This does not divert for long, and Tsurukiyo becomes angry at repeated delays and murmurs discontentedly, his small companion shedding tears because he is unable to console him. Finally Tsurukiyo says that even the sparrows are fed, but that they have nothing to eat.
After the children have partaken of Masaoka’s frugal repast of plain boiled rice, the action is rapid. An aged relative of the family enters clad in gold brocade, her white hair flowing down her back, guided over the hanamichi by maids bearing lanterns, and an accomplice carrying the box of poisoned cakes, a gift for Tsurukiyo.
As his fare has been of the scantiest, Tsurukiyo looks longingly at this box, but a whispered word from Masaoka warns him in time. Semmatsu is mistaken for Tsurukiyo, and the wicked woman who has been commissioned to kill him performs her task in a cruel fashion, Masaoka sacrificing the life of her son in order to save that of the little lord.
II
The working out of the ends of justice, the righting of wrongs, the trailing of a murderer for years by the entire members of a family, such were the plots that appealed to the audiences of Old Japan, and the writers of plays knew well how to serve their desires.
As the secret map describing a lost gold mine, or parchment hidden in the head of a bronze idol relating to a buried treasure starts the interminable, harrowing incidents of a modern cinematograph serial, the subject of revenge for wrong done held together the many scenes and acts of the Doll-theatre and Kabuki plays.
The greatest revenge play of Japan is Chushingura (lit., Loyal Retainers’ Storehouse), or the story of the faithful Forty-seven Ronin, who waited an opportunity to slay the miserable old villain who had caused their lord, Hangan, to commit harakiri, and when they had accomplished their end died as one man by their own hands.
Produced in 1748, Chushingura was written by Takeda Izumo in collaboration with Namiki Senryu and Miyoshi Shoraku.
Ichikawa Sadanji as Sadakura, the highwayman, in the play Chushingura.