Also daichō 台帳, daihon 台本. In the Kyoto-Osaka area kamigata 上方, it is often called *nehon 根本. Edo period printed scripts or stage books for the performing arts, such as *kabuki 歌舞伎, jōruri 浄瑠璃, and nagauta 長唄. Shōhon served as the standard for stage performances, listing the large stage equipment, the stage props, costumes, musical instruments and other requirements. There were books which also contained the music notations and lyrics of songs (see below).
Shōhon produced in the mid-17th century were illustrated and had 17 to 18 lines of thin letters per page. These were called shiramibon 虱本 (lice books) or eiri hosojibon 絵入細字本 (illustrated thin-letter books).A jōruri master Uji Kaganojō 宇治加賀掾 (1635-1711) published shōhon of his own performances, which contained musical annotations and were in a new style of eight lines of bold letters per page. After this, the seven-line (per page) book shichigyōbon 七行本 became the standard.
Shōhon of jōruri and nagauta lyrics, published by various schools including tokiwazu 常盤津 and kiyomoto 清元, were called usumono shōhon 薄物正本 because of their thinness, with perhaps only four or five folded pages per book. There were black-and-white printed pictures of actors on the covers *hyōshi 表紙, and annotations that included the titles of performances, the names of actors and musical performers.
The woodblock prints of actors were done by the *ukiyo-e 浮世絵 artists of *Torii-ha 鳥居派 and Kitao-ha 北尾派. There also were works by Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川歌麿 (1753-1806). These annotated pictures now serve as important data for dating single-sheet prints *ichimai-e 一枚絵. Shōhon made in the early 19th century became cruder and had a green cover. Only the title was printed to an attached title strip *daisen 題簽 on the cover.