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HEROES, ROGUES, AND FOOLS 219 0(!( Their Amorous History—Read All About It! TSURUYA NANBOKU IV AND SAKURADA JISUKE II Z With innovative stage tricks, elaborate theatricality, and male derring-do, Edo kabuki appealed to an audience inclined toward the violent, the scandalous, and the weird. Perhaps the most “Edo-esque” playwright, Tsuruya Nanboku IV (1755– 1829) obliged the tastes of the popular audiences of his time with startling stage devices and outrageously evil and mysterious characters. He treated the spectators to bodies rising in mid-air, stage parts ascending and descending , and “quick changes” or hayagawari, which allowed an actor to play multiple roles in the same performance. Nanboku’s career and work are outlined in the introduction to his play Epic Yotsuya Ghost Tale.* Osome and Hisamatsu: Their Amorous History—Read All About It! (Osome Hisamatsu Ukina no Yomiuri, three acts, eight scenes) represents his work at mid-career. Written by Nanboku and his colleague Sakurada Jisuke II (1768–1829), it was performed at Moritaza Theater in Edo in 1813. The first two acts, including the scene translated here, are said to be chiefly Nanboku’s work. Jisuke, Nanboku’s fellow student at the studio of Sakurada Jisuke I (1734–1806), was not a star writer of drama but was known for his dance numbers, some of which have remained popular until today. Drawn from a number of ballads (utazaimon), the plot retells the story of Osome and Hisamatsu, young lovers who famously committed suicide in Osaka in 1710. The play would have been quite familiar; earlier plays, like the famous jōruri puppet play The Ballad, The Newest Version (Shinpan Utazaimon), written by Chikamatsu Hanji (1725–1783) and performed in 1780 at Takemotoza Theater, featured the same basic story found in many utazaimon. Nanboku, for his version, moved the locale to Edo and set the love story within an often comical drama involving deceptive identities, crossedintentions,andsurprisingturnsofevents.Hefollowstheconvention of love-suicide jōruri, applying the rhythmical seven-five syllabic scheme in speeches while having characters allude to or actually sing popular songs. Written for the great female impersonator Iwai Hanshirō V (1776–1847), “Osome Hisamatsu” requires thirty-four quick changes of its star, enabling him to perform seven separate roles: Osome (a young woman), Hisamatsu (a young man), Takekawa (a middle-aged lady-in-waiting), Osome’s stepmother Teishō (a middle-aged lay nun), Oroku (a daring extortionist), Omitsu (a country girl), and Osaku (a servant woman). 220 HEROES, ROGUES, AND FOOLS In the selection that follows, Kamekichi, a hairdresser, and Matahachi, a palanquin bearer, appear in front of the Aburaya shop. Dressed as mountain monks and carrying conch horns to perform, they sing an utazaimon that narrates the tragic story of Osome and Hisamatsu, the hero and heroine of the play. This invites the audience to participate in their shared knowledge of the story while the lovers in the play are ignorant about their end. The inside joke between play and audience gets a reprise in the last scene when a street performer with a monkey sings an Osome-Hisamatsu ballad to cheer up Omitsu, Hisamatsu’s abandoned and deranged fiancée. Echoing the cries of newsboys (yomiuri) hawking the latest gossip, Nanboku’s title highlights the “scandal” (ukina) aspect of the story. Framed within a search for a stolen sword, the lord’s family treasure, and a certificate ofitsauthenticity,theplayisbuiltaroundtheloveaffairbetweenOsome,the daughter of the owner of Aburaya, an affluent pawnshop that also sells oil, and Hisamatsu, the shop apprentice from the country, who is later revealed to be heir to the samurai victimized by the theft of the treasure sword and certificate. Osome is already betrothed to Seibei, an extraordinarily compassionate and able young merchant of medicinal herbs. He stands in stark contrast to the immature lover boy, Hisamatsu. An “illicit” affair between employee and the master’s daughter is punishable by death or exile; when Hisamatsu, having killed a man, runs after Osome, who has left home, the play’s tragic ending seems to be set. Nanboku, however, entertains the audience to the last minute by giving the play a happy ending, improbable as it is. The treasure sword and certificate conveniently appear, legitimating Hisamatsu’s samurai status and returning him to a clean slate, so to speak, even regarding his crime of murder. He, Osome, and Omitsu live happily ever after as husband, wife, and mistress. In addition to dramatizing theft, robbery, torture, and murder and strewing his stage with blood and corpses...

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