Sonezaki Shinjū
曽根崎心中
Term · performing arts
Jōruri play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1703) for the puppet theatre: the clerk Tokubei and the courtesan Ohatsu die together; the first domestic tragedy of the genre. A jōruri play for the puppet theatre by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, written after a double suicide of 22 May 1703 and first performed on 20 June 17031. The orphaned oil clerk Tokubei and the courtesan Ohatsu, who love each other, choose to die together2. It was Chikamatsu’s first domestic play (sewamono) and first love-suicide play (shinjūmono) — until then jōruri had mostly told history3; its success was such that the shogunate banned his love-suicide plays in 17224. Wikipedia, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, “a jōruri play by the Japanese playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The double suicides that occurred on May 22, 1703, inspired Chikamatsu to write this play and thus The Love Suicides at Sonezaki made its debut performance on June 20, 1703”. ↩ Ebd., “The two central characters are an orphaned oil clerk named Tokubei and Ohatsu, the courtesan he loves”. ↩ Ebd., “Chikamatsu’s first "domestic tragedy" or "domestic play" (sewamono) and his first love-suicide play (shinjūmono). Until this play, the common topic for jōruri was jidaimono or "history plays"”. ↩ Ebd., “the bakufu banned Chikamatsu’s shinjū plays in 1722 because of their content’s popularity”. ↩ Literatur Wikipedia, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki: Anon., The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, in: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Love_Suicides_at_Sonezaki (zuletzt abgerufen am 28.10.2026).