Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 413, between real and unreal.

I am always hesitant to dip my toes into the world of Shakespeare comparisons.

You see, I've noticed that around the world, there's always someone who ends up

described in English language writing as the Shakespeare of X.

Alexander Pushkin is the Shakespeare of Russia.

Tang Shenzu is the Shakespeare of China, and so on.

Those comparisons are, in a sense, very flattering,

given Shakespeare's large role in pretty much any discussion of literature

or the history of the English language.

But they can also be misleading

because the question then becomes, in what way is this person like Shakespeare?

Love him or hate him, there is a range to Shakespeare's work from comedies to tragedies

that not a lot of other writers match. It's far more common to stick to a single genre.

And of course,

the man had a huge impact on the development of English as a language, coining new words galore as he went. If the goal of the comparison, though, is to say, here is someone who, like Shakespeare,

provides us a fantastic window into their own time period, that's something I can get behind.

I love a good historicized reading of a literary text.

And if we're taking that angle, I think there is an obvious candidate for a Japanese Shakespeare.

Indeed, functionally, there's no competition.

Obviously, it would have to be Chikamatsu-Mun Zayamon, the quintessential dramatist of the zenith of the Edo period.

Now I should note that Chikamatsu Monzaemon is a pen name, used by the man in question, both because of a long

tradition of men of letters in East Asia using pen names, and because of some specific social circumstances

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