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Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater – A Provocative Illustrated Examination of Ancient Tradition by an American Writer
“Intrepid journalist and novelist William T. Vollman’s colossal body of work stands unsurpassed for its range, moral imperative, and artistry.”
— Booklist 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.
— Booklist 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.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
14 people are currently reading
587 people want to read
About the author
William T. Vollmann
99 books1,456 followersWilliam Tanner Vollmann is an American author, journalist, and essayist known for his ambitious and often unconventional literary works. Born on July 28, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, Vollmann has earned a reputation as one of the most prolific and daring writers of his generation.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
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March 15, 2011
Understatement isn't exactly characteristic of William T. Vollmann's writing. In his previous journalistic attempts to understand some of the more paradoxical and confusing aspects of the world, he has exercised such an unremitting onslaught of literary hyperbole as to make it his stylistic M.O. His writing seems to exhaust the meaning of exploration. To his credit, this is also what makes his writing approach so inimitable. Rising Up, Rising Down is the most immediate example that comes to mind; a 3,600 page meditation on the meaning of violence. In so many ways, it comes as no surprise that the subject for his latest non-fiction piece is the most notoriously ambiguous artistic tradition. Since the late 19th century, westerners have been simultaneously moved and confounded by Japanese Noh Theater. Ulysses S. Grant, after seeing his first Noh Play in 1879, was so moved by its subtle grace that he subsequently urged for the preservation of Noh theater. And Ernest Fennolosa, an Italian scholar of Japanese, went to great lengths to explain the technical aspects of Noh, and to introduce some of Zeami's famous plays to western audiences. Yet the amount of actual writings on Noh is scarce. With the exception of a few brief introductions to edited collections of classic plays (the Noh repertoire contains 250 different titles) there isn't exactly a definitive book on Noh in English. As Vollmann opines in the introduction of the book "Deaf, dumb and illiterate in Japanese, innocent of formal study in any discipline of art, a graceless dancer afflicted with bad eyesight, I may not be the perfect author for any essay on Noh drama." Maybe not, but as is the case with most of Vollmann's oeuvre, his epistemology creates so much neurosis about understanding anything outside of his own personal experience, that he is always more than willing to admit that he can't possibly understand the subject matter at hand, regardless of how much research he does, or how many interviews he conducts. Though this is also a trademark point of motivation for his books. This endless curiosity seems to prevent satisfaction with his own cultural ignorance. And herein lies a sort of explanation as to why his books tend to be so very long and, according to some critics, overwritten. It's because, as a journalist, Vollmann is not content with assumption, or over-confident assessment. He'll never truly understand poverty, the border politics of Imperial County, prostitutes, or the Soviet Army, but his books are a way of sharing this attempt to understand and connect to some other part of the world. Still, most readers, even those familiar with Vollmann's work, might be inclined to ask "Why Noh Theater?". In the case of Kissing the Mask, Noh Theater is important because it's a cultural conduit through which he can channel the essence of feminine beauty. And throughout the book we follow Vollmann's quest to understand a little more about what it means to be a woman.
Of course, a majority of this book is specifically about Japanese Noh Theater. It's the cultural stepping stone for Vollmann's foray into the nature of feminine beauty. He traveled all throughout the island of Japan for the book, seeing most of the plays in either Kyoto or Tokyo. As always, a translator accompanied him for his interviews with various mask-makers and actors. The book begins - as does Fennolosa's The Classic Noh Theater of Japan, a collection of plays (mostly his notes completed by Ezra Pound) - with a brief overview of the roles of the actors, the musicians and their instruments, the stage schematics, and the relevance of the mask. There is a pretty detailed sketch of the idea of Noh Theater and how it functions formally, as the best approach to this subject for a western writer would be to begin with an elaborate description of the technical aspects of a Noh play. This is undoubtedly the most focused section of Kissing the Mask because Vollmann avoids digression at this point, trying to give the reader a coherent idea of the visual experience of a Noh play. A common criticism of his writing has been that he often assumes that the reader doesn't require too many explanations of the subject at hand. This may also be because he feels equally lost on this particular subject, maybe with the hope that he's describing it to the reader as he learns about it. He focuses on actor Umewaka Rikoru, grandson of the famous Umewaka Minoru (a Noh actor who did plays during the last days of the Shogunate, and continued acting up through the Meiji restoration period, which was a considerably difficult time for Noh actors as they lost their means of acting as a feudal lord's retainer). Many of the questions posed to Mr. Umewaka concern the emotional and psychological preparation of a Noh actor, most importantly, that most Noh actors strive to feel nothing on stage. As Rikoru's grandfather studied under Zeami, one of the first Noh play writers, as well as the most well known theoretician of the art form, Vollmann utilizes his writings on Noh as a philosophical crutch, and a helpful explanatory guide, assisting the reader through a comprehensive explanation of the underlying religious and philosophical connotations of a typical Noh play. Zeami’s theoretical writings are important to Vollmann’s understanding of Noh in that they offer insight into what is being conveyed through a majority of the plays, not simply through allusive physical gesture and stage props, such as the fan and the mask, but through the symbolic suggestiveness of the plays themselves. There is an emphasis on the concept of “the flower”, which implies the beauty of a Noh performance, as Zeami states in his Fushikaden: (Teachings on the Style and the Flower). The flower as a metaphorical concept, represents a sense of beauty that is never immediately apparent. Therefore, with a Noh actor, as with a San Francisco street prostitute, the beauty behind the flower and the mask is veiled in a superficial aesthetic; an image or representation of beauty intended to create an illusion. The actor or beauty implies grace through their own soulfulness of movement and expression. The flower of beauty is an idea that compels someone like Vollmann to endlessly probe for information or knowledge that might aid in the penetration of the mask. Is enough knowledge or research the best way to understand or obtain this beauty? This is one of the more profound questions that his book has to offer. After this rough explanation of Noh Theater, and the mysterious nature of this artistic tradition, Vollmann delves deeper into various other manifestations of female beauty in the world that might help him adequately understand what it is that defines femininity.
