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18 in Yedo; but the dramas which had originally been written for them were subsequently transferred to the stage.

These puppet-plays, however, reached their highest development in Osaka. One of Joun’s best pupils left Yedo for Kyoto where he made the joruri very popular; but in the latter city a new school of joruri arose later on under Uji Kaganojo, who, however, found a powerful rival in Inouye Harima in Osaka. The fame of these two men was soon eclipsed by that of a third, Takemoto Gidayu, who invented a style which combined all that was good in both of them without any of their defects. His style is recognised as the best of all joruri and has ever since been so popular that the gidayu, as it is called after him, is often confounded by the common people with the joruri, of which it is only a single form. It was in 1686 that Gidayu first opened a puppet-show in Osaka at which he himself sang and recited, when he was thirty-five years old. While his popularity was no doubt due to his own great ability, still he was exceptionally fortunate in commanding the services of the greatest lyrical dramatist of Japan. Chikamatsu Monzayemon, who was born in 1653, and therefore Gidayu’s junior by a year, had, after being brought up in a temple, entered a court noble’s service; but he soon left it and took to writing librettos for puppet-shows. He had already written eight plays, none of them possessing any high merit, before he produced the first of his great plays for Gidayu. During twenty-eight years until Gidayu’s death in 1714, he wrote for him about sixty plays; and throughout that long interval he produced only two plays that were not for him, but for his pupil. This unique partnership between two men of the first rank in their respective professions made their joint work the model of the Japanese lyrical drama.

After Gidayu’s death, Chikamatsu who died ten years later, wrote some thirty plays for the singer’s pupils. All his plays were on historical subjects except twenty-two, which were domestic. Before his time there were only