道行

A michiyuki ("going along the road") depicts a journey toward a destination, above all as dance. The travelers are usually a pair of lovers, though parent and child or lord and retainer also appear. Takemoto, tokiwazu, or kiyomoto music sings the passing scenery and the travelers' hearts, turning the journey itself into poetry.

Famous examples include Michiyuki Tabiji no Hanamuko, danced by Okaru and Kanpei of Chūshingura, and Michiyuki Hatsune no Tabi, for Shizuka and the fox Tadanobu of Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura. Even when the road leads toward tragedy, the michiyuki blooms with beauty—and that overlay of light and shadow is its deepest flavor.

The word michiyuki has taken root far beyond the stage. Because its scenes so often showed lovers stealing away together, michiyuki came to mean an elopement itself; the verse style that renders a journey's scenery and feeling is called michiyuki-bun, a tradition of Japanese letters; and even a kimono overcoat bears the name michiyuki—one more ripple of the word's travels.

The michiyuki belongs to no single family: it is a shared language of Japanese theatre, cultivated by kabuki and the puppet stage alike. It resonates deeply with kabuki's sense of space, in which the hanamichi itself becomes a road.