Is the drum heard before the performance played live, or a recording?

Take your seat and, before the play begins, drum and flute are already sounding. This is the chakutō — music that plays while the curtain is still down and people are still coming and going in the house.

The custom descends from the Edo playhouse, where a drum was struck beneath the yagura or at the entrance to announce to the town that the doors were open. This was the ichiban-daiko, and the sound carrying through the streets told people there was a play that day. Today's chakutō comes down that line. The practical announcing function has gone, but it still tells the house that the curtain is near, and begins to shape the air of the theatre.

As to live or recorded: the ground of the answer is that kabuki sound is, as a principle, all performed live. The geza music, the takemoto, the nagauta — all are played on the spot. The chakutō too properly belongs to the hayashi musicians. Practice can differ by theatre and production, so it cannot be asserted that it is always live. Still, the fact that people are making sound before the curtain rises says much about the character of this art. In a kabuki house, sound is not reproduced; it is made where you are sitting.