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能面（おもて）
A Noh mask, called omote by performers, is a carved and painted wooden face used to embody a role. Types indicate age, status and character, while movement and viewing angle give the fixed form a changing presence on stage.
The principal performer, shite, often uses a mask, but roles such as living adult men may be performed bare-faced, or hitamen. A mask is therefore connected to role and performance tradition, rather than an accessory worn by every actor.
Hakushiki-jō in Okina represents an aged deity. Alongside its prominent brows and beard, a separate jaw joined by cords distinguishes its construction. The mask is put on during the stage action, unlike the usual backstage preparation.
Jō masks portray elderly men, with individual forms such as Kojō. Male types include Chūjō for aristocratic or warrior spirits and other forms for younger characters. Similar age does not make all masks interchangeable.
Ko-omote commonly portrays a young woman and can also serve divine roles. Other female types include Waka-onna, Magojirō, Fukai and Shakumi. Names, forms and school preferences distinguish them; not every female mask is a Ko-omote.
Hannya’s horns, eyes and mouth embody a woman transformed by jealousy, anger and grief. Its role involves a character’s suffering rather than an abstract evil face. Other supernatural roles have different masks.
Ko-omote does not fix emotion in a single broad smile or grimace. Its brow, eyes and mouth support different readings in performance. The association calls this an intermediate expression, while forceful supernatural masks can use a contrasting approach.
In performance convention, a slight upward inclination, terasu, is associated with brightness, and a downward one, kumorasu, with a clouded mood. This is not a mechanical switch guaranteeing the same emotional judgement from every viewer under any lighting.
A 2012 Nagoya–Tokyo university release describes experiments with a modern Ko-omote and student judgements of facial combinations. Mouth shape proved important, and readings could oppose performance convention. Such experiments cannot establish a medieval maker’s intention.
The 2012 study first asked participants to alter the brow, eyes and mouth of a modern Ko-omote with software, making or imitating expressions. It then combined those three regions from upward- and downward-inclined photographs into eight faces. Another group judged each as happy or sad, allowing the researchers to compare conflicting feature cues.
Judgements particularly followed the mouth: combinations using the downward-inclined mouth were more often called happy, while those using the upward-inclined mouth were more often called sad. Inclining the whole mask therefore need not give every feature the same emotional cue. These were static experimental images. Bodily movement, music, sequence and performance experience also shape an encounter on stage, so the result cannot stand in for the whole performance.
The eye openings restrict the performer’s field of view. Familiarity with stage position and controlled movement help communicate the role. A museum photograph can show form, but cannot reproduce the full effect of performance.
A Noh mask is generally slightly smaller than the performer’s face and does not enclose the whole head. Cords pass through holes near the temples to secure it. The carved reverse leaves space behind the wooden face, with openings for the eyes and mouth. The wearing photograph and the Chūjō reverse below show these two aspects through different objects; they are not front and back views of a single mask.
The small eye openings give a narrow field of view. Performers learn the stage’s spatial relationships and can use pillars for orientation. How the mask is secured, where its openings lie and how the body moves therefore work together in performance.
Earlier masks used various woods, including paulownia; hinoki cypress became widespread later. A gofun ground supports painted eyes, mouth, brows and hair, while the reverse is often lacquered. Sculpture and painted detail work together.
The pictured Ko-omote in the Tokyo National Museum bears the inscription “永井恒澄”. Dated to the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries, it is painted wood, 21.2 cm high and 13.6 cm wide. The museum relates it to copies of Yuki no Ko-omote while qualifying the attribution.
A honmen serves as a model for an utsushi copy. In the Konparu collection, several Shakumi masks share impact marks, lost colour and stains, allowing the heritage description to discuss copying. An apparently old blemish may itself have been reproduced.
Ko-omote or Shakumi first identifies a type, not an individual maker. Some type names originated with early makers and continued on later copies. Dating, provenance and inscriptions must therefore be considered alongside the name.
Okina masks precede many later forms, with early survivals dated to Kamakura–Nanbokuchō. Zeami’s writings already mention supernatural, elderly, male and female types. Further differentiation developed through late Muromachi and Momoyama.
Hereditary makers such as the Deme families continued work through Momoyama and Edo, using older masks as models. The Konparu group includes early objects and copies by makers such as Zekan Yoshimitsu. Careful replication transmitted forms while complicating attribution.
After the Meiji Restoration, Kasuga Shrine purchased a group inherited by the Konparu family. Threatened dispersal prompted Nara volunteers to preserve it through Teirakusha, together with costumes. The Tokyo National Museum acquired the group in 1950: forty-six Noh masks and one Kyogen mask. This is a specific collection history.
The National Noh Theatre’s 2026 exhibition list includes Matsumoto Masahiko’s Shōwa-era tools and production stages. It also directs readers to online front and reverse images of its Noh and Kyogen masks dating to the Edo period or earlier. Preservation now documents processes and images as well as historic objects.
Contemporary mask makers also work on new productions. The new Noh play Maso credits Yasuo Miichi with mask making; his practice also includes restoring older Katayama-family masks, making new ones, and producing copies for temples and shrines. Preservation, copying and new theatrical work can coexist within one maker’s practice.
Omote.
No. Some roles are performed bare-faced.
No. It is a type, with objects of different dates and histories.
Yes. The Konparu group includes examples with matching marks, colour losses and stains.
The Tokyo National Museum.
It recombined brow, eye and mouth regions from the two inclinations and asked for happy/sad judgements; the mouth was especially influential.
Cords secure the mask, while the eye openings allow only a narrow view; performers learn the stage and use cues such as pillars.
