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Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
528![Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.8.5)
Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
528Paperback
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Overview
William T. Vollmann, the National Book Award–winning author of Europe Central, offers a charming, evocative, and piercing examination of the ancient Japanese tradition of Noh theatre and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty. Kissing the Mask is the first major book on Noh by an American writer since the 1916 publication the classic study Pisan Cantos and the Noh by Ezra Pound. But Kissing the Mask is pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780061228490 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins |
Publication date: | 03/15/2011 |
Pages: | 528 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.50(d) |
About the Author
![About The Author](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.8.5)
Hometown:
Sacramento, CaliforniaDate of Birth:
July 28, 1959Place of Birth:
Santa Monica, CaliforniaEducation:
Attended Deep Springs College and Cornell UniversityTable of Contents
List of Illustrations xv
0 Understatements About This String-Ball of Idle Thoughts 1
I Black Hair
1 "The Mask Is Most Important Always": The Noh Performances of Umewaka Rokuro 9
2 Schematics: Roles, Rules, Props 43
3 Malignance and Charm: A Catalogue of Female Masks 65
4 A Branch of Flowers: Steps to Ineffability 84
5 The Dragons of Kasuga: Texts, Places, Histories, Masks 91
6 Sunshine at Midnight: An Interview with Mr Mikata Shizuka 102
7 Perfect Faces: Maiden, Mask, Geisha, Wife, Princess 106
8 Aya Kudo and the Zo-onna: A Porn Model Compared with a Noh Goddess 117
9 Her Golden Lips Slightly Parted: An Image of Kannon 126
10 Crossing the Abyss: The Three Beings of Three Women 128
11 What Is Grace?: A List and a Possible Hermeneutic 141
12 Rainbow Skirts: The Loveliness of Lady Yang 166
13 Jewels in the Darkness: The Dances of Kofumi-san and Konomi-san 174
14 "She Cannot Do Anything Else": Compulsions, Costs, Achievements 202
15 Suzuka's Dressing Room: A Geisha Gets Ready 212
16 "They Just Want to Look in the Mirror": Yukiko Makes Me Over 222
17 "I Sit with My Legs Closed": Glimpses of Onnagatas 229
18 "There's No Ugly Lady Face": Katy Transforms 237
19 The Phallus of Tiresias: What Is a Woman? 244
II White Arms
20 A Curtain of Mist: Understatement and Concealment 255
21 In the Forest: An Apology 263
22 Sun-Bright Like Swords: The Beauty of Valkyries 264
23 Passing Light: Andrew Wyeth's Helga Pictures 282
24 Who Is the Willow Tree Goddess?: Snatches of a Play 292
III Beauty's Ghost
25 Snow in a Silver Bowl: An Epitaph for Radha's Grace 297
26 Beauty's Ghost: Ono No Komachi in Traditional Noh Plays 298
27 Urashima's Box: A Few Thoughts About Time 312
28 The Decay of the Angel: Komachi in the Noh Plays of Mishima Yukio 318
IV The Moon Maiden Goes Home
29 Sunshine on Silla: The Unknown 331
30 Pine Tree Constancy: "Takasago," "Izutsu" and "Matsukaze" 338
31 Kagekiyo's Daughter: "Semimaru" and the Plays of Separation 354
32 Behind the Rainbow Curtain: Going Home Beneath the Skin 367
Appendix A Descriptions of Feminine Beauty in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (ca. 1000-1010) 405
Appendix B Descriptions of Feminine Beauty in Some Old Norse Sources 408
Appendix C Descriptions of Feminine Beauty in Sappho and Miscellaneous Greek Lyric Sources 414
Appendix D Proportions of Feminine Beauty in Some Classical and Western European Sources 421
Appendix E Noh Play Groups, and Plays Mentioned 423
Glossary 425
Chronology 431
Notes 436
Bibliography 486
Note on the Illustrations 501
Note on the Orthography 502
Acknowledgments 503
What People are Saying About This
“[Vollmann’s] evocations of [Noh’s] death-haunted stories, its eerie masks, its male actors playing women...are so electric and strange, so enchanted, that they made me long for the very dramas that have often sent me toward the exit before the intermission.”