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Description
This play, now commonly called "Gorozo the Gallant / Gosho no Gorozo," included in the first act the brutal murder of young Hototogisu, daughter of a tea ceremony master, by Yuri no kata, jealous wife of the daimyo Asama Tomoenojo, who had just taken Hototogisu as his concubine. In this scene Bando Kakitsu I (1847-93) as Menosuke rushes in to try stop Yurinokata, played by Onoe Kikugoro V (1844-1903), from stabbing Hototogisu, acted by Nakamura Fukusuke (1841-1921). Based on a novel by Ryutei Tanehiko (1783-1842), the kabuki version was written by Kawatake Mokuami (1816-1893) and first performed in 1864, but about 1887, when this print was produced, the first act was eliminated because (ostensibly) of its onstage violence. The rest of the play concerns two samurai who had served in the Asama household and a woman they both loved named Satsuki. Mokuami was famous for his domestic dramas, and with bringing new stories and staging to the theater in the late Edo and early Meiji eras. Chikanobu's rendition has the appearance of a staged play, with painted flats in the background, but is quite different from his earlier depictions of actors on stage. Kawatake Mokuami (translated by Alan Cummings), "Gorozo the Gallant" in James R. Brandon and Samuel L. Leiter (ed.), Kabuki Plays on Stage: Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002, pp. 291-317).
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