And so Kissing the Mask is imbued with allusions and analysis of various examples from Japanese culture. Just as much as Noh theater is essential to Vollmann’s understanding of feminine beauty, so is Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji, Kawabata’s Snow Country, Geishas, Kabuki Theater, the Norse Sagas, Andrew Wyeth’s Helga Testorf drawings, Mishima’s obstinate attachment to youthful beauty, transgender women, and porn actresses. Many Noh plays, such as Kayoi Komachi (Komachi and the Hundred Nights), focus on the transient nature of existence, the disintegration of the body, and the futility of attachment to the passage of time; a mortal obsession which occupies much of the second half of the book. And this theme is to be found to some relative degree in all the aforementioned cultural and artistic examples. These are digressions, at times successful, at other times, seemingly inconsequential, that help to illuminate the initial concerns of representational beauty in Noh Theater. To summarize the importance of every cultural digression on beauty would be tiresome. What’s important is that each example emphasizes some artistic or social version of attachment to beauty. These meditations and digressions make Kissing the Mask unfocused in ways, yet help illuminate Vollmann’s central theoretical concern in others. This middle portion of the book almost caves in a way. Some readers, already struggling to keep up with the information on Noh, may feel bogged down by such an overwhelming display of cultural allusion. The intention is always clear though, and each chapter offers hours of contemplative thought. One of the intellectual consolations of the book is the thought provoking aspect of each and every one of these artistic examples of veiled beauty, how the various examples connect, and most importantly, how each one might relate to feminine beauty and the art of understatement.
In chapter 16, entitled They Just Want to Look in the Mirror: Yukiko Makes Me Over, Vollmann gets a Geisha makeover by Yukiko, a famous Japanese make-up artist. It’s a particularly entertaining section, and a moment of the trademark self-insertion of Vollmann into his subject matter, that he is so well known for. Now he can look into the mirror to truly ponder what a woman is, more importantly, in what way it is possible to create the illusion of feminine beauty. For, as he states in the fourth chapter with the help of some of Mr. Umewaka’s thoughts on the illusion of beauty in Noh, “… one of the many astonishing achievements of Noh is when a dumpy old man becomes a lovely young girl, all the while showing his swollen feet in the white tabi socks and working his Adam’s apple as he sings in his old man’s bass. No matter what his body is, the young girl lives in him! He possesses the true flower.” So then, if the flower blooms by maintaining secrecy, is the mask of feminine beauty always an illusion? He attempts to find out by putting himself behind the mask of the Geisha. There is a beauty to this display of curiosity about beauty, in and of itself. And reading Vollmann muse on the seemingly feminine image in the mirror in front of him (not to mention being able to view the pictures that he takes of himself) is one of the most moving passages of the book.
Readers less interested in exploring some of the more classic Noh plays and artistic allusions in Kissing the Mask, will be more interested in the case of Mishima Yukio, the infamous Japanese novelist who committed Seppuku in 1970, supposedly motivated by an attempted coup d'etat, and wrote modern versions of some of the famous plays of Zeami. Mishima was a writer, notorious for several theatrical personas, which were all part of a lifetime attempt to create an artistic legacy out of aesthetic contrivances. As Paul Schrader has suggested, in his film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Mishima's obsession with the essentially transient beauty of youth prevented him from being capable of dying honorably, in full acceptance of the lamentable process of aging. Even though his famous ritual suicide is often associated with what is typically considered an honorable death. As Donald Richie states so calmly in his Japan Journals, "The theatricality of this sort of death, as melodramatic as the plots of any of Mishima's plays, was a necessary piece in the life so spectacularly terminated. That is what I thought of when I learned of Mishima's suicide. There was no surprise." Early on, in his description of the beauty of feminine allusiveness, and an aspect of Noh Theater that makes its own ambiguity so astounding, Vollmann comments on its ability to surprise the spectator with the symbolical nuances of beauty that are never immediately apparent. Mishima, in his rebellion, not only against his own self-hatred, but against the accepting nature of the transience of beauty and young age that the tradition of Noh Theater embodies, lets his characters pursue their vain obsessions to a delusional degree. His example might as well blend into the miasma of cultural allusion that Vollmann has to offer, but it should also stand out as a sort of moral allegory within this text. Mishima's attachment decries the Shintoesque calmness and acceptance of death and aging that all Noh plays attempt to convey. To be more precise, concerning this particular book; the lesson that Vollmann aims to instruct most of his readers on through the example of his own stubbornness, is that the attachment to an understanding of beauty is analogous to madness and confusion. It will not show us the true nature of beauty. Rather it will put us at war with its essence. Hence, the case of Mishima Yukio, and the vain futility of attachment.
What is feminine beauty? What is Grace? What is Poverty? What is Violence? To approach any of these questions with the assumption that enough knowledge and self-education can assist one in coming to a satisfying conclusion is a fallacy. So why should the average reader invest the time that it takes to read four-hundred or more pages full of ponderous meditations? It's because insatiable curiosity informs our motives for reading books in the first place. This intellectual desire to come to a conclusion, or wrap up a complicated question is wholly absent from Vollmann's treatise on beauty, as it is with his previous non-fiction pieces. And yet, this is what makes for such a compelling exploration of beauty. Of course, this is not to dismiss its value as one of the few, and most recent, studies on the art of Noh Theater. With so few books written on Noh Theater in the English language on the market these days, it's culturally refreshing to hear a contemporary voice analyze the complexities of such a mysterious artistic tradition, and it's furthermore remarkable that he is capable of using it as a lens through which to attempt to understand such an aesthetically abstract concept as feminine beauty. Vollmann is more than capable of holding his own with the likes of Arthur Waley, Donald Keene, Ernest Fennolosa, and Ivan Morris. Which is an incredible accomplishment for an "ape in a cage", who going into this book, didn't understand the first thing about the Noh theater, or Japanese language for that matter.
