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

236 Basic Kabuki makeup for an onnagata.

239 My makeover by the T-girl Katy. Los Angeles, 2008. The immediately following portraits of her are from the same period.

240 Katy at her makeup mirror, in a relatively early stage of transformation.

241 Now she is further along. As I look over these images of that sweet and gentle person, I feel tender toward her. She had a very open smile.

242 Here she is in full femme mode, but on a different occasion (the previous night). It is about midnight and she is standing in front of the bar. As you can see, her makeup, like a Kabuki actor’s, is especially effective in such low-light environments as theater, bar, street.

243 Katy’s housemate, the lovely T-girl Jennifer.

252 Cross-dresser’s prosthetic vulva. This is a basic model; another version can menstruate.

253 Rock garden at the Koyoma-In subordinate temple of Tofuku-ji, 2006.

254 Gravel pattern at the Reiun-In subordinate temple of Tofuku-ji. Kyoto, 2006. See also sketch on page 335.

268 The loveliness of whiteness: Geisha at tea ceremony. Ponto-cho, Kyoto, 2005.

289 The Ishakawon Gate. Kanazawa, 2008.

295 Sketch of Noh stage’s bridge, pines and rainbow curtain.

303 Sketch of shite and musicians performing in “Aoi-no-Ue.” Nara, 2004.

308 Mr. Kanze as Komachi.

309 Time and beauty: Uba (old woman mask) and ko-omote . Superficially this uba resembles the blind warrior mask of Kagekiyo, and apes such as the author have been fooled. But, as Ms. Nakamura reminds me: “A mask that has its hair separated at the center is female.” Photographed in Mr. Umewaka’s studio in Tokyo, 2002. Please note the caveat to the illustration on page 80.

315 Sketch of a gate at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, ca. 2005.

327 Sketch of the front righthand corner (as the audience sees it) of a Noh stage, with stairs and surrounding white gravel.

329 Hinges on gate at the Shoren-In. Kyoto, 2005.

333 Sketch of sand-patterns and lantern, rock garden at the Reiun-In subordinate temple of Tofuku-ji. Kyoto, 2006.

335 Sketch of the rock garden at the Reiun-In, framed by a doorway. Kyoto, 2006.

346 Astumori’s stupa. Suma, 2006.

348 Pine tree at Matsukaze-do, Suma, 2006.

359 Sketch of Semimaru’s shrine in Otsu, Lake Biwa, 2006.

360-ff Selections from some sketches of a performance of “Semimaru” at the National Noh Theater in Tokyo, ca. 2008. The shite , the madwoman Sakagami, was played by Mr. Kanze Kiyokazu. This first drawing shows Semimaru being carried in his palanquin to the wilderness, where he will be abandoned.

361 Sakagami with her madness-signifying branch.

364 Sakagami and Semimaru (who is wearing the tall hat, sitting at her left). In this quick drawing the stage pillar, chorus and musicians can also be seen.

365 The Osaka Noh theater after a performance, 2004.

391 Four instants in Masami-san’s dance. Higashi, Kanazawa, 2008.

394 Congolese beauty I. Near the Congo River, 2001.

395 American beauty I (the rock star Paula Keyth). Portland, Oregon, 1995.

396 American beauty II (G-girl). Eastern California, 2008.

397 Thai beauty. Bangkok, 2001.

398 Kazakh beauty. Her face always reminds me of a lovely Noh mask. Altamy, 2000.

399 Congolese beauty II. Goma, 2001.

400 Iraqi beauty. Baghdad, 1998.

401 Japanese beauty. Tokyo, 1998.

402 Waka-onna mask belonging to the Umewaka family. Tokyo, 2002. Ms. Nakamura notes that this mask would be used specifically for “Michimori.”

His colleagues gave their leisure to various pastimes: some read novels, others took up the chants and No plays of the Kanzé School, and still others gathered to write haiku and make sketches illustrating the poems. Most of these diversions, however, served as pretexts for getting together to do some drinking.

