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context: theatre > kabuki
Chikamatsu Monzaemon 1653-1725
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a portrait of Chikamatsu |
Chikamatsu in fact mostly wrote for bunraku, but he created some kabuki plays too. He is widely considered to be Japan's greatest playwright, and at one time they tried to build him up as their Shakespeare. His plays are either spectacular historical stories or domestic tragedies (with lots of lovers killing themselves). The latter have quite naturalistic dialogue, but highly poetic narration, giving what then a new sense of taking ordinary people very seriously, of raising them to the same stature as great tragic heroes. His writing is immensely poetic, with incredibly complex wordplay: he could be considered one of Japan's greatest poets. His work is also very passionately emotional, though the stories are generally very slight. He also wrote the first play of arguably Japan's most popular story...