曽我物

Soga-mono are works based on the vendetta of the Soga brothers, Jūrō and Gorō, who avenged their father by striking down Kudō Suketsune in 1193. The story has been retold across noh, bunraku, and kabuki alike.

In Edo kabuki, from the Kyōhō era (1716–36) onward, every theatre staged a Soga play for the New Year season—a custom said to have lasted into the early Meiji years—mourning the brothers' untimely deaths while celebrating the new year.

The readiest way to taste the Soga style today is Kotobuki Soga no Taimen, "The Felicitous Soga Encounter," in which the brothers first come face to face with their enemy Kudō Suketsune. Hot-blooded Gorō in aragoto style, gentle elder brother Jūrō in wagoto—kabuki's classic role types assemble in a single scene, still staged again and again at New Year and celebratory productions.

The Soga story has left its trace even on the seasonal vocabulary of Japanese: rain on the 28th day of the fifth month of the old calendar—the day the vendetta was achieved—is told to be the tears of Tora Gozen weeping for the fallen Jūrō, and is called tora ga ame, "Tora's rain," a summer season-word in haiku. The tale soaked that deeply into everyday language.

The Soga world runs deep in the Kabuki Jūhachiban: Yanone shows Soga Gorō heroically sharpening an arrowhead, and the dashing hero of Sukeroku is, in truth, Soga Gorō in disguise. The art of the Ichikawa Sōke and the Soga plays are inseparable.