Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), often referred to as "Japan's Shakespeare" and a "god of writers, " was arguably the most famous playwright in Japanese history and wrote more than 100 plays for the kabuki and bunraku theaters. Today, the plays of this major literary figure are performed on kabuki and bunraku stages and in the modern theater, and forty-nine films of his plays have been made, thirty-one of them from the silent era. In this volume, Gerstle translates five plays never before available in English that complement other collections of Chikamatsu's work.