Although both the lovers Koharu and Jihei had traversed evenly difficult lives, one may say that Jihei had sacrificed more than what Koharu can forgo. Jihei was already married to Kamiya Osan during that time and had a fair number of children with her. However, his unfathomable love for Koharu, then a 19-year old prostitute at the Kinokuni House in Sonezaki, was beyond compares and he has but to let go of his life and string connections with his wife and his children.
On the earlier part of the play we saw how Koharu had thought otherwise of the suicide pact she made with Jihei, making her morose, depressed by the idea of meeting with death himself. But Jihei was more than looking forward to this pact as he sees it as the only way he could be joined with Koharu in eternity. He had gone on a great extent but at the end of Act I he forfeited the idea of suicide so Koharu could live peacefully without the burdens of him. Here he was seen to make another sacrifice for the entire benefit of his loved one.
At the end of the story, Jihei did not only leave his children behind because of the suicide pact but he had also given up the love and concerns of those dear to him, specifically his brother Magoemon whose concern for him was profound. Jihei have done all these sacrifices, worthy or not, just to savor at last an afterlife with his most beloved Koharu.
