Like royalty, kabuki families can trace their lineages back years and years into the distant past, interrupted only occasionally by an adoption to keep a line going. This May the Kabuki-za holds the monthlong Dankikusai, a theatrical festival that was started in 1936 to commemorate the outstanding achievements of two dramatic giants in the Meiji Period (1868-1911), Ichikawa Danjuro IX and Onoe Kikugoro V. In celebration, the two titan's descendents, Danjuro XII and Kikugoro VII, will step into the trademark roles of their namesakes.

Kabuki-za is presenting two masterworks by Kawatake Mokuami (1816-93): "Shiranami Gonin Otoko (The Five Shiranami Men)," written for Kikugoro V in 1862 and "Kiwametsuki Banzui Chobei (The Ultimate Story of Banzui Chobei)" written for Danjuro IX nearly 20 years later. A native of Nihonbashi in Edo (present-day Tokyo), Mokuami (born Yoshisaburo Yoshimura) apprenticed himself as a playwright at the Ichimura-za theater at age 19 instead of taking over his father's pawnbroking business. While the two dramas are a mere sampling of the 360 that Mokuami produced during a 50-year career, their distance in time from each other shows the range of the author and the changing fortunes of Japan.

If you have time, see the spectacular "Five Shiranami Men" in the evening program, three acts that last over three hours. Mokuami wrote "Shiranami" for Kikugoro V when the actor was 19, inspired by a set of ukiyo-e (genre painting) prints by Utagawa Toyokuni III that depicted five "Shiranami" burglars. The Shiranami were a group of bandits inhabiting the Baibo Gorge in China's Shansi province in the "Chronicle of the Latter Han Dynasty (25-220)." The name came to be used for men who made their living by theft, swindling or extortion.