His two actor sons, however, have made up for their father’s delinquencies. They suffered poverty while young, Danjuro, Kikugoro, and other friends of Kanya providing a sum for their living and education. Both received their stage discipline under Tamura Nariyoshi, the beloved theatre manager and contemporary of Kanya, who, until his death a few years ago, was the acknowledged Kabuki authority in Tokyo. Bando Mitsugoro, the elder son of Kanya, is one of the best dancers of the Tokyo stage, excelling in the music-drama. His face and voice do not fit him for the rôle of a chief actor, but his remarkable skill as a dancer makes up for this. Morita Kanya, the thirteenth, the younger son of the Meiji manager, is one of the most brilliant young actors in Tokyo, handsome, versatile, eager, as was his father, for new things. He has won a distinct place in the affections of theatre-goers, and is but on the threshold of his career. In the autumn of 1921 the Kabuki-za was burned down; the actors of this theatre were obliged to play at the Shintomi-za, and Kanya was avenged. Later his two sons, Mitsugoro and Kanya, for the first time played together in special plays in the parental theatre in memory of their father, the progressive manager of Meiji. IV Rise and Fall of Shimpa A by-product of Kabuki in the form of Shimpa, or New School, was one of the most striking developments of Meiji. A second O-Kuni and Nagoya Sansaburo, in the persons of the beautiful geisha, Sada Yakko, and her political-agitator husband, Kawakami Otojiro, started this form of entertainment. But unlike the founders of Kabuki, their efforts were resultless. Shimpa consisted chiefly of crude melodrama, and while it reached a certain standard, it has now outlived its usefulness, and is practically extinct. The idea of setting up an opposition to Kabuki grew out of the activities of one Sudo in Osaka. He had been a samurai, but fled from home without his father’s consent, earned his living in Tokyo while studying, and went to Osaka where he spent his time in arguments about popular freedom. He began to lecture in public places, airing his views about the rights of the people, and at last wrote a political novel, which he sought to dramatise the better to spread his doctrines. In front of the theatre where the piece was given there was a large arch erected by the Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper that had made its influence felt at this date, 1881. A spectator of this performance was Kawakami Otojiro. The idea of a students’ theatre, where all the burning questions of the day could be preached to the people, seized hold of him, and he never rested until he had formed a company for this purpose.