Many Thanks to NHK TV, kabuki21 and the Original Uploader who posted this kabuki play online.
+ Summary : The play “Furu Amerika-ni Sode-ha Nurasaji” (“My Sleeves Will Never Be Wet With the Rain of America”) is set during the final days of the Edo period as there were tense relations between Japanese and foreigners. A geisha named Kiyū (played by Japanese actress Dan Rei) is beautiful, but she is sickly and steadily moves downward until she comes to a teahouse that is especially for foreigners. There she encounters her old friend Osono (Bandō Tamasaburō) who has also fallen in the world because of her failures caused by drink. Alone and despondent, Kiyū commits suicide and on the spur of the moment, Osono explains it away by saying that Kiyū decided to die rather than serve the foreign barbarians. Unfortunately, this becomes a famous story and Osono tells the heroic story of Kiyū night after night with more and more elaborate embellishments including Kiyū’s death poem in which she declares that she will “never let her sleeves get wet with the American rain.” But eventually, Osono’s lies catch up with her.