Of course, a majority of this book is specifically about Japanese Noh Theater. It's the cultural stepping stone for Vollmann's foray into the nature of feminine beauty. He traveled all throughout the island of Japan for the book, seeing most of the plays in either Kyoto or Tokyo. As always, a translator accompanied him for his interviews with various mask-makers and actors. The book begins - as does Fennolosa's The Classic Noh Theater of Japan, a collection of plays (mostly his notes completed by Ezra Pound) - with a brief overview of the roles of the actors, the musicians and their instruments, the stage schematics, and the relevance of the mask. There is a pretty detailed sketch of the idea of Noh Theater and how it functions formally, as the best approach to this subject for a western writer would be to begin with an elaborate description of the technical aspects of a Noh play. This is undoubtedly the most focused section of Kissing the Mask because Vollmann avoids digression at this point, trying to give the reader a coherent idea of the visual experience of a Noh play. A common criticism of his writing has been that he often assumes that the reader doesn't require too many explanations of the subject at hand. This may also be because he feels equally lost on this particular subject, maybe with the hope that he's describing it to the reader as he learns about it. He focuses on actor Umewaka Rikoru, grandson of the famous Umewaka Minoru (a Noh actor who did plays during the last days of the Shogunate, and continued acting up through the Meiji restoration period, which was a considerably difficult time for Noh actors as they lost their means of acting as a feudal lord's retainer). Many of the questions posed to Mr. Umewaka concern the emotional and psychological preparation of a Noh actor, most importantly, that most Noh actors strive to feel nothing on stage. As Rikoru's grandfather studied under Zeami, one of the first Noh play writers, as well as the most well known theoretician of the art form, Vollmann utilizes his writings on Noh as a philosophical crutch, and a helpful explanatory guide, assisting the reader through a comprehensive explanation of the underlying religious and philosophical connotations of a typical Noh play. Zeami’s theoretical writings are important to Vollmann’s understanding of Noh in that they offer insight into what is being conveyed through a majority of the plays, not simply through allusive physical gesture and stage props, such as the fan and the mask, but through the symbolic suggestiveness of the plays themselves. There is an emphasis on the concept of “the flower”, which implies the beauty of a Noh performance, as Zeami states in his Fushikaden: (Teachings on the Style and the Flower). The flower as a metaphorical concept, represents a sense of beauty that is never immediately apparent. Therefore, with a Noh actor, as with a San Francisco street prostitute, the beauty behind the flower and the mask is veiled in a superficial aesthetic; an image or representation of beauty intended to create an illusion. The actor or beauty implies grace through their own soulfulness of movement and expression. The flower of beauty is an idea that compels someone like Vollmann to endlessly probe for information or knowledge that might aid in the penetration of the mask. Is enough knowledge or research the best way to understand or obtain this beauty? This is one of the more profound questions that his book has to offer. After this rough explanation of Noh Theater, and the mysterious nature of this artistic tradition, Vollmann delves deeper into various other manifestations of female beauty in the world that might help him adequately understand what it is that defines femininity.
And so Kissing the Mask is imbued with allusions and analysis of various examples from Japanese culture. Just as much as Noh theater is essential to Vollmann’s understanding of feminine beauty, so is Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji, Kawabata’s Snow Country, Geishas, Kabuki Theater, the Norse Sagas, Andrew Wyeth’s Helga Testorf drawings, Mishima’s obstinate attachment to youthful beauty, transgender women, and porn actresses. Many Noh plays, such as Kayoi Komachi (Komachi and the Hundred Nights), focus on the transient nature of existence, the disintegration of the body, and the futility of attachment to the passage of time; a mortal obsession which occupies much of the second half of the book. And this theme is to be found to some relative degree in all the aforementioned cultural and artistic examples. These are digressions, at times successful, at other times, seemingly inconsequential, that help to illuminate the initial concerns of representational beauty in Noh Theater. To summarize the importance of every cultural digression on beauty would be tiresome. What’s important is that each example emphasizes some artistic or social version of attachment to beauty. These meditations and digressions make Kissing the Mask unfocused in ways, yet help illuminate Vollmann’s central theoretical concern in others. This middle portion of the book almost caves in a way. Some readers, already struggling to keep up with the information on Noh, may feel bogged down by such an overwhelming display of cultural allusion. The intention is always clear though, and each chapter offers hours of contemplative thought. One of the intellectual consolations of the book is the thought provoking aspect of each and every one of these artistic examples of veiled beauty, how the various examples connect, and most importantly, how each one might relate to feminine beauty and the art of understatement.
In chapter 16, entitled They Just Want to Look in the Mirror: Yukiko Makes Me Over, Vollmann gets a Geisha makeover by Yukiko, a famous Japanese make-up artist. It’s a particularly entertaining section, and a moment of the trademark self-insertion of Vollmann into his subject matter, that he is so well known for. Now he can look into the mirror to truly ponder what a woman is, more importantly, in what way it is possible to create the illusion of feminine beauty. For, as he states in the fourth chapter with the help of some of Mr. Umewaka’s thoughts on the illusion of beauty in Noh, “… one of the many astonishing achievements of Noh is when a dumpy old man becomes a lovely young girl, all the while showing his swollen feet in the white tabi socks and working his Adam’s apple as he sings in his old man’s bass. No matter what his body is, the young girl lives in him! He possesses the true flower.” So then, if the flower blooms by maintaining secrecy, is the mask of feminine beauty always an illusion? He attempts to find out by putting himself behind the mask of the Geisha. There is a beauty to this display of curiosity about beauty, in and of itself. And reading Vollmann muse on the seemingly feminine image in the mirror in front of him (not to mention being able to view the pictures that he takes of himself) is one of the most moving passages of the book.
Readers less interested in exploring some of the more classic Noh plays and artistic allusions in Kissing the Mask, will be more interested in the case of Mishima Yukio, the infamous Japanese novelist who committed Seppuku in 1970, supposedly motivated by an attempted coup d'etat, and wrote modern versions of some of the famous plays of Zeami. Mishima was a writer, notorious for several theatrical personas, which were all part of a lifetime attempt to create an artistic legacy out of aesthetic contrivances. As Paul Schrader has suggested, in his film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Mishima's obsession with the essentially transient beauty of youth prevented him from being capable of dying honorably, in full acceptance of the lamentable process of aging. Even though his famous ritual suicide is often associated with what is typically considered an honorable death. As Donald Richie states so calmly in his Japan Journals, "The theatricality of this sort of death, as melodramatic as the plots of any of Mishima's plays, was a necessary piece in the life so spectacularly terminated. That is what I thought of when I learned of Mishima's suicide. There was no surprise." Early on, in his description of the beauty of feminine allusiveness, and an aspect of Noh Theater that makes its own ambiguity so astounding, Vollmann comments on its ability to surprise the spectator with the symbolical nuances of beauty that are never immediately apparent. Mishima, in his rebellion, not only against his own self-hatred, but against the accepting nature of the transience of beauty and young age that the tradition of Noh Theater embodies, lets his characters pursue their vain obsessions to a delusional degree. His example might as well blend into the miasma of cultural allusion that Vollmann has to offer, but it should also stand out as a sort of moral allegory within this text. Mishima's attachment decries the Shintoesque calmness and acceptance of death and aging that all Noh plays attempt to convey. To be more precise, concerning this particular book; the lesson that Vollmann aims to instruct most of his readers on through the example of his own stubbornness, is that the attachment to an understanding of beauty is analogous to madness and confusion. It will not show us the true nature of beauty. Rather it will put us at war with its essence. Hence, the case of Mishima Yukio, and the vain futility of attachment.
