There is a colour print by Torii Kiyonaga, painted and printed in 1784, depicting this custom so faithfully that it brings the scene vividly before our eyes. It shows the low two-storied houses on each side of theatre street in Yedo, with a glimpse of the drum-tower of the Nakamura-za to the right. On the big lanterns elevated on poles on each side of the theatre entrances, are seen the crests that recall the dream of Saruwaka Kansaburo, the founder of Yedo Kabuki, while waiting for a licence to open his theatre. He dreamed that a stork with a branch of an icho tree in its beak flew from the summit of Mount Fuji and entered his house. He took this as a good omen for his new enterprise, and the theatre crests were chosen in accordance with his dream. In Kiyonaga’s print a flying stork is seen on one lantern, a fan-shaped icho leaf on the other, while these two emblems of the Nakamura-za are represented on the paper spheres adorning the tea-houses and actors’ residences that line each side of the narrow thoroughfare. In this picture the representatives of the theatre world are clad in the silk shirts and the stiff upper garments, or kamishimo, worn over the shoulders and tucked into their belts, that distinguished the gentleman of that day. If the yakusha were spoken of as riverside beggars, they still clung to the conventional garb of the middle and upper classes at that time worn in Japan. They also carried a sword in their belts, which was the privilege of the samurai. But this concession had been allowed since the Shogun had issued an order that the actors should be taught morality, and as a step towards their “uplift” it was commanded that they should be neatly dressed and wear a sword on leaving the theatre. When the play was over, the chief actor was escorted home by two young actors, a servant bearing a chest of clothing. The onnagata was accompanied to his house by attendants, one holding a big protecting umbrella over the head of the creator of feminine rôles. With a similar display of dignity, the actor made his round of calls during the New Year season, the sleeves of his kimono bearing the crest of his family, a retinue following in his wake, the cynosure of all eyes as he passed through the admiring throngs of holiday-makers.