When Onna Kabuki was at its height, there were four companies in Kyoto called O-Kuni, Sadoshima, Shinobu, and a company managed by a man named Dansuke. Shinobu removed to Ise province, Dansuke and his company established themselves at Osaka, that was then as it is to-day the leading commercial centre of Japan. The Sadoshima party was divided into two, headed respectively by Takeshima and Sadoshima, both of whom had sons who became noted actors in the first period of the male theatre. They were Takeshima Kyozaemon and Sadoshima Dempachi. The latter was a dokegata, or comic actor. Sadoshima’s grandson wrote _Sadoshima Nikki_, or the Journal of Sadoshima, which deals with the Kabuki of his time, and is a theatre classic. Had the women companies remained exemplary in conduct and kept their ranks free from the other sex, the history of the Japanese theatre might have been quite different. But the leading actresses were prostitutes; their art was a means to an end, and they abused their privileges as entertainers. No permanent and self-respecting theatre could have continued to exist on such an immoral foundation. The degradation of the Onna Kabuki was due in no small degree, however, to the playing of men and women together. The public very soon came to look down upon these players, and they were referred to as Kawara Kojiki, or Riverside Beggars, derived from the fact that the first Kabuki players had erected their temporary stages on the dry beds of Kyoto rivers. The term was from this time handed down to besmirch the reputations of generations of honest, legitimate actors that followed. In 1608 a proclamation by the Shogun’s Government was made limiting the Onna Kabuki to the outskirts of the cities, where its baneful influence might be less of a contamination to society. Several court ladies who had carried on flirtations with the handsome young actors of the Onna Kabuki were exiled, in punishment of their misdemeanours, and Government interference was frequent. In 1626 a notice advertising a performance was ordered to be taken down. In 1628, when a company of actresses played at Takanawa near Shinagawa, in the suburbs of Yedo, the theatre was so crowded that great confusion ensued, and the place was ordered to be closed. The climax came when the Government of the third Shogun, Iyemitsu, issued a strict order (1629) forbidding female performances of any kind. At one stroke the performances of women dancers, the actresses of the Onna Kabuki, and even the women minstrels who sang to the movements of the marionettes in the puppet show, came to an abrupt end.