Noh, Bunraku and Kabuki are widely known as typically traditional forms of performing arts in Japan. They evoke images about what old Japan was like before the Meiji Restoration 1868, in the mind both of the audience from abroad and also of those living in contemporary Japan. However, these theatrical forms have not simply preserved their original styles, but modified themselves many times and in many ways throughout the history, in response to the requirement and the needs of each epoch. Especially in the modern era, facing with the tremendous impact of Western culture, these theatrical forms have been strongly expected to represent an “authentic Japanese spirit” in theater. So they have sometimes given up their flexibility by excessive formalization and sophistication, and have lost their popularity with the wider range of audience they used to enjoy before modernization. What have stayed unchanged are a collection of ancient tales which has worked as a common ground for various narratives in Noh, Bunraku and Kabuki. The ways of telling a story are often different in these three theatrical forms, but it is not hard to identify the original narrative they all refer to. In this paper I will focus on one particular tale called Shuntokumaru or Shindokumaru, which is supposed to appear around the 12-13 Century (the Kamakura Era) in Yao, an area in the southern Osaka. What is very impressive about this tale is the function of a poison used by the stepmother, which makes the hero boy blind and unable to succeed his father as the head of the family. The boy is forced out of the family and survives as a beggar monk, but finally — in some version by the power of the Kannon (the Goddess of Mercy), in another (Bunraku) version by the self-sacrifice of the stepmother herself — he miraculously recovers his sight. I will investigate what the act of poisoning means in this tale, and compare various interpretations of poisoning we find in traditional narratives in Noh, Bunraku and Kabuki. I will also study the subject in the modern realization of the same narrative in in a contemporary theater and a comic (Manga).