AN OLD PORTRAIT OF CHIKAMATSU, FROM THE FRONTISPIECE A FRIEND OF CHIKAMATSU, WHICH WAS PUBLISHED IN The Chinese poem above the portrait eulogizing the dramatist is from the pen of Ikwan himself. Ikwan was the father of Chikamatsu Hanji. [Frontispiece CHIKAMATSU THE JAPANESE SHAKESPEARE TRANSLATED BY ASATARO MIYAMORI Professor of English Literature in REVISED BY ROBERT NICHOLS Formerly Professor of English Literature in Witb 74 3llustrations 80 THE YAMATO SOCIETY TOKYO LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. PREFACE WITH the exception of The Tethered Steed, the following are unabridged translations of the best jōruri (puppet plays) of Chikamatsu Monzaémon, known as "The Japanese Shakespeare". Shakespeare". All episodical details are omitted from The Tethered Steed, and passages consisting of "words, words, words," have been very much condensed, so that the play as it is now offered to the reader is less than half the length of the original. With regard to the other plays, the translation has been invariably made with such conscientious fidelity as is consistent with clarity. It must be borne in mind, however, that certain narrative elements and, in particular, the michiyuki or 66 songs of travel", which abound in classical quotations, similes, metaphors and above all in the most exquisite word-play, offer almost insuperable obstacles even to the hand of a master - translator. such difficulties are encountered any attempt at literal translation is of necessity abandoned and I have endeavoured to convey the general sense in my own phraseology. This unavoidable paraphrasing is the more unfortunate in that half the special significance and grace of Chikamatsu is to be found in these very passages, written in excellent verse and displaying to the fullest advantage the beauty and music of the Japanese tongue. Where Sometimes for the sake of euphony the poet sacrifices sense to sound and is content to remain inconsistent, a tendency which it is not hypercritical to regret. An illustration of the weakness is to be found in The Love Suicide at Amijima, where in the first act the hero is spoken of as being in narrow circumstances, while at the beginning of the second act, the audience is given to understand that the hero's business is in a thriving condition. I have given myself a free hand in rendering such contradictory information and avoiding such discrepancies. The reader would do well, moreover, to remember that these selections are puppet plays intended to be chanted by professional reciters to the music of the samisen, the finest of all Japanese instruments, and to be performed by beautiful marionettes, skilfully manipulated; let him reflect that puppetry is a synthetic art in which dialogue, poetry, music, song and the motion of marionettes all combine. True and perfect appreciation of Chikamatsu, therefore, is not to be gained by a mere reading of the texts; even less is it reached by a reading of any translation of them. It may assist the reader's imagination to notice that to impart life and animation to the puppets demands a certain exaggeration in the action, a leaven of bombast in the language throughout the piece. Throughout this volume, in the case of personal names of Old Japan the surname precedes the given name (equivalent to "Christian name "), while with present-day names the position is reversed. The reason for such an arrangement is that in olden times given |