“At this time Tojuro was zamoto, or stage manager, and if he did not give an opinion no one would say anything. He would address the actors: ‘Now, you actors, practise your parts well,’ and so would take his departure. The actors would begin to rehearse from the next day; they learned their rôles in four or five days, and as soon as they had learned one play they would begin another. And when this new play was given to the actors, Tojuro said he wished to have it explained once more, after which he did not say anything with regard to his rôle. “The character he was to play required him to wear high rain clogs and a wide straw hat, so he ordered these properties to be made, and when they were handed to him put them on and said: ‘Now give me my lines,’ and Chikamatsu Monzaemon gave them to him. ‘This is a good play,’ he said. ‘When I first heard it I thought so. Some plays are greatly admired by the audience, while others are not popular. Now I am over fifty years, and yet I am unable to criticise the play, or tell whether it is good or bad, for had I known how to criticise plays I might have become an extraordinary person by this time. Before I began to learn the words I wore the geta and took the stick. It is better not to criticise at first, but to try and understand.’” Kichizaemon concludes by saying: “Whenever a rôle was given to Tojuro, whether short or long, good or bad, he always studied it carefully”. The giant among the playwrights of his time was Chikamatsu Monzaemon, but as his best plays were written for the Doll-theatre, he does not rightly belong to an account of Kabuki playwrights. It is true, however, that the great influence his compositions had upon Kabuki, even to the present day, can hardly be over-estimated. His real name was Sugimori Nobunori, and the little town of Hagi, in the Province of Hizen, that has produced so many men famous in Japanese history, regards him as an illustrious son. This is disputed, since several other villages in different parts of the country also put forward claims as to Chikamatsu’s birthplace. Even his last resting-place is not known, for his grave is found in two places, the cemetery of Hyomyo-ji, a Buddhist temple in Osaka, and in a village near this city. And so the greatest playwright of Japan, who wrote more than one hundred plays, was born and died in obscurity. It is thought that he was an illegitimate son, since there seemed to have been some cloud upon his life. The Sugimori family were of good repute, and served the lord of Hagi.