Uzaemon’s ancestors were said to have been samurai in the service of a daimyo. On coming to Yedo from the provinces he entered the employment of Murayama Matasaburo and afterwards became the sole proprietor, giving the theatre his own name. He was not an actor, but successful in business management, and few of his successors distinguished themselves on the stage. The Ichimura-za crests, one an orange with leaves at the top and the other a stork in a circle, have continued to be theatre symbols from the time of the first Ichimura-za to the present. This playhouse passed through many vicissitudes, and was removed from its original site and finally destroyed by fire. The last theatre bearing this name has come down to modern times, and was destroyed in the great disaster of 1923, a temporary Ichimura-za serving at the present. Still another theatre, the Morita-za, was to have considerable influence upon stage history. It was established in 1660 by Morita Tarobei, who came to Yedo from Settsu Province. Among his advisers was a comic actor, Bando Matakuro, and he adopted this actor’s son, transferring his property to him and calling him Morita Kanya, the second, a name that has been inherited for 250 years by actors and managers. The thirteenth Morita Kanya is now a member of the Imperial Theatre company, and his father was one of the most aggressive theatre managers during the modern period of Meiji. [Illustration: Ichimura Uzaemon, the thirteenth, as Yasuna in a posture dance descriptive of a man who has become demented because of the loss of his wife.] The Yamamura-za was another of the first Yedo theatres, and would in all probability have continued together with the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, and Morita-za, but one of its leading actors became involved in a scandal with a lady-in-waiting at the Shogun’s Court, and it was demolished by the authorities. Kawarasaki Gonnosuke established the Kawarasaki-za in 1648. He was at first a Nō actor, but came to Yedo from the provinces and started a Kabuki theatre. Among several plays he composed, that concerning the revenge of the Soga Brothers was most popular. In 1663 this theatre was incorporated with the Morita-za, but later they separated and continued until modern times, the Kawarasaki-za having been closely associated with the Ichikawa actor-line. Za—as applied to a theatre—had not been especially invented to meet the new theatrical situation. Long before the Nō had become firmly established in the fourteenth century, companies of players attached to the great Shinto Shrines had called themselves za, which previous to this time had been in use to denote a commercial guild. It was a case of history repeating itself that the resurrected term should have been used in connection with the new playhouses that were springing up in all directions.