The first onnagata of Kabuki are shadowy; they have left their names, but very little has been recorded of them. Kyoto produced the early onnagata, later Osaka became a headquarters, but Yedo was not the soil in which they could flourish. The people of Kyoto had not parted with their taste for things elegant, artistic, and literary,—the inheritance of centuries. Yedo was a political centre, and did not breed onnagata. But one characteristic of the onnagata was that they were common to the stages of the three towns. They received their early training in Kyoto or Osaka, then spent the best part of their careers in Yedo, or else wandered from one town to another. Still another peculiarity of the onnagata was that so many of them took to Buddhism, retiring from Kabuki to spend the remainder of their lives in some peaceful temple. In Kyoto, Itoyori Gensaburo first acted female parts, and in Yedo, in 1642, Murayama Sakon came from Kyoto to play at the Murayama-za. He has been described on his first appearance in Yedo as wearing a flowing robe of light silk, his head covered with a cloth dyed in many colours, and he carried in his hand a branch of a tree to which was attached a long piece of paper inscribed with verse. His performance was nothing more than a simple dance. His popularity, however, brought disaster, for the authorities, ever watchful lest the theatre corrupt good manners, issued an order prohibiting onnagata. The existence of Kabuki trembled in the balance. It was some time before the matter was settled, for the proprietors of theatres, with the worthy Saruwaka Kansaburo, founder of Yedo Kabuki, at their head, made an application that male players be allowed to play as females, and permission was granted, provided the specialty should remain distinct from men’s rôles. This was the real origin of the onnagata. Murayama Sakon’s rival and contemporary was Ukon Genzaemon. He was playing on the Yedo stage in 1655, when the city was swept by a conflagration, and his theatre was destroyed. As the actors of that time were forbidden to appear on the stage wearing long hair, but were obliged to shave the crown above the forehead, they covered their heads with a piece of silk to prevent the disfigurement from being seen. Ukon is described in the theatre gossip of the day as wearing an orange silk head-covering, and as he was a handsome youth and very womanly, it is easy to imagine that the Yedo audiences were highly pleased with him. From the criticism of the time, he was considered beautiful, a fine dancer, but had no animation, and so became monotonous. Murayama Sakon and Ukon Genzaemon played together in the same play, and were closely associated in the theatre of Osaka, Kyoto, and Yedo.