the other, loyalty to the daughter of her lord, whose wet-nurse she had been and with whom she had been sent to a distant province.
Kabuki audiences, however, had a taste for melodrama and complicated plots, and so more characters and episodes were added. In the present version there are two villains, the Washizuka brothers, Kwandayū and Hachiheiji. Kwandayū, the elder, by the theft of three hundred golden ryō entrusted to Yosaku, causes him to be disgraced and so lose his position as the chief retainer of his lord; he also is responsible for the death of Shigenoi’s father. Hachiheiji, among other evil deeds, kills Yosaku’s half-brother when he comes to replace the amount that had been stolen. Further details need not be given, save to say that virtue is properly triumphant in the end.
We introduce first the husband.
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