Jihei
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Shinjū ( 心中) is a Japanese term meaning "double suicide", used in common parlance to refer to any group suicide of two or more individuals bound by love, typically lovers, parents and children, and even whole families.
Double Suicide (心中天網島, Shinjū Ten no Amijima) is a 1969 Japanese historical drama film directed by Masahiro Shinoda. It is based on the 1721 bunraku (traditional puppet theatre) play The Love Suicides at Amijima by Monzaemon Chikamatsu.
Double Suicide: Directed by Masahiro Shinoda. With Kichiemon Nakamura, Shima Iwashita, Shizue Kawarazaki, Tokie Hidari. A doomed love between a paper merchant and a courtesan.
In this striking adaptation of a Bunraku puppet play (featuring the music of famed composer Toru Takemitsu), a paper merchant sacrifices family, fortune, and ultimately life for his erotic obsession with a prostitute. Criterion is proud to present Double Suicide in a stunning digital transfer, with a new and improved English subtitle translation.
In 18th Century in Japan, the paper merchant Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura) falls in love for the courtesan Koharu (Shima Iwashita), but he can not afford to redeem her from her master and owner of the brothel, since he spent all his money in the place with Koharu.
Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed.
This film is a close adaptation of Chikamatsu’s 1720 doll-drama The Double Suicide at Ten No Amijima, and traces a basic conflict in Japanese drama, giri-minjo, between social obligation and personal emotion in the bourgeois milieu.
