#chikamatsu

Sunagakurenosato || Multimuse blog

Monzaemon Chikamatsu. The originator of Sunagakure's Puppet Technique. Playwright of several famous tragedies. One of Sunagakure's founding figures (and propagandist--- the author of the Book of Kings, an account of the lives of Sunagakure's Kazekages).

Below is an excerpt of Book 1: In the hidden sands, on the Shodaime Kazekage, Reto:

More information undercut

I think sakura is a fujoshi too lmao did u see her reaction to the boy on boy action? Idk about hinata, but as u said she n sakura forced sasuke and naruto to marry them, even though hinata knows too little of naruto to know hes gay.

naruto and sasuke love each other,there was no one around in sasukes confession, why not say, hey i like you in 'that' way, usuratonkachi? Just confessing, no need to start dating yknow.

There are lots of gay portrayals in shounen now, it wasnt there b4. So kishi couldve let it out anyway right? In interviews and all, but no he has to label them as more bros than blood bros, spitting on the subtle purpose of his story, making his audience get it wrong. Whats the point of writing a love story when hes giving gods word that it is a story about two brothers?

Why WHY did he have to make them reincarnated brothers?

thats all, have a good day sneeze! Sorry if i loaded u up, but i see longer asks sent to u, so it wont be a problem right?

Hi. Hope you have a good day as well. Long ask isn't a problem.

1) Sakura is not a fujoshi, just a hormonal boy crazy girl. I have talked about it here.

2) It's not really a confession, it's Sasuke's thoughts. It doesn't matter whether anyone was around Sasuke's confession. Because the point was that Kishi could not have made his main characters confess their love explicitly in the manga. But it doesn't matter, because he did so much else. SO MUCH. And that is enough. Anyway, the ending was supposed to be tragic so as to facilitate the story line of Boruto, as in with the new generation kids. Naruto and Sasuke were never supposed to end together once Boruto went on board. If it weren't for Boruto, it would have been open ended, and the takeaway/impression would have certainly been that they did end up together. So you can take some comfort in that, but if you can't, I will understand.

3) Most people feel miserly about that one interview where Kishimoto called them blood brothers. But ignore the nuance of the whole piece.

Look how much he is struggling to explain their relationship. The interviewer was being quite assertive about getting his answer too. I am telling you, Kishi was sweating balls here. He couldn't have revealed the actual nature of their bond, and like I said, a lot of people can tell what the story was about. Like this interviewer. Who is being cautious but smart. Kishi is talking about loneliness and abandonment. Both Naruto and Sasuke suffered from it. Kishi finds it hard to put in words but he is trying to explain the underlying feeling of it anyway. It's not hard to see.

Look at this. Don't you find it weird that there is SO damn much conversation around defining this relationship? It's there in the manga in a major way and it's there in the interviews because that's what the manga is about. Kishi is explaining how some bonds are taken for granted because they already have quite a strong impression in the intuitive memory of the audience. Like bonds of family. Like Sasuke and Itachi. You can tell in a story who is family. But the bond between Naruto and Sasuke is hard to explain no? Even Sasuke wants to know the answer! Lol. And he gets it, in the end. Friendship is hard to explain, he says. And yet a lot of characters were pointedly portrayed as friends. Like Shikamaru and Chouji. Properly emphatically friends. Kakashi and Obito. Jiraiya and Tsunade, Inoichi and Shikaku, Lee and Neji, Ino, Shikamaru and Chouji.

All FRIENDS. And we got it very easily too. What he found difficult to explain was the 'friendship' between Naruto and Sasuke. Naruto keeps calling him friend. But obviously, Sasuke isn't satisfied. Again, until the end. Like the audience can obviously tell that when Naruto goes absolutely berserk at the mere name of Sasuke, or that Sasuke gives up his life for a person he didn't even like apparently, yeah that stuff is beyond friendship. Audience isn't dumb. Well not all.

One doesn't really have to go interview hunting to find the veracity of Naruto and Sasuke's love. It's all in the manga. It's the real source. But if you have to refer to the interviews, don't ignore the rest of them.

Everything depends on how Kishi is able to put their relationship into words. Hmm. He did. He didn't have to make them say 'I love you, let's date'. He made them say different words that were much more significant, that made more sense with them, that matched the quality, nuance and emotional heights of their love. Kishi does stress on the importance of words and communication though. I have talked about it here.

