How are a role's face and wig decided?

The order begins with shōne, the character's core nature. What sort of person is this at bottom — strong or brittle, on the side of righteousness or nursing a grievance? Until that is settled, neither face nor wig can be. Put the other way: every choice in the koshirae is derived from that single point.

As for makeup, kabuki actors apply their own. At the dressing-room mirror they lay on the white and draw the lines. Stylised faces such as kumadori are largely fixed by play and role — suji-guma for the aragoto hero, indigo for the court villain. But the weight of a stroke, the way it is swept, the degree of blurring carry each house's kata, and into that comes an adjustment to the actor's own bone structure. Copying a father's face exactly may not sit on one's own. So a young actor works from his forebear's face while searching for the strokes that hold on his.

For the wig there is a fitting called katsura-awase before the run. The base built by the katsura-shi is set on the actor's head and its tension adjusted. If the fit is wrong the wig shifts under violent movement, and hours of wearing bring headaches. Once the base is settled, the tokoyama dresses it into the role's coiffure — samurai or townsman, young or old, kempt or dishevelled, all declared by the shape of the topknot and the precision of the dressing. And crucially, face and wig are not decided separately. Both derive from the same reading of the shōne, which is why they always answer one another.