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 Orthography

For the first few years I diligently collected macrons (those bars which in Japanese transliterations so often bask over the letters “u” and “o”). One sometimes meets “Noh” without its “h,” and then with or without a macron. Dogen’s thirteenth-century “Genjo Koan” may glide onstage wearing three macrons, one of them roofing Dogen himself. But no romanization is consistent; and so, reader, I took pity on you and on myself. You will see no macrons here.

All Japanese proper names are given, as is customary for them (not for us), with the family name first.