Noh Ko-Jō

TITLE: Noh Ko-Jō
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Asia
COUNTRY: Japan
ETHNICITY: Japanese
DESCRIPTION: Ko-Jō Kyo-Kei (Old Man) Mask
MAKER: Takiyama Ichiemon (Iso Tanba City, Hyogo, Japan, 1940- ) and Ohoshima Jyunji (Fukuchiyama City, Kyoto, Japan, 1930- )
CATALOG ID: ASJP016
CEREMONY: Noh Drama
AGE: 2011
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: paint; horse hair; acrylic string

The Noh theater evolved from a combination of Chinese Nuo opera, popular village entertainment known as Sarugaku, and courtly Bugaku dance to become a uniquely Japanese form of high culture. Noh, or Nōgaku, probably first emerged as a distinct form of theater in the 14th century.  A wide variety of plays developed over the ensuing three hundred or so years, with masked characters playing an important role in most.  The masks require the actors to communicate through posture, body movement, and vocal control, whose perfection requires years of intense training.  Although the masks prevent the actor from using facial expression, the most expertly carved masks can be made to express different emotions at different angles, so that he actor can change facial expression by the tilting his head.

This mask is known as Ko-Jō (or Ko-Jyo) and is a kind of Jō-Kei (old man mask) created by the famed carver Koushi Kiyomitsu in the late 14th century. This specimen was acquired from Inoue Corporation of Kyoto.

For more on Noh masks, see the excellent book by Michishige Udaka and Shuichi Yamagata, The Secrets of Noh Masks (Tokyo: Kodansha International , 2010).