William Vollmann - Kissing the Mask - Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, ... Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines

378: “Wait awhile…” — Brazell, p. 190 (“Shunkan,” trans. Eileen Kato).

378: Description of Shunkan mask — After Nakanishi and Komma, p. 55 (plate 58).

378: “Please put aside / the River of Heaven…” — McCullough, p. 67.

378: “Sekare sekarete” — Dalby, p. 77 (“Longing”).

379: “A dreadful island…” — The Taiheiki , p. 45.

379: “The cutting is like a gust of wind…” — Ibid., p. 47.

379: Footnote on the natives of Devil’s Island — The Tale of the Heike , vol. 1, p. 186.

379: Same footnote: “When I learned that we were passing Suma…” — Lady Nijo, p. 227.

380: Description of wabi — De Mente, pp. 33–35.

380: Zeami’s recollection of Kyoto’s flowers — Interview with Mr. Mikata, October 2006.

380: “I can’t help thinking about the capital…” — McCullough, p. 77 ( A Tosa Journal ). In the same source, on the twenty-seventh day of the eleventh month, “a certain person” composes a poem about sadness for a dead child, a little girl who will never go home to the capital (p. 75).

380: Proust on the sounds within an egg — Vol. 1, p. 482 (“Madame Swann at Home” section of Within a Budding Grove ).

381: “Thus by living in the capital…” — Zeami (Rimer and Yamazaki), p. 96 (“Kakyo”).

382: The three pictures of Nancy — Allen, pp. 99–101.

383: “A man’s true feeling for a woman does not arise from the bodily contact…” — Owen, p. 918 (Li Yu, “Silent Operas” [seventeenth cent.]).

384: Zeami’s definition of fulfillment — Op. cit., p. 137 (“Shugyoku tokka”).

385: The famous moon poem in the Tales of Ise — McCullough, p. 60, noting that it was referred to years later in the poems of skillful courtiers in A Tosa Journal .

385: “For many are the pleasant forms which exist in numerous sins…” — Robinson, p. 303 (“The Thunder: Perfect Mind”).

385: The once-a-year frequency of theater-going in Edo — Guide to Edo-Tokyo Museum , p. 8.

385: The geisha song about butterflies — Dalby, pp. 40–42 (“In the Right Now of Now”).

386: Mr. Umewaka: “It’s more difficult to always do the same thing than to change…” — Jeff Clark corrections, to ms. p. 3.

387: “To see with the spirit is to grasp the spirit…” — Zeami (Rimer and Yamazaki), p. 71 (“Shikado”).

387: The square lacquered box with white butterflies — Nakamura Museum in Kanazawa, box ca . 1982.

387: “Those who dedicate themselves to pleasure…” — Makuzu, p. 31.

387: “An allegory carried too far or too low…” — Milton, p. 515 (extracts from Voltaire’s Essay Upon the Civil Wars of France… And also Upon the Epick Poetry of the European Nations from Homer to Milton [London, 1727]).

387: Footnote: “I feel as if a mask kissed me…” — Mishima, Five No Plays , p. 103 (“Kantan”).

388: Description of unfinished ko-omote s as wooden crystals — After illustrations in Hori, Masuda and Miyano, p. 148.

389: Description of the geisha Kikuyo — Kafu, p. 98 (“Decay of the Angel”).

389: Footnote: Sei Shonagon on the etiquette of souvenirs accompanying letters to and from the capital — McCullough, p. 162.

393: Plot of “Nishikigi” — Keene, Twenty No Plays , pp. 89ff. (“The Brocade Tree”).

393: The deathbed poem of Ki no Tsurayuki — Translated and briefly discussed in Keene, Seeds in the Heart , p. 267. This sentiment one comes across any number of times in the classical literature. For instance, the neglected wife of a highbred womanizer writes these eponymous lines in her Gossamer Journal (McCullogh, p. 155): “When I reflect on the perpetual uncertainty in which I exist, it seems to me that this is a journal of a woman whose fortunes have been as evanescent as the gossamer shimmer of a heat wave in the sky.”

393: “We had been fussing about with our dress and powder since early dawn.” — Murasaki, Diary , p. 23.

POSTSCRIPT TO APPENDIX B

411: Descriptions out of Sigrid Undset — The Bridal Wreath , pp. 56–57, 111, 112–20, 16–17; The Cross , pp. 348, 44, 182–85; The Mistress of Husaby , pp. 292–93; The Cross , p. 403.

APPENDIX E: NOH PLAY GROUPS, AND PLAYS MENTIONED

424: “Only a few hundred plays” — Rath, p. 201.

424: Eight hundred pre-1868 plays survive — Waley, The No Plays of Japan , p. 37.

424: Jeff Clark’s estimate — From his corrections, on p. 2 of my ms.

GLOSSARY

425: Definition of the Floating World: Ancient Egyptian love poem — Simpson, p. 333 (“The Song of the Harper”, slightly “retranslated” by WTV).

426: Definition of hikime kagibana : Description of Hokusai’s sketch of a court beauty — Men and Women , p. 35, no. 4 (court lady).

428: Definition of Shinto: Mr. Mikata’s remarks — Interview of October 2006.

429: Definition of tsuki : description of fushikizo : Hori, Masuda and Miyano, trans. for WTV by Yasuda Nobuko and slightly rev. by WTV; p. 42 (quoting Kanze Kiyokazu).

CHRONOLOGY

434: 1780s — “The ideals of the Floating World” — Peabody Museum, p. 124 (Money Hickman, “Geisha to the Fore: Niwaka Festivals and the New Luminaries of Edo”). One niwaka was derived from “Takasago” (ibid., p. 129).

435: 1952 — “Today, the Umewaka school may be forced to cease its performances…” — Bowers, p. 19.

Names of authors are cited here as they appear on their respective title pages, with resulting variation in the order of family and given names. But they are listed by family name.

I have categorized books by their area of relevance to Kissing the Mask , not by their own purported subject matter. Thus David Strauss’s Percival Lowell appears in category C, relating to geishas, because it is only the geisha material in it which is cited here.

Texts as translated for this book by the four translators whom I commissioned (Sumino Junko, Keiko Golden, Yasuda Nobuko and Kawai Takako) will be placed in my archive in Ohio State University.

Especially beautiful pictorial sources relating to Noh masks and to geishas are bulleted (). See sections A. and C.

A. PUBLISHED SOURCES ON NOH THEATER

1. William Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, George Tanabe and Paul Varley, comp., Sources of Japanese Tradition , vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; orig. comp. 1950s).

2. Monica Bethe and Richard Emmert, with the assistance of Joni Koehn and Gustav Heldt, Noh Performance Guide 7: Aoinoue (Tokyo: National Noh Theatre, 1997; printed by Shobunsha Printing Co.).

3. Monica Bethe and Richard Emmert, with the assistance of Gus Heldt, Noh Performance Guide 3: Miidera (Tokyo: National Noh Theatre, 1993; printed by Shobunsha Printing Co.).

4. Monica Bethe and Richard Emmert, with Karen Brazell, Noh Performance Guide 5: Atsumori (Tokyo: National Noh Theatre, 1995; printed by Shobunsha Printing Co.).

5. Faubion Bowers, Japanese Theatre (New York: Hermitage House, 1952).

6. Karen Brazell, Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

7. Ronald Cavaye, Paul Griffith, Akihiko Senda, A Guide to the Japanese Stage from Traditional to Cutting Edge (New York: Kodansha International, 2004).

8. Reiko Chiba, ed., Painted Fans of Japan: 15 Noh Drama Masterpieces (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1993 repr. of 1962 1st printing).