Interference even went so far as to plays. The sakusha, or playwrights, were strictly forbidden by the Government to write real history into their dramas. In consequence, they were obliged to camouflage fact with fiction. Reports that were circulated far and wide, matters that had been discussed in every household, were represented as belonging to a distant period. The playgoers, however, were quick to understand the reference. This is the reason why the opening scene of _Chushingura_ is placed a hundred years or more previous to the date of the sacrifice of the Forty-seven Ronin. A quarrel broke out in the audience at the Yamamura-za at one time because the name of a contemporary personage had been used in a play, and thereafter no reference was allowed to living persons. Great care had to be taken in the choice of names given to the characters in a play, for if a cognomen selected was already in the possession of some high family complaints were lodged with the authorities. When fire again destroyed the Nakamura-za and Ichimura-za, they were ordered to be rebuilt away from the centre of the town. The Kawarazaki-za, which stood somewhat apart from the other theatres, and had been untouched by the fire, was left undisturbed. The removal of the theatre site was explained as due to the laxity of the actors, who were forgetting themselves and mingling with the people; because they played such common, vulgar things that had a bad influence upon society, and because shibai was the source of changes in the fashions that incited the citizens to extravagance. The severest period of interference the theatre had to undergo was during the administration of Mizuno, Lord of Echizen, the prime minister of the shogunate, who began his sweeping reforms in 1842, hoping thereby to prop up the falling Tokugawa Government. And when the Ichimura-za and Nakamura-za were burned down, this dignitary decided that the time had arrived to put an end to the fortunes of shibai. It was his intention to crush this institution of the people at a blow, in order that the widespread immorality alleged should be suppressed. Mizuno stopped the work of theatre reconstruction, and would have carried out his reforms with a high hand if it had not been for the head man of the theatre district, called Toyama. This official was brought in for consultation. The fate of Yedo Kabuki hung in the balance, and the whole question depended on Toyama’s views as to the right of the people’s theatre to exist. Whatever his defence it proved an effective checkmate to Mizuno’s plan to abolish shibai, and a compromise was made by means of which the theatres were to be removed as far as possible from Yedo castle, and at a safe distance from the homes of the citizens to preserve them from contamination.