One of the most important of the underworld institutions which the prints of this period depict is the theatre. Though Harunobu turned aside from it, his great contemporary Shunsho and the whole body of Shunsho's followers found most of their material there.
The popular theatre had sprung into importance in the days of Moronobu. Previous to that time, the classic lyric drama of the aristocracy, called the No, had flourished in the secluded palaces of great nobles; but the mob was obliged to divert itself with nothing more interesting than jugglers and street performers. Therefore when the theatre first came into being, in the river-bed of Kyoto, it achieved great popularity; and when later it was transferred to Yedo, it rose during the Genroku Period (1688-1703) to a position of passionate favour. It appears never to have had a very savoury moral odour; and before long it became associated with so much corruptness that it presented a serious problem for the Tokugawa rulers. In 1643, as a corrective measure, they had decreed the exclusion of female actors from the stage. From this time on, only men trod the Japanese boards; the female rôles were taken by male actors whose skill in this impersonation is said to have been extraordinary.
The status of a great actor in the hearts of the people was not very different from that of a successful prize-fighter among us to-day. He was a popular idol; his movements were the subject of the eager curiosity of the gaping multitude; but his social rank was of the lowest. The prints of a later date show us pictures of actors with their gay companions on boating-parties or tea-house picnics, surrounded by inquisitive throngs of spectators. Famous and greatly sought after as these actors were, they occupied positions of even less esteem than the English players in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Nothing so well illustrates their ostracism from any kind of society as the words used by one of the greatest of actor-painters, Shunsho, in the preface to a book of drawings representing actors: "To be sure, I love the theatre, and greatly enjoy being a spectator, _but I have no connection with the actors themselves, and do not know them in private life_." Even Shunsho, who had created the heroic designs of these men in their great rôles, dared not acknowledge himself as their familiar.