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PART II.

HIKOSAN GOGEN CHIKAI NO SUKEDACHI.
commonly called KEIYAMURA ROKUSUKE.

1 act

[[2 columns]]
Main Characters | actors
Rokusuke | Ebizo 
Onoemon | Hikosaburo
Osono | Baiko
Osono's mother | Taganojo
[[/2 columns]]

Written for the puppet theatre in 1786 by Ume no Shia^[[t]]kaze and Chikamatsu Yasuzo. Later adapted for the Kabuki stage. Of the original eleven acts only four survive. Of these the most famous is that performed today. The play is remarkable for the character of the heroine, O Sono, a "woman of chivalrous spirit" (onna-budo).

Yoshioka Ichimisai was the head of a famous school of fencing. He had two daughter, O Sono, whom he betrothed to his favourite pupil, Keiyamura Rokusuke, and O Yuki, who was already married and the mother of a little boy, Yasamatsu. Ichimisai was challenged to a fencing match by the head of a rival fencing school, Kiyomoku Takumi. Ichimisai beat Takumi and the latter was so filled with shame and anger that he murdered Ichimisai and fled. O Sone and her sister O Yuki went in search of him so as to revenge their father. They took with them a faithful servant and the child Yasumatsu. While the two young women were upon their travels, they were surprised by their enemy Takumi who murder's O Yuki. O Sono, a girl of courageous spirit and remarkable physical strength, continues the search alone. Her servant was also killed and the little boy, Yasamatsu, disappeared. 

Meanwhile Rokusuke had gone to Kokura in Kyushu. To this town Takumi (calling himself Mijin Danjo) also came. He saws a notice announcing that a prize of 500 koku of rice would be given to anyone able to defeat Keiyamura Rokusuke was although the two men had never met. He found a sick old woman, the mother of a woodman called Omoemon, and, forcing her to accompany him, he went to Rokusuke and implored him to allow himself to be beaten so that "Danjo" might be able to support and care for his ailing "mother". Rokusuke was so deeply touched by "Danjo"'s filial devotion that he allows his rival to win the match. As a result he was discredited and reduced to great poverty. He became a woodcutter.

It is at this point that the play opens.

The scene shows Rokusuke's poor dwelling in Kokura. A child's kimono is hanging out to dry. O Sone, disguised as a travelling musician (komuso), enters by the hanamichi. She sees the child's kimono and recognizes it at once as belonging to her little nephew Yasamatsu. She becomes convinced that the murderer of her faithful servant and the kidnapper of the child must be living in this house. O Sono is not only brave but so strong that she is able to lift a mochi-tub with one hand. Now she does not hesitate. She enters the house and seeing Rokusuke attacks him meaning to kill him. Rokusuke wards off the attack and while he is trying to explain to her how the kimono came to be hanging outside his house, he and O Sono recognize

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