Travelling Actors

Kamatari Fujiwara and Kan Yanagiya play a pantomime horse in a traveling troupe. Fujiwara spent five years as the hind legs, and has now played the front legs for ten. There is no actor, he explains, who can play the front legs of a horse better than he. He is always studying real horses to perfect his technique. Yanagiya has five years experience as the back legs. The troupe is playing the sticks at the moment. When the horse's head is damaged, Fujiwara balks. The substitute head looks too much like a fox. It interferes with his art. So the head of the troupe, in concert with the local man who is sponsoring them, gets a real horse to take their part, and demotes them.

Mikio Naruse's comedy takes a look at show business from the uncertain underside: the tiny distinctions that soothe the ego, the compromises and lies that must be told to placate the sponsors and get some money out of them. Fujiwara and Yanagiya are ridiculous, slow, and pompous. For them, however, it's a tragedy and that humanizes their foolish characters.