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

She let her left sleeve spill down from the central band of her obi to her lower calf; while the fingers of her right hand gestured upward at the level of her forehead.

I do not know, but I want to know, so when their performance is finished I inquire: “What makes a woman beautiful?”

Hachishige-san, the ochaya’s proprietress, replies: “In our generation, experience of life will make the beauty come out. Other people might value only physical beauty.”

Says Masami-san: “We just want to be beautiful, and for that our inside self must be beautiful; we must take something from the heart. We begin by imitating others.”

And Fukutaro-san says: “There are many beautiful Elder Sisters, fortunately. I was frequently scolded. The Elder Sister reminded me that the customers always watch you, how you move.”

I ask the musician what she was thinking of when she performed, and her reply is quite unlike anything I ever heard from practitioners of the Inoue School.

“I am still a beginner,” she begins modestly. “I try to visualize what the music seeks to express. In that second song, which is a sad song, I try to feel sad. But every time I perform, I hear something new. I was lucky that my Elder Sister taught me the tricks. For instance, it is very difficult to sing properly to make the right sound. The posture is like this: Sit straight, looking down with chin up, so the voice goes better. Breast should push forward, buttock backward.”

I ask the geisha: “When you dance, do you feel or are you trying to keep your mind blank?”

“I am trying to be the heroine. In this occasion, I try to imagine that you are the lover I left.”

“To what extent is beauty a performance?”

Fukutaro-san says: “Regardless of age, it should appear easy and smooth.”

“Is there anything a woman can do that an onnagata cannot?”

“Give birth,” laughs Fukutaro-san. There it is again, that answer I so often hear.

Masami-san tells me: “In a dance whose theme is longing for the other sex, in that case a woman can really think and feel that.”

She hesitates, then continues: “When I was turning my back to you and trying to look sad, trying to look most defenseless, the key, which I learned from my Elder Sister, well, it’s kind of embarrassing. You can be careful of the shoulders and other parts. The trick is to make the vagina tight. That affects your appearance, particularly when you show the back.”

THE MOON IN CUPPED HANDS

Could I ever possibly have discerned it, had Masami-san in her kimono and obi, with her back turned to me, actually clenched her vagina? If I could not, what does that say about my gullibility as I pay out money all through this floating world? And if I could, as I sincerely believe that Masami-san considers to be within a habitué’s capability, then might understatement contain still more universes than I suppose? What if I simply trust that I might someday learn to perceive such subtleties? (“Wait awhile and you’ll come home to Kyoto.”) Wouldn’t the possibility enrich me just as much as if the mask actually kissed me back?

Masami-san dances. The Higashi Eastern Pleasure Quarter may not be the old capital, but from my point of view (I now remember it several summers later, in another country) it might as well be the moon. — I feel the impulse to tell you about Masami-san’s faintly smiling dark red lips, not to mention the hairpieces and ornaments frozen in her wig like candy statuettes in the frosting of a fancy cake, her throat still young and her face just beginning to coarsen, although she was a good fifteen years older than she looked. When her dark eyes actually gazed into mine, she remained detached, and her sky-blue sleeves drew together in her lap. — Better not to miss her too much! In the Noh play “Nishikigi,” a suitor sets out unavailing love charms before a woman’s house for three years, and finally dies; his grave is called the Brocade Mound. When she hears this news, the woman also dies, and is buried there also. The two ghosts call each other husband and wife. Their attachment torments them until the arrival of the usual priest. — Why ask to feel that? And so farewell to Kaguyahime and Yuya and Matsukaze; I will not desecrate the rainbow curtain; wait awhile, wait awhile. Hence this book resembles the deathbed poem of Ki no Tsurayuki, who wonders whether the world he now departs could ever have been any more real than moonlight reflected in water in his cupped hands. Where, if anywhere, dwells the Noh play’s shite who has been released from attachment by the priest’s prayer? And where does she go when the actor who expressed her removes his gown, wig and mask? We will never know before we follow Tsurayuki behind the rainbow curtain. We might not find out even then. So for now, why not click little sake-glasses with whomever in this floating world I can love? Why not kiss the mystery’s blackened teeth? “We had been fussing about with our dress and powder since early dawn,” writes Murasaki in her diary. She seeks to control how she is seen: a swiftly glimpsed or never-glimpsed face, masked by long black hair and an elegant fan which sprouts from her gorgeous sleeve. Now she is ready. Now the play will begin.

Descriptions of Feminine Beauty in

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (ca. 1000–1010 )

Citations by Shonagon of the opinions of others have been omitted unless she expresses approval of them.

BEAUTY

longhaired young woman lying abed in an orange robe and crimson skirt, covered in a mauve and violet robe (p. 60)

many-layered clothes visible through bright curtains of state beneath green bamboo blinds (p. 85)

young, with long hair over her shoulders (p. 94)

contrast between Empress Sadako’s white forehead and glossy black lute (p. 113)

Empress Sadako’s complexion, which harmonizes with her three-layered scarlet silk dress and two plum-red robes (p. 129)

an Imperial concubine’s robes of plum-red, deep red, dark red and an over-robe of light green embroidered silk which makes her look young even though she conceals her face behind a fan (p. 130)

the concubine’s young attendants in loose, cherry-colored coats, underskirts of light green and plum red, and long trains (p. 131)

Court ladies dressed “with their robes, skirts and Chinese jackets perfectly matching the season,” the colors being tawny yellow, light violet, purple, deep red (p. 163)

pretty hair (p. 167)

beautiful shoulder-length tresses (p. 172)

Court ladies in light grey skirts, Chinese jackets, matching dresses of unlined silk, scarlet petticoats (p. 174)

the light pink hue of the Empress’s hands (p. 186)

“a natural beauty” in a tawny unlined robe and a light robe over a dress of dull purple. “With her long hair being blown about and gently puffed up by the wind, she was a truly splendid sight.” (p. 194)

neat short hair in a woman of the lower classes (p. 201)

the Empress’s red Chinese robe above a willow-green damask robe, five unlined grape-hued silk robes, a robe of blue and white gauze, a ceremonial silk skirt (p. 231)

her hair’s front parting, “which was combed at a slight angle pointing towards the ornament that held up her hair over her forehead” (p. 231)

“an attractive woman, whose hair tumbles loosely over her forehead” (p. 240)

“Once I saw a girl of about eighteen with magnificent hair that hung in thick tresses all the way to her feet; she was nicely plump and had splendid white skin,” had a toothache; her hair was disordered and her face wet with tears; she pressed her flushed cheek to her hand; a charming impression (p. 171)

a lady in an unlined white silk gown, a crimson trouser-skirt, a faded dark robe (p. 258)