Chikamatsu monzaemon biography summary worksheet

Monzaemon CHIKAMATSU (1653 - January 6, 1725) was a kabuki and joruri (ballad drama) playwright who wrote many great works during the Genroku era in the early Edo period.

The document is an introduction to four plays by the Japanese dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon.

Although he concentrated on writing for the puppet theater after 1703, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon was a Japanese playwright, widely regarded as among the greatest dramatists of that country.

The most successful one was The Love Suicide of Kamiya Jihei (Shinjū.

Chikamatsu was the foremost playwright of popular Japanese drama.

His real name was Nobumori SUGIMORI. He is believed to have been born in either Echizen Province, Suo Province or Nagato Province.

Monzaemon was first an in-house joruri playwright at Takemoto-za theater, later becoming a kabuki and kyogen (a generic term for a Kabuki drama) playwright midway through his career, before returning to write joruri again.

His work "Shusse Kagekiyo" is said to be the forerunner of early modern age joruri.

The story of the scandalous love affair between Onatsu & JC, the daughter of a prosperous merchant in the provincial capital of Himeji JESS in Harima.

Monzaemon wrote more than 100 joruri plays. Of these, about twenty are "sewamono" (domestic dramas dealing with the lives of commoners) and the rest are "jidaimono" (historical dramas). The subject matter of sewamono included the duties and obligations, or humanity, of the townspeople.

The most popular plays at that time however were jidaimono, notably