tea-houses that the performance should be going on at meal-time. Those who cannot afford to visit a tea-house go direct to the theatre and are similarly looked after, except in the case of those in the cheapest seats, by attendants detailed for the purpose. In fact, eating and drinking is inseparable from playgoing in Japan. People eat and drink while looking at a performance; some even cannot enjoy it unless they are regaled at the same time with _sake_. Playgoing is, in short, an expensive pastime in Japan. [Illustration: THE ENTRANCE OF A THEATRE.] [Illustration: THE STAGE AND ENTRANCE-PASSAGE.] The theatre is a large oblong building. Over the great entrance hangs a row of wooden-framed pictures representing the scenes played; the side-entrances lead to the gallery. In front of the stage as one enters the theatre is the pit, which is partitioned into small compartments capable of holding four or five persons squatting. On either side are two stories of boxes and facing the stage across the pit is the gallery on the second or third story, which is mostly patronised by playgoers who, being unable to pay for the whole performance, come to see one or two of the best acts. From the sides of the stage two entrance-passages run through the pit towards the entrance. Actors walk under the passages to the entrance end and coming out into a box, make their appearance on the entrance-passage. These passages are very convenient as they give a larger room to the stage and impart a sense of distance when it is not expedient to crowd too suddenly on the stage. The stage is screened off from the auditorium by a drawn curtain in the larger theatres and by a drop-curtain in some of the smaller. When a popular actor is playing or some special piece is performing, curtains are presented by the patrons of the actor or the theatre; and in such a case several curtains are drawn one after another between the acts across the stage for the admiration of the audience. Another peculiarity of the Japanese stage is the revolving-stage. A scene is set upon the front half of a turn-table which is flush with the rest of the stage floor; and while that scene is being acted, the carpenters are putting up the next in the rear half; and when the first scene is over, the table revolves and brings the second to view, and so the play is continued without interruption. Yet another peculiarity is the presence on the stage of black-veiled men in clothes of the same colour. They are known as “blackamoors” and supposed to be invisible. At the commencement of a run; they stand or sit behind the actors and prompt them; they remove from the stage any article that has ceased to be of use or pull away the dead in a fight if they are found to be in the way, or push a cushion to an actor when he is about to sit down. They are of great use, though it is hard to acquiesce in the fiction of their invisibility. The stage music is played usually on one side of