床山

The tokoyama dresses each kabuki wig for its role and cares for it daily, down to fitting it on and off in the dressing room. Wig-making is a divided craft: the wig maker beats a copper base to fit the actor's head and plants the hair, and the tokoyama then styles it into the coiffure of the role.

Each role has its set style, yet adjustments are made in dialogue with the actor. In the dressing room a wig is called an atama—a "head"—and one speaks of "hanging" it on rather than wearing it. The hands that dress it before every performance create half the face of the role.

The word tokoyama lives beyond kabuki as well. In sumo, the craftsmen who dress the wrestlers' topknots are also called tokoyama; attached to each stable, they style the ranked wrestlers' elaborate ōichō daily and, by custom, take professional names beginning with the character toko. The title survives in both worlds—stage and ring—as the name of those who tend the hair.

The wigs that symbolize the Ichikawa Sōke's aragoto—the kurumabin with its boldly fanned-out sidelocks, seen on Kamakura Gongorō in Shibaraku and in Kagekiyo—also pass through the tokoyama's hands before every performance. Behind the beauty of exaggeration stands this quiet backstage craft.