yaseotoko　痩男

KEY WORD :　art history / sculptures

"Emaciated man." Noh mask *noumen 能面 representing a ghost suffering in hell. Lean flesh barely disguises the skeletal structure of this mask. Sunken eyes and weakly open mouth both turn down. The lack of lower teeth and thin limpid lines of hair add to the sense of impassiveness. The bland, earthy coloring appears bloodless. Only the metallic eyeballs highlighted with vermilion suggest an affinity with the superhuman. While some yaseotoko masks have broad faces with wide-set eyes, others have smaller features set closer together, like the fine example owned by the Mitsui 三井 Art Museum, Tokyo and formerly the model mask honmen 本面 of the Kongou 金剛 school, which bears an inscription attributing it to the 15c carver Himi 氷見 (see *jissaku 十作). Yaseotoko is used by all schools of *nou 能 for men suffering in hell, either from having disobeyed the Buddhist dictate not to take life, such as the hunter in UTOU 善知鳥 and the fisherman in AKOGI 阿漕, or who are obsessed with unfair treatment in life, like the fisherman in FUJITO 藤戸 and the lover Fukakusa no Shoushou 深草少将 in KAYOI KOMACHI 通小町. For the last play, the more refined variant masks of shoushou 少将 and fukakusaotoko 深草男 were devised in the mid-Edo period.

REFERENCES:

*onryoumen 怨霊面, *kawazu 蛙, *hatachi amari 二十余.

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NOTES:

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