ABSTRACT
We have seen how Toyotaké Wakatayū, with Ki-no-Kaion, an able writer, as his playwright, in 1702 established a marionette theatre, called the Toyotaké-za in the same quarter as the Takémoto-za.
Kaion, a native of Sakai, a thriving city near Osaka, was born in 1663 and was thus ten years junior to Chika-matsu. His father and older brother were poets and he himself, like Chikamatsu, served in his youth as a Buddhist priest, returning later to the outer world in order to study medicine. Subsequently he followed the medical profession and resided in Osaka. His leisure hours he spent in taking lessons in Japanese classics from Keichū, a Buddhist priest noted for his ascetic life and profound knowledge of Japanese literature. Gradually Kaion drifted into literary work, to become at last a puppet dramatist.
