三枚目

Sanmaime is the popular name for kabuki's dōkegata, the comic role that delights the audience with funny lines and mimicry. The name is said to come from the front billboards of Edo-period playhouses, where the comic actor's name was most often posted third in the row.

In everyday speech, the sanmaime is the clown of any group—the one who plays the comic part and puts a room at ease. To call someone a sanmaime carries affection: not a figure of ridicule, but a person whose humor draws people in.

In everyday use today: "He was the class sanmaime, always making everyone laugh"; "These days the sanmaime is better liked than the nimaime." The phrase carries a teasing respect for those who shoulder the laughter themselves—the Edo affection for the comic actor on the third billboard, passed intact into modern appraisals of character.

Sanmaime belongs to kabuki's system of role types as a whole. No play stands on its leads alone; it breathes because someone carries the laughter—and the Ichikawa Sōke's aragoto stages, too, have always rested on this depth of supporting roles.