Strolling puppet players there were also, with boxes suspended by cords around their necks. They displayed their dolls on the top of the box which formed a miniature stage for the movements of the little figures. In the fullness of time the dolls and minstrels approached each other, instead of leading separate existences. But it was music that brought them together. The introduction of the samisen from the Loo Choo Islands, by way of the port of Sakai, near Osaka, shortly before O-Kuni’s appearance, was the medium that united these workers in the sphere of puppetry. By the end of the sixteenth century, this combination had produced the popular music-ballad drama called Joruri, which at one time threatened to completely overwhelm Kabuki in the estimation of the people. The initial stages of the Doll-theatre development are very interesting, for the conventions evolved at this time were appropriated by the real actors and may be seen upon the modern stage of Japan. The first ballad plays in which the dolls performed harped on one motive, the efficacy of I prayer to gods and Buddhas. The stage technique in use at this time was especially adapted to display before a wondering audience appearances of gods, phantoms, apparitions, and ghosts, and many ingenious contrivances were invented to suit these supernatural visitors, while the plots of the plays were moulded so that the various stage tricks in connection with the godly and ghostly personages could be carried out. During the vogue of the doll-ballads, with the answering of prayer for plots, elaborate machinery came into use for the manipulation of grotesque characters which were neither man nor beast, god nor demon, strange creatures created that machinery might give them life. Conjuring also played its part in astonishing the audiences of those days, and there was a period when the most ingenious devices were planned, in which water was used, the characters of the stories disappearing into waterfalls, floating on lakes, and even moved by water power. Then followed an outburst of the military spirit in Joruri, and the answered-prayer balladry took a secondary place. It was the adventures of the great warrior Kimpira, the incarnation of courage, slayer of devils and demons, that captured the popular fancy. The exploits of brave men were of more interest than the ghostly and godly pieces, and Kimpira overshadowed all the rest. The Kimpira bushi, or Kimpira tune, was started in Yedo by Sakurai Tamba, and he was followed by his son Izumi Dayu, who was even more sanguinary than his father. He handled an iron rod so dexterously when he marked the rhythm to his ballad about the extraordinary adventures of Kimpira that he knocked off heads and lopped off limbs of the dolls every day. This realistic display suited the Yedo audiences.