the quarter, where Yohei finally ransoms the missing Azuma, and brings the pair out of the trunk in which they are hiding. Yohei forgives and dismisses Hikosuke for his extortion attempts. The play ends on a festive note with Yohei spreading gold, sake, and good cheer.

The organization of The Uprooted Pine is opposite from a yatsushi Kabuki play. The settings of the three maki are: i, the quarter; ii, the father's residence; and iii, a michiyuki followed by a return to the quarter. The play's structure is symmetrical. Maki i begins in the quarter among extremely sophisticated courtesans. This enchanting atmosphere, however, is disturbed by the entrance of the comic-villain, Hikosuke, in the last half of the maki. Maki iii is the reverse of maki i: Hikosuke's banishment returns the play to the opening level. The middle scenes take place at Jōkan's house, Yojibei's prison. The form is symmetrical in that almost all the characters of maki i reassemble at the end of the play.

Chikamatsu certainly was aware of an earlier work by Kaion, Wankyū sue no Matsuyama (Wankyū and Matsuyama), which employs the same sequence of scenes: the quarter, a prison-home, a michiyuki, the quarter. Similarly, Wankyū goes mad during his michiyuki. In this play, the father banishes Wankyū in maki i to make him learn a lesson through hardship, thereby saving his life. At the end of maki i, Wankyū says that his first twenty-five years were a dream, and life in the quarter was like being in the Western Paradise.

Maki ii is a fall from that upper world of pleasure to the depths of suffering. The imagery depicts a vivid hell, complete with hungry demons. Wankyū's predicament parallels Yojibei's; both are caught between two women and the consequent responsibilities. In both cases, the wife in the end is sympathetic to the love between the courtesan and her husband. This sympathy and absolute devotion coming from two women—a wife and a courtesan—drives both Wankyū and Yojibei to madness. Wankyū is faced by a threat from both women to commit suicide if he does not go with the other. Wankyū is left alone; Matsuyama chooses to return to the quarter and allow herself to be ransomed by a wealthy country fellow, but after she has left, Wankyū goes mad for love and sets out to find Matsuyama.

During his journey of madness, he wanders about destitute. Matsuyama's new husband, Hayajirō, even offers money to the beggar Wankyū, but he politely refuses. Then Matsuyama, too, offers some money to him, and Wankyū dances a deranged, happy dance, proclaiming that in the end Matsuyama will be faithful to him. The suspense continues until Hayajirō explains that he knew all along the beggar was Wankyū. He gives Matsuyama to Wankyū, and even agrees to plead with Wankyū's father, Hayajiro's friend, to forgive the prodigal Wankyū. Love wins out over all; the play ends in unity and harmony.

In The Uprooted Pine, Chikamatsu places the beginning and end of the drama in the refined sphere of sui, an important term in the aesthetics of Tokugawa culture, meaning sensitivity and sophistication—savoir faire in matters of taste—far above that of the mundane world of money, violence, or evil. In this play, sui describes the world where the most elegant and refined courtesans rule by their delicate sense of taste, contrasting with the everyday life of the money-worshipping, merchant class. The encounter of Yohei and Azuma at the beginning of maki i is within this sphere; here we see the kindness of goddesslike Azuma sow the seeds for the happy ending. The language is refined and devoid of any crudity, but, with the entrance of Hikosuke, the atmosphere suddenly changes. Azuma, whose “eyes flash love and wisdom” and who is “a courtesan in name only,” is called instead “just a high-priced whore” by Hikosuke. His language is confused in other ways as well. He gives grievances instead of festive greetings at the New Year, and says such notable things as, “I proudly claim the honor to be an unrelated descendant of Emperor Kammu.” He is, of course, a comic figure and his language reflects his role, but there is more to his language than just humor. It is violent, crude language full of earthy metaphors; the narrator says he stinks like “an overripe persimmon,” and he refers to himself as a dog on all fours, after he is beaten by Yohei. Earlier the narrator comments on his action, “He drags her (Azuma) with the violence that drunkenness and his native brute strength supply.” In contrast to Hikosuke, Yojibei is introduced as one who has surpassed the highest mountain of sui (“sui no sui o koetaru koi no yama”). Hikosuke is the agent who disturbs the world of sui surrounding Azuma, Yojibei, and Yohei. He stabs at Yohei, thinking that it is Yojibei, only to be wounded himself instead, and his accusations of murder against Yojibei throw Yojibei into prison. Not until the end of the play does the setting return to the sphere of sui.

