_CHUSHINGURA (THE TREASURY OF LOYAL RETAINERS): A PUPPET PLAY_
by Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Shoraku, and Namiki Senryu; Donald Keene, translator
_Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers)_, also known as the story of the Forty-Six (or Forty-Seven) Ronin, is the most famous and perennially popular of all Japanese dramas. Written around 1748 as a puppet play, it is now better known in Kabuki performances. In the twentieth century, cinema and television versions have been equally successful.
The historical basis of the drama is the vengeance taken by the ronin, or former retainers, of Lord Asano Naganori upon Lord Kira Yoshinaka, who had caused Asano's death. In the play a forty-seventh retainer, who died before the vendetta could be brought to its conclusion, is considered to have joined in spirit in the act of vengeance.
Many earlier dramatic versions of the tragic story had been made, but this one, which follows a 1706 play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, even in its choice of historical setting and fictitious names for various characters, has retained its preeminence to the present day. However, in Kabuki performances whole acts are often omitted and long passages which were not in the original script are often substituted.
Donald Keene here presents a complete translation of the original text, with notes and an introduction that increase the reader's comprehension and enjoyment of the play. The introduction also elucidates the ideal of loyalty. This traditional virtue, as exemplified in _Chushingura_, has never completely lost its hold on audiences, in spite of twentieth-century changes in Japanese society and moral ideals. Moreover, as Professor Keene points out, the excitement, color, and violence expressed in the play may be considered the counterpoint to the austere restraint and understatement which are more commonly thought to be "traditionally" Japanese.
One of the Translations from the Oriental Classics. Donald Keene, Professor of Japanese at Columbia University, is the translator of _Major Plays of Chikamatsu_ and _Essays in Idleness_ (_The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko_), and the editor _of Twenty Plays of the Noh Theatre_.
Jacket design: From "The Vanguard of Loyalty and Righteousness of Our Country [Japan] ," a painting by Yokoi Kinkoku, an eighteenth-century priest and poet. Done in the style known as haiga, a rapidly executed, often comic depiction of scenes or persons, which is in painting the equivalent of the haiku in poetry, the painting presents a highlight from each of the play's eleven acts. The scenes included here progress from the fifth act (lower right-hand corner) to the eleventh (upper left-hand corner).