An Actor's Revenge

Three men, Sansai Dobe, Kawaguchiya and Hiromiya are responsible for the deaths of seven-year-old Yukitaro's mother and father. Yukitarō is adopted and brought up by Kikunojo Nakamura, the actor-manager of an Osaka kabuki troupe. The adult Yukitaro becomes an onnagata, a male actor who plays female roles. He takes the stage name Yukinojo. Like many of the great onnagata, particularly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he wears women’s clothes and uses the language and mannerisms of a woman offstage as well as on. Many years later, the troupe pays a visit to Edo, where the three men responsible for his parents’ deaths now live. Yukinojo brings about their deaths by means of various stratagems, then, apparently overcome by what he has done, retires from the stage and disappears, no one knows where. The events of the film are coolly observed and sardonically commented on by the Robin-Hood-like thief Yamitaro.