The structure can be analyzed, as well, in terms of Gidayū's theory of a five-act play. The first part of maki i can be classified under the title of “Love,” and the last section of maki i, with its fight and coarse language, fits Gidayū's Act II title of Shura (battles). Maki ii is the center of the play, and, in the pathos portrayed, contains the essence of the whole drama, as Gidayū says Act III should. The first scene of maki iii is a michiyuki journey, matching Act IV in Gidayū's theory. Finally, the auspicious conclusion completes the analogy with Gidayū's treatise on the form of a five-act history play. Although this is a tightly unified play thematically, each part has a different mood, and the variation is purposeful. Chikamatsu is using the conventions of the history play as the backbone of the dramatic structure of this contemporary-life play. Therefore, it is simplistic to say Chikamatsu was influenced by the Kabuki yatsushi genre, or by Kaion's earlier play; he uses elements from a variety of sources, and all are significant as background for understanding the style and conventions.

Chikamatsu is exact in his use of convention. The first two lines hint at the themes and outcome of the play. Each line is from a different poem. The first line comes from a poem in the Kokinshū, Book VII, number 350:

Kame no o no
Yama no iwane o
Tomete otsuru
Taki no shiratama
Chiyo no kazu ka mo
Down from Turtletail Mountain
Battering the rocks, tumble
White jewels of the waterfall—
How beautiful and endless
Is their infinite number!

The other poem is from the Gosenshū, Book XI, number 777:

Tsukubane no
Mine yori otsuru
Minano kawa
Koi zo tsumorite
Fuchi to narikeru
From the peak of Mt. Tsukuba
As Minano River
Tumbling down—
My love, piling higher and higher,
Forms a deep pool.

The first is a festive poem and sets the auspicious atmosphere of New Year. The second is festive as well, but is about love. Since “Minano River” can be written with the characters for man and woman, the image of the water rushing into a deep pool is quite suggestive. In both poems, abundance is important, whether depth of love or number of jewel drops. Multiplicity continues in the lines that follow the opening of the play: the shuttlecock goes back and forth many times, and the array of beautiful robes are all “double” or “triple-dyes.” This fascination with numbers appears at significant moments throughout. As Yohei takes the few coins that he received from Azuma, he says, “I'll turn these ten gold coins into a hundred, a hundred into two hundred, two hundred into five hundred—once the profits start rolling in, I'll turn my fortune into a thousand pieces of gold quick as shooting an arrow.”²⁵ This atmosphere of abundance and multiplicity, however, is shattered when the first crisis occurs, the wounding of Hikosuke. But at the very end of the play, when the money for Azuma's contract is paid by Yohei, who has returned from Edo after making his fortune, the numerous joyous handclaps of the characters, flowing gold coins, many festive toasts, and nuptial pledges “that through a thousand years, ten thousand years of life,”²⁶ promise fidelity—all return the atmosphere to the auspicious multiplicity and harmony that began the play. Hikosuke is barred from this final scene by Yohei, who pardons the villain, but banishes him saying, “since this is a festive occasion—leave at once!” However, if the play were only to offer a happy vision with no crisis, there would be no dramatic story to enact. We must look at maki ii and the michiyuki to see how the playwright dramatizes the crisis of Yojibei's fall from the world of sui to his prison-hell and madness.

Yojibei falls into a world “unvisited even by the sun” and into a voluntary dreamlike exile. Yet this world is none other than his own home, where he is among his family. In this prison, his suffering is caused by the absolute devotion of those around him rather than by any evil. The figure who dominates the action of this maki, however, is not Yojibei, but his father Jōkan, the miserly millionaire. He is very near in personality to the character of Wankyū's father in Kaion's play, because each attempts to save his only child, and the revelation of their feelings is the climax of the drama.

