Program Note
The upright samurai, Hironoshin, does not laugh at the joke of the Lord, so he is in charge of “catching cat fleas.” That means he is a male prostitute. Hironoshin is unable to disobey the order, so he serves his first customer. He is criticized for performing terrible sex and feels humiliated, so he decides to learn how to do it better. He runs into Seibei, who is a merchant that flirts with many different people.. Hironoshin secretly watches Seibei make love, he improves his techniques by learning how to kiss, caress and talk dirty. Flea-picking Samurai begins with a sex comedy dreaming of revival and depicting the transformation of the guy, a samurai to a whore. However, it is a contradiction in itself to catch cat fleas in the first place, and the system of the Edo period in which they live is so unreasonable and unequal. How to live as a human being before living as a samurai. Hironoshin, who had only been steadfast but has not seen any other world, observed the lives of weak but persistent people and chooses to live among them. The Lords uses sex as a tool to oppress individual freedom and try to annihilate it. After all, Hironoshin experienced he finally breaks through everything not by his own strength, but through the will and faith of all who had been with him. (KIM Bong-seok)