型

A kata is a "definitive form" of acting or staging—the distillation of countless refinements made as a play was performed again and again across generations. Everything from line delivery and movement to costume and timing carries the accumulated wisdom of past masters.

Some kata belong to acting families, some were created by individual great actors, and some grew out of regional traditions such as those of Edo and Kamigata. When an actor succeeds to a historic name, the kata come with it. Far from a mold that restricts freedom, the kata is the starting point from which each actor's own artistry grows.

Even the everyday word kata-yaburi—"breaking the mold"—depends on the kata. Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII was known for his motto, "With kata you can break the kata; without kata, you are merely shapeless," said to have moved him deeply when the monk Muchaku Seikyō spoke it on a radio counseling program. Only one who has mastered the form can break it: a saying cherished far beyond the theatre for capturing how inheritance and creation depend on each other.

The Ichikawa Sōke preserves its own kata, above all in the aragoto style. The Kabuki Jūhachiban plays travel through time together with these forms, and Danjūrō XIII builds his own stage upon the kata he has inherited and absorbed.