Another scene that stands out vividly among the loyalty plays is also by Takeda Izumo, and it would be difficult to judge which displays the better workmanship, _Terakoya_, The Village School, or the Sushi-ya scene from _Yoshitsune Sembonzakura_. Yoshitsune is the name of that legendary hero of Japan whose adventures form the plots for many a Kabuki play, and _Sembonzakura_ signifies ten thousand cherry trees, suggesting something of the lustre and fame of Yoshitsune’s name. Sushi-ya is a humble shop where rice sandwiches stuffed with vegetables or fish are sold. It was in this sushi-ya that a Heike prince lived in disguise. The interior of the sushi-ya is shown, wooden buckets arranged in neat rows. The young man of the shop, who is in reality the Heike prince, enters with a small tub slung over his shoulder, as he has been about the business of the shop. O-Sato, daughter of the proprietor, loves the effeminate youth, and is seen making overtures to him, which he does not particularly relish. Gonta, the prodigal son of the family, returns home. This character has the bushy hair which Kabuki has conventionalised to identify robbers and bold, bad men. His large black-and-white-checked kimono is in striking contrast to his bare skin and the inky blackness of his wig. He has come after money, and knows well how to play upon the feelings of his mother. She is inclined to scold him at first, but he relates a tale of woe with such telling force that she is instantly won over to his side. When Gonta turns his face towards his fond parent his countenance expresses all degrees of contrition and misery, but when he takes the audience into his confidence he swiftly changes to the prodigal again, crafty and watchful, lest his good acting in the rôle of a much-abused person may fail to secure him the advantage he desires. The mother goes to open a chest of drawers to give him some money, but she cannot unlock it. Gonta, who really belongs to the light-fingered gentry, easily picks the lock and helps himself generously. Some one is heard approaching, and to hide his newly acquired riches he places the money in one of the sushi tubs standing on the verandah, and disappears behind the blue and white curtain that separates the shop from the dwelling. By way of the hanamichi, the old keeper of the sushi-ya returns home in a state of agitation, with some object concealed under his arm wrapped in a kimono, and when the prince, in the capacity of a servant of the place, comes to welcome him, the master sends him on an errand, and when alone unwraps a human head and slips it for concealment into a tub standing next to that in which Gonta has deposited his ill-gotten gains. Disclosing his secret to the prince, the old man tells him how his enemies are searching for him, but that he accidentally came upon the body of a samurai who had been killed in a fray and with whose head he intends to mislead the enemy.