What is feminine beauty? What is Grace? What is Poverty? What is Violence? To approach any of these questions with the assumption that enough knowledge and self-education can assist one in coming to a satisfying conclusion is a fallacy. So why should the average reader invest the time that it takes to read four-hundred or more pages full of ponderous meditations? It's because insatiable curiosity informs our motives for reading books in the first place. This intellectual desire to come to a conclusion, or wrap up a complicated question is wholly absent from Vollmann's treatise on beauty, as it is with his previous non-fiction pieces. And yet, this is what makes for such a compelling exploration of beauty. Of course, this is not to dismiss its value as one of the few, and most recent, studies on the art of Noh Theater. With so few books written on Noh Theater in the English language on the market these days, it's culturally refreshing to hear a contemporary voice analyze the complexities of such a mysterious artistic tradition, and it's furthermore remarkable that he is capable of using it as a lens through which to attempt to understand such an aesthetically abstract concept as feminine beauty. Vollmann is more than capable of holding his own with the likes of Arthur Waley, Donald Keene, Ernest Fennolosa, and Ivan Morris. Which is an incredible accomplishment for an "ape in a cage", who going into this book, didn't understand the first thing about the Noh theater, or Japanese language for that matter.
April 6, 2010
Also posted at Feminist Review.
Full disclosure: I am an avid fan of William T. Vollmann's work and was excited to read this book. Vollmann often has strange and interesting things to say about women and gender relations, and his notorious interest in prostitutes (who feature prominently in both his fiction and non-fiction) may almost be labeled as an obsession. In his latest book, Kissing The Mask, Vollmann concentrates on the nature of femininity by viewing it primarily through the lens of the ancient, gorgeous masks of Japanese Noh theater. It is also a meditation on the idea of femininity as a staged performance.
Noh theater is far too complex to encapsulate in just a few sentences, and Vollmann himself often professes trouble in defining it thoroughly. At first glance, Noh seems a bizarre choice of medium through which to focus on femininity, as most Noh actors are male and men traditionally play the roles of women with the aid of costuming and masks. However, Vollmann directs his attention, and the readers', to the beautifully rendered Noh masks representing female characters. These become a metaphor for the “mask” of femininity that many women wear: makeup, jewelry, clothing, and other adornments that are more or less socially mandated.
Similarly, the elaborate and carefully orchestrated movements on the Noh stage are analogous to the “staged” femininity also involving complex, time-consuming, and money-burning ornamentation that often results in constricted and painful mobility. Vollmann is concerned with what “manifests” a woman as opposed to what a woman “is,” and in this endeavor he visits Japanese geishas and transvestites, both of whom could be said to wear the feminine mask. He digresses into history of what other cultures have traditionally considered “beautiful,” and manages to weave in thoughts about porn stars and artists' muses.
Vollmann readily admits that he perceives women as “the other,” and is fully aware of the fact that he is viewing women through the privilege of a male gaze. He waxes rhapsodic about female beauty throughout the text, basically elevating women on a very high and poetic pedestal, which made me slightly uncomfortable; when a person (or entire gender) is put up on a pedestal, it's a long way to fall. Vollmann appears to genuinely like and respect women, however, and my discomfort was minor and temporary. He also, as in his other nonfiction books, makes no pretense about being an objective observer; he is fully immersed as a character in his own true story.
Kissing The Mask is highly valuable as a look into the secretive, baroque, and intricate Japanese subcultures of Noh theater and geisha teahouses, with the author's personal study of staged femininity mostly as a bonus. Furthermore, it's enriched with William Vollmann's gorgeous and almost lyrical prose, plenty of photographs and drawings, several appendices with notes and chronologies, and a glossary for the many Japanese words and phrases liberally sprinkled through the material.
Full disclosure: I am an avid fan of William T. Vollmann's work and was excited to read this book. Vollmann often has strange and interesting things to say about women and gender relations, and his notorious interest in prostitutes (who feature prominently in both his fiction and non-fiction) may almost be labeled as an obsession. In his latest book, Kissing The Mask, Vollmann concentrates on the nature of femininity by viewing it primarily through the lens of the ancient, gorgeous masks of Japanese Noh theater. It is also a meditation on the idea of femininity as a staged performance.
Noh theater is far too complex to encapsulate in just a few sentences, and Vollmann himself often professes trouble in defining it thoroughly. At first glance, Noh seems a bizarre choice of medium through which to focus on femininity, as most Noh actors are male and men traditionally play the roles of women with the aid of costuming and masks. However, Vollmann directs his attention, and the readers', to the beautifully rendered Noh masks representing female characters. These become a metaphor for the “mask” of femininity that many women wear: makeup, jewelry, clothing, and other adornments that are more or less socially mandated.
Similarly, the elaborate and carefully orchestrated movements on the Noh stage are analogous to the “staged” femininity also involving complex, time-consuming, and money-burning ornamentation that often results in constricted and painful mobility. Vollmann is concerned with what “manifests” a woman as opposed to what a woman “is,” and in this endeavor he visits Japanese geishas and transvestites, both of whom could be said to wear the feminine mask. He digresses into history of what other cultures have traditionally considered “beautiful,” and manages to weave in thoughts about porn stars and artists' muses.
Vollmann readily admits that he perceives women as “the other,” and is fully aware of the fact that he is viewing women through the privilege of a male gaze. He waxes rhapsodic about female beauty throughout the text, basically elevating women on a very high and poetic pedestal, which made me slightly uncomfortable; when a person (or entire gender) is put up on a pedestal, it's a long way to fall. Vollmann appears to genuinely like and respect women, however, and my discomfort was minor and temporary. He also, as in his other nonfiction books, makes no pretense about being an objective observer; he is fully immersed as a character in his own true story.
Kissing The Mask is highly valuable as a look into the secretive, baroque, and intricate Japanese subcultures of Noh theater and geisha teahouses, with the author's personal study of staged femininity mostly as a bonus. Furthermore, it's enriched with William Vollmann's gorgeous and almost lyrical prose, plenty of photographs and drawings, several appendices with notes and chronologies, and a glossary for the many Japanese words and phrases liberally sprinkled through the material.
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May 9, 2014
CREDITS ::
January 3, 2021
Some excellent stuff here, but also some rambling and the occasional (for this reader) overly lyrical evocation of the Goddess and the bewitching and transcendent Feminine. I agree with him that "feminine beauty" has an element of "grace", but feel that he neglects the biological sources of his emotional and physical response to these performed femininities – surely part of the lure of the male Noh actor moving as a woman is that these echoes stir and stimulate our primitive self, a self which sees real breasts and real vagina under the robes and is incapable of seeing "just" a performance - the mating instinct cannot see the mask.
WTV has written down his thoughts, his experiences, his preliminary and hesitant views. He takes great pains to remind us he is an "ape" and ignorant about those things he discusses, as though to head off any potential criticism for his lack of focus or the sometimes contradictory nature of his arguments.
I don’t know. There was some great thinking here, and a real empathetic concern with those he spoke of, but also some trite theorising and some passages of (sorry NR) what I can only describe as "purple prose" which I found almost laughable in their adolescent floridity.
