It tells how above the heads of the audience there were lanterns on which were to be seen the actors’ crests, and suspended from the gallery hung others bearing the symbols of the tea-houses. In front of the stage many candles were seen burning. First, there was the Sambasso dance, and after this all the play actors with the principal actor in advance made their entrance upon the stage, each carrying a lighted candle in his hand and clad in ceremonial skirts, long and voluminous, that encased their feet and flowed yards behind them like a lady’s train—the same costume worn by the great daimyo when attending social and state functions at the Shogun’s Court. The spokesman for the actors asked the patronage of the audience for ten thousand years, meaning to the end of time, a characteristic salutation of Asia, and in response the audience signified their appreciation by clapping their hands. When the actors had retired, music was heard and an auspicious song was sung, the _Shikainami_, or Waves of the Four Seas, a passage from _Takasago_, a Nō play in which a prayer is made for the peace of the world and the smoothness of the waves in the four seas. Following this, an announcement of the programme was read by a dignitary of the theatre. He began by crying out in a ringing voice: “Tozai! Tozai!” or “East-West! East-West!” This was to call the attention of people to the east and the west, and, indeed, in all parts of the theatre, who were thus admonished to listen to the important details of the plays to be acted. These men knelt down on the stage in front of the curtain, and read the programme in a peculiar style and with a flourish that belonged to the theatre. Gradually they became few in number, their salaries were decreased, and their place in the theatre was less and less recognised. The custom is now and then seen to-day, particularly at the beginning of Takeda Izumo’s _Chushingura_. A puppet announcer is placed outside the curtain and manipulated from behind, the doll going through the motions of an animated delivery of details connected with the play while an actor behind is responsible for the words. Special performances were given four times a year, when the shibai ceremonial had a distinct place of its own; these were the celebration of the New Year, Spring, the Bon, or Festival of the Dead, in midsummer, and the opening of the shibai season in November. One of the most interesting of these was the Kaomise, or Face-Showing ceremony, on which occasion the actors were displayed before the admiring gaze of the audience, not as characters in a play, but in their own persons, to ask for the patronage of the people. It was a gracious acknowledgement of their close relationship to the audience, and at the same time gave expression to a subtle flattery of the playgoers, whom they thus took into full confidence as an essential part of the theatre.