An Actor's Revenge

Yukinojo, a Kabuki actor, seeks revenge by destroying the three men who caused the deaths of his parents. Also involved are the daughter of one of Yukinojo's targets, two master thieves, and a swordsman who himself is out to kill Yukinojo. While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge, firstly by seducing the daughter of one of them, secondly by ruining them... —Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk> An adaptation of a novel by Otokichi Mikami. In the early 1810s, an Edo-based merchant is driven into bankruptcy by Sansai the magistrate and by the rival merchants Kawaguchiya and Hiromiya. The merchant's wife is blackmailed into having sex with Hiromiya, under a false promise of preventing further actions against her family. After both spouses commit suicide, their orphaned son Yukitaro is adopted by the actor and theatrical manager Kikunojo Nakamura. Yukitaro eventually gains some fame as an onnagata, a male actor who plays female roles. He takes the stage name Yukinojo. He wears women's clothes and uses the language and mannerisms of a woman offstage as well as on. In 1830, Yukitaro returns to Edo as the main star of a kabuki troupe. The supposedly meek and gentle professional actor is actually obsessed with getting revenge on his family's foes. He decides to seduce Sansai's lovely daughter Namiji in order to gain entrance to her father's inner circle. Yukitaro eventually gets his revenge, but he is dismayed that his plan had unexpected collateral damage and that he caused the death of an innocent woman. In reaction, he retires from the stage and then disappears without a trace. —Dimos I