Frustrating. Occasionally great, and he is clearly a very intelligent, concerned, compassionate and interesting writer and yet, somehow, it all seems to fall apart in my hands…
WTV has written down his thoughts, his experiences, his preliminary and hesitant views. He takes great pains to remind us he is an "ape" and ignorant about those things he discusses, as though to head off any potential criticism for his lack of focus or the sometimes contradictory nature of his arguments.
I don’t know. There was some great thinking here, and a real empathetic concern with those he spoke of, but also some trite theorising and some passages of (sorry NR) what I can only describe as "purple prose" which I found almost laughable in their adolescent floridity.
Frustrating. Occasionally great, and he is clearly a very intelligent, concerned, compassionate and interesting writer and yet, somehow, it all seems to fall apart in my hands…
September 28, 2013
Actually, 3.5 stars...
William T. Vollmann's Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater (2010) has the subtitle with thoughts on Muses, Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines ! This is a pretty clear warning that the book is likely to wander. Vollmann himself calls it "this string-ball of idle thoughts". It is first and foremost an introduction to the world of Noh theater by an amateur enthusiast, as well as that enthusiast's declaration of love for Noh. To tell you the truth, Noh would have been one of the last things I would have thought could appeal to Vollmann, but then I have only read his Whores For Gloria . What a whiplashing contrast there is between his early Whores For Gloria and this book, between dismal depths of human degradation (*) and the calm but intense artistic purity of Noh theater!
Vollmann apologizes at length and often for being an "ape in a cage", for not having the background and knowledge to fully appreciate this subtle art form. But he nonetheless obtained generous access to some of the most important people in Noh, as well as detailed advice from some serious experts, and an extensive bibliography and endnotes make it clear that he did his research (no one familiar with Vollmann's work ethic could be surprised). Vollmann did not embarrass himself in that regard.
Though, of course, Noh grew out of earlier forms of theater and performance, including Shinto dances and chants, it attained its unique and traditional form in the fourteenth century due largely to the efforts of a father and son team, Kiyotsugu Kwanami (or Kanami) (1333-1384) and Motokiyo Zeami (or Seami or Kanze) (1363-1443/4). Zeami became the theorist of Noh, writing essays about its aesthetics, and composed many of the plays which became the models for later authors. He also wrote very concrete and practical advice for Noh actors. Some of these essays are assiduously kept secret by the oldest troupes, which are associated with families - either you are born into the family or adopted into it if you want to be a Noh actor. Of the five main schools/families of Noh in our age, Vollmann spent most of his time with members of the dominant Kanze school, which has direct family ties to Zeami. Though the occasional woman was a Noh actor in the far past, all roles have been performed by men for a very long time, with few exceptions (women do study with one of Vollmann's main contacts; these women had to learn how to play the women "with a man's strength"). And this is one of the aspects of Noh which occupy Vollmann the most.
Indeed, this aspect of Noh led Vollmann to reflect on the nature of femininity; why is it an often elderly man can convincingly evoke a beautiful young woman with an exquisite mask, a gorgeous kimono and a few restrained gestures? This question then led Vollmann to look into the corresponding arts of transvestites.(**)
And so the reader is led far afield from the detailed descriptions of the experience of Noh theater, from the summaries of Noh plays, from the lengthy examination of types, appearances, and roles of the multitude of masks employed in Noh(***), from the excerpts of interviews in which Vollmann is trying hard to get actors and mask carvers, who do not express themselves in words (or at least not their own), to help him, a man of words, to see inside their experience, to finally arrive at the question of what is the feminine?
Vollmann flatly states "for me, the representation of femininity is the profoundest art," and he proceeds to rake Zeami's writings on the aesthetics of Noh over his own coals, seeking to detect/project Zeami's agreement. He drops that for a while and contemplates Zeami's admonition that balance must always be maintained, runs that through his experience with photography, recalls Celine, Rachmaninoff and Gauguin and constates that balance is not a prerequisite for beauty, then returns to Noh where
Vollmann has not offered us a treatise on Noh, nor even on femininity. Though there is much information about Noh in this book, and much sharing of how Vollmann views femininity, the style of this book is more of an extended essay, or an obscenely bloated version of what the Japanese call a zuihitsu , where the author is to follow his brush, his thoughts, in whatever associative, deductive, inductive manner presents itself to his mind at the given moment. Clearly, Vollmann had to give some thought to the loose organization of such a lengthy book, but it consists of ruminative exploration, occasionally punctuated with disclaimers like "Set this aside for a moment, or for the rest of your life. I am not sure whether I believe it myself." And then on to the next rumination.
Vollmann's exegesis of feminine beauty in the pre-modern Japanese context convincingly drew my attention to a crucial point I did not previously appreciate. Feminine beauty was not to be seen , only, at most, glimpsed . The stunning kimonos, obis, etc. and the black sheen of the long hair studded with costly hairpins and combs drew the attention away from the body and the face. As Lady Murasaki wrote, "The moon was so bright that I was embarrassed to be seen and knew not where to hide."
But the reader must be prepared to find very little resolved in these lengthy meditations; the detailed, side-by-side comparison of two female beauties - the Noh mask with the face of a Japanese porn queen - peters out into inconclusiveness; the following interview with the Noh mask maker constates the obvious - the mask is not lifelike - but when asked, in this case why is it beautiful, the response is "That's what I'm always wondering, actually." And so it goes in Vollmann's search for the nature of feminine beauty. From contemporary beauty ads to Chretien de Troyes to Norse sagas; from the Manyoshu to the Renaissance poet Giovanni Giovano Pontano and then Yeats.
It doesn't much matter what I think of this book, but, in case someone may be curious, I found it engaging and generally interesting. There are few non-specialist books on Noh in English, and Vollmann's fascination with it is contagious. But, on occasion, it seemed to me that he was proceeding like the laziest kind of reporter, going to the street and interviewing the first person/woman/transvestite willing to talk to him. And I found some of his paeans to womanhood to have crossed the line into forced literary artifice, which I found doesn't suit him. But perhaps that's just me. Read it yourself; you certainly won't find another book like it!
(*) When I wrote in my review of Whores
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"the most desperate, diseased, sliding-along-the-filthy-bottom-of-the-barrel prostitutes in San Francisco's Tenderloin district," I was understating the case; a few of the scenes in that book had me ready to bolt from the room.
(**) Vollmann is nonjudgmental, but it appears to me that he hasn't much experience with transvestites, for his reported interaction with them was very limited and was not particularly empathetic; it seemed he was examining the curious fauna instead of feeling his way into their lives as he usually does. In any case, he brought very little away from these interactions for the book.
