Even though the theme of love intends to represent happiness and peace, it cannot always be achieved in life because of the complexities of social lives and the pressure of relationships that individuals in the couple have. Both The Love Suicides at Sonezaki by Chikamatsu and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet share the theme of lovers’ suicides that occur because of the odds against their relationships and express the European and Eastern cultural conventions.
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki is set in the pre-modern Edo period of Japan, during which courtesans and geishas were parts of the society and arranged marriages were the norm. Thus, Tokubei was expected to marry a girl from a good family to set a respective social status for himself and not to find love on his own. Ohatsu, on the other hand, was expected to provide pleasure to men and never fall in love with a single person. Romeo and Juliet is set in the Elizabethan period in England when many people died young and were to marry early. However, the two lovers could never marry one another because their families were rivals. Therefore, both couples could not be happy together because of the social circumstances that would inevitably ruin their happiness.
The stories illustrate how the young lovers resisted the societal conventions that prevented them from being together: “gather to pray for these lovers who beyond a doubt will in the future attain Buddhahood” (Chikamatsu, n.d., 175). They decided that being together in death and meeting one another in eternal life is a better choice than abiding by the pressures from their families of society that would never make them happy.
Reference
Chikamatsu, M. (n.d.). The love suicides at Sonezaki. Web.