Nōgaku Semimaru Mask

TITLE: Nōgaku Semimaru Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Asia
COUNTRY: Japan
ETHNICITY: Japanese
DESCRIPTION: Semimaru (blind prince) mask
MAKER: Sawazou
CATALOG ID: ASJP030
CEREMONY: Noh Drama
AGE: 1950s
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: paint; lacquer; silk cord

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 used solely in the eponymous play, Semimaru and represents the blind fourth child of Emperor Engi (Emperor Daigo, 885-930). It begins when an imperial officer, Kiyotsura, who has received an order from the emperor to abandon Prince Semimaru on Mount Ōsaka, takes the prince to the mountain. Semimaru calms the lamenting Kiyotsura by approving the emperor’s wise decision as calculated to improve Semimaru’s chance of the happiness in his next life. Kiyotsura shaves the prince’s head to have him renounce the world and gives him a straw raincoat, rain hat, and cane before they part. In tears, Prince Semimaru who is now alone holds his biwa (Japanese lute) to his chest, staggering and tripping over the mountain. A court official, Hakuga no Sanmi, comes to check on Prince Semimaru to find him in the misery. Out of pity, he constructs a straw hut to keep the prince out of the rain and dew and invites the prince in.

Prince Semimaru’s older sister, Princess Sakagami, has hair growing towards the sky by nature. Although she is a princess, the strange phenomenon is considered a curse, and she goes mad and leaves Kyoto, wandering in the wilderness until she reaches Mount Ōsaka. There she stops upon hearing the sound of a lute coming from a straw hut and talks to her brother, Prince Semimaru. The brother and sister embrace and share their sorrowful stories. They then part in tears.

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