Is there a conductor within the hayashi ensemble?

Picture a Western orchestra and the absence of a conductor seems strange. But kabuki music is built so as not to need one — because its tempo is not fixed.

Kabuki music stretches and contracts with the breathing of the actors on stage. If an actor holds a mie a beat longer, the music extends to meet him. If the dialogue runs quick, it follows. The music, in other words, is continually responding to what the stage is doing. Place a conductor imposing tempo from outside and that responsiveness stops working.

That does not mean nobody leads. In nagauta the tate-uta and tate-jamisen — the principal singer and principal shamisen — draw the ensemble along by shared breath. In gidayū the chanter and shamisen lead as a pair. Cues are given by the players' own calls, which serve in practice as words of instruction. It is not, then, that there is no conductor; conducting is distributed to everyone, in the form of breath. Everyone is watching the stage and everyone is listening to everyone else. Without that arrangement, the music could not stretch to meet the actors at all.