Nо̄ and kyōgen masks were perfected between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although influenced by pre-existing traditions, nо̄ and kyōgen masks developed distinctive features differentiating them from earlier masks, like those imported from and continent and used in gigaku mimed skits and bugaku court dances. During the fifteenth century nōgaku was supported by the aristocracy, and performers adapted plays and staging techniques to the cultivated taste of their new patrons. While earlier traditions featured ritual dances or comic sketches, and music, nо̄ developed a more elaborate dramaturgy. With increasingly complex characters came the need for masks that allowed the actor to express a wider range of emotions. While early masks portray mostly gods, demons, or exotic characters, those used to portray men and women emerge later.
The standard Japanese word for ‘mask’ is kamen (‘temporary face’), but noh masks are normally referred to as omote (‘face’), suggesting a quality of ‘truth’ of the noh mask, an object of revelation rather than concealment. Noh and kyōgen masks cover the face, but not the head of the actor, leaving the chin visible as noh aesthetics do not seek stage realism. Significantly, most noh masks have an open mouth: it sometimes seems as if they were about to say something.
Nō and kyōgen masks have been transmitted within families of actors, patron amateurs such as the Edo-period daimyо̄ families, temples, and shrines. After the upheavals following the Meiji Restoration during the second half of the nineteenth century, some actors were forced to sell their masks. A large number of these have ended up in museums or in the hands of foreign collectors. Today, Japanese masks can be admired in museums in Japan and around the world, such as the Japanese National Museums, the Mitsui Memorial Museum in Tokyo, the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya, the Hayashibara Museum in Okayama, the Kanazawa Noh Museum and the Museum of Noh Artifacts, Sasayama in Japan, as well as the Musée Guimet in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum Rietburg, Zurich, the Museum of East Asian Art, Berlin, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Contributor: Diego Pellecchia, Monica Bethe