For this week's Japanese enrichment video, I revisited a Youtube creator I used to watch: Linfamy. I've always enjoyed learning about history and this interest brought me to this Youtube Channel. Linfamy mainly focuses on "odd" parts of Japanese history and as you watch more videos, you start picking up common themes among Japanese values. For the purpose of the blog, I chose the video about 心中 because I've actually learned more about it through my USEM last year. Last year, I took an University Seminar with Prof. Amanda Kennell and she had her friend who specialized in Japanese puppetry (Bunraku—文楽) to give a talk and the topic of that speech was 心中.
心中 is essentially "Double Suicide" and was deemed the "highest form of love" among (traditionally) a man and a geisho. Often times, a geisho won't actually self-harm to show their customers their love, but instead, give them small clippings of her hair as a way to show that intention (also easier to mass-produce for multiple customers).
心中 is very popular because of the mild "tragedy" of the idea; kind of similar to why Romeo and Juliet is so popular in modern-media. In the realms of 文楽, perhaps the most famous story is 心中天網島 (Shinju Ten no Amijma), which literally translates to Double Suicide. The story itself is not as romantic as Romeo and Juliet— in fact involving adultery— but was apparently based off a real life case of two lovers dying together because of their class difference and society's un-approval of their love (if I remember correctly from the 文楽 class).
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