六方

Roppō is a stylized manner of walking with grandly swinging arms and powerfully stamping feet, performed above all when a character exits down the hanamichi. Arm and leg on the same side move together, and the exaggerated stride itself expresses the figure's strength and surging emotion.

Varieties abound: the tobi roppō ("flying roppō") that bounds forward leap by leap, the fox roppō with its vulpine grace, the courtesan roppō, and more. As the actor storms down the hanamichi, every eye and every cheer in the house follows.

The name roppō—"six directions"—is said to derive from swinging the arms toward heaven, earth, and the four quarters as one advances: the hō is the hō of direction, and those six directions are the source of the name. Another account traces it to the swaggering gait of the Edo toughs known as the roppō-gumi. Either way, the heart of the performance lies in a stride vast enough to span all six directions. The very name speaks the scale of the art.

Its supreme example closes Kanjinchō of the Kabuki Jūhachiban: Benkei, his lord's crisis past, hurtles through the audience in a flying roppō. Performed by generations of Ichikawa Danjūrō, it is the moment when the exhilaration of the family's aragoto art bursts forth in its purest form.