(***) Vollmann's fascination with the masks definitely exceeded mine, but then he had these beautiful objects before his eyes, while the reader has only the photos Vollmann made for the book. Although I have the first edition hardback, the reproduction of the photos is truly execrable. Ecco should be ashamed.
William T. Vollmann's Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater (2010) has the subtitle with thoughts on Muses, Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines ! This is a pretty clear warning that the book is likely to wander. Vollmann himself calls it "this string-ball of idle thoughts". It is first and foremost an introduction to the world of Noh theater by an amateur enthusiast, as well as that enthusiast's declaration of love for Noh. To tell you the truth, Noh would have been one of the last things I would have thought could appeal to Vollmann, but then I have only read his Whores For Gloria . What a whiplashing contrast there is between his early Whores For Gloria and this book, between dismal depths of human degradation (*) and the calm but intense artistic purity of Noh theater!
Vollmann apologizes at length and often for being an "ape in a cage", for not having the background and knowledge to fully appreciate this subtle art form. But he nonetheless obtained generous access to some of the most important people in Noh, as well as detailed advice from some serious experts, and an extensive bibliography and endnotes make it clear that he did his research (no one familiar with Vollmann's work ethic could be surprised). Vollmann did not embarrass himself in that regard.
Though, of course, Noh grew out of earlier forms of theater and performance, including Shinto dances and chants, it attained its unique and traditional form in the fourteenth century due largely to the efforts of a father and son team, Kiyotsugu Kwanami (or Kanami) (1333-1384) and Motokiyo Zeami (or Seami or Kanze) (1363-1443/4). Zeami became the theorist of Noh, writing essays about its aesthetics, and composed many of the plays which became the models for later authors. He also wrote very concrete and practical advice for Noh actors. Some of these essays are assiduously kept secret by the oldest troupes, which are associated with families - either you are born into the family or adopted into it if you want to be a Noh actor. Of the five main schools/families of Noh in our age, Vollmann spent most of his time with members of the dominant Kanze school, which has direct family ties to Zeami. Though the occasional woman was a Noh actor in the far past, all roles have been performed by men for a very long time, with few exceptions (women do study with one of Vollmann's main contacts; these women had to learn how to play the women "with a man's strength"). And this is one of the aspects of Noh which occupy Vollmann the most.
Indeed, this aspect of Noh led Vollmann to reflect on the nature of femininity; why is it an often elderly man can convincingly evoke a beautiful young woman with an exquisite mask, a gorgeous kimono and a few restrained gestures? This question then led Vollmann to look into the corresponding arts of transvestites.(**)
And so the reader is led far afield from the detailed descriptions of the experience of Noh theater, from the summaries of Noh plays, from the lengthy examination of types, appearances, and roles of the multitude of masks employed in Noh(***), from the excerpts of interviews in which Vollmann is trying hard to get actors and mask carvers, who do not express themselves in words (or at least not their own), to help him, a man of words, to see inside their experience, to finally arrive at the question of what is the feminine?
Vollmann flatly states "for me, the representation of femininity is the profoundest art," and he proceeds to rake Zeami's writings on the aesthetics of Noh over his own coals, seeking to detect/project Zeami's agreement. He drops that for a while and contemplates Zeami's admonition that balance must always be maintained, runs that through his experience with photography, recalls Celine, Rachmaninoff and Gauguin and constates that balance is not a prerequisite for beauty, then returns to Noh where
the lovely woman approaches, sliding silently across the stage, the ancient mask of her face shining warmly like ivory. She is not a woman - not only because she is a man but also because she is inhuman: perfect grace and womanhood itself. Slowly, slowly she inclines her head, and her face alters expression an infinity of times, each expression feminine, tranquilly lovely, and alien to the faces of any of the living women I have ever known.
Vollmann has not offered us a treatise on Noh, nor even on femininity. Though there is much information about Noh in this book, and much sharing of how Vollmann views femininity, the style of this book is more of an extended essay, or an obscenely bloated version of what the Japanese call a zuihitsu , where the author is to follow his brush, his thoughts, in whatever associative, deductive, inductive manner presents itself to his mind at the given moment. Clearly, Vollmann had to give some thought to the loose organization of such a lengthy book, but it consists of ruminative exploration, occasionally punctuated with disclaimers like "Set this aside for a moment, or for the rest of your life. I am not sure whether I believe it myself." And then on to the next rumination.
Vollmann's exegesis of feminine beauty in the pre-modern Japanese context convincingly drew my attention to a crucial point I did not previously appreciate. Feminine beauty was not to be seen , only, at most, glimpsed . The stunning kimonos, obis, etc. and the black sheen of the long hair studded with costly hairpins and combs drew the attention away from the body and the face. As Lady Murasaki wrote, "The moon was so bright that I was embarrassed to be seen and knew not where to hide."
But the reader must be prepared to find very little resolved in these lengthy meditations; the detailed, side-by-side comparison of two female beauties - the Noh mask with the face of a Japanese porn queen - peters out into inconclusiveness; the following interview with the Noh mask maker constates the obvious - the mask is not lifelike - but when asked, in this case why is it beautiful, the response is "That's what I'm always wondering, actually." And so it goes in Vollmann's search for the nature of feminine beauty. From contemporary beauty ads to Chretien de Troyes to Norse sagas; from the Manyoshu to the Renaissance poet Giovanni Giovano Pontano and then Yeats.
It doesn't much matter what I think of this book, but, in case someone may be curious, I found it engaging and generally interesting. There are few non-specialist books on Noh in English, and Vollmann's fascination with it is contagious. But, on occasion, it seemed to me that he was proceeding like the laziest kind of reporter, going to the street and interviewing the first person/woman/transvestite willing to talk to him. And I found some of his paeans to womanhood to have crossed the line into forced literary artifice, which I found doesn't suit him. But perhaps that's just me. Read it yourself; you certainly won't find another book like it!
(*) When I wrote in my review of Whores
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"the most desperate, diseased, sliding-along-the-filthy-bottom-of-the-barrel prostitutes in San Francisco's Tenderloin district," I was understating the case; a few of the scenes in that book had me ready to bolt from the room.
(**) Vollmann is nonjudgmental, but it appears to me that he hasn't much experience with transvestites, for his reported interaction with them was very limited and was not particularly empathetic; it seemed he was examining the curious fauna instead of feeling his way into their lives as he usually does. In any case, he brought very little away from these interactions for the book.
(***) Vollmann's fascination with the masks definitely exceeded mine, but then he had these beautiful objects before his eyes, while the reader has only the photos Vollmann made for the book. Although I have the first edition hardback, the reproduction of the photos is truly execrable. Ecco should be ashamed.
