Tōjūrō’s Love and Other Works

When an actor’s familiar triumphs begin to fail him, how far will he go to make his next role convincing? In “Tōjūrō’s Love,” rivalry on the Kyoto stage leads a celebrated performer toward a chilling experiment with another person’s feelings.

The five-scene play “Kesa’s Husband” revisits a legendary act of sacrifice through the voice of the man left behind. Its intimate conversation gives way to violence, repentance, and a grief that resists the praise others bestow on virtue. Elsewhere, a boy’s cruel game ends in an old woman’s forgiveness, and a chance encounter in a railway dining car turns upon a remembered appetite for fried oysters.

“Impressions of Akutagawa” completes the collection with Kikuchi’s candid portrait of a fellow writer: brilliant, controlled, and always carrying a book. A major novelist, dramatist, and publisher, Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948) wrote with particular interest in ambition and moral conflict. These five works, first published from 1917 to 1927, appear complete in a new English translation with brief explanatory notes.