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

The wig box is an irregular hexagon whose three back sides meet at right angles. It is dark-colored and reaches to the girl’s waist.

The wig weighs a kilogram, Suzuka says. The wigmaker in Tokyo has told her that each head is different. When their careers begin, the geishas all visit him to have their measurements taken. Sometimes she must send it back to the wigmaker to have it redone. All this must be inconvenient, but at least, unlike Konomi-san and her sister maikos in Kyoto, Suzuka can remove her wig at the end of a night, so that she need not sleep on a wooden pillow.

Opening the box, and thereby exposing this concretion on the long white neck of its stand, she begins to spice it up with hairpicks from one of many drawers. She sticks in a long gold one bearing a gilded plum flower, emblem of this season (it is acceptable to symbolize a time a trifle too early, but never too late). Next she sinks a crescent-comb into the hair. The comb is red “because I’m young.” (You may recall that red is also a sign of youth in Noh kimonos.) At last comes the black barrette, much heavier than barrettes I normally see.

She crowns herself with the wig in one easy motion, then ties it on with a narrow green ribbon which goes round the back of the neck; her forefingers smooth the wig down around her ears. Now she is a true geisha right down to the heart shape in her forehead. Continuing to deploy the magnifying mirror, she touches up her mouth with a brush, carefully going over and over her red lips, making the upper lip into another heart, filling out the lower, then gently patting everything. 4

There is time for me to take a photograph or two. The obi-tier seizes this chance to rush in with his own camera, gleefully snapping away. Then Suzuka goes to her taxi.

Yukiko Makes Me Over

Yukiko’s salon is unmarked, naturally, and there is a discreet second-floor entrance. The street is quiet, at least for Tokyo; her clients must feel safe. The room is by my standards smallish — about the size of the chamber where Suzuka-san’s colleague geisha Kasami-san danced for me. While Yukiko makes tea, I go into the tiny lavatory to change into my new black dress.

Laying out three disks of foundation, Yukiko, who is thirtyish and very pretty, with long brown hair, shows me the corresponding pictures in the Japanese fashion magazines: One foundation looks best photographed and printed onto glossy paper; one is more appropriate to going out on the street; and the third is intermediate. I choose the second.

Gandhi advises us to do what we do without expecting results; and I entertain decidedly minuscule hopes of achieving maiko-esque beauty, especially since although I carefully shaved in my hotel less than two hours before, Yukiko sweetly, reproachfully inquires whether I have shaved.

She begins with a cream-type astringent: Clarins’s Lotion Tonique. 1The base cream will be Diorskin 001 base de teint , which contains a hint of pearl, making it a trifle shiny. The purpose is to even the skin. One adds less of it in summer, more “where it needs it more.” Yukiko begins with the Diorskin by dabbing with her forefinger a spot on my forehead, an upper and lower spot on each cheek, and a spot between my mouth and my chin. On the forehead she works the stuff horizontally, elsewhere vertically. Then she addresses the zone beneath each eye, proceeding in descending arcs from the center of the underlid out to the cheek, her touch so firm that my flesh moves. Next she rubs it on the eyelids. All the while, I must keep my eyes open.

Now it is time for the number three cream foundation. Formerly, she says, Japanese women used to lighten their faces with foundation, but at the moment they prefer to slightly darken them, making them appear smaller. Firmly patting with the sponge (she always employs a new sponge for every step), smoothing around my eyes, she instructs me to look up while staying still. After two hours my skin oil will reappear, she says. She mentions a special paper from Kyoto which can absorb it (an easy procedure: simply pat and adjust); all the same, I am reminded how limited and ephemeral this is; and for a moment I nearly begin to comprehend the sacrificial hours paid by women at their mirrors and in beauty parlors and department stores and manicure-pedicure studios. Suzuka’s nightly effort is, as we have seen, significant — not to mention the long preparations of Mr. Umewaka in the mirror room before his Noh performances. And all of it must be done over again next time.

“You see,” says Yukiko, lightly touching my chin, “even now it is starting to show. Since your beard is not black it should be okay for a couple of hours.” As a result of such transience, her customers generally do no more than remain here with her, for about three hours. After a chat and tea, they return home to their families.

Next comes the concealer, in order to render the contour of my new age spot more vague. It is a stick cream, Anti-Cervier, Yves Saint-Laurent product number 41911-1. Yukiko also applies it to my wrinkles, and especially to the wedge of skin below and outside of each eye, using two fingers, always going up, not down, since we don’t want to show the sagging of my face.

In general, runs her diagnosis, my poor male flesh is afflicted with many red spots; her goal is to render it a uniform color. She works for quite awhile on the creases between the two wings of my nose and on the corners of my mouth. With special care she rubs concealer over the age-downturned corners of my lips.

“How old can a man become and still resemble a woman?”

“After age sixty it is quite difficult.”

Following the concealer comes the powdery foundation (a white substance, Anna Sui Face Powder 700), rubbed in, first on the wrinkles around my eyes. First touching me with her brush, then rubbing with a finger, always upward, in firm strokes that move flesh, beneath each eye she creates a downpointed right triangle whose inner side parallels my nose. Yukiko can render this undercoat (the equivalent of gesso on an oil painting) either glossy for a “cute” look or else more natural so that the client appears “classical.” Suspecting that cuteness lies beyond my power, I have elected for the classical look.

I ask Yukiko how I could best approximate all this at home, and she advises me to buy a magnifying mirror.

Now for an eyeshadow, which she smears gently in, selecting here and there from many different looks in the palettes, where it resembles vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream. “When you get older it gets darker under the eye, particularly for Japanese,” she informs me tactfully. “Then the eyeshadow will not appear nice.” This amelioration likewise lasts for about two hours. Using a special brush, she makes seven round trips across each eyelid “like a windshield wiper.” Where the brush first touches, there it will be thickest; those round trips smooth it out. Then she proceeds upward, afterward rubbing up and down with her finger in order to blur the contours.

She warns me to avoid allowing any eyeshadow to fall on my cheek, since it cannot easily be removed.

Again, the goal seems to be making the facial skin more uniform, disguising lines and color changes. If so, then the white mask-face of the geisha, or the literal mask-face of the Noh beauty, are simply farther along the continuum.

Now with her soft brush Yukiko mixes two kinds of purple Japanese powder. Then she bends over me, commencing beneath the center of each eye, following the cheekbone “to make it natural.” Her applications consist of circles proceeding down and away from the eye, then up back toward it. She continues until my skin appears just a trifle lighter in color than my cheeks.