The maki is balanced between dramatic scenes involving Okiku and Azuma on the one hand, and Jōkan on the other. Yojibei has only a supporting role. There is little action; dramatic conflict is confined within the noble heart of the elderly merchant Jōkan. Although he is trying to help his son by remaining steadfast in his refusal to pay a ransom to Hikosuke, he is forced to bear the indignation of Okiku and her father Jibuemon. His true feelings are gradually revealed, and the climax of the revelation is in movement D. Since his honor demands that he cannot openly help his son escape, he uses a variety of indirect means to achieve his goal. During the chess game, his recital of the passage from the Nō play Kanehira describes both a warrior sinking into the Buddhist Shura realm, and, indirectly, Yojibei's fall into trouble. The mousetrap story is another of Jōkan's roundabout attempts to persuade Yojibei to escape. Jōkan uses the verb ochiru, “to fall down” ten or more times: in the Nō passage, the horse falls into the mire; in the chess game, when the opponent loses he too falls; and, finally, in the mousetrap analogy, the verb “to escape” is the same as “to fall.” Jōkan steadily pushes Yojibei until he agrees to “ochimashō,” to escape from the house and fall into the world of freedom, which for him is madness.

The action is somewhat perplexing if viewed as strictly realistic drama. All the characters are extreme in their undying, absolute devotion to the frivolous Yojibei, who, though not a bad man, is hardly a commanding presence. With each exhibition of love from those around him, Yojibei is driven further towards insanity. The crowning point is the moment in unit 13, when Jōkan forces Yojibei to flee on the threat of Jōkan's own suicide. The action of Okiku lifting “the earth trodden by her father-in-law's feet” suggests a view of Jōkan as an Amida-like figure, who offers absolute mercy and freedom for the sinner. Let us look more closely at the passage in which Jōkan demands Yojibei accept his mercy and consequently pushes him into a hell of madness. (See Glossaries B and C).

13a [ji haru] Jōkan calls from inside.

(Jōkan) [iro] Okiku, Okiku! [kotoba] Do I hear aright? Is that disobedient scoundrel saying that he won't escape? Heartless, inhuman wretch!—I haven't told anyone for fear that people might say that old Jōkan at the age of seventy allowed himself to be blackmailed, but I secretly sent a man to Hikosuke. I tried to settle things privately by offering up two hundred pieces of gold. Hikosuke took advantage of my position, and said he was unwilling, even for a thousand pieces. I've heard that his wounds are superficial, but he's mortal, after all, and there's no telling when he might die. Can you imagine the agonies I've gone through as a father? [ji iro chū] I have tried to distract myself with chess, [haru] only to be harassed. [chū] The more I have been reminded of Yojibei's plight, [fushi] the more painful it has been.

b [ji u] All evening long I have racked my mind [haru] thinking up that [ue] plan of escape from the trap. Try to understand the [u] immeasurable fatherly love that went into it. (To Yojibei) You cannot remain a child all your life. Some day you'll be a father yourself. If only I could make you realize how a father feels for his son! Tell me at once—will you or won't you escape?

(Narrator) [kin] His voice is harsh, but the [haru] tears on his face may be surmised even by those outside the wall.

[ji chū] Yojibei, weeping, [iro] prostrates himself.

(Yojibei) My [kotoba] gratitude makes it all the more impossible to run away. [ji iro u] Forgive me, I implore you.

(Narrator) He bows his head in tears.

(Jōkan) [kotoba] Very well. A man normally hopes to survive an aged father, even by a single day, and he tries to remain in good health so that on the anniversaries of his father's death he may offer prayers for his happiness in the other world. [ji iro haru] Would you prefer to be [u] mourned by your father and make him suffer? Very well, stay here if you like, but first I will thrust this dagger into my wrinkled belly.

[u] Namu Amida Butsu.

(Yojibei) [ue] Father! I'll go away! [u] Wait! [suete] He collapses [u] in tears.

c (Jōkan) [kotoba] Do you swear it?

(Yojibei) How could I lie to you?

(Jōkan) I'm happy. My mind is at rest. I forgive you all your disobedience of the past. I accept this one act as the equivalent of thirty years of dutiful service as a son. [ji haru] Your dead mother must also be [u] rejoicing. Okiku has a father, and I have Okiku. [iro] Don't worry about us here.—[kotoba] I see that you'll have a lady to go with you. Madam, please make sure that Yojibei takes moxa treatment however much he objects, and don't let him drink any sake. Always travel in a sedan chair, even if it's expensive—people may recognize you on horseback. [ji iro chū] Please do as I ask.

