We intend to
focus our research on Bunraku theatre to the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon
and his work from around 1670 until his death in 1725. Chikamatsu was and still
is one of the most famous Bunraku playwrights and his plays are still staged
today. The period in which he lived, the Edo Period, from 1603 until 1868, was
ruled by the Tokugawa Shogunate and was a time of peace and order. They scaled
back military efforts and encouraged a growth in the arts, the ruling Tokugawa
family were also enthusiastic patrons of the arts. Other forms of art, such as Haiku and Kabuki
were also quite popular with the public at this time. Early on in the Edo
Period the Shogunate also cut off ties with the West and banished Christian
missionaries from Japan. Our research will focus on his role as the first non-actor
playwright for Bunraku, his unique form of writing which included the introduction
of a five act play, and his style of storytelling which influenced future
writers. We came to this consensus after
individually searching for information and coming together as a group twice to
discuss our findings and then narrow down a specific area we could agree upon.
Each of us found different books and scholarly articles and focused on the main
idea of each source to create a list of main topics we could discuss. After
pitching various ideas we
frequently came back to one topic, Chikamatsu, which is when we decided to
focus on him. His name was continually mentioned in sources we
read and as we could see he was a very influential person in Bunraku
theatre. The sources listed below are
the primary sources we used for the information gathered in this proposal and
will certainly help us as we further our research.
Tokugawa Bijutsukan.,
eds. The Japan Of The Shoguns: The Tokugawa Collection. Montreal,
Quebec, Canada : Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts, 1989. Print.
Chikamatsu, Monzaemon,Gerstle, C. Andrew,Chikamatsu: 5
Late Plays. New York : Columbia University Press, 2001. Print.
Ando, Tsuruo. Bunraku: The Puppet Theater. New
York: Walker/Weatherhill [1970. Print.
Hironaga, Sh?zabur?. Bunraku: Japan's Unique Puppet
Theatre. Toky: Tokyo News Service [1964. Print.
