Why are Jayanagi, Kan'u and Uwanari so rarely staged — will we ever see them?

Jayanagi, Kan'u and Uwanari are among the Jūhachiban that have stood longest away from the stage. The eighteen include works played as a matter of course today — Kanjinchō, Sukeroku, Shibaraku — and alongside them these, whose names are known while the plays themselves are almost never seen. Membership of the same list conceals very different circumstances.

They go unperformed not for lack of popularity but because reviving them costs incomparably more. Where only fragments of plot and text survive, the work begins with making a script at all: collating surviving ledgers, programmes and pictorial sources, supplying what is missing, and then building movement, music and scenery from nothing. Where a normal staging tunes a shared kata to this month's company, this is the making of a kata.

Performances are therefore reserved for special occasions — a succession, an anniversary, times when a large company and a real preparation period can be assembled. Revival attempts including these plays have continued in recent years, so it is not a case of never again. But since they are not regular repertory, the practical stance is: when a staging is announced, do not miss it. To witness the moment a lapsed play returns is itself one of the things the Jūhachiban, as a living project, has to offer.