He was employed as a boy of all work in the fish market, that stronghold of independent Yedo citizens, and was sent by his employer to escort his little daughter to and from her dancing lessons. Having to wait in the entrance of the house, the boy soon came to take a vivid interest in the proceedings, and by dint of peeping within he learned the dances much quicker than the legitimate pupils. The second Kambei recognised the lad’s ability, and not only took him under his wing, but eventually married him to his daughter, and made over to him the Fujima school. Kambei, the third, died under strange circumstances. It was found out that he had carried on a love affair with the mistress of a daimyo who was one of his patronesses. The lord is supposed to have had him secretly dispatched, and then sent his body home with the explanation that he had suddenly expired. It was thought by his wife and pupils that he had been poisoned, but the mystery was never solved. His wife carried on the teaching but, being a woman, she had no relation with the theatre. Among the third Kambei’s pupils was Nishikawa Senzo, who became a star of the Nishikawa school. [Illustration: Onoe Kikugoro, the sixth, as the transformation of a maid into a white fox, in a descriptive dance, Kagami Shishi, or the Mirror-Lion.] After the third Kambei’s time the Fujima house had two branches founded by his pupils; one was called Fujima Kangoro, and the other Fujima Kanyemon. As the Kangoro line has always had a woman at its head, it has not been employed by the theatre. That carried on by Kanyemon is now the first school of Tokyo, with Hanayanagi second. Nishikawa maintains its prestige in Nagoya; Kyoto possesses the Katayama school, while the leading schools of Osaka are the Umemoto and Yamamura. [Illustration: Crest of Nakamura Denkuro (Metal cross).] [Illustration: Crest of Sawamura Sojuro (Alphabetical character repeated).] CHAPTER XXVI MOTIVES OF KABUKI PLAYS I One overwhelming motive is to be found in the plays of the Doll-theatre and Kabuki—loyalty and self-sacrifice. These were the popular themes that stirred the people to the depths. It is the conflict of giri (sense of justice, duty, obligation) and ninjo (humanity, sentiment, feeling) which forms the backbone of all the drama produced before the Restoration of the Emperor in 1868. Lord Macaulay has said somewhere that we may safely conclude that the feelings and opinions which pervade the whole dramatic literature of a generation are feelings and opinions of which the men of that generation partook. This is true in a particular sense of the loyalty tragedies enacted by the marionettes and played by the Kabuki yakusha, for not only did these representations inculcate in the masses a passion for service and self-abnegation, but in them are faithfully mirrored the life of Japan’s feudal age.