The Comparison of Chikamatsu’s Trilogy of Kokusenya －On Historical Backgrounds, Plots, and Characters－
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Syu, Ting-Wei
Abstract
In 1715 Chikamatsu Monzaemon wrote a puppet play named Kokusenya Kassen. It is a play about how Kokusenya, a Chinese military leader, tried to resist the conquest of Qing dynasty. The great success of the play lead to a series of similar works regarding Kokusenya’s episodes. Though not as popular as Kokusenya Kassen, Chikamatsu Monzaemon himself also wrote two more related plays, Kokusenya Gonichi Kassen and Tōsenbanashi Ima-Kokusenya. Prior studies mostly focused on the comparison of Kokusenya Kassen and Kokusenya Gonichi Kassen. Among them only few articles mentioned Tōsenbanashi Ima-Kokusenya. However, there are many similar elements used in these three plays. The three stories all happened outside Japan, and focused on main characters inspired by the same historical figure, Kokusenya. Even the plots and character designs showed features in common. Furthermore, though the three plays were adapted from a real history event happened in Mainland China and Taiwan, Chikamatsu Monzaemon added quite a few Japanese elements into the works. This thesis will compare the three plays, firstly by studying how Chikamatsu Monzaemon added Japanese features into the plays, secondly by listing the similarities of plots and characters in the three works, and finally by analyzing how Kokusenya Kassen affected its two related works. Through the process above, we expect to find out Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s intentions when writing these three plays, and also the reasons resulted in the different reviews the three works received.
Subjects
Kokusenya Kassen
Kokusenya Gonichi Kassen
T?senbanashi Ima-Kokusenya
Shotoku-Kyoho era
plot
character design
Type
thesis