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

1871Mr. Umewaka Minoru resurrects Noh in Tokyo.

1871First annual Miyako Odori or Cherry-Blossom Dance in Kyoto.

1873The Empress appears in public without blackening her teeth.

1899–1972Life of Kawabata Yasunari.

SHOWA PERIOD

1918Kafu Nagai publishes Geisha in Rivalry .

1925–70Life of Mishima Yukio (Hiraoka Kimitake).

1948Umewaka Rokuro born.

1952An American Occupation censor writes: “Today, the Umewaka school may be forced to cease its performances” due to “intrigue and pressure” by the Kanze School.

1954After several decades of separation, the Umewaka School rejoins the Kanze School.

1958Prostitution becomes illegal in Japan.

1988Mr. Umewaka succeeds his father to become Rokuro Umewaka the fifty-sixth.

All sources are cited in short form (e.g.; “Ze-ami” and “Zeami”). The bibliography immediately follows. When quoting from Rimer and Yamazaki, I have not capitalized “Flower,” “Grace,” etc., since the other Zeami translation I cite did not.

Epigraph: “What am I to do with you…” — Manyoshu , p. 86 (poem 248: “Addressed to a Young Woman”), slightly “retranslated” by WTV. In his modern version of the Noh play “The Damask Drum,” Mishima has an old janitor rhapsodize about his cruel young beloved: “She’s the princess of the laurel, the tree that grows in the garden of the moon” (Five Modern No Plays , p. 40). And why not? In the original, the old gardener says: “They talk of the moon-tree, the laurel that grows in the Garden of the Moon…” (Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan , p. 172; “Aya no Tsuzumi”).

Epigraph: “Dresses make the lady…” — Von Mahlsdorf, p. 109.

Epigraph: A woman never imitates herself.” — Zeami, p. 142 (“Shugyoku tokka”).

0: UNDERSTATEMENTS ABOUT THIS STRING-BALL OF IDLE THOUGHTS

Epigraph, p. 1: “His colleagues gave their leisure to various pastimes…” — Mishima, Runaway Horses , pp. 5–6. Kafu (p. 108) refers to the same phenomenon less contemptuously in his lovely description of an aesthete’s observations of nature during “an idle life in a kind of watery world whose loneliness he relished.”

2: Footnote: The poem about the book of Noh lessons — Ueda, Light Verse , p. 172 ( senryu “retranslated” by WTV).

2: “Can’t a man praise the woman he loves?” — In a trope which Mishima must have liked, Zeami compares the actor who is not also a playwright to “a brave warrior who is on the battlefield without arms” (op. cit., p. 41 [“Fushikaden”]). I similarly compare to this unarmed warrior the observer of feminine beauty who has not loved women much.

2: “Can’t he describe her?” — In the ancient Welsh Mabinogion a raven lands on a duck’s corpse. “Peredur stood and likened the exceeding blackness of the raven, and the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the woman he loved best, which was as black as jet, and her flesh to the whiteness of snow, and the redness of the blood in the white snow to the two red spots in the cheeks of the woman he loved best” (p. 178, “Peredur Son of Efrawg”).

1: “THE MASK IS MOST IMPORTANT ALWAYS”

10: Footnote: Comments of Noh expert in Umewaka lineage — Clark corrections, unnumbered p. 2.

10: Mr. Umewaka Rokuro as a candidate for best living Noh actor in Japan — For instance: “Unanimously called a genius, Umewaka Rokuro is arguably the best dancer/actor alive.” — Yokoyama Taro ms., p. 2 of 3.

10: Footnote about kimonos — Brazell (pp. 120–21) gives the nomenclature, and all of the following derives from her. She notes that “the basic garment” is “similar to the modern kimono.” She provides the names for the materials used to fabricate kimonos for male and female roles; these I omit. The outer brocade robe is called a kara-ori . Such garments as hunting cloaks have their own names. The stiffened pleated skirts are made of okuchi if plain and hangiri if satin with gold or silver weft. Brazell goes on to detail wigs and other aspects of Noh and kyogen costuming.

11: Remarks of Mr. Umewaka Rokuro — Interviews in Tokyo and Osaka, April 2002. The Noh actress Yamamura Yoko was interviewed in Tokyo at the same time, on the premises of Mr. Umewaka’s school.

11: The stink of Noh kimonos — Jeff Clark objects (correction to ms. p. 3) that “they’re freshened with sachets, incense and an occasional venting. So it’s misleading to say that they stink. The undergarments that get the most sweat etc. are washed.” All the same, the kimonos brought to me by Mr. Umewaka’s apprentices did stink.

17: Zeami: “All the exercises must be severely and strictly done…” — Ze-ami, p. 16. His name is sometimes also transliterated “Seami.”

18: One observer: “A religious and sober atmosphere of almost suffocating intensity” — Ze-ami, p. 4 (foreword).

19: Dr. Yokoyama Taro: “Unlike most other music/dance performances…” — Tokoyama Taro, trans. by Sato Yoshiaki, p. 1 of 3.

20: Footnote on shura — Jeff Clark corrections, note to ms p. 9.

20: Excerpt from Taiheiki — De Bary et al., p. 291 (“The Loyalist Heroes”).

20: Footnote: Sins washed away by the Great Exorcism — Ibid., pp. 34–35. Another peculiar sin listed is “woes from creeping insects.”

Same footnote: “The Mahayana Precepts” — Ibid., p. 143.

20: “The sin of human beings” — When I remarked on the sadness of a similar Noh drama, Mr. Umewaka said, “After all, he got involved in war, so that’s the tragedy of the human being. Tsunemasa is talented; he loves the lute so much, and because of his love of the instrument he returns as a ghost. He was involved in the war without his intention. But it is a sin nonetheless.” Here it may be worth remarking on the Shinto notion of sin as defilement . In the records for The Great Exorcism of the Last Day of the Sixth Month (recorded in 927 AD), we find enumerated among the heavenly and earthly sins to be washed away by the Great Exorcism of the Last Day of the Sixth Month such evil choices as violating one’s child or violating a mother and her child, then such ambiguous acts as killing animals, covering up ditches and double planting, which survival itself might necessitate, and finally unavoidable consequences of biology itself — for instance, defecation. What is guilt in this context? Indeed, some Buddhists might say, what is guilt in any context? Evil and delusion burdens us as does biological necessity. Only sacred mercy can save us. But save us it can. “The Mahayana Precepts in ‘Admonitions of the Fanwang Sutra’ ” go so far as to guarantee that all of us defecators from kings to prostitutes to supernatural beings can be named “most pure ones” if we accept the Buddha’s Admonitions of the Law.

21: Kagekiyo: “The end is near…” — Waley, p. 133.

21: “ Late dewdrops are our lives …” — Loc. cit.

21: One scholar: “In the time of Tokugawa (A.D. 1602 to 1868)…” — Pound and Fenollosa, p. 7 (Fenollosa writing; my italics). I would have quoted from my other copy, which contains the original introduction by Fenollosa, but since Umewaka Minoru is mentioned in it so extensively I gave it to Mr. Umewaka.

22: Zeami: “The impersonation of old men is the most important thing in Noh…” — Ze-ami, p. 27.

23: Zeami: “He must not bend too much at the waist or at the knees…” — Ibid., pp. 26–27 (“Fushikaden”).