Are there auditions for kabuki casting?

To eyes trained on film or modern theatre this looks strange, but in kabuki a play and "whose art it is" are inseparable. Benkei in Kanjinchō is always a particular house's Benkei, transmitted a particular way. It is less that a role exists and a performer is sought for it than that someone holds the kata and the play rises around them. An open audition does not fit that order of things.

In practice, casting is settled between Shochiku, the producing company, and the senior actors of zagashira rank. Who is in the company that month, how the house plays are woven in, whose hands a role should be placed in so that they take a step forward — a programme forms from the accumulation of such judgments. For a young actor, receiving a role inside that company is itself the training, and the slow move toward heavier roles is the record of his growth. It looks unlike modern casting because it is, at bottom, the machinery of transmission.

There are exceptions. New kabuki works, and productions brought in by outside directors, can assemble wider companies and produce pairings the usual channels would not. Nor is the door closed to those not born into a house: the National Theatre's kabuki actor training programme is the recognised public entrance from outside the hereditary lines, and actors who came through it stand on the stage.