, 1h53 Directed byKon Ichikawa OriginJapon GenresDrama ThemesFilms about television ActorsKazuo Hasegawa, Ayako Wakao, Fujiko Yamamoto, Ichikawa Raizō VIII, Shintarō Katsu, Eiji Funakoshi Rating73% Three men, Sansai Dobe (Ganjirō Nakamura), Kawaguchiya (Saburō Date) and Hiromiya (Eijirō Yanagi) are responsible for the deaths of seven-year-old Yukitarō’s mother and father. Yukitarō is adopted and brought up by Kikunojō Nakamura (Chūsha Ichikawa), the actor-manager of an Osaka kabuki troupe. The adult Yukitarō (Kazuo Hasegawa) becomes an onnagata, a male actor who plays female roles. He takes the stage name Yukinojō. 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. Yukinojō 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 Yamitarō, also played by Hasegawa.