August 31, 2016
when something starts essentially as "I'm no expert in Japanese history or culture, but I'm gonna act like I am throughout this" alarm bells start ringing.
Want to read
April 22, 2010Hoo boy. I want to read this, but more importantly, I want William Vollmann to be my friend. What an amazingly fascinating nutcase! He's so prolific, and so eclectic, and so just balls-out crazy. And he does not give a smidge of a shit what anyone thinks or says about it. This book's title (+ subtitle) is thirty-four words long. Thirty-four! (Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater With Some Thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines) What? Parentheticals in a freaking subtitle? A list of all the shit you can possibly think of? Amazing. And, of course, also fucking insanely brilliant and absurd. Boy oh boy oh boy, Vollmann, you crazy awesome dude.
Here's a piece of the review from The Oregonian via Powells:
Characteristically peripatetic, Kissing the Mask rambles across vast territory in an effort to corral -- or at least contemplate -- the concept of feminine beauty. Throughout, Vollmann focuses an obsessed and adoring lens on the Noh master Umewaka Rokuro, the Kabuki geishas, and a transgender community in Los Angeles while simultaneously traipsing through Indian, American, European and Norse cultures in an effort to identify what it is (presumption? physiology? carriage?) that makes a woman a woman. Along the way, he pays homage yet again to his pet subject -- prostitutes -- about whom he has notoriously raved and written throughout his career.
Here's a piece of the review from The Oregonian via Powells:
Characteristically peripatetic, Kissing the Mask rambles across vast territory in an effort to corral -- or at least contemplate -- the concept of feminine beauty. Throughout, Vollmann focuses an obsessed and adoring lens on the Noh master Umewaka Rokuro, the Kabuki geishas, and a transgender community in Los Angeles while simultaneously traipsing through Indian, American, European and Norse cultures in an effort to identify what it is (presumption? physiology? carriage?) that makes a woman a woman. Along the way, he pays homage yet again to his pet subject -- prostitutes -- about whom he has notoriously raved and written throughout his career.
March 20, 2020
...I just... didn't find this very engaging, interesting, insightful, or focused.
Definitely the rare dud in the Vollmann Oeuvre (I also really didn't like The Royal Family; although others have loved it)
Definitely the rare dud in the Vollmann Oeuvre (I also really didn't like The Royal Family; although others have loved it)
March 28, 2024
This book is kind of a mess.
The language is beautiful, it's a lovely thing to read, but the messages behind it are all knotted up and unfortunate. It's a book about female beauty, about nō theater, about onnagata and geisha and Valkyries and trans women, but mostly about "what is a woman?," a question the author thinks he is attempting to understand and answer, failing to notice that his actual question is "what is it I find alluring about a woman."
I don't think there's a lot of value in a man writing a book about what a woman is to begin with, and while his clear affection and adoration of women exists in every line, at the end of it all, he is still describing an ideal and not women at all. He cannot escape his own preoccupation with what he finds alluring and attractive to consider that maybe womanhood is a space that contains more than just the things he can see and describe and appreciate. He makes the same mistake as countless other pieces of fundamentally misogynist writers do: defining womanhood based on his perception, not the reality of the women involved.
There's more i could say, his clear discomfort with and lack of consideration for older women, the creepiness he hints at towards young women and girls, the weird understanding he seems to think he has with Japanese cultural tradition (despite not knowing the language), the constant interweaving of "grace" with "woman" (it's hard not to wonder what the author would think of women like me, clumsy to our cores. Does he believe my lack of grace places me in some middle space of gender, unworthy of consideration?), but really I think this is just a book that probably shouldn't have been written, and in an equal world that didn't forever place men above the rest and tell them their thoughts are inherently valuable regardless of qualifications, maybe he would've realized it.
The language is beautiful, it's a lovely thing to read, but the messages behind it are all knotted up and unfortunate. It's a book about female beauty, about nō theater, about onnagata and geisha and Valkyries and trans women, but mostly about "what is a woman?," a question the author thinks he is attempting to understand and answer, failing to notice that his actual question is "what is it I find alluring about a woman."
I don't think there's a lot of value in a man writing a book about what a woman is to begin with, and while his clear affection and adoration of women exists in every line, at the end of it all, he is still describing an ideal and not women at all. He cannot escape his own preoccupation with what he finds alluring and attractive to consider that maybe womanhood is a space that contains more than just the things he can see and describe and appreciate. He makes the same mistake as countless other pieces of fundamentally misogynist writers do: defining womanhood based on his perception, not the reality of the women involved.
There's more i could say, his clear discomfort with and lack of consideration for older women, the creepiness he hints at towards young women and girls, the weird understanding he seems to think he has with Japanese cultural tradition (despite not knowing the language), the constant interweaving of "grace" with "woman" (it's hard not to wonder what the author would think of women like me, clumsy to our cores. Does he believe my lack of grace places me in some middle space of gender, unworthy of consideration?), but really I think this is just a book that probably shouldn't have been written, and in an equal world that didn't forever place men above the rest and tell them their thoughts are inherently valuable regardless of qualifications, maybe he would've realized it.
February 24, 2022
I have a problem with authors of huge books - books which are not only too fat, but which also have been crammed full with odds and ends. Before sitting at their keyboard, such writers should get rid of their superfluous energy by an hour of jogging or so. Vollmann calls this 500 page book "small..."
But first the positive side: Vollmann modestly confesses that he doesn't know anything about No or Japanese culture, but his descriptions of No are some of the best and most riveting I have ever read (during a stay in Japan, he sees a great variety of No plays, has interviews with important actors and also meets a mask maker). He just describes what he sees, but he is a good observer who knows how to translate those observations into inspiring prose.
Then the negative side: in the No female characters are played by (often elderly) men with masks - those masks are perhaps the central aspect of No. Different from Kabuki, where the onnagata (male players of female roles) will move and talk in a feminine way, in No the players of feminine roles will speak, sing and move like the elderly men they are - the fiction of femininity is wholly in the mask (and the fantasy of the viewer).
This leads Vollmann to the teasing question to what extent femininity in general is a performance and the even more fundamental question: what is a woman? - a problem which takes Vollmann not only to transvestite bars in Tokyo and geisha in Kyoto, but also has him discuss Kabuki's onnagata, Greek cult statues, Norse sagas, transgender women, porn queens, Valkyries and Venus figurines. In other words, he jumps from one thing to another without any clear thread and fills the big book with only loosely related snippets and anecdotes. It is all too much like late night bar talk – I wish Vollmann would have concentrated more on the No theater (about which there is still a lot to say).
So if Vollmann's descriptions of the No theater inspire you, quickly find a book with translations of No plays to enjoy the real thing (see https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...).
