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For example, in the Shunkan scene of a kabuki play (derived from a celebrated incident in The Tale of the Heike concerning a Buddhist priest who plotted against the ruler) entitled Heike nyogo no shima, when the two men, Naritsune and Yasuyori, fellow exiles of Shunkan, enter the stage, set at the deserted island to which the three men have been sent as a punishment, the gidayū, the chanter, comments on the goodness of Shunkan's character with the following words:
"Although his means are scanty
His welcome (to his friends) is sincere
Showing how truly close
Their friendship is."
Later when one of the two companions, Naritsune, dances in order to describe the beauty of a lovely seaweed diver with whom he is fall in love on the island, the gidayū describes her beauty for him:
"When the tide is right
She reveals her lovely body
And plunges into the bottomless depths
To gather many kinds of seaweed
Too busy even to keep her hair back with
A comb made of boxwood."
A mock marriage then takes place between the diver, named Chidori, and Naritsune, during which the chanter describes the ceremony and party.
To this extent the gidayū/chanter functions as a chorus might from time to time in opera or a musical. However, we find that the gidayū, reflecting the norm in bunraku, where the gidayū always speaks for the dolls, will also on occasion speak for the kabuki actors. For example, again in the play, Shunkan, when Senō, one of the envoys from the capital city comes to announce that Naritsune and Yasuyori have been pardoned because of an amnesty declared on the occasion of the birth of an imperial son, Shunkan's reaction is voiced by the gidayū. At this painful moment when he hears only their names among the pardoned and not his own, the gidayū, not the actor playing the part of Shunkan, says for him,
"Only two of us have been pardoned
And I along have slipped
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