Kumadori: Character in Lines and Colour

Makeup applied to the actor’s face

Kumadori is a form of kabuki makeup closely associated with forceful aragoto roles and period plays. Coloured lines over a base exaggerate facial muscles, veins and expression. The design is applied to the actor’s own face.

Red, blue and brown offer different clues

Red lines often signal courage and vigorous heroic power. Blue is associated with formidable villains or vengeful spirits, while brown appears on demons and other supernatural beings. Colour works together with the pattern, base and particular scene.

Distinguish the base from the lines

Akattsura uses a red ground for rough, foolish retainers of villains, with red kumadori added over it. A red-painted base therefore need not have the same meaning as heroic red lines.

Preparing a base for Otokonosuke

In Shochiku’s account of Nakamura Shidō explaining Arajishi Otokonosuke in the Under the Floor scene of Meiboku Sendai Hagi, hair oil is first spread evenly: an uneven layer would leave the white makeup patchy. A reddish white preparation containing tonoko is brushed on and patted with a sponge. The brows, eyes and kumadori follow, with fingers softening the red lines. Each layer prepares the surface for the next.

The demonstration also explains flattening the natural eyebrows to suit the role’s brow shape and adding red around the nose to make it look larger. Shidō notes that families inherit different uses of red. These are choices in one role’s demonstration, rather than a universal ingredient list for kumadori.

The made-up face works with movement and sound

In the same demonstration, the pupil completes Otokonosuke’s suji-guma, then performs a delicate trot for a female role at Shidō’s request before switching to Otokonosuke’s speech and forceful glare. The makeup stays in place, but gait, voice and gaze produce a strikingly different impression. Tsuke sound effects, made by striking wooden clappers against a board, shift from a light accompaniment to a forceful one.

Kabuki’s inherited kata can encompass makeup, costume, movement and scenery. At an emotional peak, a mie may begin with a head movement, spread arms or a step before the actor holds a powerful pose. Other performers also pause, concentrating attention on that character. Kumadori operates within this coordinated performance.

Narukami’s anger changes the whole stage figure

In Narukami, the priest seals the dragon deity beneath a waterfall and causes a drought. Kumo no Taema-hime gets him drunk and releases the deity. He wakes, recognizes the deception and pursues her. The National Theatre contrasts their sensual conversation in the first part with the forceful aragoto of the later action.

For his anger, the wig changes to upright igaguri hair, kumadori is applied, and the costume turns out to reveal flames on white. The acting includes a pillar-clinging mie, with both hands gripping and one leg around the pillar, and a leaping tobiroppō exit in pursuit. Makeup, hair, costume and posture together enlarge the change in his state.

Mukimi-guma: youthful presence

Mukimi-guma uses relatively spare red lines for youthful, attractive and upright roles. Its name refers to a resemblance to shellfish removed from its shell. Examples include Sukeroku in Sukeroku Yukari no Edo Zakura and Sakuramaru in the Kurumabiki scene of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami.

One-line and two-line patterns

Ippon-guma gives a dependable but unruly strong character a prominent vertical red line, as with Watōnai in Kokusenya Kassen. The National Theatre’s written account also specifies a fold beneath the chin suggesting a double chin. Nihon-guma has two rising red lines, blue chin whiskers, and black at the eye corners and inside the lips. It conveys the more composed strength of an adult such as Matsuōmaru in Kurumabiki.

In the teaching diagrams shown here, follow the design upward from the eyes: the more prominent vertical line of ippon differs from the two lines spreading toward the temples in nihon. The chin and black accents supply further clues. “One” and “two” identify the organizing pattern rather than a count of every mark on the face.

Suji-guma brings force forward

Suji-guma uses several sweeping red lines for fierce anger and extraordinary strength. The National Theatre’s diagram adds bold bands across the forehead, beside the eyes and over the cheeks, with a red triangle on the chin and black at the mouth corners. Compared with spare mukimi-guma, the distinction is not simply “more red”: the design spreads across more facial regions and incorporates the chin.

Kamakura Gongorō in Shibaraku and Umeōmaru in Kurumabiki are examples. The same Umeōmaru can wear ippon-guma in Ga no Iwai, so a character’s design also relates to the particular scene.

