Shinpa (新派) (also rendered shimpa) is a form of theater and cinema in Japan usually featuring melodramatic stories. Its roots can be traced to a form of agitation propaganda theater in the 1880s promoted by Liberal Party members Sadanori Sudo and Otojirō Kawakami.[1] It eventually earned the name "shinpa" (literally meaning "new school") to contrast it from "kyūha" ("old school" or kabuki) due its more contemporary and realistic stories.[1] With the success of the Seibidan troupe, however, shinpa theater ended up with a form that was closer to kabuki than to the later shingeki because of its continued use of onnagata and off-stage music.[1] As a theatrical form, it was most successful in the early 1900s as the works of novelists such as Kyōka Izumi, Kōyō Ozaki, and Roka Tokutomi were adapted for the stage.[1] With the introduction of cinema in Japan, shinpa became one of the first film genres in opposition again to kyūha films, as many films were based on shinpa plays.[2] Some shinpa stage actors like Masao Inoue were heavily involved in film and a form called rensageki or literally "chain drama" appeared which mixed cinema and theater on stage. With the rise of the reformist Pure Film Movement in the 1910s, which strongly criticized shinpa films for their melodramatic tales of women suffering from the strictures of class and social prejudice, films about contemporary subjects eventually were called gendaigeki in opposition to jidaigeki by the 1920s, even though shinpa stories continued to be made into film for decades to come.[2] On the stage, shinpa was no longer as successful after the Taishō era, but good playwrights such as Matsutarō Kawaguchi, actresses like Yaeko Mizutani and such Living National Treasures as Rokurō Kitamura and Shōtarō Hanayagi helped keep the form alive.[1] Shinpa also had an influence on modern Korean theater through the shinp’a (신파) genre.[3] In Japan, the troupe Gekidan Shinpa still continues to perform, taking advantage especially of the involvement of kabuki actors.