Shinjū

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Shinjū (心中) means "double suicide" in Japanese, as in Shinjū ten no Amijima (Double Suicide at Amijima), written by the seventeenth-century tragedist Chikamatsu Monzaemon for the puppet theater (bunraku and/or joruri theater). Double suicides are the simultaneous suicides of two lovers prevented in their hopes to be together by social conventions or family obligations. Double suicides were, and still are, rather common in Japan throughout history and double suicide is an important theme of the puppet theater repertory. The tragic denouement is usually known from the audience and is preceded by a michiyuki, a small poetical journey, where lovers evoke the happier moments of their lives and their attempts at loving each other.

The film maker Masahiro Shinoda adapted Shinjū ten no Amijima (1969) as a film, released under the title: "Double Suicide" in English, in an astounding and modernist adaptation, including a stunning score by Toru Takemitsu.

In the preface he wrote for Donald Keene's book Bunraku, the writer Jun'ichirō Tanizaki complained about the too-long endings of all the double suicide plays, since it is a known denouement. In his novel Some Prefer Nettles, he parodies the notion of shinjū and makes it a social and sensual double suicide with no clear ending.

Shinjū (1994) is also the title of the first novel by American writer Laura Joh Rowland, a mystery set in 1694 Genroku-era Japan. The main character, a yoriki (a lower-ranking police officer) named Sano Ichirō, investigates a double murder disguised as a lovers' suicide.