(Narrator) His words are brief, but his agitated heart is torn in ways numberless as the [u] stripes of the purse he tosses to Yojibei. “Farewell” [fushi] is his only word; [noru] the rest is choked in tears.²⁷

The musical notation outlines the rhetorical methods used in performance. Jōkan describes his feelings and confesses his attempts to bribe Hikosuke. His monologue breaks at the emotional point when he describes the harassment by the others around him, while he was trying to be calm and think. After the relaxing fushi cadence, his monologue continues. In section b, he forces Yojibei to accept his mercy even though it endangers Jōkan's own life. The beginning, sung in the adorned ji style, employs a very high pitch (haru, ue). The narrator's comments after his imploring speech are in the emotional, high-pitched style of kin, followed by a gradual lowering of the pitch (haru, u, and chū). Yojibei's voice, spoken in kotoba, relaxes the emotional build-up. When Jōkan next speaks, he declares his determination to die before his son. His voice, too, is in rational kotoba. The second half of his pronouncement shifts to ji iro as he makes a final impassioned plea before killing himself. This emotional entreaty is interrupted by Yojibei's outcry in a high-pitched voice (ue). The harsh suete partial cadence brings section b to a close. Jōkan's next lines are in kotoba and the mood is suddenly light and the pace quickened, as he tries to hurry Yojibei out of the house. The final part returns to the emotional song style for the sorrowful parting.

Jōkan's act of mercy pushes Yojibei into madness. Yojibei's agony comes, ironically, from the love and mercy that surround him. Each character is resolute in his behavior and attitude towards Yojibei; he alone has no excuse. Although his prison is the comfortable womb of his own home, this total love and freedom force him into a hell of alienation. The cause of Yojibei's dilemma is overtly Hikosuke's villainy, but the real problem within Yojibei's heart is unrelated to that incident. The conflict between his responsibilities and his desires for juvenile freedom already exists. Hikosuke's action is merely the catalyst that brings it to a critical impasse; Yojibei can no longer waver indecisively between these two poles. He is forced to choose either family or desire, and ultimately he must choose desire.

The michiyuki of Azuma and Yojibei differs from a love-suicide michiyuki. Theirs is a mad journey without destination—only away from Yamazaki. Although it is a journey of suffering, the imagery does not imply a journey through hell as the love-suicide michiyuki does. The scene divides into five movements.

A. Introduction: the sadness of two who cannot know the other (“What a sad contrast to Yojibei!” p. 342)

B. Song of madness: (“She places a staying hand on him.” p. 342)

C. Yojibei remembers and regrets: “I am an autumn leaf careening madly of itself, too unsettled to alight.” (“Her last words to me will be my strength.” p. 343)

D. Despair and longing for father and wife: “My heart is one but torn in two,” (“They take each other's hands and weep, giving voice to their grief.” p. 344)

E. The circle of suffering: michiyuki ends with dusk.

Structurally this michiyuki is similar to those in love-suicide plays in its movement to a crisis, followed by a denouement. There is, however, no suggestion of hope at the end; instead, there is a vision of endless suffering, and moreover, having the journey end at dusk reinforces the atmosphere of despair. Movement D is the climax. In it, Yojibei is driven by thoughts of Azuma on the one hand, and his wife and father on the other, to the point of having his heart “torn in two.” This split vision of suffering and alienation is at the opposite pole from the harmonious and unified vision of abundance at the beginning and end of the drama; and it is the experience of the fall into alienation and madness that leads to the happy ending.

Hikosuke's two comments in the last scene of maki iii, that he heard Yojibei had dropped dead along the road, and that he will kill Azuma with mercy, are, on the surface, only Hikosuke's typically derisive comments. They do, however, suggest the other theme, Yojibei's rebirth as a new man after his period of torment. It is in our expectations of a Yojibei reborn with a new awareness of the world that we are disappointed. Yojibei does appear at the end of the play and does participate in the festivities, but he and Azuma say hardly a word, offering only humble apologies. We are given no hints of what the “new” Yojibei is like. Yojibei's experience, which had been very personal in maki ii and during the michiyuki journey, suddenly becomes public, and we are not given access to his inner feelings. What we do see in this play (and in other late works), however, is Chikamatsu's masterful presentation of the psychology of elderly parents. Jōkan's inner conflict—rather than the dilemma of the young people—is at the core of this drama.

