Chûshingura Lecture 20220601 (Thomas Schneider) Hello. I would like to talk about the Japanese play Kanadehon Chûshingura from 1748. We know it under the title "The Treasury of Loyal Followers" or "The Revenge of 47 Leaderless Vassals" – depending on your opinion. Japan connoisseurs claim that if you don't understand Chûshingura, you don't understand the Japanese way of thinking. The early and then unrelenting popularity of the piece can be measured by the many performances since its creation. The title is a composite construct, as this English disambiguation of Chinese characters illustrates. The main term chûshin roughly translates as "faithful subject" or "virtuous vasal", with neo-Confucian coloration. Here we are talking about a "storehouse" or "treasure trove" of such followers. The advanced term kanadehon could be casually translated as "practice templates for the kana". This indicates the coincidence that the number of individuals sworn to the Vendetta E, the so-called 47 rônin - i.e. leaderless samurai - is just as many as there are signs in the Japanese syllabary - i.e. kana. What do we want to talk about? First, we should roughly understand the plot of the fictional play, essentially depending on the relationships. Then we want to investigate an actual historical incident – the so-called Akô jiken from the years 1701 to 1703 – in which, according to the bakufu, 47 people took their own lives with their own hands. 1 other unfortunate man - named Kanpei, whom we briefly saw on the previous slide committed suicide. Finally, we want to address contemporary legal debates. In fact, the prototypes for the play came from the Osaka puppet theaters. At least 3 stories were merged in the 45 years since the historic incident. The definitive version – the "Kanadehon Chûshingura" – is consequently attributed to 3 authors. The piece divides into 11 acts, as can be seen in this ningyô jôruri program. Performances lasted a full day during which audiences were treated to sets representative of life in a variety of social circumstances : the temple, palace of the shogun, a menial hut, the tea house, mansions of the privileged, the abode of the merchant, traveling --The performance begins with an introduction by the tayû – the narrative narrator of bunraku. Here is the original version of the opening lines with their English translation. All 25 protagonists are already on stage whilst the curtain is being raised. However, They are strewn across the stage like lifeless puppets. Only as each name is called by the tayû does one the characters, one by one, after another come to life. As already indicated, Chûshingura is primarily a family drama, set at the beginning of the 2nd Kamakura shôgunate in 14th century Japan. Nitta Yoshisada has been defeated and the governor of Kamakura, Kô no Moronô, presides over the ceremony assisted by the daimyôs Momonoi Wakasanosuke and En'ya Hangan. Hangan's wife, Kaoyo, is called upon to identify Yoshisada's helmet out of the 47 as the one to be enshrined. In this woodcut print from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Tadayoshi is mistakenly identified as Hangan himself. Tragedy ensues when Hangan actually draws his short sword against Kô no Moronô in the pine corridor of the shogunal palace causing him slight injury. On the grounds of Edo Castle and particularly during the New Year's celebrations for the imperial envoys, this is an unimaginable breach of protocol. That same day, Hangan is sentenced to seppuku and his family is relieved of their fief. Moronô is acquitted. Here Hangan – in the presence of the shôgun's deputies – is waiting impatiently for his top retainer Ôboshi Yuranosuke to arrive.
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