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

Note on the Illustrations

Never winning permission to photograph any Noh performances or rehearsals, I made sketches instead. Hopefully these will give some indication of stage layout and choreography.

The geishas who danced for me were more permissive. You will find their performances documented here, even if inadequately.

Even a high-quality color photograph of a Noh mask, printed on the best glossy stock, would fail to serve, given the subtleties of mask painting, and, more important, the power that these works of art possess of seeming to alter expression with angle. I refer you to the bibliography for several beautifully illustrated works on this topic; likewise for portraits of geishas.

As for Kabuki, that is scarcely represented here in either text or images. My apologies.

I would have liked to reproduce images of Stiff White Ladies, Genji Picture-Scrolls, Andrew Wyeth’s Helga paintings, Noh fans, cosmetic advertisements and the like, but “commercial considerations” advised against it.

Finally, I want to assure you that even though my made-up face appears in a couple of illustrations herein, I lack illusions as to my attractiveness. It seemed germane to show how different makeup artists addressed the same problem. Smeary reproductions on rough paper stock may well improve the originals.