How do costume and wig express a character?

Kabuki dress is designed so that the audience knows who a figure is the instant the curtain opens. This is not a matter of courtesy but of necessity. Edo playhouses were darker than today's, the rooms were wide, and people came in partway through. Explaining every character in dialogue would have stalled the play. So the information was loaded onto appearance.

The wig carries chiefly station, trade and age. The shape of the topknot, the flare of the side locks, the degree of disorder — a townsman's topknot differs from a samurai's, and a respectable woman is dressed nothing like a courtesan. Older roles carry grey. Sometimes a single hairstyle names the category outright, as the kuruma-bin of aragoto does: see those flaring side locks and you know at once that this is a role of more-than-human power.

The costume carries temperament and circumstance: colour speaks the inner nature, motif the lineage and fate, material and cut the rank. And what is interesting is that this information is not fixed. When a character's inner truth is revealed mid-story, the ensemble itself changes. In bukkaeri the upper garment is thrown back to disclose another figure beneath; in hikinuki, a thread is drawn and the costume changes in an instant. Appearance transforms at the moment of revelation — and because dress is sign, rewriting the sign carries dramatic force.