Presented in conjunction with our special Evening with Masahiro Shinoda, Saturday, February 27. "In this close adaptation of Chikamatsu's 1720 doll drama, The Double Suicide at Ten no Arnijima, one of the basic conflicts in Japanese drama-the conflict between social obligation and personal emotion in the bourgeois milieu-is explored. Jihei, the owner of a paper shop in Osaka, is faced with making a choice between remaining with his wife, Osan, or running off with a courtesan, Koharu. The latter is the property of a fashionable tea-house, and is about to be bought from her master by a rival of Jihei. As there is no possibility of being together in this world, Jihei tries to persuade the unwilling Koharu to join him in a suicide pact. As the tragedy mounts, Shinoda constantly makes us aware that the Kurago (the black-clad men who traditionally handle the Bunraku puppets in doll drama) are looking on with considerable anguish and helplessness. Double Suicide extends Chikamatsu's concerns to include ethics versus eroticism, a thralldom timelessly enacted behind the mystery of empty streets and houses, beyond the anonymity of human crowds." (AJ)