Ayame also believed that the chief thing for an onnagata to do was to play the part of a good woman. This ought to be the duty of an onnagata, and rôles that were not proper, even though the play was popular, should be declined. He advocated that an onnagata should not lose the gentleness and mildness of a woman, but he recognised the unnaturalness of a male acting female rôles, and gave the advice that it was wise to develop the natural feelings of a woman in daily life, and not to use too much affectation on the stage. A really good onnagata was an actor who passed his daily life with the heart of a woman. When an onnagata on the stage thought that he had an important rôle as a woman, his actions would become unwomanlike. Contemporary with Ayame was Midzuki Tatsunosuke, a precocious actor who played with Sakata Tojuro when he was 16. He died at the age of 73, and the onnagata school he established endured long after his death, several of his pupils distinguishing themselves. Yoshizawa Ayame had a deshi called Sodesaki Karyu, who became a popular onnagata. He was born in the country near Osaka, yet spent most of his life in Yedo. His talent was versatile, and he could act the greatest variety of women, from a princess to the wife of a coolie. Following the fashion of many retired onnagata, when he left the theatre he started an incense shop, but his interest in the business, which could not have been highly lucrative, soon waned, and he returned to the stage, playing in the rôle of chief actor instead of onnagata. His audiences took kindly to the change, and he did not lose his stage reputation in consequence. Towards the end of the Genroku period there were a surprising number of onnagata playing on the Yedo stage, nearly all of whom had come from Osaka. This was due to the fact that Kabuki was rapidly absorbing the ballad dramas of the Doll-theatre, and many an actor who desired to become an onnagata received stimulus to his ambition when watching the doll-handlers as they moved the female characters. The art of these doll-handlers was so remarkable that it was only natural that the future onnagata of Kabuki should learn how to act the doll-drama heroines, and eventually imitate the doll’s every gesture and movement. There was a ningyo-tsukai, or doll-handler, called Oyama, who was a genius in moving female dolls, and his name became so closely associated with his art that the onnagata were often called oyama, a term that is synonymous with onnagata and used quite as frequently by theatre folk to-day.