How do actors acquire kabuki's sense of ma — timing?

Ma is often explained as the blank between lines, but in kabuki it is wider than that. On stage it is the breathing of the whole theatre — the flow of the geza music, the strike of the tsuke, the breath of the actor opposite, and the temperature of the house. It is not, therefore, something acquired by rehearsing alone.

The centre of acquisition is the real stage. From childhood the actor stands in performance, placed inside the breathing the adults around him make. He may not yet understand it; his body learns the pulse regardless. Alongside this run studies in gidayū and nagauta and in classical dance. Training in the music oneself puts into the body a sense of where to draw breath, where to wait, where to come in.

In the end an actor finds his own ma through repeated failure and adjustment. Even in the same role, a different partner breathes differently. A different house changes how long one waits. There is, therefore, no correct ma — which is why no manual can be made. Had it been writable like a score, it would have been written; that it has not been is because it cannot be. That there is no textbook for ma is the plainest evidence that kabuki is not the replaying of a recording but an art raised, live, on the spot.