Major Plays of Chikamatsu, Volume 10

近松門左衛門

Columbia University Press, 1961 - Drama - 485 pages

"Major Plays of Chikamatsu gives Western readers a fascinating look at seventeenth century Japanese culture. Like other playwrights before him, Chikamatsu created characters who are members of a society driven by its mores. However, unlike those of other playwrights of the period, Chikamatsu's characters have multidimensional personalities and unconventional voices, making his art more realistc and complex."--Publisher's description.

Contents

• Introduction I: 1
• The Love Suicides at Sonezaki Sonezaki Shinjū: 39
• The Drum of the Waves of Horikawa Horikawa Nami: 57

About the author

Donald Keene was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 18, 1922. He was a child prodigy and entered Columbia University on scholarship in 1938 at the age of 16. He received a bachelor's degree in 1942, a master's degree in 1947, and a doctoral degree in 1951 from Columbia. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy and volunteered to study Japanese. His first experience as a translator came in Hawaii, where he worked on routine military reports captured from Japanese units in the Pacific theater. He then became a wartime interrogator after the battle in Okinawa on April 1, 1945. After he was discharged, he taught at Columbia University for 56 years. Over his career, he translated many of the most important works of Japanese literature into English. He also wrote numerous books in both English and Japanese including Dawn to the West and Travelers of the Ages. In 1985, he became the first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Prize for Literature for literary criticism. He became a Japanese citizen in 2012. He died on February 24, 2019 at the age of 96.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Major Plays of Chikamatsu, Volume 10; Issue 53 of Columbia paperback; Major Plays, 近松門左衛門; Issue 66 of Records of civilization; Issue 66 of Records of civilization, sources and studies; Records of civilization, sources and studies, edited under the auspices of the Department of history, Columbia university. 66; Translations from the oriental classics; UNESCO collection of representative works: Japanese series; UNESCO collection of representative works: Japanese series. Records of civilization: sources and studies, no. 66
• Author: 近松門左衛門
• Translated by: Donald Keene
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1961
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: May 14, 2008
• ISBN: 091027813X, 9780910278133
• Length: 485 pages
• Subjects: Drama / Asian / General; Drama / General