Who wrote The Love Suicides at Amijima?
Chikamatsu Monzaemon
What type of work is The Love Suicides at Amijima?
A puppet Play
In Japanese Ningyo means?
Dolls
In Japanese Joruri means?
The combination of chanting and shamisen playing
(Literally "three strings"): a three-stringed, Japanese musical instrument.
The samisen
What is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, founded in Osaka?
Bunraku
Puppet theatre and Kabuki arose during the _____ (between 1603 and 1867) and were staged for commoners and therefore often addressed common concerns and contemporary events.
Edo Period
______ focused on classical literature and themes and was generally sponsored by the wealthy as the official state theatre.
Noh Theater
Puppet theater consisted of 3 elements.
Puppets-puppeteers, samisen music, joruri chanting
Puppet theatre thrived in the early modern milieu of the _____ _________ (1600-1828), the military regime of the _______ family that ruled from Edo, modern-day Tokyo (aka the "Edo Period").

Tokugawa Shogunate
During the ______ period licensed pleasure quarters thrived, attracting customers of all social classes.
Edo
Under the emperor and the Tokugawa Shoguns, there were four social classes _____, _______, ______, _______. Actors and entertainers were considered outcasts, together with prostitutes and beggars. Marriage outside one's class was forbidden.

Samurai (warriors), peasants, artisans, and merchants.
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725)
Born into a provincial samurai family. Wrote his first plays in the 1680s. Although after 1693 he devoted most of his energies to kabuki, in 1703 he reconnected with Gidayu—a famous joruri (popular narrative chanting) chanter who founded his own puppet theatre in Osaka—and wrote exclusively for Gidayu's puppet theatre during the last two decades of his life.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon (in 1703) pioneered a new subgenre called ____ ______ _______ _______.
"The contemporary-life play." In that year a shopkeeper from Osaka had committed double suicide with a prostitute from the Sonezaki pleasure quarters, believing that they could be reborn with their lover "on the same lotus" in the Buddhist Pure Land if they committed suicide together. Three weeks after the event, Chikamatsu's The Love Suicides at Sonezaki premiered with roaring success.
How many plays did Chikamatsu Monzaemon write?
100 plays
Information - good to know:
The Love Siucides shows a complicated network of social relationships and obligations between husband and wife, parent and child, and even among prostitute, madam, and customer....shows the clashes between social obligations and the desire for personal happiness.