[Illustration: YAKUSHA MAKING A ROUND OF NEW YEAR CALLS. In the foreground a member of the Ichikawa family, with two pupils and his servants, following behind an onnagata similarly attended. The kites in the picture show the favourite pastime of children during the New Year holidays. (Colour print by Hasegawa Kanpei, the fourteenth, and Torii Kiyosada, father of Kiyotada.)] They intermarried to a remarkable extent. Since they were segregated to certain quarters near the theatre, they chose their wives for the most part from among their own fraternity. The daughters of actor families married men of their father’s profession, and their daughters again became the wives of actors. This brought about such complicated genealogies that it became impossible to unravel the tangled relationships. Now and then a yakusha strayed out of the fold and took unto himself a farmer’s daughter, or, as was quite common, selected a maiden who had passed her life in the theatre atmosphere, daughter of the proprietor of a chaya, or theatre tea-house, that catered daily to the audience. Sometimes a yakusha had for father the keeper of a restaurant, and the sons of wrestlers made good actors as they were of fine physique. Many of the leading actors were sons of ronin, or samurai who had severed connection with their feudal lord and joined the ranks of the common people. The first Danjuro was of samurai stock, his father a ronin. Again, the dissipated sons of military families took up acting as a profession when turned out of doors by their stern samurai fathers for their sins and omissions. A famous onnagata, Yoshisawa Ayame, was a page in a samurai house before he became an actor. The first Nakamura Utayemon was the son of a physician. Others were sons of ningyo-tsukai or doll-handlers in the puppet theatre, and the yakusha were related to stage musicians, dancing teachers, costumers, and even the menials of the theatre. Arashi Kanjuro became a colour-print artist under Toyokuni, and was called Kunihara. Not infrequently the yakusha studied the Nō, and introduced many features of the classic drama into his own productions. There were actors of refinement, who stood apart from the vulgarity of their day, but on the other hand a great many who, influenced by the odium attached to their profession, led loose and immoral lives. But in this they only followed the lead of their times, for vulgarity and sensuality was the order of the day, as might have been expected, since the monotony of peace and the stagnant regime of the Tokugawa Shogunate were largely responsible for the licentiousness that prevailed.