Dignity, tranquillity, and refinement characterised the ancient Court music and the complicated measures of the flute and drum of the Nō stage. Something more cheerful, more stirring and gay, was necessary as refreshment for the people. The instrument that caused a revolution in the musical world of Japan was the samisen (lit., three strings), which opened the floodgates for the inundation of the three towns by the greatest variety of fushi, or tunes. The samisen was not indigenous, and most accounts agree that it came to Japan from the Loo Choo Islands. Some authors seek a Western origin for the samisen, and think it was brought in by the Portuguese. One old writer believed it to be an instrument used by the savages of Loo Choo Islands, made from the skin of sea snakes. The ancestor of the samisen is to-day carried by strolling minstrels in all the odd corners of China, and must have been introduced into Japan by way of the southern islands where the inhabitants were largely Chinese. The difference that exists at present between the two guitar-like instruments of the Asiatic continent and the Island Empire lies in the bodies,—that of China covered with snake-skin in the natural colours, while white tanned cat-skin serves the same purpose in Japan. The performer in both cases uses a plectrum to strike the three strings and thereby produces a whole world of rhythms unfamiliar to the ears of the Occidental. The Chinese instrument came to Japan by an indirect route, and was not accompanied by musicians skilled in its mysteries. When it reached the hands of the blind biwa players they were unacquainted with the deep experience behind it, and were obliged to grope for a way themselves. The samisen led to a period of the greatest musical creativeness the country had ever witnessed, and the wonder grows that this innocent little instrument produced in some remote time as a necessity of the Chinese soul should have been discovered by the people of the three towns and adapted to suit their musical requirements with such astonishing results. Perhaps the magic measures of the samisen may yet meet some need of the people in Western lands, and so in the fullness of time please the ear of the whole world. The samisen was not in use when O-Kuni and Nagoya Sansaburo began their collaboration, for their musicians borrowed the flute and drum of the Nō. Towards the end of the O-Kuni Kabuki, the samisen player had taken up his position behind the dancers, and a new and livelier element had become apparent in the performances.