With the beginning of Kabuki, the shibai advertisements consisted of boards on which Chinese characters were written. Later on, in Kyoto these simple announcements were framed and decorated with artificial flowers. To make them even more attractive an actor pasted a picture on the board. These posters were placed in the street to proclaim to the passer-by the nature of the coming performances. This custom originated with Nagoya Sansaburo, when he sought to make O-Kuni’s river-bed show widely known. He was the first person to write announcements on wood in Chinese characters and to set them up at the cross-roads. The founder of the Torii family was an Osaka actor, who followed the onnagata specialty, but painting was his hobby, and he began to make pictures for the kamban of Dotombori. Later he removed to Yedo. His son, Kiyonobu, inherited his father’s talent, and as his style of painting greatly pleased the Yedo people, he soon became very popular and was called Torii, the first. It is recorded that an artist of another school was requested to make the Yedo Kamban. In 1818 there was a disagreement between the then reigning theatre artist Torii Kiyomitsu and the management of the Kawarazaki-za, with the result that Utagawa Kuniyoshi was asked to undertake the work. He chose for his subject O-Kuni Kabuki, and treated it so well that all Yedo made a pilgrimage to gaze upon the picture, and the plays in progress within the shibai proved to be of lesser attraction. This not only resulted in a falling-off in attendance, but shortly after the theatre was burned down, and the superstitious playfolk traced this ill luck to the absence of the Torii posters. They hurried back to him, and he continued to monopolise this feature of shibai. To-day the traditions are being carried on with much success by Torii Kiyotada, the seventh Torii to be associated with the work of painting shibai posters. The different members of the Torii school have also been responsible for the banzuke, or illustrated theatre programmes, that are sent out by an actor to his patrons or by the theatre to its supporters. The banzuke consists of a large piece of paper on which are seen brush sketches of the plays and characters. These are neatly folded, and give the playgoers the whole story of the new programme. This old custom is still in force. Shibai chaya, or the tea-houses that served playgoers, are not to-day what they were in former times, since their usefulness has practically departed. In the brave days of old, the chaya were influential institutions, for no respectable persons would dream of entering the shibai by any other way than through the tea-house.