Background
Katakiuchi ukiki no Kameyama (Grief for a gentle flower and revenge at Kameyama: 敵討優曇華亀山) falls into a genre of kabuki and puppet plays called, broadly, adauchi mono (revenge plays: 仇打ち物 or katakiuchi mono 敵討物). More specifically, the play is one of the Kameyama no katakiuchi mono (Kameyama revenge plays: 亀山敵討物) based on an actual event involving the Ishii brothers in the Date clan's castle at Kameyama in 1701. The tale presents Ishikawa Hyôsuke's vendetta against Akabori Mizuemon, a villain who tricked Hyôsuke’s father into believing that his wife had been unfaithful, which ends in his murdering her. Hyôsuke, his brother-in-law Genzô, and Genzô’s wife (Hyôsuke’s sister Okano) exact revenge against Mizuemon at Kameyama Castle. The story also became intertwined with many variations on the exceedingly popular revenge tale of the Soga brothers and was grouped with plays called Genroku Soga (Soga of the Genroku period: 元禄曾我).
Design
In this entertaining scene the actors are being ferried across a shallow but turbulent river by a dozen tattooed porters who can barely keep their heads above water.`
References: IKBYS-III, no. 352
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