Hisamatsu and O-Some were not destined to enjoy life. Believing that they could never clear themselves of the aspersions cast upon their characters by the slanders of the evil clerk, they seek a happier world where their spirits may be united. In the gloomy storehouse, erected as a mark of congratulation when O-Some was born, the bodies of the lovers are found together. III For the exploitation of the unreal we must turn to the jidaimono. The audiences of Old Japan did not bother their heads if the plot of a play was so complex that they really could not remember where it began and how it ended, to judge from _Kokusenya Kassen_, or the Battle of Kokusenya, a jidaimono by Chikamatsu Monzaemon that enjoyed unbounded popularity when first produced in 1710, and continues to hold its own, proving its lasting qualities. Like Tennyson’s Brook, the complicated characters in this piece come and go, and the play goes on for ever; in consequence, modern audiences must witness it piecemeal, since it is only the doll-actors that are able to give the play in its entirety, and even they must be active from morning until late afternoon if they are to act all the scenes in this queer old Chikamatsu drama. Fashioned out of the cloth of exaggeration, Chikamatsu’s hero, Watonai, has no kinship with human beings; his fierce countenance showing broad red and black markings, the bushy hair, the outer costume of purple covered over with a design of twisted rope in white, the inner garment of scarlet studded with brass buttons, the huge curved sword—Watonai might as well belong to the theatre of the moon, since he has nothing in common with ordinary mortals. Watonai’s father was a faithful minister of a deposed Ming Emperor, who took refuge in Japan, and married a woman of Kyushu. Their son, fired with enthusiasm to go to his father’s country in an attempt to restore the Ming dynasty, reaches the castle of Kanki, a Chinese general married to Watonai’s half-sister, who had been left behind when her father was obliged to flee to Japan. Arrived at the Lion Castle, Watonai allows his Japanese mother to enter as a hostage, and his Chinese sister, Kinsho, whom he has never seen, declares she will try to win her husband to Watonai’s cause. If he is favourable, she will pour white face powder into the stream beneath her window, and should the answer be in the negative, a quantity of rouge will dye the water. But the general does not favour his unknown brother-in-law from Japan, and Kinsho stabs herself in the breast, her blood dyeing the rivulet that flows into the Hoang-ho. Watonai, standing on a stone bridge, watches for a sign from his sister, understands the answer is unfavourable (a property man dexterously turning over a flap in the blue stage river to show the necessary red colour). Amid much stage agony Watonai’s mother and sister die, and Kanki consents to aid the hero.