In a history play, the subject is the public world, but in the contemporary-life play usually the private sphere of common men and women is in the limelight. This sewamono, however, ends as a comedy in the public world with public forgiveness for Azuma, Yojibei, and even Hikosuke. The play comes full circle and the audience is returned to the sui world of harmony, each with his own private vision to take home from the theater.

Chikamatsu's many important dramas offer audiences, today as in the past, either as spectators or readers, interesting, exciting, and rewarding experiences. For most, however, Chikamatsu's stage is far away both in time and space; and his plays different from those familiar in the West. Our understanding and appreciation of his works can be enhanced by viewing his dramas from within their tradition. From without, the view will always be clouded. His plays cannot travel to our world; we must journey to them. An awareness of the conventions of performance brings us closer to his stage, and allows us a clearer perspective—from within his circles of fantasy—where we can reach out and touch the multisensual textures of his theater, and savor its delights.

Notes

1. The following is a list of Chikamatsu's sewamono plays that fall into this category: Satsuma uta (Song of Satsuma, 1704), Tamba Yosaku matsuyo no Komuro-bushi (Yosaku from Tamba, 1708), Yodogoi shusse taki nobori (A carp's successful climb up the waterfall, 1708), Yūgiri Awa no Naruto (Yūgiri and Izaemon, 1712), Nagamachi onna harakiri (Woman's harakiri in Nagamachi, 1712), Daikyōji mukashi goyomi (The almanac maker, 1715), Yamazaki Yojibei nebiki no kaaomatsu (The uprooted pine, 1718), and also one by Ki no Kaion: Wankyū sue no Matsuyama (Wankyū and Matsuyama, 1708). There is a German translation of Yodogoi shusse taki nobori in Detlef Schauwecker, Studien zu Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Zwei bürgerliche Puppenspiele, Sprachlicher Stil und Strukter, mit Kommentar, II (Kyoto, 1975).

2. The plays Satsuma and Tamba have samurai as the lead figures, and Yodogoi, Yūgiri, Yamazaki, and Wankyū all have wealthy townsmen as the male protagonists.

3. Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (1976), p. 100.

4. Ibid., p. 100.

5. Chikamatsu no kenkyū, ed., Tsubouchi Shōyō et al. (1900), p. 483.

6. Zen'yaku Chikamatsu kessaku shū II, ed., Wakatsuki Yasuji (1928), p. 184.

7. Chikamatsu jōruri shū I, ed., Shigetomo Ki (Nihon koten bungaku taikei series, vol. 49, 1958), p. 92.

8. Hirosue, Chikamatsu josetsu, p. 299.

9. Chikamatsu no kenkyū, p. 483.

10. Chikamatsu josetsu, p. 315.

11. Kuroki Kanzō, Kinsei Nihon geinō ki (1943), pp. 131-149, and Suwa Haruo, Chikamatsu sewa-jōruri no kenkyū (1974), pp. 252-263.

12. Translation from Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, p. 123.

13. Suwa, Chikamatsu sewa-jōruri no kenkyū, p. 254.

14. Suwa notes a Kabuki hyōbanki reference from the year 1744 about a 1677 Kabuki performance, Chikamatsu sewa-jōruri no kenkyū, p. 255.

15. Reprinted in Genroku kabuki kessaku shū II, eds., Takano Tatsuyuki and Kuroki Kanzō (1973).

16. Kuroki, Kinsei Nihon geinō ki, p. 137.

17. Ibid., p. 141.

18. Meisaku kabuki zenshū, IV, eds., Toita Yasuji et al. (1970), p. 38.

19. Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, p. 123.

20. Yokoyama, Jōruri ayatsuri shibai no kenkyū, p. 274.

21. Yūda, ed., Sonezaki shinjū, pp. 230-231.

22. Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, p. 126.

23. Ibid., p. 127.

24. Ibid., p. 130.

25. Ibid., p. 321.

26. Ibid., p. 350.

27. Ibid., pp. 339-340.

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