板につく

The ita—"boards"—are the planked floor of the stage. As an actor gains experience, the art settles into the stage's air until posture and delivery sit in perfect accord with the boards; this state was called ita ni tsuku, "settling onto the boards," and the idiom is said to derive from it.

In everyday Japanese it describes a role, profession, manner, or way of dressing that has come to fit someone naturally—praise for a sureness acquired over time. At the core of the phrase remains the bodily sense of an actor shaped by rehearsal upon rehearsal.

In present-day usage: "The title of section chief has really settled on him"; "She looks utterly at home in that apron"; "His turn as master of ceremonies has grown polished and natural." Though it praises a station or a style of dress, the phrase folds within it the actor's years upon the boards—and its weight lies precisely in the fact that it can never be earned overnight.

Ita ni tsuku speaks for every performer who stands on a stage. The sense of an art soaking into the body through kept forms and repeated performance resonates naturally with the way the Ichikawa Sōke has handed down the kata of aragoto through the generations.