The Heroine Koharu in The Love Suicides at Amijima from Woodblock Print Supplements to the Complete Works of Chikamatsu by Kikuchi Keigetsu, 1922-1925

About This Print

One of 18 prints published from 1922 to 1923 as part of the celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of Chikamatsu Manzaemon (1623-1724), perhaps the greatest dramatist in the history of the Japanese theater. Each design illustrates a scene or character from one of Chikamatsu’s famous works.  For more details on this series go to Woodblock Print Supplements to the Complete Works of Chikamatsu.

Two impressions, one with the printer's and carver's names impressed on the bottom margin. 

Note the use of metallic silver ink, most notably in the obi (see detail below under Print Details) and hair bow. 

The Story of Koharu, the Heroine in "Shinjûten no amijima" by Chikamatsu Monzaemon

Source: Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays, Karen Brazell, Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 333-334; For a translation of the entire play see The Major Plays of Chikamatsu, translated by Donald Keene, Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 387-425.

Usually considered Chikamatsu's masterpiece, The Love Suicides at Amijima is an excellent example of plays depicting love suicides, a subject prohibited less than two years after the play premiered on January 3, 1721.  Amijima was based on a real incident, a pair of lovers who killed themselves on the Amijima Diacho Temple grounds in Osaka on November 13, 1720. The puppet play opened not quite two months later. In Amijima, Chikamatsu goes well beyond simply staging a current event. The play explores the intricacies of a love triangle by treating the wife, Osan, as a major character. The entangling web of interactions between the wife and the courtesan, Koharu, complicates the plot and adds new depths to a familiar story (which ends in the double suicide of Koharu and her lover, Jihei.)  

This print is from the supplement to Volume 1 of the "Complete Works of Chikamatsu."

Many later versions of this play were written for both the puppet and the kabuki stage.

Print Details