Page:The Surviving Works of Sharaku (1939).djvu/256

 of Japan has never been questioned; but she is the symbol not only of beauty and of genius, but of sorrow as well, for in her later years all that had made her what she had been vanished, leaving only an old, worn woman, sick, in abject poverty and alone. Her career is imaged in seven stations which have furnished themes for the poets and painters of a thousand years, and the particular episode brought to mind by the title of this play is her quick-witted triumph over a rival poet of the court, Ōtomo no Kuronushi, who had forged evidence to show that her greatest and most acclaimed poem had not been composed by herself, and who sometimes is represented as embittered not only by professional jealousy, but also by the fact that his proffered love was scorned by the poetess.

The text of the present play does not seem to have survived, but the title indicates that it was especially composed because of the urū or intercalary month that was interpolated as a continuation of the eleventh month of 1794.

Our first print shows Komachi with a poem-paper in her hand.