Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Chikamatsu: Five Late Plays

Chikamatsu: Five Late Plays

Gerstle, C. Andrew
Chikamatsu
Gerstle, C. Andrew

Paperback

Series: Translations from the Asian Classics

Plays

ISBN10: 0231121679
ISBN13: 9780231121675
Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
Published: Sep 4 2002
Pages: 376
Weight: 1.51
Height: 1.17 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.86
Language: English

Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), often referred to as Japan's Shakespeare and a god of writers, was arguably the most famous playwright in Japanese history and wrote more than 100 plays for the kabuki and bunraku theaters. Today, the plays of this major literary figure are performed on kabuki and bunraku stages as well as in the modern theater, and forty-nine films of his plays have been made, thirty-one of them from the silent era.

Translations of Chikamatsu's plays are available, but we have few examples of his late work, in which he increasingly incorporated stylistic elements of his shorter, contemporary dramas into his longer period pieces. Translator C. Andrew Gerstle argues that in these mature history plays, Chikamatsu depicted the tension between the private and public spheres of society by combining the rich character development of his contemporary pieces with the larger political themes of his period pieces.

In this volume Gerstle translates five plays--four histories and one contemporary piece--never before available in English that complement other collections of Chikamatsu's work, revealing new dimensions to the work of this great Japanese playwright and artist.

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