Namiki Sōsuke

Namiki Sōsuke (並木宗輔) (1695 – ca. 1751), also known as Namiki Senryū, was a prominent Japanese playwright who wrote for both kabuki and bunraku (puppet theater). Nearly forty of his bunraku plays were composed for jōruri, a particular form of musical narrative. He is primarily associated with the Takemoto-za and Toyotake-za, the principal bunraku theaters in Osaka.

Collaborating with a number of other playwrights, including Takeda Izumo I and Miyoshi Shōraku, Namiki Sōsuke created some of the most famous traditional Japanese plays. Among them are Natsumatsuri naniwa kagami (1745, Summer Festival in Naniwa), Sugawara denju tenarai kagami (1746, The Secrets of Sugawara's Calligraphy), Yoshitsune no senbonzakura (1747, The Thousand Cherry Blossoms of Yoshitsune), and Kanadehon chūshingura (1748, The Treasure of the Loyal Retainers). Namiki died while writing Ichinotani futaba gunki (1751, The Chronicle of the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani), but it was completed by some of his collaborators.

References

• Takaya, Ted T. (1985). "Namiki Sōsuke." Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd.