The Love Suicides at Sonezaki – Bunraku Theatre (by Chikamatsu Monzaemon)

Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence

In The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, the tragic narrative of Tokubei and Ohatsu, two lovers bound by social constraints and doomed to die together, becomes a profound example of Foucault’s exploration of the “aesthetics of existence” and “care of the self.” Unlike the heroic ethos of Chūshingura, Sonezaki explores love, vulnerability, and ethical subjectivity within the context of economic entrapment and erotic intimacy.

Bunraku’s form—puppet theatre infused with lyrical jōruri narration and shamisen music—creates a distanced yet intimate aesthetic experience. The puppets’ mechanical grace contrasts with the depth of emotional realism, aligning with Foucault’s idea that ethical selfhood does not arise spontaneously from inner truth but is cultivated through stylized forms—here, articulated through the theater of the marionette. The lovers are not puppets of society merely because they are physically so, but because their lives are manipulated by the codes of commerce, honor, and gender expectations.

Yet, in choosing love-suicide (shinjū), Tokubei and Ohatsu enact a radical rupture in their subjection. Foucault’s notion of ethics is not about submission to norm but the practice of freedom, a way of sculpting oneself against imposed systems. Their double-suicide is a fatal yet beautiful form of resistance—a final aestheticization of their existence.

In The Care of the Self, Foucault emphasizes that ancient ethics centered on the self as something to be actively shaped. Tokubei and Ohatsu’s love becomes their art—crafted in defiance, not nihilism. In death, they reclaim agency, moving from passive victims of society to subjects who narrate the terms of their own end. Thus, Sonezaki dramatizes a Foucauldian art of living and dying: to care for the self is to choose the form of one’s becoming—even when the only choice is death.