黒衣

Kurogo appear on stage dressed entirely in black, faces veiled, to assist the actors—handing over props, clearing them away, helping with onstage costume changes. By kabuki's tacit rule that black cannot be seen, they are present yet officially not there.

Against snow they turn white (yukigo); against sea or river, pale blue (mizugo or namigo). The role is usually taken by the performing actor's own disciples—only someone who knows the play and the master's breathing can move at exactly the right instant.

Kurogo has entered everyday Japanese in the form kuroko: to 'be a kuroko' is to support others from the shadows without stepping forward oneself. The stage convention that black cannot be seen has settled into the modern language as a word for a whole way of carrying oneself.

The convention belongs to kabuki as a whole, yet the aragoto stage—with its enormous costumes and mechanical tricks—could not stand without this unseen support. The heroic figures of the Kabuki Jūhachiban, handed down in the Ichikawa Sōke, are quietly upheld by the work of the black.