櫓

The yagura is a framework structure erected above the main entrance of a playhouse, wrapped in a curtain dyed with the theatre's crest. In the Edo period, the right to raise it was the proof of official license from the shogunate, and it was honoured as the very symbol of the right to perform.

In Edo, only the three licensed theatres—the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, and Morita-za—were permitted to raise a yagura. At today's Kabukiza, a yagura bearing the theatre's phoenix crest is still erected above the entrance for the kaomise production each November: the old privilege is gone, but the tower survives as cherished custom.

The yagura was not only for show—it was an instrument. Drums beaten atop it, the yagura-daiko, once announced the opening of performances, their sound drawing crowds to the theatre quarter. Kabuki's tower drums are said to have largely fallen silent after the Bunka era (1804-18), but in sumo the yagura-daiko still sounds today—the word survives to be heard.

The yagura belongs to no single acting house; it tells of the institutions and dignity of Edo kabuki. It was beneath such towers that successive Ichikawa Danjūrō honed their art—the licensed theatre culture was the very soil in which the aragoto style of Edo grew.