The Battles of Coxinga

It features effects uniquely suited for the puppet theater, such as the villain Ri Tōten gouging out an eye (ostensibly to prove his loyalty).

Go Sankei opposes making good on Ri Tōten's promise, pointing out to him the immorality and outright foolishness of sending away the Empress with the heir.

The Emperor, favorably impressed by Ri Tōten's sacrifice decides to marry his younger sister, the lovely Princess Sendan (栴檀皇女) to him.

She is opposed to any marriage so the Emperor forces her to wager her assent on the outcome of a mock battle between 200 court ladies wielding plum or cherry branches.

When he discovers the "senselessness" of the mock battle, he reproaches the emperor at length for alarming the palace; for setting a bad example; for his extravagances; his dislike of governance; and for being such a careless ruler that he didn't know that Ri Tōten was responsible for the famine by stealing rice from the Imperial storehouses and using his ill-got proceeds to bribe and corrupt people throughout the country; and last (but not least) for not recognizing that Ri Tōten gouging out his eye was a message to the Tartars that they had his complete backing and should invade.

Ryūkakun remains on the shore and perishes fighting the Tartars; they leave satisfied that everyone (including the prince) is dead, except for Go Sankei — although he does not worry them.

Act 2 dawns in a sleepy Japanese fishing village, to which the "Grand Tutor" Tei Shiryū fled after being banished from China so many years ago.

Despite his earnest efforts, he never truly grasps military matters until one day walking on the beach he espies a clam and a shrike locked in combat.

No sooner has Watōnai's wife Komutsu (小むつ) pried apart the shrike and clam than the two see a small boat drifting towards them.

Encouraged by a prophecy of victory mentioned by Tei Shiryū's unnamed Japanese wife and by analysis of ideograms and the I Ching, Watōnai resolves to reconquer China for the emperor.

An Taijin (安大人), underling of Ri Toten, rushes up with his officers and soldiers – they had driven the tiger thence, intending to take its head as a present for the Great King.

At the impregnable Castle of Lions (獅子城), Watōnai is in favor of attacking at once with his newfound soldiers, arguing that his half-sister's failure to ever send a letter to Tei Shiryū amply proves her disloyalty.

This proof conclusively settles the matter, as the image matches and none by Kinshōjo and Tei Shiryū would remember the portrait now as well.

Before she vanishes into the gate, an agreement is made with Tei Shiryū and Watōnai waiting outside: If the negotiations go well, white dye will be dumped into the cistern, which will shortly flow into the river outside and be very visible.

While Kinshōjo's maids are occupied trying to find some acceptable fare for the mother to eat, Kanki returns with good news: He has been promoted by the Great King to general of cavalry, commanding 100,000 horsemen.

Kanki explains that if he didn't kill Kinshōjo before announcing the alliance, he would be shamed before the whole world by gossip claiming that he did not join Watōnai's rebellion out of principle but because he was wholly dominated by his wife and her relations.

Watōnai bursts in among them regardless of the guards, and comes to loggerheads with Kanki when Kinshōjo comes back in: the scarlet came from no dye but the blood of her fatally cut open belly.

Coxinga's mother perceives all this with joy, and true to her earlier words about shame, stabs herself in the throat and cuts through her liver.

With her dying words, she exhorts Coxinga to defeat the hordes of Tartary mercilessly and to filially obey Tei Shiryū.

Sendan and Komutsu, at the harbor, ask a young fisher boy wearing an uncannily antique hairstyle to take them part of the way in his fishing boat.

For the past two years he had wandered the wilderness and remote regions of China as a fugitive, avoiding the agents of Ri Toten and raising the infant prince; he has grown inured to hardship and is weary.

Pausing, he sees "two old men with shaggy eyebrows and white hair, seemingly in perfect harmony with the pine breeze, as friends who have lived together for years."

The two old men reveal that what he saw so vividly and as so close as the board itself were really hundreds of leagues away and that more than five years have passed since he began watching their game.

The two vanish and Go Sankei discovers that he has grown a long beard and that the prince is now a seven-year-old of grave voice and mien.

They exchange news and discover that the villainous former envoy, Prince Bairoku and his thousands of men are swarming up the mountainside after them.

The survivors are pelted with rocks and other missiles until they succumb and Prince Bairoku, having managed to climb out of the chasm, has his head bashed in by Go Sankei with the two immortals' go board.

Coxinga discusses with his war council of Kanki, Go Sankei and Tei Shiryū how to defeat the Great King, Ri Toten, and their forces.

Kanki proposes that several thousands of baskets of choice provisions be thoroughly poisoned and left behind in another feigned retreat, whereupon they would counterattack.

Coxinga likes both suggestions but decides to simply engage in a straightforward frontal assault, with Komutsu and her Japanese-looking troops in the vanguard.

The Princess Sendan rushes in with a message from Tei Shiryū: He has decided on an honorable suicide by attacking Nanking alone.