sen, a three-stringed guitar recently introduced from Loochoo. A favourite story for this purpose was the Jōruri jiu-ni dan Sōshi, written towards the end of the Muromachi period. It relates the loves of the famous Yoshitsune with a heroine whose name, Jōruri, is now used as a synonym for a whole class of dramatic compositions.
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century we hear of Jōruri-Katari (chanters of Jōruri) at Yedo, for whom two authors named Oka Seibei and Yonomiya Yajirō are said to have written a number of pieces, some of which, known as Kompira-bon, are still in existence. They relate the adventures of a hero named Kompira, nine feet two inches high, with a face so red that nothing could be redder, whose doughty deeds in quelling demons and slaying savage beasts are still the delight of the Japanese schoolboy.
The first Kabuki Shibai, or popular theatre, as distinguished from the Nō Shibai, and from the Ayatsuri Shibai, or marionette theatre, is said to have been established at Kiōto early in the seventeenth century. We are told that a priestess of the great temple of Kidzuki in Idzumo, named O Kuni, having made the acquaintance of one Nagoya Sanzaburō, ran away with him to Kiōto. There they got together a number of dancing-girls and gave performances on the bank of the river Kamo, where the Theatre Street stands at the present day. O Kuni as a priestess would naturally be acquainted with the pantomimic dances performed in honour of the Shinto gods, and was doubtless herself a trained dancer and mime. Owing to certain abuses, the employment of women as actors was put a stop to by the authorities. Their place was taken by boys, but this also was eventually prohibited.
