In adapting Chikamatsu's eighteenth-century drama to the screen, Shinoda could afford to be more than faithful to the original and still be true to his modern sensibilities: fatalism and the layering of realities are both linked to the bunraku puppet drama, and that in turn to an implicitly Buddhist understanding of the world. That we are all born into debt, as it were, precludes a happy ending; the transience of all things would seem to preclude closure itself. The conflict between passion and duty is central to the tale of the merchant Jihei and the courtesan Koharu, for whom Jihei would give up his business, his family, indeed, his life as there is no chance of their being together in this world. Double Suicide may be read as cultural Buddhism in a secular Edo-period setting; imbedded beliefs give resonance to a small sacrifice like the symbolic cutting of one's hair, or the climactic love scene in a cemetery. Black-clad bunraku puppet-handlers are present to manipulate the action throughout, but as the tragedy unfolds we see their helplessness to thwart the lovers' fate-in spite of the opening invocation of "Buddha's mercy, a net from heaven."