定式幕

The jōshikimaku is kabuki's traditional draw curtain, sewn from vertical panels of black, persimmon, and green. Pulled open and closed by hand, it marks the beginning and end of a performance; its use is said to date back to the licensed theatres of Edo, and the order of the colours varies from theatre to theatre.

The slow glide of the curtain is itself part of the staging—and today the three-colour stripe is recognized around the world as a symbol of kabuki itself.

The order of the three colours is said to have differed at each of Edo's three licensed theatres—the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, and Morita-za. The Nakamura-za reportedly used white in place of green, in a black-white-persimmon scheme, so the curtain served almost as a theatre's crest: one glance told you where you were. Even today the sequence differs between the Kabukiza and the National Theatre, each theatre's tradition woven into its stripes.

The jōshikimaku belongs to kabuki's theatre culture as a whole rather than to any one family—yet the history of Edo kabuki that the Ichikawa Sōke has helped carry has unfolded, era after era, with the opening and closing of these three-colored stripes.