Status Updates From The No Plays of Japan

Ikeniye made me think of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. It's very like a horror film opening, but he leaves out most of it and summarizes it, noting that there is a dragon in it that wasn't even mentioned in any of the presented dialogue.

The Hōka Priests almost seems like a send-up, but it's not. The central characters plot to kill the man who killed their father and succeed without much plot complication. The next two Waley tells us he didn't even bother to translate in their entirety because the endings are too esoteric.

The Damask Drum, or Princess Bitch...

"Here follow the twelve concluding lines, too full of Buddhist technicalities to interest as general reader."--133

Lame choice, but given that this was published in 1922, Waley has probably been dead for a long time, or perhaps not that long..

Hachi no Ki is reminiscent of a parable of Jesus.