Kugeare and cha-guma

Kugeare is blue makeup for a powerful, high-ranking villain, such as Fujiwara no Shihei in Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami. A black circular mark called a kuraiboshi may appear on the forehead. Cha-guma is used for characters transforming into supernatural beings. The spider spirit in Tsuchigumo has a slightly brownish white base, added eyebrows and a widely split-looking mouth.

Mixed and comic patterns

Kagekiyo’s pattern joins red above to blue below for a captive, worn-down warrior; it is also called han-guma. Saru-guma combines boldness with humour, as in Kobayashi no Asahina. Namazu-guma gives comic villains such as Shibaraku’s Kashima Nyūdō catfish-like whiskers. The latter two belong to zare-guma, playful patterns drawing on animal or plant forms.

Compare the same facial regions

To compare the red designs, begin at the same part of each face. Mukimi-guma is relatively concentrated around the brows, eyes and lips. Ippon and nihon extend attention upward beside the forehead, while suji adds bands across the forehead and cheeks. Then compare the chin: nihon’s blue whiskers differ from suji’s red triangle.

This provides a way to read the teaching diagrams. On stage, the performer’s face, the role and inherited practice also shape the result; an isolated red mark is not enough to assign every performance to an identical geometric template.

The account of a 1673 beginning

The National Theatre traces the beginning to Ichikawa Danjūrō I’s 1673 debut as Sakata no Kintoki, with red and black makeup. This origin account links the early makeup with aragoto’s emergence; the different patterns used today developed further over time.

Shading developed further in the eighteenth century

The shading technique is attributed to Danjūrō II. The National Theatre quotes a 1772 actor treatise that recommends broad lines and thinly applied red, warning that red applied too heavily looks black. It also discusses what to do when the white base does not adhere properly.

These are practical judgments about how materials appear once applied: more pigment does not necessarily produce a brighter red, and the base affects the work laid over it. The historical advice records such choices without establishing a single recipe followed by every performer today.

Nineteenth-century stylization

Ritsumeikan University’s kabuki reference associates the consolidation of stylized kumadori with Danjūrō VII in the nineteenth century, as exaggerated expressions became fixed designs. It also notes a resemblance to Chinese theatrical face painting, while stating that direct influence on Danjūrō I has not been established.

Two impressions dated 1887

In the Suzuki Jūrō Collection, inscriptions on the backs of framed impressions date examples by Danjūrō IX and Onoe Kikugorō V to April and May 1887. These surviving impressions preserve the shapes of nineteenth-century performers’ facial makeup.

A compilation published in 1928–29

CiNii Books records Kabuki Kumadori, compiled by Ichikawa Shinjūrō under Ōta Masamitsu’s supervision, as an Isseisha publication of 1928–29. The recorded volume binds parts 1–12, showing one printed form in which the practice was collected and transmitted.

Watching backstage and learning from seniors

In a Shochiku interview, Ichikawa Fukutarō recalls quietly watching Danjūrō make up backstage during Kanjinchō in 2012. After his introduction as a heyago in 2013, he learned makeup, costume and acting from senior members of the theatrical family. New works and rarely performed roles continued to send him to those seniors for knowledge about the character and its makeup.

This learning route differs from preserving a book or an impression. It involves watching what a performer does in the working theatre and learning how to bring makeup and acting together. Printed designs and impressions offer records for comparison, while instruction passes on practical choices.

Baikō’s demon-woman impression

An impression held by the National Theatre preserves Onoe Baikō VI’s blue makeup as the demon woman of Mount Togakushi in Momijigari. Baikō lived from 1870 to 1934; the impression itself has no recorded exact date.

Transferred in 1979, later shared digitally

Suzuki Jūrō’s family donated his collection to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and the National Theatre took over its management in 1979. Its digital presentation includes 54 impressions, mainly from early Shōwa, with some ordinary stage makeup as well as kumadori.

Stage patterns also enter product design

Kumadori also circulates as a product motif. Shochiku describes producing three-dimensional models and corresponding flat designs as references. This work with commercial motifs sits alongside the continuing theatrical practice of making up a particular actor for a particular role and scene.