In the Kabuki chronicles it is stated that a painting of Ichikawa Danjuro, the second, was taken to China by traders plying between Nagasaki and the Chinese ports, and it seems likely that the yakusha became familiar with some of the favourite Chinese actors. In his _Notes on Japanese Drama_ in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society, the late Rev. Arthur Lloyd suggests the possible influence of the West on shibai. He says: “In 1603 the Spaniards had been fifty years in Japan, and they were not all priests and missionaries. Sailors and merchants came, too, many of whom would associate with Japanese, and some probably with Japanese of the class to which O-Kuni and her husband, the ex-samurai, belonged. Such men would naturally possess copies of some of Lope de Vega’s comedies, and thus may have come to Japan the seed from which grew the Kabuki theatre.” This is pure conjecture on Mr. Lloyd’s part, but he used it to throw light on the proscription of Kabuki plays, and explained that there were other licentious practices in Japan in the seventeenth century which were not interfered with, and that the proscription would become intelligible and consistent if there was but a shadow of ground for suspicion that the shibai and the Spaniard were even remotely connected. [Illustration: Nakamura Ganjiro of Osaka as a melancholy lover in a play of the people.] This view may be to some extent true, for the ever-suspicious authorities were aware that the best avenue for the forbidden knowledge to reach the people was the shibai, and hence their anxiety to prevent the spread of radical ideas. Many incidents attest to this watchfulness on the part of the officials. It is recorded that the father of the third Nakamura Utayemon received magic power from a foreigner in a rôle that required him to make a sudden transformation into a ghost. Again, Tsuruya Namboku, a playwright who specialised in the ghostly, wrote a piece with a sea rover, Tenjiku Tokubei, as hero, and as it was necessary to effect a quick change in the stage management, the alert censor suspected that Namboku had secured his information from Christians, who were supposed to be devoted to magic methods. Namboku was arrested, but was released, as there was not sufficient evidence to prove that he had been in league with Occidentals. Tsuruya Namboku created a character in Tenjiku Tokubei that has outlived generations of actors and remains popular with modern audiences. Tokubei sailed away on unknown seas to India and returned with wealth greater than that of a daimyo, many strange tales to relate, and curious articles to exhibit. Such a play must have been of lively interest to the shut-in people of Japan, who were gradually awakening to the attractions of the world without.