生世話物

Kizewamono are the domestic plays (sewamono) of exceptional realism. The prefix ki is taken to mean "pure" or "raw": these works transcribe onto the stage, without ornament, the customs of society's lower depths and the darker workings of human nature.

The genre is said to have developed in Edo kabuki from the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–30) onward, with Tsuruya Nanboku IV as its representative author—his Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan, unsparing in Iemon's villainy and Oiwa's tragedy, its masterpiece. In the final Edo years Kawatake Mokuami is said to have written many kizewa plays for Ichikawa Kodanji IV.

In the final Edo years the kizewa line of realism joined with Kawatake Mokuami's musical dialogue to reach a summit all its own. In Sannin Kichisa Kuruwa no Hatsugai, said to have premiered in 1860, the thief Ojō Kichisa—a man in a young woman's furisode—sings out the famous lines in 7-5 meter at the riverbank by Sumida, "The moon hazy, the whitebait fires dim in the spring sky..." Portraying lives lived in the city's shadows, the language flows like music: one destination of the domestic play.

Aragoto's perfected stylization and kizewa's raw reality form kabuki's two poles. That Ichikawa Danjūrō VII is said to have created the role of Tamiya Iemon at the premiere of Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan shows the house of aragoto leaving its mark on the theatre of realism as well.