Among Danjuro’s pupils was a remarkable woman, Ichikawa Kumehachi. She began life as a dancing-mistress, studied under Danjuro, and formed a woman’s company of her own. So successful were these players that in the early days of Meiji they were allowed entrance to the houses of the nobility, when the actors could not be admitted on account of their low position in society. On Kumehachi’s stage only women appeared, and the manly rôles were so well taken by women that it was difficult to penetrate the outward guise that concealed the feminine personality. All the stage duties, including those of carpenters, were performed by women. Kumehachi had the hands of a dancing-mistress; they were long, narrow, and flexible, and her bright eyes were full of life and intelligence. She passed away in 1913 at the age of 70. A few days before her death she was playing in her small theatre, and so died in harness. Danjuro once said of her: “If she had been a man her acting would have surpassed mine.” At one time she was called the “Woman Danjuro”, her acting so closely resembled that of her master. But such was the handicap of sex in Meiji that Kumehachi was not given the freedom to develop that would have proved her genius, and although she was undeniably popular with the people, the fact that she was a woman proved a stumbling-block to her advance. In its craze for new things and desire to imitate the Western theatre, Tokyo overlooked Kumehachi, and she died obscure and neglected, the company she had formed disbanding for want of leadership. Nor did the attractive Sada Yakko ever succeed in reaping but a small measure of success from her barren Shimpa environment. She was a dimming star when towards the end of Meiji she founded a school for actresses that was to form a new departure of the progressive Imperial Theatre. At the beginning of the craze for imported plays men attempted to portray the rôles of women. Their manner of walking—a sort of hop, skip, and jump—was as true to the habits and customs of Occidentals as the mincing stage gait of Orientals affected by Western players. Men were seen to be an impossibility as the heroines of the intellectual drama of the West, and a demand for young women for such rôles increased the number of stage-struck damsels in all parts of the country. Many a would-be actress strutted her brief hour upon the stage as Juliet or Ophelia, and then was heard of no more.