The scene which follows, however, quite outdoes anything in the supernatural in which Kabuki is wont to specialise. Iyemon fishing in the river discovers the door to which the bodies of the two victims were tied when they were thrown into the water. O-Iwa raises her head and speaks in sepulchral tones, and the door turning over, Kohei’s ghost repeats its tragic phrase: “Master, medicine, please!” For these were the words Kohei used when interceding on O-Iwa’s behalf. The same actor takes the rôles of both ghosts, and the lightning change from wife to servant is left to the imagination of the spectators, and only the stage mechanics beneath the blue and white cotton waves know how the transformation is effected. * * * * * Without doubt _Botan Doro_, The Peony Lantern, takes first place among the ghost plays of Kabuki. A Chinese tale retold by the professional story-teller, Encho, and dramatised by Mokuami and Fukuchi, the two outstanding playwrights of the Meiji era, it is always performed in midsummer. Ghosts are a cooling influence for theatre-goers surfeited with the sights and sounds of the hot thoroughfares, and shades from another world clad in grey, with wan, indistinct faces, seen vaguely behind weeping willow branches, seem appropriate stage characters in summer weather. The chief characters in _Botan Doro_ are O-Tsuyu, a beautiful maiden in love with Hagiwara Shinsaburo. There is also the young lady’s maid, and a picturesque evildoer, Tomozo. O-Tsuya meeting secretly with her lover is suddenly surprised, and they are rudely parted. In despair, she commits suicide with her maid, and the ghostly shapes visit Shinsaburo nightly. A priest gives him a small golden image of the Goddess of Mercy to ward off her nocturnal visits, and puts up a charm to keep O-Tsuya away. Tomozo, the hero’s faithless servant, steals the image and tells his wife that the ghost of O-Tsuya will appear and pay him a sum of money for hiding it, the influence of which prevents her from entering her lover’s house. He is firmly convinced the ghost will appear, and his look-out for the apparition is so full of surprise and contrast, and the suspense so well sustained, that the audience is thoroughly keyed up in anticipation. Tomozo and his wife talk so much of the ghost that every moment they think she has come, and soon are trembling with fear, the frightened wife taking refuge under the large green mosquito net suspended over her bed. O-Tsuya and her maid are suddenly seen to float behind the drooping branches of a willow tree, seemingly suspended in air, the maid carrying the ghostly lantern, shaped like a pink peony, that gives out a dim and intermittent glow.