His solicitude for the infants of the footlights is touching. Crouching behind a boy actor, he guides his actions and gives him his cue, waiting to escort him on and off. And when the feet of the old actor become feeble the kurombo is close at hand to assist, knowing his least movement from long association. Silent observer of the great men, the actors, creeping on all fours behind some gorgeous figure in gold brocade, the kurombo is conscious of the sins and omissions of the players, and he is the humourist of the situation. But he never shows that he is human. The audience seldom if ever catch a glimpse of his face, perhaps only in profile as he takes up some partially exposed position, with book in hand, prompting the actors whose memories are not trustworthy. The boy kurombo begins to learn the mysteries of the stage at an early age. His father brings him to shibai when he is a mere baby, not more than four years of age, and he may be allowed to go upon the scene and take away a pair of sandals, or other small property, in order that he may begin to learn his life’s duties. Small actors and equally diminutive kurombo thus grow up together. It is customary for the kurombo in his novitiate to sit at each side of the stage unconsciously taking in every detail. These children soon become accustomed to gaze in a detached way at the audience, which must make a vast impression on their minds, and at the same time they evince a lively interest in all that concerns the stage. Their eyes, round with wonderment, look at a play as though it were a fairy tale unfolding before them,—the ghosts and demons, samurai and peasants of Kabuki passing near. It is small wonder that the kurombo, whose taste for the theatre is bred in the bone, stays with it until old age claims him—always a shadow. The most perplexing convention of the Japanese theatre to the Occidental, long accustomed to mixed players, is the fact that Kabuki is the possession of actors, and that women characters are in consequence in the hands of males. If this seems a strange business for a man, it must be remembered that Shakespeare’s heroines were played by youthful English actors. Moreover, it is realised that the peaceful atmosphere and orderly regime behind the stage,—the environment in which the actor lives and works, is in many respects like a man’s club in the West. This freedom to work unhindered by the opposite sex gives the Kabuki actor a greater opportunity to be himself, and the remarkable calm that seems to permeate all that takes place on the stage may be one advantage of the pure male theatre. Masks and marionettes have had a large part in the shaping of Kabuki conventions. Many of these conventions, that seem so strange and very often absurd upon first acquaintance, become more intelligible in the light of the debt the popular theatre owes to the Doll-stage and to the still older form, the Nō.