顔見世

Kaomise—"showing the faces"—was the annual production introducing a theatre's newly assembled troupe. In the Edo period, actors signed one-year contracts beginning in the eleventh month, so the November production gathered the new company before the audience. It was the most important event of the theatrical year.

Theatres across Japan still mount kaomise productions today. The most celebrated is the year-end Kichirei Kaomise at the Minamiza in Kyoto, its facade lined with maneki boards bearing actors' names in bold kanteiryū calligraphy.

So deeply did kaomise mark the start of the year that November was called, it is said, "the New Year of the theatre country." And in Japanese today any first public appearance may be called a kaomise—a theatre-born word alive in everyday speech.

The Edo kaomise and the Ichikawa Sōke are deeply linked: from 1714 onward, Shibaraku—one of the Kabuki Jūhachiban—is said to have been performed every year as an indispensable scene of the November kaomise programs.