Love triangle? Yes, in team seven. Both Naruto and Sakura like Sasuke romantically. Naruto experienced love and became an adult, he surely did. Thanks to Sasuke. It was his memory and Naruto's feelings for him that goaded him to become stronger and more mature and determined af. It isn't a coincidence vote two was right after it was revealed that it was Naruto's seventeenth birthday, he has literally and metaphorically come of age. And then he tells Sasuke again how much he loves him, how he really truly felt about him. In chapter 698. And Sasuke concedes, he is finally at peace, now that he has heard it from Naruto's own mouth. It was important for him to know these 'words'. Words are what gave him his resolution. Naruto's words that he couldn't very well say before.

Kishi was writing this story at a time when it was not acceptable in shounen to have major gay characters. I don't think that's the case today either. Although what we do know is that Naruto anime did try to hetishize Naruto and tried to distract from many sus scenes by adding non canon stuff to it. From Wiki.

Especially not the MC. Naruto is supposedly the first shounen MC to have kissed another boy on the mouth. In canon. This was written under the facade of comedy, as a lot of scenes were especially with Naruto, Kishi had to find a way to create smokescreens and red herrings so as not to get caught red handed. It's not an easy job for the writer to do this and make it believable and effective and so impactful. The average shounen consumer was happy with it, those who looked for a fuller and more layered approach, and complexity in their media also loved it. There was something for everyone in it. This was no easy feat. This takes real talent. And kishi was motivated to do it and how. And he did it too. But it wasn't smooth as butter. He had to fight his editors several times on multiple scenes. Like the reverse oiroke jutsu you are talking about. Very sus, wasn't it? It was meant to be. Or the fight at the vote two. He didn't compromise with his story to the best of his ability. But imagine the pressure he was under. We need to dig a little deeper. It's never that black and white. If it was that bad, then it is safe to assume that Kishi didn't feel comfortable revealing the nature of their relationship explicitly. A lot of artists have gotten canceled or blacklisted for less. Plus, if the gay tones were so overt, the anime would have faced difficulties getting distributed in other countries, mainly North America, because of their syndication rules. From Wiki.

And I have a feeling that Kishi was also reticent because of his own orientation. There has been much debate on this. But I strongly suspect that Kishi relates with Naruto's character. He has said it himself that he sees himself in Naruto. Naruto is his projection, self insert. And Sasuke is his muse, the classic archetypical, dreamy, beautiful but deadly bishounen, that everyone desires, including men. Like Sasuke has been clearly depicted. And I think Kishi is in a similar predicament as Naruto.

4) Naruto and Sasuke are not reincarnated brothers. It's their chakra. That doesn't make them brothers. How exactly does that make them brothers? Where does Kishi make anyone say it or imply it? Madara and Hashirama also had Ashura's and Indra's chakras but people are okay with calling them gay for each other. They were also given very homoerotic scenes. Just like Sasuke and Naruto. But the same people who deny SNS ship Hashimada lol. Unfair, isn't it? They have the special chakras because they are the fated saviours of their world. That reincarnated chakras make them brothers, though is already a ridiculous argument, in no universe cancels out the rest of the story. That's not how it works. The point is Sasuke and Naruto were written as main act of the story. This was the main act, vote two. You know which other thing has a main act just like Shippuden? This.

A double suicide narrative was already in the making, and then Kishi makes sure that his main act is the same as the main act of Chikamatsu's shinjuu plays. Chikamatsu is considered as one the greatest, most prolific playrights Japan has ever produced. His work is pretty much a part of the cultural and literary imagination of Japan. Kishi wanted to pay homage to him, like many other modern Japanese creators.

The main act comes at the end, led by everything that has happened before. The hero and heroine have already tried everything else. But in the main act, they die together after the most profoundly emotional interaction/depiction that rends your heart. Although, in Kishi case, they think they are dead, but they aren't. They live. Kishi had already thought of this ending panel by panel and line by line many years before chapter 698 was published. Hehe. Writers are serious about these things, they have to be isn't it? It's their job. Anyway, that's how crazy this man is. And I love him for it. Don't underestimate him. He did a lot for fans. He is a wonderful artist. He had to give up at the end. And it sucks. But he did his best.

