Double Suicide
Saturday 2:30pm
Directed by: Mashiro Shinoda
Released: 1969
Run time: 103 minutes
Certificate:
A doomed love between a paper merchant and a courtesan ends in tragedy
Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei (Kirchiemon Nakamura) knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu (Shima Iwashita), he becomes a man obsessed.
Their passion for each other is all consuming. Koharu foregoes other customers to return his love, and Jihei leaves the running of the paper store in the hands of his wife, Osan. At the beginning of each month - twenty-nine months thus far - Jihei writes a vow to Koharu to free her from her life so that they can be together. However, he doesn't have the money to pay her ransom, and his efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life.
Jihei and Koharu vow they will be together for eternity if they cannot be together on Earth.
The film is based on the 1721 puppet play The Love Suicides at Amijima by Monzaemon Chikamatsu. The stylized sets and the period costumes and props simultaneously convey a classical theatricality and contemporaneous modernity.
