Читать книгу Chushingura; Or, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers - Shoraku Miyoshi - Страница 19

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The revenge of the Ako retainers took place in the twelfth month of the fifteenth year of Genroku (January, 1703); and few months later, a play founded on it was already on the stage. In 1706, the Takemotoza, the great puppet-theatre of Osaka, put up a ballad drama by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, called Kenkohoshi-Monomiguruma, upon the same subject, which the same great dramatist followed up with another, entitled Goban-Taiheiki, in which the story was carried back to the time of the first Shogun of the Ashikaga line in the middle of the fourteenth century. In this play occur for the first time the names of Kono Moronao and Enya Hangwan, noted warriors of that period, as those of the two enemies whose fatal quarrel gave rise to the great vendetta, and also the loyal chief councillor of Asano appears as Oboshi Yuranosuke and the humblest of the loyal retainers, Terasaka Kichiemon, is disguised under the name of Teraoka Heiyemon. After this, several plays of more or less merit were performed in Yedo, Kyoto, and Osaka. A noted actor of the time, Sawamura Sojuro, made a great hit with one of these plays in Osaka in 1746 and in Kyoto in the following year; and a famous writer of puppet-plays named Takeda Izumo, who saw these successes of Sojuro, produced in collaboration with Namiki Scnryu and Miyoshi Shoraku in 1748 the play, Kanadehon-Chushingura, which is translated in the following pages. It was put up, as originally intended, at a puppet theatre and afterward at an ordinary theatre. It became not only the most celebrated version of the vendetta, but also the most popular of all plays; and other plays upon the subject of the loyal retainers of Ako were entirely dropped. So great is even at the present time the fame of the play that the revenge of Ako retainers is better known as Chushingura and its hero Oishi Kuranosuke sounds less familiar to the ears of the common people than his play-name of Oboshi Yuranosuke. For the latter name which first appeared in Chikamatsu’s Goban-Taiheiki is adopted in the Chushingura, as also the names of Enya Hangwan, Kono Moronao, and Teraoka Heiyemon. The play still retains its popularity and it is even now, as it used formerly to be, in many theatres the stock play for the last month of the year since it is sure to draw large houses, just as the plays founded on the vendetta of the Soga brothers are the most commonly performed in the first month.

We will now proceed to discuss the plot of the play and compare it with the true story of the famous vendetta.