Page:The Surviving Works of Sharaku (1939).djvu/58



t is said that whenever the manager of a Japanese theatre needs to be sure of having full houses and consequently large receipts, he invariably puts on one or the other of the two great and ever popular vendetta stories, either —the tale of the forty-seven loyal retainers who avenged their lord, or the story of the Soga brothers, twelfth-century youngsters whose father had been killed, and who in accordance with the knightly code of the time gave their young lives to accomplishing the required vengeance and through their deaths lived again as perennial heroes of the stage.

From about 1710 until after the period of Sharaku the presentation of the Soga story, in one form or another, as the opening play of the New Year, was a custom of the Edo theatre and as at the beginning of 1794 the Miyako-za had put on with conspicuous success a piece called, the production of the fifth month may have been decided on by the astute manager because of the proved popularity of the Soga theme. resembled its famous prototype in recounting a story of revenge accomplished by two brothers, but its action and its characters were in many ways different. Unfortunately no text of the present play has been found; we can see, however, that its main outline was taken from the well known jōruri and that it contained additional material drawn from. The basis of its action is as follows:

In 1701, during the Genroku era, the brothers Ishii Hanzō and Ishii