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Paper short abstract:

The proposed paper will examine how dreams are represented in Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) ’s bunraku plays. Through this argument, I will investigate theatrical treatments of dream space in bunraku, thereby indicating the ecology of imagination in Japanese traditional theaters.

Paper long abstract:

In the first half of the paper, I will summarize how dreams were treated in Japanese culture. As a matter of fact, Japan is rich in the literature of dreams. One of these figures fascinated with dreams was Myōe (1173-1232), a Buddhist high priest who constructed the Kosanji Temple near Kyoto. He is known for his record of dreams collected over 40 years. After a summary of the Japanese “dream culture” before the modern period, I will discuss the theoretical problem regarding the difference between the record of a dream per se and its representation on stage, because the latter is evidently an artifact, a kind of rhetoric for storytelling.

To elaborate the problem, I will discuss how dream space is conceived in the plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). Chikamatsu “modernized” bunraku in the late 17th century in the sense that he introduced characters who exhibit their will, in contrast to those who were obedient to destiny in early bunraku. In accordance with this shift, while dreams in old plays were a vehicle for oracles, in Chikamatsu’s they function as spaces for virtually realizing the desires of the characters. In The Later Battles of Coxinga (1717), the hero’s son, who longs to see his father’s land, flies over from Taiwan to Japan in his dream. The fulfillment of wishes in Chikamatsu is visualized as the insertion of another illusion on stage. Thus, in the latter half of the presentation, I will propose a working hypothesis to investigate theatrical treatments of dream space in bunraku, thereby indicating the ecology of imagination in Japanese traditional theaters.