Noh Theatre and It's Mask's

Hey, nice to meet you, internet. So today I decided to write some blog about Japanese famous Noh theatre and the type of mask they use for the play, and of course the meaning behind it, so without further ado..let’s get right into it.

For some of you who don’t know, Noh is a classical Japanese musical drama that based on tales from traditional literature since 14^th century, Noh is a drama play that focused on the characters that centered around the props, costumes and of course the mask. Each mask have a meaning behind it, and the actor tell the story following the characters which the mask represent, they show it with a gesture and dance performance through out the play.

On this blog I’m gonna talk about mainly on the types of mask, rather than the theatre itselfs. The meaning behind the mask and how they are potray in the theatre. But today we gonna cover Noh theatre origin and history, so we can understand better where it's coming from and how it came to be the way Noh theatre we know today.

If you love Japan and it’s culture, anime, manga movies, games or perhaps just surfing the internet on a daily routine, you probably bound to know about seen one of this menacing type of Noh mask, given it’s often shown on many modern story and media, this type of mask probably on the public eye become one of Japan famous icon.

But how these bizzare theatre mask come into life and still trive into modern society never have an entirely sure answer when and how this came into being, however there's a speculation on when this culture first appeared on Japan, there some believe that Noh theatre and their names, were first  developed from mid to latter part of Muromachi period (1329-1573).

Before that time however the mask set wasn't entirely set and the mask themselves had a strong religious connotations, but as time progress the religious characteristic on the mask began to disappear on the mask and adapted a more human characteristic. Noh performers began to use of Yugen and profundity as they believe to hide their unattractive aspect of them as a person and continue to bring much more character to mask that they wear, to show a stronger beauty of Noh theatre to the audience. 

As an art form that centered around the mask and how to potray their characteristic which they inherit, Noh have a great number of variety of mask, as of today there are exist over 200 mask with different kind of use. As they wear the mask for the play, the performers feels the mask are much more than just a prop to change appearance, and believe the mask have a spiritual feel in it which they inherent.

So..how many types of these spiritual mask out there?

There's exist 60 basic categories of Noh mask types, which have their own characteristic and trait to their role, but because there are so many of them and don't have the guts for it, i'll only be covering 4 of them which i interested the most and that type's are..

•  Onna/Woman
•  Jo/Elders 
•  Kishin/Demon
•  Onryo/Ghost and Spirit   

Which i'll be covering on the next post, what are the role they have and what are the meaning behind the mask and so on.

Until then, have a nice day and thank you for your time for reading this

Much appreciated.   

 Reference:

• http://www.the-noh.com/sub/jp/index.php?mode=db&action=e_index&class_id=1
• https://nohmask21.com/eu/mlist.html
• http://www.historyofmasks.net/famous-masks/noh-mask/