After Ujisato’s death, Sansaburo returned to Kyoto with considerable property left him by his lord, and led an extravagant life, passing his time in the pleasures of the capital. It is easy to see that the alluring O-Kuni, who was such a novel amusement to the citizens of Kyoto frequenting the popular entertainment resort on the Kamo River, must have captivated his fancy, for he quickly decided to cast in his lot with hers. Sansaburo, bred in a military family and having associated with one of the celebrated feudal lords of the period, was in consequence acquainted with the best in literature and art. That he was familiar with the Nō stage, particularly with the Kyogen, or comic pieces given between the Nō plays, is very certain, for he soon changed O-Kuni’s simple Shinto-Buddhist dance into the nature of Kyogen. No doubt he considered that her performances savoured too much of religion to please all and sundry, so he taught her popular songs and also composed pieces for her. She did not, however, succeed in winning the highest popular favour until she transformed herself into a male, wearing swords and covering her head with a peculiar head-dress. From the time that O-Kuni assumed the outward guise of a man, dancing with two swords thrust through her belt, the people flocked to see her. For the first time Sansaburo called her performances Kabuki, the name by which the Japanese stage is known at the present day. The word was no new invention. It had been in use for a long period to signify something comic, and gradually came to lose its original meaning and was used to denote the particular kind of theatrical entertainment that had arisen, and from that time forward Kabuki was applied to everything pertaining to the popular stage. The word for theatre, “shibai”, also came into general use at this time, meaning to sit on the lawn or grass, from the fact that the platform for performances was a temporary affair and the audience sat on the ground. Still later Sansaburo introduced more and more of the Nō elements, the externals of O-Kuni’s stage being largely borrowed from the aristocratic theatre. And how the present highly complex stage of Japan developed out of O-Kuni’s dance is the story of the rise of Kabuki.