An actor’s improvisation at the Kabuki-za to honour the memory of Danjuro was also given. The stage showed the front of a Yedo theatre with a tea-house at one side and a sign announcing the Danjuro anniversary. Nine of the most popular onnagata of the Kabuki-za and Ichimura-za entered as maids of the tea-house and stood waiting for the appearance of otokodate, or chivalrous commoners. These popular characters were taken by fourteen of Tokyo’s best actors, and they came in slowly by the two hanamichi and stood facing each other, talking across the audience, displaying by their voice and manner some characteristic which had endeared them to playgoers in past performances. With the onnagata they made a brave array of actor talent. Into their midst came the veteran onnagata, Nakamura Utayemon, chief of the Tokyo actors. He made his entrance as the mistress of the tea-house, and addressed the audience on Danjuro and his work for Kabuki. The Ichikawa crest was conspicuous in the decorations of the theatre within and without, and high over the entrance of the Kabuki-za, where the yagura, or drum tower of the Yedo theatre was accustomed to appear, there shone forth at night a huge Ichikawa crest in electric globes, somehow linking the modern actor of Japan with the fraternity in the West. Less elaborate is the announcement of a minor actor’s promotion to a grade or so above the rank and file, made during the progress of a play, which is done in various graceful ways. Two women in the establishment of a daimyo, rivals in the play, enter by the hanamichi with their attendants, and the procession proceeds to the gate of a temple. All enter with the exception of the rivals, and one maid. For a moment the current of the play is turned aside, and in the gay-patterned costumes of their rôles, the two leading characters kneel down on the stage with the maid between them, each taking turn in explaining how the young man in the female disguise has been a pupil of a stage favourite who has recently died, of his association with him, and that as he has now progressed in his work they crave the patronage of the audience. The maid then returns thanks for the favour of the audience, and all three rising to their feet they take up the lines of the play as though there had been no interpolation,—the maid being admonished to join the others within the temple, as she may be needed. When the adopted son of Danjuro, the ninth, was fired with ambition to become an actor, since he was a member of so distinguished an actor-house, no teacher seemed ready to volunteer. His father had been a banker, and he was thus not born in the purple. Nakamura Ganjiro of Osaka generously consented to assist him. For years he studied hard and at last made a first bow in a Tokyo theatre. His introduction planned by Ganjiro only serves to show the esteem in which the great Danjuro was held, and that for his sake Ganjiro was willing to assist a member of his family.