セリ

Seri are traps cut into the stage floor that lift or lower actors and even whole sets. Raising is called seri-age, lowering seri-sage. At the center of the revolving stage sits the great ōzeri, large enough to move an entire building—carrying the audience, for instance, from a room straight up to the rooftop above it.

Smaller traps nearer the audience serve for entrances and exits, turning an actor's very appearance—rising as if from underground—into a spectacle of its own. The small trap set into the hanamichi at the shichisan position bears its own name: the suppon.

The seri's full grandeur can be savored in the celebrated 'Sanmon' scene of Sanmon Gosan no Kiri: the great temple gate of Nanzenji—the thief Ishikawa Goemon seated atop it, pipe in hand, declaiming 'What a glorious view!'—rises slowly on the ōzeri, vermilion gate and blossoming cherries ascending together into a single magnificent picture.

Like the revolving stage, seri belong to kabuki as a whole rather than to any family's art. The Kabukiza, where Danjūrō XIII performs, is fitted with traps large and small that shape the rhythm of every scene change.