ABSTRACT
Various textual and pictorial sources indicate that, by around 1614, several other plays were being performed in improvised theaters at the festivals, shrines, and deserted riverbeds throughout the Japan. The joruri Takadachi is similarly suggestive of the tendency toward extraordinary violence in early puppet theater. Although the text of the 1625 Takadachi godan is closely based on that of the kowakamai Takadachi in the Daigashira textual line, it contains some important differences, the most obvious of which is its conclusion. Matabei’s lurid paintings of the scene leave little to the imagination, and by showing the women first stripped and then murdered, he seems to emphasize the sexual nature of the violence. Perhaps most troubling of all, Matabei depicts Semeguchi no Rokuro grinning dementedly as he stabs Tokiwa between the breasts, alluding to the bandit taking sadistic pleasure in the crime.
