The Love Suicides at Sonezaki

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki is a drama of love and death by the Japanese playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725). It was written for the puppet theatre (ningyō jōruri, or bunraku) and was soon adapted to kabuki and other stage forms. It is regarded as the most popular of his domestic tragedies, or sewamono, a category Donald Keene used for the author's non-historical plays. It was not his first work, since he had earlier written the puppet play The Heirs of Soga in 1683, nor is it usually considered his most famous, a title often given to The Battles of Coxinga.

It premiered on 20 June 1703, apparently inspired by the double suicide of a couple that took place at a temple in Osaka on the morning of 22 May that year. The play was revised in 1717 with added scenes, such as the villain's punishment, but the version usually translated and staged is the 1703 original. Its success was immediate, and in 1721 Chikamatsu premiered The Love Suicides at Amijima, on a similar theme. Its popularity was also accompanied by a rise in lovers' suicides, and the Edo shogunate banned its performance in 1723, along with the public funerals of couples who died together.

The action unfolds over one day and one night, in three scenes. The protagonists are Tokubei, an orphaned merchant who works for an oil firm, and Ohatsu, a courtesan at the Tenmaya teahouse whom he loves and who returns his affection. In the first scene, Tokubei makes his rounds with an apprentice and meets Ohatsu near the Ikudama temple. She reproaches him for his silence, and he confides his troubles. His uncle, the owner of the firm, wants him to marry his wife's niece, and Tokubei's stepmother accepts the match behind his back in exchange for a generous dowry. When Tokubei flatly refuses, his uncle dismisses him and demands repayment of money he does not have. After recovering the silver from his stepmother with the help of villagers, Tokubei returns to Osaka, where his friend Kuheiji asks him for a loan and later denies it. Deceived and beaten, Tokubei sees both his money and his honour slip away.

In the second scene, at the Temma house, Kuheiji boasts of his fortune and of having branded Tokubei as an extortionist. Hidden in Ohatsu's robes, Tokubei communicates with her through gestures of hands and feet, and the two resolve to die together. The third scene, the most celebrated, mixes poetic dialogue with the lovers' journey, a michiyuki or lyrical journey, to the Tenjin grove, where an unusual tree, with a pine and a palm growing from one trunk, seems to them the right place. There Tokubei binds Ohatsu to the tree and, after a first blow that misses its mark, both die by the blade.

The play admits several readings. Many scholars see a conflict between giri, social obligation, and ninjō, human feeling or passion; others stress the influence of Pure Land Buddhism, whose promise of reunion after death appears in the michiyuki. The debate over the preceding scene, in which Ohatsu makes a pilgrimage, remains open, and modern productions often omit it. Today the play is a key work for understanding popular theatre of the Genroku era and the rise of urban tragedy in Japan.