Plays

Minamoto no Yoshitsune, estranged from his powerful brother, flees north disguised as a mountain ascetic with his loyal retainer Benkei and a handful of men.

The tyrant Kiyohara no Takehira has seized power and is about to execute a group of innocents who refuse to bow to him.

In the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter of Edo, the dashing street knight Sukeroku—lover of the great courtesan Agemaki—picks fights night after night.

A traveling peddler appears at a gathering in Ōiso, selling uirō, a famous cure-all medicine from Odawara.

The holy priest Narukami, wronged by the imperial court, has sealed the rain-bringing dragon god beneath a waterfall, plunging the land into drought.

Yosaburō, the pampered heir of a great Edo merchant house, meets the beautiful Otomi on the beach at Kisarazu and falls in love at first sight.

The dashing swordsmen Fuwa Banzaemon and Nagoya Sanza are rivals in love, vying for the favor of the same courtesan.

In Fudō, the deity Fudō Myōō—object of the Ichikawa Sōke's devotion at Naritasan Shinshōji temple—manifests directly upon the stage.

The single character of the title—two women flanking one man—announces the theme: a first wife's ritual raid on her successor, the old custom called uwanari-uchi.

A hero and a villain seize a great elephant from either side and pull—a play named for its own feat of strength.

A hero armed with a stout green bamboo meets a rampaging spirit on the hanamichi and forces it back to the main stage—Oshimodoshi is at once a play, a role, and a piece of staging.

At New Year's, Soga Gorō sits whetting a giant arrowhead, readying himself for the day he will strike down Kudō Suketsune, his father's enemy.

Guan Yu, the great hero of the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, strides onto the kabuki stage—a rare aragoto piece built around a foreign hero.

After the fall of the Heike, the fearsome warrior Akushichibyōe Kagekiyo lies captive in a prison of the victorious Genji.

An actor draws mask after mask from a box, transforming his performance with each one—a play built on the delight of metamorphosis.

At the mansion of Ono no Harumichi, the young lady Nishiki-no-mae suffers a bizarre affliction—her hair stands on end—and her wedding has been postponed.

The title means release from worldly attachment. Its subject is the lingering resentment of the warrior Kagekiyo, unquiet even in death.

A tale of the uncanny, said to draw on the legend of the "snake willow" of Mt. Kōya—a story of jealousy and lingering resentment.

Under the pretense of shaving a hero's beard with a sickle, an enemy tries to slit his throat—and the blade will not cut. An aragoto play about invulnerable strength.