Nisoji and Namboku were great friends, and they played practical jokes upon each other. Namboku was once slightly ill and Nisoji asked a Court doctor to go and examine him. A kago, or palanquin, carried on the shoulders of six stout bearers proceeded to Namboku’s humble dwelling. The Kabuki sakusha had received no warning of the Court physician’s visit, and was greatly surprised. Taken unawares, he got out of his bed and bowed low on the mats. When the great medical man took his departure, the kago bearers asked for money, but the maker of plays was incurably poor, and could only pay a small portion of the kago men’s demands. In order to get even with Nisoji, Namboku planned a counter joke. There was a certain shrine in Shinagawa, a suburb of Yedo, where the spirit of the famous general, Kato Kiyomasa, was enshrined, and it was Nisoji’s habit after visiting the shrine to repair to a tea-house in the vicinity. There was some gossip that Nisoji had carried on a flirtation with the daughter of the tea-house keeper, and Namboku ordered a lantern to be made bearing his friend’s crest together with that of the tea-house maiden, and hung it up in front of the shrine. Nisoji was much perplexed, and acknowledged that Namboku had evened up the score. The second Namiki Gohei was the second son of a vassal of the Shogun. He was expelled from his house because of dissipation and association with actors. The third Gohei was a follower of the first Namiki, and it was he who collaborated with the seventh Danjuro in giving the finishing touches to _Kanjincho_, Kabuki’s music-drama masterpiece. Nishizawa Ippo was the grandson of a novelist and kept a bookshop. He had many literary friends, and wrote plays, but there are few genuine pieces of his left, as they have been patched and altered, there being no protection for plays, and no conscience about changing them to suit the requirements of the actors. Segawa Joko kept a gofuku-ya, or drapery shop, in Yedo, and wrote plays because he felt an inclination to do so. Finally he was persuaded to give up his business, and he became a tate sakusha, or chief playwriter. He sinned in verbosity, and the actors tired of his long speeches. It might have been better for Joko’s peace of mind had he continued to deal in kimono and obi. His specialty consisted in dramatising the stories related in the yose, or places of amusement where the professional story-teller held forth. The eighth Danjuro was successful in some of these pieces, and they are still favourites with playgoers. The last sakusha to shine before the dawn of the Meiji era was Sakurada Jisuke, who was born in 1802 and died in the tenth year of Meiji, 1877. He was associated with actors and literary men for forty years, and during most of his career he was head of the Yedo playwrights. He wrote many plays, and among them are a number frequently given by the actors of modern Tokyo and Osaka.