Mishima Yukio, Runaway Horses

Deaf, dumb and illiterate in Japanese, innocent of formal study in any discipline of art, a graceless dancer afflicted with bad eyesight, I may not be the perfect author for any essay on Noh drama. Fortunately, this is no essay, but a string-ball of idle thoughts. 1Rarely able to compose a short sentence, let alone a short book, I admit that this attempt of mine to extol the beauties of understatement may well approach the ludicrous. All the same, can’t a man praise the woman he loves? Can’t he describe her? Without presuming to be her, or to know her as she knows herself, can’t he claim acquaintanceship with her moods and ways?

In brief, rather than a primer prepared by a Noh expert, this short book is an appreciation, sincere and blundering, resolutely ignorant, riddled with the prejudices and insights of an alien, a theatergoer, a man gazing at femininity. Sometimes the blankness of my understanding corresponds to the faded-tattoo blue of Hiroshige’s skies and marshes. In his prints, snowcovered boats ride in a pale blue harbor enthralled by snowy trees, and I find many a pale white moon in a pale blue sky. All is tea- and tattoo-ink. Ladies view plum blossoms or maple blossoms in the snow; often they stand in meditative pairs at the base of some snow-outlined tree whose arms are as graceful as their hair.

On the Ginza subway line, a longhaired woman is removing a tiny, tiny digital device from her purse, while a dollfaced girl stands in the doorway, peering into the screen of her cell phone. Not far above their heads, hints of scattered cherry-blossoms and horned women enrich the stylized movements of white hands, the rapid graces of diamond-crowned, scarlet-cloaked Kabuki princesses. In snowy Kanazawa the moment has come when the geisha and the musician are giggling downstairs and I hear the shamisen being tuned. And on the Noh stage in Kyoto, a man has just now become a woman whose elegance is precisely modulated, in keeping with the way that the edge of her horizontally held fan cleaves the air. I watch them all, then write down what I see.

What a long line at the Kabuki-za tonight! Will there be time for a beer and a grilled eel over rice? How much will the tickets cost? Three hundred dollars apiece? I ought to save two thousand for an hour with just one more geisha, and seven hundred for my female makeover with Yukiko; then it’s off to the porn shop. I can still afford my coffin hotel, if I eat potato chips for breakfast all week. Someday the dollar might tumble downstairs; then I’d have to declare victory and end this book! Someday I might even turn elderly . But why entertain such impossibilities? I’d rather count the orange stripes of the white carp I saw in the pond of that snowy garden. A few more dances from now, I’ll be able to tell you with confidence when and how each gender unmasks itself to the other? For you and only for you, I peer into ancient picture-scrolls until it’s time for another snack. I sure hope the geisha won’t see the wrinkles in my suit. (Of course she will, but she’ll pretend she doesn’t.)

Why does the neurotoxin in this blowfish sashimi make my tongue tingle? I like it. How much more would be fatal? Never mind that; Mr. Kanze’s performing tonight in half an hour; time to pay the check and find a taxi; I’m ignorant about this Noh; will he be a man or a woman tonight?

Meanwhile the geisha Masami-san is rushing and rustling down the stairs, her brocaded obi comprising a square of loveliness at her back. Soon she will dance for me: My heart will voyage through the interstellar darkness around a white mask. Fukutaro-san tunes the shamisen. The two performers sit together, tilting their heads toward each other. Their kimonos are the same sky-blue.

How I love my life in this floating world! If I go drinking with the go-between, tomorrow my eyes will be as red as the lamps at Gion Shrine; but for that there’s always green tea, powdered and whisked to a froth, accompanied by a perfect little pistachio sweet. I’m a glutton, a plump middle-aged man now beginning to understand the old lechers who clutch at beauty, not that I’ll do that; I’m proud, so I’ll watch grace in theaters, bars, teahouses; I’ll invent a book about representations of feminine beauty and write off every geisha dance on my taxes…