Namiki Gohei, born in Osaka in 1747, was the chief playwright of his time. His plays were so much in demand in the theatres of the three towns that he travelled back and forth a great deal. He was patronised by Sawamura Sojuro, the third, and also wrote for the third Onoe Kikugoro. _Banzuiin Chobei_, written for the fourth Ichikawa Danjuro, remains exceedingly popular at the present day, showing the democratic leaven that was working in Japan in Gohei’s day. This is among his best pieces. Chobei was an otokodate, or brave commoner, ever ready to champion the cause of the weak and down-trodden citizens, often the victims of the tyrannical two-sworded gentry. He incurred the enmity of an evil samurai, who put him to death. This was a theme to stir the audiences of Osaka and Yedo. After the death of the third Sojuro, Namiki wrote for his son, the fourth Sojuro, and for the fifth Matsumoto Koshiro. As he had been an actor in his early days, he knew something of the stages of Osaka and Yedo, that had many different characteristics, and he combined the two. His play, written around the ever-verdant story of the Soga brothers’ revenge, one of the most fruitful sources for the Kabuki’s sakusha’s inspiration, was so popular that it was given for many years at every Yedo theatre on the New Year programme, and the custom was only discontinued at the beginning of Meiji. In using historical material, Gohei felt the cramping influence of the authorities, and he skilfully combined the true with the false facts of history. Popular rumours of the day, gossip that went on round the hibachi in the dwellings of Yedo, were prohibited from finding representation on the stage, and consequently Gohei utilised the talk of the town as false reports, and the audience knowing the true inwardness of things that had been circulated far and wide, could easily understand his references. That the business of playwriting was not very lucrative seems to be suggested from the fact that Gohei once kept a tobacco shop in Osaka, later becoming a seller of sake. In Yedo he also opened a little medicine shop and sold pills, an old-fashioned Chinese remedy for colds. His excursions into business could not have been to his liking, but due rather to forced circumstances, since he is on record as having said when he sat down before his desk: “All the world is my own. No enemy is near me. All the actors are my own, and I can use them as I like.” A Yedo playwright some years younger than Namiki Gohei was Horikoshi Nisanji, but his plays have not been handed down as have been those of his more popular Osaka contemporary.