Shibai has faithfully preserved the most characteristic musical elements, and it is within the theatre that Japanese music is best represented. Gidayu Joruri, Yedo Nagauta, Tokiwazu, and Kiyomoto, with a variety of minor styles, form the musical settings for Kabuki productions. The Gidayu Joruri in vogue in shibai is taken bodily from the Doll-theatre, and is used whenever a drama written originally for the marionettes is produced. In these masterpieces the actors are responsible for the dialogue, while the minstrel sings the descriptions to the accompanying rhythms of the samisen, giving the players an opportunity to posture and gesture to their hearts’ content. The Gidayu minstrel and samisen player kneel on cushions on a raised rostrum to the right of the stage, a silver or gold screen behind them. In front of the minstrel is a lacquered book-rest, where lies the ballad book (joruri-bon) in which the passages of the play are written by hand in large, bold characters. Sometimes the minstrel enters into the conversation, when he scolds or weeps, laughs or pleads, according to the emotion of the moment. The difference between Gidayu and Nagauta is that the first is balladry and requires both recitation and song, conversation and description, while Nagauta is but a series of songs, solo or chorus, interspersed with sustained orchestral effects of samisen, drum, and flute in complicated rhythms. A full Nagauta corps, composed of many singers and samisen players, all in ceremonial stage costume, kneeling in a row on a red-covered dais across the stage, with the drummers grouped below, forming a background for the gorgeous characters of the music-drama, is an unforgettable and truly representative Kabuki picture. In Nagauta the singers commit the words to memory, or have a small book close beside them. Like the chorus of the Nō stage, they carry a closed fan which is taken up in one hand as they sing, and placed in front of them at the end of their song. Tokiwazu and Kiyomoto partaking of the nature of Gidayu, the singers kneel behind the lacquered stands supporting their books, and are generally stationed on a high platform to left or back of the stage, the only instrument being the samisen. The movable platforms on which the musicians and singers sit are pushed on and pulled off as the exigencies of the descriptive dance require. Sometimes a curtain is held up in order that they may make good their escape from the stage. As Nagauta had an affinity with the Nō, and treated of poetic and mystical subjects, the upper classes patronised the Kineya family, and it has therefore always enjoyed a superior position. These singers and musicians were regarded in the theatre as guests of honour, who had condescended to accept the hospitality of shibai. They were never classed so low in the social strata as the yakusha, but had a recognised rank and place.