Botan Dōrō

Botan Dōrō entered Japanese literary culture in the 17th century, through a translation of a book of Chinese ghost stories called Jiandeng Xinhua (New Tales Under the Lamplight) by Qu You.

[1] In 1666, author Asai Ryoi responded to the Edo period craze for kaidan, spawned largely by the popular game Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, by adapting the more spectacular tales from Jiandeng Xinhua into his own book Otogi Boko (Hand Puppets).

Asai removed the Buddhist moral lessons and gave the stories a Japanese setting, placing Botan Dōrō in the Nezu district of Tokyo.

[4] In order to achieve a greater length, the story was fleshed out considerably, adding background information on several characters as well as additional subplots.

[6] A more modern version of the play was written in 1974 by the playwright Onishi Nobuyuki for the Bungakuza troupe, starring Sugimura Haruko, Kitamura Kazuo and Ninomiya Sayoko.

[citation needed] A new adaptation by Kawatake Shinshichi III was staged for the first time with a full kabuki casting in June 1989, again at the Shimbashi Embujo.

[8] On the first night of Obon, a beautiful woman and a young girl holding a peony lantern stroll by the house of the widowed samurai Ogiwara Shinnojo.

[13] This theme follows the standard pattern of a Noh theater katsuramono play, where the female ghost hides her spectral nature until the final reveal at the end of the story.

[citation needed] Botan Dōrō is famous for the onomatopoeia 'karan koron', which is the sound of Otsuyu's wooden clogs announcing her appearance on stage.

Yamamoto's film roughly follows the Otogi Boko version of the story, establishing protagonist Hagiwara Shinzaburo as a teacher who flees an unwanted marriage with his brother's widow and lives quietly some distance from his family.

The usual encounter with Otsuyu follows, although the inevitable consequence is treated as a happy ending, or, at worst, bittersweet, since they are united beyond the grave, if not in life.

[16] In 1972, director Chūsei Sone made a pink film version for Nikkatsu's Roman Porno series, entitled Hellish Love (性談牡丹燈籠, Seidan botan doro).

Following the rakugo and kabuki versions, Hellish Love places emphasis on the sexual nature of the relationship between the protagonist and Otsuyu.

[17] A massive change in the story is made in Masaru Tsushima's 1996 Otsuyu: Kaidan botan dōrō (Haunted Lantern).