In a Nagasaki play relating to the visit of a Chinese envoy, there is seen a temple interior that could not be simpler and yet suggests grandeur—the background, a wide expanse of gold screens arranged with sliding doors on which are painted gold and black dragons, and in the foreground the actors, a group of daimyo in grey-blue, the bronze-brocade and gold-clad villain receiving the gifts that are to be presented to the emissary from China. Not all Kabuki’s scenes are simple and serene, and nothing daunts the superior stage carpenters when once, they try their hands. In a popular play there is a scene depicting a realistic earthquake, and a mansion collapses under repeated shocks. The building sinks down amid stage, according to some secret of the carpenters, and the hero makes his way out of the roof, ruin and desolation around him. When it comes to sensational snowstorms, typhoons, and conflagrations, Kabuki can hold its own with the Western stage. It is, however, in architecture that the hand of the Kabuki craftsman is shown unmistakably. He has been free from the thraldom of the picture frame of the Western stage, and in following his own devices has worked with a freedom that has produced some satisfactory results. The producer has taken the main room of a Japanese dwelling for his model—a straw-matted room, sliding screens for background, a severely plain apartment; for its sole decoration, an alcove containing a hanging picture, before which stands a vase of flowers or object of art. It has not been necessary for him to knock out one side of the house in order to allow the audience a view of what is passing within. The Japanese room being open to the outside, forms an admirable setting for the action of the plays. To this room, which is in reality a platform for the players, he has added adjoining apartments, corridors, bridge-passages, verandahs, and the sloping roof is always present, either in part or as a whole. Completing the picture are gardens and rustic gates, stone water-basins, stepping-stones, wells, bridges, ponds, fences, and stone lanterns, and he has surrounded his buildings with the favourite flowers of Kabuki, lotus, chrysanthemum, peony, iris, and azalea. With a true love of nature he has placed in his scenes cherry and plum trees in full bloom, and has used pine trees and scarlet maples, drooping willows and feathery bamboo.