“At this time Tojuro was zamoto, or stage manager, and if he did not give an opinion no one would say anything. He would address the actors: ‘Now, you actors, practise your parts well,’ and so would take his departure. The actors would begin to rehearse from the next day; they learned their rôles in four or five days, and as soon as they had learned one play they would begin another. And when this new play was given to the actors, Tojuro said he wished to have it explained once more, after which he did not say anything with regard to his rôle.
“The character he was to play required him to wear high rain clogs and a wide straw hat, so he ordered these properties to be made, and when they were handed to him put them on and said: ‘Now give me my lines,’ and Chikamatsu Monzaemon gave them to him. ‘This is a good play,’ he said. ‘When I first heard it I thought so. Some plays are greatly admired by the audience, while others are not popular. Now I am over fifty years, and yet I am unable to criticise the play, or tell whether it is good or bad, for had I known how to criticise plays I might have become an extraordinary person by this time. Before I began to learn the words I wore the geta and took the stick. It is better not to criticise at first, but to try and understand.’”
Kichizaemon concludes by saying: “Whenever a rôle was given to Tojuro, whether short or long, good or bad, he always studied it carefully”.
The giant among the playwrights of his time was Chikamatsu Monzaemon, but as his best plays were written for the Doll-theatre, he does not rightly belong to an account of Kabuki playwrights. It is true, however, that the great influence his compositions had upon Kabuki, even to the present day, can hardly be over-estimated.
His real name was Sugimori Nobunori, and the little town of Hagi, in the Province of Hizen, that has produced so many men famous in Japanese history, regards him as an illustrious son. This is disputed, since several other villages in different parts of the country also put forward claims as to Chikamatsu’s birthplace. Even his last resting-place is not known, for his grave is found in two places, the cemetery of Hyomyo-ji, a Buddhist temple in Osaka, and in a village near this city. And so the greatest playwright of Japan, who wrote more than one hundred plays, was born and died in obscurity. It is thought that he was an illegitimate son, since there seemed to have been some cloud upon his life. The Sugimori family were of good repute, and served the lord of Hagi.
In his youth Chikamatsu entered the temple named Chikamatsu, at Karatsu, in the province of Hizen, and it was from this temple that he took his professional name later in life. While dwelling there he must have laid the foundation for that large knowledge of Buddhism, history, and literature he displays so abundantly and convincingly in his plays. The calm of the Buddhist retreat soon became monotonous to his vigorous spirit, which sought for new worlds to conquer. He went to Kyoto, where he remained for some time with a brother, then entered the service of the noble house of Ichijo, where he became familiar with the customs and ceremonies of the aristocracy, and more particularly with the traditions of the Nō, which influenced his earlier writings greatly. When he severed his relation with this princely establishment, he had conferred upon him a certain rank in acknowledgement of his service.
So little is known concerning Chikamatsu’s life that it is impossible to conjecture the reasons that led him to write for Kabuki, and associate with the “riverside beggars”. His first success was at the Miyako-Mandayu-za, Sakata Tojuro’s theatre. Kokon Yakusha Taizen, or Account of Ancient and Modern Actors, a chronicle of the theatre, published in 1750, records that Chikamatsu surprised the audience by a novelty, in the form of the ghost of a Court lady called Fujitsubo that came out of wistaria flowers and was transformed into a snake. People in the audience were so pleased they shouted: “Monzaemon! Monzaemon!”
In spite of his apparent popularity, Chikamatsu had a sudden change of heart, and at the age of 38 he left for Osaka there to collaborate with Takemoto Gidayu, the Doll-theatre minstrel. What was Kabuki’s loss at this time proved to be a gain later on, for his masterpieces were absorbed by Kabuki and generations of actors since Genroku have performed the varied characters of his plays.
A brother, with whom Chikamatsu had stayed when he first went to Kyoto, was a medical authority in his day, who had published books on medical subjects, and also works on history. This younger brother once suggested to Chikamatsu that he could utilise his talent to better advantage than in writing for the Doll-theatre, as we are told by Dr. Fujii in his Life of Chikamatsu. But the latter retorted that the profession of writing plays might be less harmful than the writing of treatises on medicine, because in the latter case misprints or errors might prove very harmful to the lives of men.
Chikamatsu took his materials from all sources. He helped himself liberally to the plots of the Nō drama and of Nō Kyogen, Buddhist sermons that were recited to popular tunes, songs of the people, children’s airs and even vulgar ditties, while the songs of folk-dances he used to advantage. He was a scholar, familiar with the Chinese and Japanese classics, and learned in Buddhism. But he always aimed to make the common people understand, and considered that the lower classes were his regular audience and chief patrons. He died at 64, in 1724, having written steadily for thirty years, composing one hundred and thirty pieces.