In historical studies the current family system is defined as one of the inventions in early modern times. The units of parents and children became “natural” to ensure the perpetuation of the system. Chikamatsu-Monzaemon seems to have had no small interest in this cultural institution of his age because he depicted various types of families in his melodramas. This article will analyze the representations of families in Sonezaki-shinjū, Meido-no-hikyaku, and Onna-koroshi-abura-no-jigoku, especially focusing on the young characters trapped in emotional conflict under the pressure of the family system.

In Seken-hahaoya-katagi, Tada-Nanrei's “ukiyo-zōshi” story, there appear several good housekeepers who were faithfully modeled after the merchants' wives of the Edo Period. Under the great influence of Ejima-Kiseki and Ihara-Saikaku, Tada both humorously and moralistically depicted the traits of various classes and professions. But Seken-hahaoya-katagi is not so much humorous due to its rather didactic plot. In addition, it wasn't published by Hachimonji-ya as his other works were. Thus it is very likely that the author deliberately made his signature on this book because he felt a need to guarantee its genuineness.

The “ninjō-bon” genre of the Edo Period has a sort of narrative pattern in which a merchant's family life is depicted in the form of love romance. Shunshoku-ume-goyomi by Tamenaga-Shunsui also follows this pattern; a poor merchant tries to establish a family-like ties with others because of his unfortunate family relations and finally succeeds in making his own home. Through the representation of the merchant's family, together with those of three other merchants' families of different backgrounds, the author seems to suggest a possibility of diverse family forms free from marital or biological bonds.

“Sannin-kichisa-kuruwa-no-hatsugai” is Kawatake-Mokuami's important work written during the period when he had been establishing his own style as a kabuki dramatist. Since the third year of the Ansei Period he had gradually broken away from theatrical conventions and started to write a series of plays called “shiranami-mono” which sympathetically feature rogues. “Sannin-kichisa” is a result of this transitional period. But it is also another turning point in his career because of the peculiar way of representing the outlaw hero which later became characteristic of his dramas.

Haruki Murakami's short story “Lexington-no-yūrei” (1996) is implicitly interspersed with the memory of extreme homophobia in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. This article will foreground such a historical moment to consider why the Japanese writer, supposedly heterosexual, must record and preserve this traumatic memory and how the story can be queerly interpreted in relation to AIDS fiction in the 1990s.