Page:Tales from old Japanese dramas (1915).djvu/43

 to a powerful rival, and their competition contributed to the improvement of marionettes and the development of the epical drama. An ambitious, excellent pupil of Gidayū, named Toyotaké Wakatayū, established an independent marionette theatre called the Toyotaké Za in 1702, in the same quarter as the Takemoto Za, with Ki-no-Kaion, an able writer, as its playwright. After Gidayū's retirement three years later, the new theatre prospered nearly as much as the older one did.

Kaion was born in 1663, so that he was ten years younger than Monzayemon. His father, though merely a confectioner, was proficient in writing haikai or seventeen-syllabled verse, and his elder brother was a well-known kyōkashi or comic poet called Yuyensai Teiryū. In his youth Kaion was a pupil of Abbot Yetsuzan of the Kakimoto Temple at Sakai, in the province of Izumi. Later he became a layman; and taking up his residence in Ōsaka, practised medicine. In his leisure hours he studied Japanese classics under Keicha, a noted scholar.

From 1702, when his connection with the Toyotaké Za commenced, until his retirement in 1723,