It is also related that she danced before Oda Nobunaga, one of the foremost military leaders of the time, by whose death Hideyoshi was able to rise to power. And it is said that both Hideyoshi and his chief retainers patronised O-Kuni. There is a story that she was invited by Hideyoshi’s faithful lieutenant, Kato Kiyomasa, to the southern island of Japan, where he held sway as the daimyo of Kumamoto. But it seems impossible to believe that O-Kuni should have been engaged to such an extent, and more probable that some of the great ones recognised her talent, and the story was applied to all the outstanding personalities of her time. For, after all, while the great and noble of the land may have appreciated her, it was to the people that O-Kuni particularly addressed herself. _Kabuki Koto Hajime_, or Beginnings of Kabuki, a book written by a Kabuki playwright, Tamenaga Icho, and published in 1762, says that O-Kuni was beautiful, that she was skilled in calligraphy—an important female accomplishment—that she had a sympathetic nature, loved flowers and the moon, and that a snowy evening or a maple scene in the autumn inspired her to poetry. There is an account of O-Kuni written by an author who must have attended her performances, and yet he does not dilate upon her beauty, which must have been an oversight, for judging from the general details known about her she certainly possessed some superior power of attraction. Both Sansaburo and O-Kuni died while the O-Kuni Kabuki was at its height. The chroniclers do not tell how they parted company, or ended their stage careers, but Sansaburo gave up acting and became a retainer of the lord of Tsuyama, whose wife was his sister. He was killed by the daimyo’s chief retainer during the building of Tsuyama Castle. This man had been long in the service of the daimyo, but Sansaburo aspired to outrival him on account of his relationship, and because of his association with the illustrious Gamo Ujisato. The two had a dispute and fought, and Sansaburo was killed. His friends retaliated by immediately taking the life of the chief retainer, and his two brothers were also punished by self-inflicted death at the command of the daimyo. When O-Kuni grew old, and had outlived her career on the stage that she had created with Sansaburo, she returned to her old home in Kitsuki, near Izumo Shrine. Here she retired from the world, and lived in a rustic cottage, spent her time in reciting the sutras, writing verse, and died at a ripe old age. This account of O-Kuni’s last days appears to be very reliable, as it is from _Izumo O-Kuni Den_, or Biography of O-Kuni of Izumo, from records preserved among the Shrine archives. The exact date of her death is not given in this record, and her last resting-place is also unknown.