Revenge and the Marketplace

A Study of Chikamatsu Hanji’s Travel Game while Crossing Iga

Abstract

The basic proponents of Japanese revenge drama in the Edo period (1603-1868) are examined in terms of Chikamatsu Hanji’s (1725-83) joruri (bunraku) piece: Travel Game while Crossing Iga (Igagoe dochu sugoroku, 1783).The paper treats the following aspects: revenge plays deriving from a masterplot; the status of revenge in this period; the dramatization of revenge; revenge and journeying; stationendrama; a comparison with another play based on the same masterplot, Horse Charge while Crossing Iga (Igagoe norikake gappa, by Nagawa Kamesuke, 1776); revenge and monetary society; the ethics of the merchant class; and expressionism linked with highly melodramatic situations.