Plenty of Nothing

Noh Masks at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Source. Pitt Rivers Museum.

Shunkan

Several islands claim to be the place of exile of the monk Shunkan, who plotted against the Heike in 1177. His co-conspirators received pardons, but he conspicuously did not. There are Noh plays about it. This statue is in Iōjima in Kagoshima Prefecture. Source. Also.

Staging Noh

This illustration from a collection of Noh songs gives a good idea of the performance's stage directions. Source.

Jido

Still from The Sound of the Mountain (1954).

    Shingo put on his glasses and started to untwist the cord; and the moment he could see them clearly the hair and lips of the jido mask struck him as so beautiful that he wanted to cry out in surprise.

    When Suzumoto had left, Eiko came to his desk.

    "Isn't it beautiful."

    Eiko nodded silently.

    "Put it on for a minute."

    "But that would be all wrong. Here I am in foreign clothes." When Shingo handed her the mask, however, she put it on and tied the cord.

    "Move your head, very gently."

    Standing before him, Eiko moved her head this way and that.

    "Good. Very good." The words came of their own accord. Even with so little movement, the mask quite came to life. Eiko had on a russet dress, and her hair sent waves cascading at the sides of the mask, but she had taken on a charm that held him captive.

    "Is that enough?"

    "Yes." Shingo immediately sent Eiko out to buy a reference work on No masks.

Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain (trans. Edward Seidensticker), pages 85-6.

Noh Nekyia

Read about a Noh performance based on Book XI of the Odyssey that was staged at Epidaurus in 2015.

Uba Masks

Sources: 1); 2).

Noh Whisky

This label looks a little like a government health warning. Source.

Noh-Masked High School Girl Hanako

Hanako wears a Noh mask to school every day. Manga artist Ryo Oda says she wants to use Nohmen Joshi no Hanako-San to explore the gap between traditional and modern. Source.

Matsukaze

The two salt maidens, Matsukaze and Murasame, spot Middle Counselor Yukihira, as recounted in the No play Matsukaze. Source.

Wholly Unintelligible

    Not everyone enjoys Nō. Many in the audience doze, somehow able to awaken at the key moments. In the past, when commoners were only rarely permitted to attend performances of Nō, they eagerly bought tickets only to discover that they could not understand what was going on. On one such occasion a man tried to leave, but he was informed this would be interpreted as a sign of disrespect to the nobles attending; if he absolutely had to leave, he would have to pay an exit fee! The first Europeans who saw Nō were most unappreciative. W. G. Aston, who in 1899 wrote what was for many years the only history of Japanese literature in English, stated, "The Nō are not classical poems. They are too deficient in lucidity, method, coherence, and good taste to deserve this description. . . .  As dramas the Nō have little value. There is no action to speak of, and dramatic propriety and effects are hardly thought of." The British diplomat Lord Redesdale, who served in Japan from 1866 to 1870, pronounced the Nō to be "wholly unintelligible."

Donald Keene, The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, page 114.