With this relaxation there again came into existence a woman’s theatre, headed by a brilliant actress, Kumehachi, who was a contemporary of Danjuro, the ninth, the great star of Meiji. She took male rôles as did other women of her company. With her death her company disbanded. A successor to Kumehachi exists to-day who also acts men’s characters most successfully, Nakamura Kasen, but she loses much of her prestige by acting with mixed players. The establishment of a school of actresses in connection with the founding of the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo belongs to the modern history of the Japanese stage. Judging from the conditions that have been brought about by mixed players on the Western stage, it was a fortunate thing that women were excluded, for the actors were able to develop a masculine theatre unhampered by petticoat influence. Whether this is an advantage to the art of the theatre remains to be seen when Kabuki, the unique masculine stage of Japan, will become known outside the land of its origin. In order that men should reign supreme in the world of make-believe, the creativeness of the Japanese woman in the direction of the theatre has thus been clearly sacrificed. But in the future their talent may be able to find scope for development in a theatre of their own, as an expression of the spirit of women. The tendency of the theatre art in Japan is toward a separation of the sexes, and there is hope that in the future a women’s theatre, free from the immoral influences that caused the downfall of the Onna Kabuki, will coexist with Kabuki, the firmly established masculine stage. O-Kuni’s prominence began in 1596, when she first met Sansaburo, and she reached the height of her fame in 1601. By 1629 women were strictly prohibited from performing in public. Thus the women’s theatre she had founded came to an abrupt end, after an existence of three decades. CHAPTER IX WAKASHU KABUKI: THE YOUNG MEN’S STAGE The first Kabuki theatre to be founded in Japan in which performances were given by companies composed entirely of men was started in the third year of Genna, 1617, by Dansuke, who seems to have been an enterprising manager. It was Dansuke who formed companies of women from the pleasure quarters of Kyoto, and who was invited by no less a personage than the great daimyo, Date Masamune, to bring his players to his feudal capital, Sendai. Dansuke also established a company of female players in Osaka, but he is known chiefly in the history of Kabuki as the founder of the first male theatre.