緞帳

A donchō is a curtain that opens vertically, rising and falling. Kabuki's tradition is the jōshikimaku draw curtain pulled open sideways; the donchō is said to have been absent from the major theatres until the early Meiji era, entering them from the Western-influenced Imperial Theatre at the era's end.

Smaller playhouses once barred from using the draw curtain relied on the donchō instead—which is said to be how donchō-shibai, "drop-curtain theatre," became a byword for minor theatres. Today lavishly woven donchō are the pride of modern theatres, and in kabuki they open mainly dance pieces and new works.

The word also produced donchō yakusha, 'drop-curtain actor'—a disparaging term, still found in dictionaries, for performers of the minor theatres denied the draw curtain. It quietly preserves the memory of an age when the very type of curtain declared a theatre's rank.

The donchō is a word of kabuki's modern theatres rather than of any single family's art. Knowing which curtain opens a piece—the striped jōshikimaku for the classics, the donchō for dances and new works—reveals the rhythm with which kabuki in the age of Danjūrō XIII moves between old and new.