團十郎茶

Danjūrō-cha is a muted reddish-brown among Japan's traditional colours, also known as kakiiro, "persimmon colour." Said to be dyed with red-ocher pigment and persimmon tannin, it has a deep, quiet warmth of red.

The colour is said to have swept Edo after Danjūrō V wore a persimmon-coloured ceremonial robe in Shibaraku, and it came to bear his name. That an actor's name became the name of a colour speaks to the scale of the Danjūrō phenomenon in its day. The official Naritaya site, it should be noted, credits Danjūrō II with using persimmon for the Shibaraku robe — the generation that fixed it as the colour of aragoto and the generation whose name it took are best kept apart.

Danjūrō-cha is not the only colour to take an actor's name: rokō-cha, said to derive from the haimyō of Segawa Kikunojō II, and shikan-cha, linked to Nakamura Utaemon III, are among the "actor colours" that swept Edo one after another. Stage costume moved street fashion—these words mirror an age when actors set the trends.

Persimmon remains the emblematic colour of the Ichikawa Sōke: at name-succession kōjō ceremonies, actors of the Sōke traditionally wear kamishimo of this shade. On stage, the colour is the visible history of the Naritaya line, handed down since Danjūrō V.