During the month of April, the Kabukiza in Ginza is offering its annual Nakamura-kai program, featuring such major actors as Kichiemon, Jakuemon, Ganjiro, Tomijuro and Baigyoku, who belong to the Nakamura line of kabuki actors.

It's an inviting program, with the distinguished onnagata and Living National Treasure Jakuemon appearing in "Kasane" and "Terakoya" with his nephew Kichiemon, and Ganjiro, the champion of the "soft" wagoto style of acting associated with Kyoto and Osaka, leading his sons Kanjaku and Senjaku in two classic Chikamatsu works. The plays are dedicated to Ganjiro's father Ganjiro II, who died in 1983.

The afternoon program begins with a scene from the historical work, "Yoshitsune's Letter from Koshigoe," adapted from a 1754 bunraku play. Gotobei (Tomijuro) is waiting to be introduced to the famous general Minamoto no Yoshitsune, hoping to join his forces, but two other samurai conspire to ruin Gotobei's chances by encouraging him to drink too much sake. Helplessly drunk, Gotobei dances the auspicious dance "Sanbaso" with a group of comical house servants.

"Yoshitsune's Letter" is followed by the beautiful and grotesque dance drama "Kasane," performed to Kiyomoto accompaniment. Originally part of the play "Kesakake Matsu Narita no Riken," it was first presented in Edo in 1823.

Kasane (Jakuemon) is desperately in love with Yoemon, a young farmer with a samurai background, who has seduced her mother and killed her father. He has fled Edo, but Kasane follows him to the bank of the Kine River and begs him to die with her, telling him that she is now three months pregnant. Yoemon finally agrees, but then he finds a human skull floating down the stream on a wooden votive tablet, with a rusty sickle stuck into its left eye socket. Yoemon immediately recognizes the skull as the head of Kasane's father, whom he has murdered. When he breaks the tablet into two, Kasane falls and becomes crippled, and when he pulls the sickle out of the skull, the left side of Kasane's face suddenly is horribly disfigured.

Yoemon strikes Kasane with the sickle, fatally wounding her, and abuses her furiously. Then he tries to flee, but is drawn back by the stunning motion of his victim's dead hand.

"Terakoya" is an old kabuki favorite on the theme of a knight who sacrifices his own son in order to save the life of the young heir to the 9th-century minister Sugawara no Michizane. Kichiemon learned the role of the hero Matsuomaru from his eminent grandfather Kichiemon Nakamura I, but has not played it in 16 years. Nonetheless, his Matsuomaru is very impressive. Jakuemon enhances his nephew's performance with his superb rendition of Matsuomaru's wife Chiyo.

The evening program is devoted to Chikamatsu Monzaemon's ever-popular double-suicide stories, "Breaking the Sealed Packages of Gold Coins" and "Sonezaki Shinju." In the first, Ganjiro plays Chubei, who runs a business in Osaka dispatching express messengers for the transportation of money. Chubei is madly in love with the courtesan Umegawa (Senjaku), whose contract he hopes to buy out. At the teahouse one day, Chubei overhears Hachiemon, another client of Umegawa's who is also interested in buying her out, insulting him publicly.

Incensed, Chubei tries to convince Hachiemon that he too has enough money to redeem Umegawa, but, carried away, opens the package containing 300 gold coins entrusted to him by a customer. The moment he has broken the seals, however, Chubei realizes the gravity of his offense. He hands the money to the proprietor of the teahouse as Umegawa's ransom, and then asks Umegawa to die with him.

Ganjiro's heated exchange with Gato Kataoka as Hachiemon is one of the highlights of this play. It is interesting that Hachiemon, treated as Chubei's good friend in Chikamatsu's bunraku original, has been made into a typical villain in the kabuki version.

Between the two plays Tokizo and Baigyoku do the fantasy dance number "The Journey of Butterflies," in which the beautiful Komaki and her samurai lover have been transformed into black butterflies after giving their lives to save their masters.

Chikamatsu's great bunraku classic "Sonezaki Shinju" was not adapted for the kabuki stage until 1953, when the late playwright Nobuo Uno undertook the task for Ganjiro (then named Senjaku, and just 21 years old) and his father Ganjiro II in the roles of the doomed lovers Ohatsu and Tokubei. His success in "Sonezaki Shinju" made Senjaku (now Ganjiro III) a major star overnight, and he has played Ohatsu nearly 1,000 times since, with his father playing Tokubei. Now Ganjiro's older son Kanjaku has succeeded to the part of Tokubei.

Ohatsu, an Osaka courtesan, is gentle, warm and passionate. Her lover Tokubei's career and plans for redeeming her contract so they can get married are destroyed by a friend's betrayal, and, seeing the destruction of all their hopes, she convinces him to join her in death. The scene as the two make their way through the night to die in the Sonezaki woods is one of the most affecting in Japanese literature.

Ganjiro originated this role in 1953 under the direction of his mentor Tetsuji Takechi, and he has polished it over the years, imparting to it more natural, human nuances. Not surprisingly, he quite overshadows his son Kanjaku as Tokubei.