Apart from costumes fixed by the play, does the actor decide?

In kabuki, assembling a role's appearance is called koshirae — a word covering not only the costume but the wig, the makeup and the properties carried. The question is where the settled part ends and the actor's judgment begins.

The ground of the answer is that the main kata cannot be moved. Alter the cut of the suō in Shibaraku or the colour of Sukeroku's headband and it becomes something else. These are not one actor's property but a shared inheritance. Around the immovable parts, however, the latitude is wider than one might expect.

Take the shade. "Persimmon" covers a range of depth and brightness, and which one is taken changes how the figure reads from the seats. Or the under-robes and linings: barely visible from the audience, they flash briefly with a movement, and what is used there is said to show an actor's taste most clearly of all. The pairing with hand properties, the fine dressing of the wig, the weight of a line in the makeup — such choices accumulate into that actor's koshirae. The same role leaves a different impression from house to house because this latitude is at work. What is chosen is also a statement of how the role is read. The koshirae is acting that has begun before a word is spoken.