An Outlaw Hero in an Unjust Society
Stealing from the Rich and Helping the Poor

In 2009, Ryuzanji Company has toured to Taiwan with “High Life” of Lee Macdougal, which won the audiences acclamation. In 2015 TIFA, Ryuzanji Company brought the work of the father of Japanese modern theater. They re-produced the Mokuami Kawatake’s Kabuki work, Nezumi Kozo, a story based on a real thief who lived in the 1830s, and re-interpreted the play as Rat Kid Jirokichi in the form of modern underground theater in 2013. Rather than preserving Japan's traditional art of kabuki, it takes the original meaning of the word kabuki: the act of singing, dancing, bringing joy, and focusing the energy of the common people. Rat-Kid Jirokichi is a true kabuki that lives in the present.

In the late Edo Shogunate era, an abandoned child raised by the thief Okuma became the outlaw hero Jirokichi, who stole money from the rich and shared it with the poor. Later he moved to Kamakura and disguised himself as a fortuneteller. One night, in order to help the cutler Shinsuke, he sneaked into a feudal lord’s house and stole a hundred ryō. Unfortunately he was discovered by the guard Yosobei, but he also found out that this guard was actually his own father. However, being a thief, he was unable to reveal his identity but had to leave crying. Jirokichi gave the money to Shinsuke, but several days later, he heard that the stolen money had been discovered and Shinsuke arrested. Even Jirokichi's father Yosobei had been implicated in abetting the crime, and thus imprisoned.