The Love Suicides
“The Tragedy of a Desperate and Hopeless Love” What are the limits of love? Is despairing love boundless and its ill-fated actions expected to be understood? How far is too far in an attempt to ease the hurt of a broken heart? These are questions that many have asked since the beginning of time to which no one has ever really adequately answered. This satiating of an intense desire for another result in a varying of consequential results based on culture, customs, and the time frame in which the doomed lovers lived. In The Love Suicides, written by Chikamatsu Manzaemon and considered to be a masterpiece, many complications arise in this romantic and dramatic tragedy that demonstrates a most complex look at love. In this essay, I will delve into the symbolism of the work, the significances of the characters’ actions, the cultural differences from those that I am accustomed, and my viewpoint of the fatal ending. The Love Suicides is set in a Sonezaki, Japan tea house in 1720 and is a great favorite of the Japanese stage. It tells the calamitous story of Jihei, a paper merchant and his lover, Koharu, a prostitute. This story is about the moral and social code under which the townsmen lived at the time, with the status of merchants being lower than that of the samurai class. Even though considered to be a lower class, the townsmen had developed a firm ethical code whereby in order for your business to prosper, your financial and personal obligations had to be met first. Jihei is married to his cousin, Osan, and is tormented by his sense of duty to his family and tormented by his love for Koharu. The story opens with Koharu secretly meeting a “samurai customer,” while dodging Tahei, a wealthy man who is attempting to buy her contract and take her as his own. Koharu does not like Tahei and wants no part of him. In trying to understand Tahei, I can only imagine that he feels. Tahei is a rich guy who loves this woman but she’s in love with another man who