Is Sukeroku's entrance — the deha — neither dance nor drama?

In Sukeroku Yukari no Edo-zakura, the hero makes his entrance along the hanamichi in a set-piece given generous time. This is the deha. Snake-eye umbrella in hand, purple headband bound at his brow, he moves down the walkway riding the music — and several minutes are spent on that alone.

How to classify this is the heart of the question — and in truth it does not fit the division between dance and drama. The handling of the umbrella, the display of the headband, the carriage of each step: every gesture is plainly dance vocabulary, riding the music, marking a pulse, presenting fixed forms. And yet all of it is telling us what sort of man the greatest dandy in Edo is — his style, his bravado, what he is carrying. A character rises without a word of dialogue. That is the work of drama.

In Ichikawa stagings, custom has this entrance accompanied by katōbushi, a narrative musical form born in Edo, sometimes played with the participation of amateur societies devoted to it. Music, dance and acting exist in kabuki as separate crafts — and in the best passages the seams between them vanish. Sukeroku's deha compresses that wholeness into a few minutes. The answer is not "neither" but "both."