Jihei

"Jihei" — the name of the doomed merchant protagonist of "Meido no Hikyaku," the great Joruri play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon — appears as the title of this Yumeji composition, suggesting a depiction of the ill-fated lover who embezzles money to pay for his obsessive attachment to the courtesan Koharu. Yumeji was drawn to the Chikamatsu love-suicide plays for the same reasons he was drawn to all narratives of impossible love: the tragic confirmation of the romantic ideal, the proof that desire, when pure enough, could overwhelm all social obligation. Jihei represents that proof in its masculine form.