Senior to Tojuro and Danjuro, Yamanaka Heikuro died at the age of 83, and played with both the first and second Danjuro. He adopted a son, who did not live to succeed him. Many stories are told of the impressiveness of this stage villain, and how even the actors playing with him sometimes became frightened at his appearance. He was of large physique and a man of forceful character, so that he was eminently fitted to play the diabolical katakiyaku whose fierceness and violence caused the Yedo audience of those days to feel thrills of horror. Great stage changes took place during the second part of the Genroku period, and the rapidly developing Doll-theatre began to influence Kabuki and its actors. The public tired of the sentimentality introduced by Tojuro, and expressed a taste for the loyalty and sacrifice plays such as were in vogue in the Doll-theatre, that had begun to capture the public imagination. The actor genius of the latter part of the Genroku period was undoubtedly Sawamura Chojuro, who was born in 1680 and died in 1734. He was the son of an Osaka merchant. His elder brother was also an actor of repute, and a younger brother an expert drum performer. Although he played with Tojuro, he did not confine himself to this school exclusively, but was influenced by the different styles of the Genroku stage. He assimilated and harmonised the characteristics of the celebrities who had preceded him, and so did much towards the establishment of the rules of acting that pertain to modern Kabuki. He made himself popular in samurai plays, in those of everyday life that reflected the manners and customs of his time, and he was equally at home in historical pieces that required the exploitation of the unreal, while he excelled also in dancing. His son, called Chosaburo, became the second Chojuro. A follower who took the name of Sawamura Chojuro, the third, was destined to found a strong actor family that is flourishing in Tokyo to-day, half a dozen members of this name now being prominent. He was known on the stage as Sawamura Sojuro, a name to reckon with in Japanese stage history. The present Sawamura Sojuro of the Imperial Theatre, Tokyo, with his four actor sons, and a nephew, Sawamura Chojuro, make a formidable family array of players, there being no fear for some time to come that this line will suffer extinction. When Yedo Kabuki lost its two Genroku stars, Danjuro and Hichisaburo, there was a vacancy that no one else could fill, and the Yedo people must have felt a lack of interest when witnessing the performances of those who tried to take their places. There were in reality only two actors in Yedo at this time who upheld the past glory of the stage. One was Ikushima Shingoro, and the other Nakajima Kanzaemon.