The post I wrote about it last year, citing the parallels between Love suicides at Amijima and Naruto.

"Let us leave, no trace of tears upon our dead faces." - Love suicides at Amijima

Well at least we know where Kishi got his inspiration from. He wasn't stealing from any of those NS doujinshis. He was getting inspired by Chikamatsu, Japanese Shakespeare. No wonder the dialogues he wrote for Naruto and Sasuke are so emotionally impactful and romantic.

What could be a greater tribute to the greatest dramatist Japan has ever seen? Chikamatsu is someone whose work is well imprinted on Japanese people's psyche. Kishi is a well rounded writer, and this is the result. And what a result it is. This is also proof that the world Sasuke and Naruto live in wasn't conducive to their love, a world fraught with prejudice and injustice. Shinobi world, at the end of the day, isn't all that different from the real world when it comes to the basics, is it? And so this tale of love couldn't reach its rightful conclusion.

Essentialism will be the death of you. Its defiance of the absurdity of existence makes it a tool for destroying the human spirit, particularly when it goes up against the chaos of emotions and eroticism. New Wave Japanese director Masahiro Shinoda’s DOUBLE SUICIDE (1969, Criterion Channel) turns Chikamatsu’s classic Bunraku play “The Love Suicides at Amijima” into a highly theatrical meditation on the conflict between how society defines us and what we wish to be. It’s a meta film, highly stylized, that fascinates at the same time as it may drive you to distraction.

It opens with kuroko, the black-clad puppeteers of bunraku, preparing for a performance while Shinoda’s voice on the telephone suggests setting the story’s final scenes in a cemetery over the objections of co-writer Taeko Tomioka. Then the camera follows paper merchant Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura) as he crosses a series of bridges until he stops to look down and see a figure that will turn out to be himself lying dead next to his mistress, the courtesan Koharu (Shima Iwashita), surrounded by kuroko. From there until near the end, the action moves into abstract studio sets while tracing the couple’s doomed love. Koharu has signed a contract to work out of a brothel so she can support her impoverished mother.  She and Jihei are in love, but since neither has the money to buy out her contract, they are considering suicide. Jihei is afraid of the shame it will bring to his wife (also Iwashita) and children, but cannot escape his sexual and emotional attachment to Koharu.

The kuroko continue to appear in these scenes, observing the cast and at times drawing them into their next actions, much as they would manipulate the puppets in Bunraku. It’s one of several distancing devices that forces us to sit back and consider the action. The sets are obviously artificial, with flimsy walls often covered with oversized design motifs. And the acting style is more florid than nuanced. The characters are presented as predetermined types who may move through various emotions but always do so in what seem to be prescribed ways. This can sometimes feel overblown. The merchant (Hosei Komatsu) who hopes to buy Koharu for himself is so exaggeratedly boorish he wears out his welcome with the audience even more quickly than he does with the other characters. And Koharu’s almost unrelieved whining becomes grating after a while. You may find yourself wishing Jihei would just put her out of our misery. But Nakamura is quite fine, and Iwashita shines as his wife. Their long discourse over how to handle his obsession with Koharu is played at a high pitch but skillfully so. They take you through each beat and make it clear how they’re fighting against their socially dictated roles as husband and wife.

What does the technology of the puppet make possible or hinder in performance?

To answer this question, this blog is devoted to an understanding of what puppetry can do through the lens of Japanese puppet theater (bunraku) and the philosophical writings of Jane-Marie Law’s, particularly “In the Shape of a Person.”

A quick primer on bunraku and three viewpoints on the initial question are described through scene analysis of the Mitani Bunraku play “ Sorenari Shinju” (Much Ado about Love Suicides).

The first viewpoint, Who is the Puppet, Who is the Puppeteer, concerns Law’s paradigm of “A Human Being as an All-Powerful God.”  The paradigm describes the God-like and God responsible space of the playwright as a balm to the top down oppression of Early Modern Japan.

The second viewpoint concerns the ability for puppets to allow humanity to “Triumph Over Death.” Through puppetry, mortals are able to imbue inanimate forms (puppets) with life, which, in a way, brings them back from the dead.