When Yoshimine had been left behind he began leading a life of dissipation; the precious arrows were lost and the young man fell under the influence of one of Ashikaga Takauji’s followers to such an extent that he persuaded his brother to give this man a position of trust in the army that in the end enabled him to bring about the tragic catastrophe and compass the death of Yoshioki at the ferry of Yaguchi. In despair because the arrows entrusted to his care had not been properly guarded, Yoshimine set out with his sweetheart to search for them and when he himself was about to be murdered, as his brother had been, at the Yaguchi Ferry, they came suddenly flying through the air and lodged in the throats of the two men with whom he was fighting. That is the miracle which took place at the ferry, and we have described the subsidiary action which has to do with Yoshimine and the arrows merely to explain the title of the play. There are no prints by Sharaku representing this part of the story and we return now to the main plot.
When Yoshioki had gone to the war, Yura Hyōgonosuke, whom he had left in charge of his wife and child and castle, realizing the rashness and inexperience of the young general, turned over the guardianship to another faithful retainer, Minase no Rokurō Munezumi, and set out in disguise to join his lord and guard him from his own too reckless valor as well as from his enemies. It is to be admitted that Hyōgonosuke took rather forceful methods of exercising restraint, and when his identity was disclosed, Yoshioki, furious, sent him home in disgrace. Then Yoshioki was murdered at the ferry, and the tale of the loyalty of his retainers—a theme invariably dear to the Japanese—goes on through the wanderings of the wife and child, ever led and protected by Hyōgonosuke and Munezumi, until the latter is killed by their enemies and the former sacrifices his own son in order to save the son of his dead lord.
We show first Sharaku’s portrait of Hyōgonosuke.
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