Onoe Baiko as the demon woman in Ibaraki, escaping with her severed arm.
As companion piece to Modori Bashi there is Ibaraki, by the same playwright, which shows the very highest and best development of the music-posture play.
Watanabe Tsuna, after capturing the arm of the devil woman, guards the box in which it is kept, as he is certain she will return to claim her severed member. Disguised as a venerable old lady, refined, peaceful, and altogether attractive, the weird monster appears and desires to enter Watanabe’s abode, but is refused admittance.
Much disappointed, she is leaving, when Watanabe calls her back under the impression that she is one of his relatives, and she is taken within and a feast spread, before her.
When Watanabe’s adventures are related, she expresses a wish to see the arm. At sight of it there is a sudden transformation of her face from that of a placid, kindly old woman to something hateful and sinister. Unable to disguise her true nature, she snatches up the arm and makes off, followed by Watanabe.
When she returns in full fiendish regalia, with long flowing white mane, wearing a terrifying horned mask with staring gold eyeballs, there is a clever fight in the nature of a posture dance, and the strange, picturesque creature suddenly breaks away from the struggle and jumps into the air, where she is poised for a moment—the triumphant posture of all the characters at the end satisfying the audience that the devil woman has been overcome.
Among the many weird shosagoto, few equal Dojo-ji in beauty and interest. Taken from a Nō drama of the same name, Dojo-ji, The Temple of Dojo, it is concerned with that old tale of a beautiful princess who, loving a priest, pursues him, and changing herself into a serpent and twining around the bell in which he is hiding, melts it in her jealous rage. A new bell is hung and she returns to vent her spite upon it.
The temple atmosphere is created when the action begins, the hanamichi swarming with priests and overflowing upon the stage. The Nagauta singers and musicians sit motionless in the background, while a great verdigris-hued temple-bell suspended by a red and white twisted rope swings high among pendent cherry flowers, making a gay scene.