The career of Matsui Suma-ko clearly represents a certain undesirable phase of westernisation, a sort of frenzy for imported drama that took hold of the theatre reformers. At the time she entered Dr. Tsubouchi’s Bungei Kyokai, or Literary and Art Society, that was to reform stagnant Kabuki by producing Western drama, the novelty of the actresses was at its height, in Osaka as well as Tokyo. Dr. Tsubouchi sought to create intellectual actresses removed from all immoral influences. Matsui Suma-ko was the most promising aspirant for the newly created position, and she became the star of the society. At the age of 18 she had married an innkeeper in a fishing village. Later she was divorced, and came to live with her brother, who kept a cake shop in Tokyo. She waited on customers until she found another husband who was interested in the new drama, and with him she joined Tsubouchi’s company. It is an unpleasant story how she parted from her second husband, fascinated Shimamura Hogetsu, Dr. Tsubouchi’s chief supporter and stage manager, causing him to resign as professor of Waseda Daigaku and to abandon his wife and children. Together they formed a company called the Art-Theatre. It was as Tolstoy’s heroine in _Resurrection_ that Miss Matsui made her greatest success, and with this and other Western plays she toured the country, the novelty of her venture and the boldness of her character bringing her a fair measure of success. When Shimamura died in 1919, her position was greatly changed. He had been almost wholly responsible for her success. She did not possess the mental or spiritual capacity to go on alone, without his assistance. He had been conspicuous among Japanese literary men for his study of Western literature, and was the recognised leader of the naturalistic school. She had no reserve of education or experience to draw upon. Furthermore, after his death voices in the audience called out tauntingly, and some of the minor Kabuki actors who had been asked to play with her in an effort to maintain her popularity refused to do so. Things had come to an end, and she could go no further in plays that were not indigenous to Japanese soil. The only way out of the many difficulties she had created for herself was to make a grand exit, and this she did some weeks after the burial of her leader, Shimamura, by hanging herself in the building that had been erected as the headquarters for the new stage naturalism. Matsui Suma-ko, a daughter of the rice fields, essayed to play the whole repertoire made famous by Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Sarah Bernhardt, Julia Marlow, and Mrs. Leslie Carter. It was an impossibility. There was no natural growth from within, only unhealthy camouflage. She attempted to produce, but always failed, because what she could impersonate never sprang spontaneously from her own soul. All her efforts aimed not to construct, but to dazzle for the moment,—time and strength wasted in a vain endeavour.