P.S. This hardcover book was published on such sub-standard paper that already within 10 years it is discoloring...
(See my website: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/)
But first the positive side: Vollmann modestly confesses that he doesn't know anything about No or Japanese culture, but his descriptions of No are some of the best and most riveting I have ever read (during a stay in Japan, he sees a great variety of No plays, has interviews with important actors and also meets a mask maker). He just describes what he sees, but he is a good observer who knows how to translate those observations into inspiring prose.
Then the negative side: in the No female characters are played by (often elderly) men with masks - those masks are perhaps the central aspect of No. Different from Kabuki, where the onnagata (male players of female roles) will move and talk in a feminine way, in No the players of feminine roles will speak, sing and move like the elderly men they are - the fiction of femininity is wholly in the mask (and the fantasy of the viewer).
This leads Vollmann to the teasing question to what extent femininity in general is a performance and the even more fundamental question: what is a woman? - a problem which takes Vollmann not only to transvestite bars in Tokyo and geisha in Kyoto, but also has him discuss Kabuki's onnagata, Greek cult statues, Norse sagas, transgender women, porn queens, Valkyries and Venus figurines. In other words, he jumps from one thing to another without any clear thread and fills the big book with only loosely related snippets and anecdotes. It is all too much like late night bar talk – I wish Vollmann would have concentrated more on the No theater (about which there is still a lot to say).
So if Vollmann's descriptions of the No theater inspire you, quickly find a book with translations of No plays to enjoy the real thing (see https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...).
P.S. This hardcover book was published on such sub-standard paper that already within 10 years it is discoloring...
(See my website: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/)
September 8, 2017
Granted I just began reading this book however, I am enjoying it. Vollmann has a beautiful love for Noh theater, it is apparent in his through research and knowledge of this book. It is refreshing to see that as silly as that sounds. I have found myself rereading certain parts of the book just to get a greater grasp of what he is speaking about. I would love to visit Japan one of these days however that is a pipe dream for the moment. I am looking forward to reading the rest of it.
March 12, 2010
I wasn't sure of the book at first because I'm getting tired of this jerking to Eastern ideology and culture (take that any way you'd like to), but I ended up really enjoying it.
More than just a study of feminism in Japanese culture and in the lgbt community, it is a great study on the question "What makes one a women?" The author gives great respect and distance to those interviewed.
More than just a study of feminism in Japanese culture and in the lgbt community, it is a great study on the question "What makes one a women?" The author gives great respect and distance to those interviewed.
Read
July 29, 2011Vollmann is one of those blessed souls who wanders the earth looking for the essence of beauty. Fortunately for beauty, the paths are endless and words do not suffice. Fortunately for us, Vollmann's prose is gorgeous and we don't mind joining his trip.
August 19, 2010
Entertaining reading from a generally creepy dude
September 9, 2022
Explore the the world of Noh with Vollmann in this rich travelogue, critical analysis, and exploration of gender. Rich in detail, history, weirdness, the high low blend that Vollmann investigates. Love his deep dives into topics. There is so much there to enjoy and this also is Vollmann's exploration of his own cross dressing interests and love of women.
A completely new take on Noh,
A completely new take on Noh,
February 13, 2024
Vollman is great!! I found this book to be extremely interesting even for a big old ape like me. I would only recommend this book if you have read Vollman before, as a stand alone I think it can be very disorientating
October 4, 2023
endlessly beautiful, maybe his most perfectly compact book?
July 29, 2022
Kissing the Mask is confounding. I am a fan of William Vollmann's writing, but it seems his fiction/historical fiction is what works for me over his non-fiction. When I read this I feel un-moored, floating around in WtV's brain searching for some topical thread I can latch onto, unsuccessful in understanding why one paragraph is following another. I pick it up to complain and read the page I left only to see all sorts of thoughtful treasures on it, fooling me into thinking I can keep going, only to be cut adrift again in the icy landscape of Vollmann's head.
I bought this more on the strength of the author's name than an interest in the topic, but deep down I already knew that this would be about Noh theater only on the surface, and was thinking it would be an interesting journey into culture and ideas, which it probably is and I just can't decipher it yet. I feel the primary thread through this is the "femininity" portion of the title. Vollmann has an interesting relationship to femininity in his writing, and I feel ultimately this is the base of the exploration, and why it seems so difficult to grasp. Vollmann writes some weird wild stuff about women in his novels, and has a fixation on certain professions and general societal places that women have in various parts of the world. And now in this form of theater that he is exploring in depth, men play women, and this is a new psychological stepping stone.
I haven't finished the book, and decided that I won't finish. But of course now that I'm writing thoughts about it I want to see where it goes, but that is my frustration with Vollmann's non-fiction. It plays with me, and behaves like a ball of mercury that I can't pin down and eventually swipe away.
I guess I will hang onto it.
I bought this more on the strength of the author's name than an interest in the topic, but deep down I already knew that this would be about Noh theater only on the surface, and was thinking it would be an interesting journey into culture and ideas, which it probably is and I just can't decipher it yet. I feel the primary thread through this is the "femininity" portion of the title. Vollmann has an interesting relationship to femininity in his writing, and I feel ultimately this is the base of the exploration, and why it seems so difficult to grasp. Vollmann writes some weird wild stuff about women in his novels, and has a fixation on certain professions and general societal places that women have in various parts of the world. And now in this form of theater that he is exploring in depth, men play women, and this is a new psychological stepping stone.
I haven't finished the book, and decided that I won't finish. But of course now that I'm writing thoughts about it I want to see where it goes, but that is my frustration with Vollmann's non-fiction. It plays with me, and behaves like a ball of mercury that I can't pin down and eventually swipe away.
I guess I will hang onto it.
March 29, 2015
Late in his improbably greenlit study-of-women-via-a-centuries-old-Japanese-art-form, Vollmann writes: "My voyeurism makes me forget that the world is in fact not a stage" and, considering the aim of his study, this would a detrimental point of criticism; however, anyone who has read Vollmann's work (as they assuredly have if they're coming to this pleasantly non-essential addition to his bibliography) know he is someone that, even in an outside position, never seems to have any distance between himself and his subjects.
Kissing the Mask is classic Vollmann:his frighteningly extensive depth of literary knowledge combined with his love of prostitutes (and their culture) is allowed to run rampant in his take on centuries old aspects of Japanese culture; which is the true aim of this book.
Consistently, but not constantly, reminding the reader of his position as an "ape in a cage" when it comes to Noh theater (even if he seems to effortlessly discuss handfuls of plays with the simplicity of a subject-master), Vollmann may be more interested in women as a subject (or just in general) than the aspects of ancient Japanese culture that act as his lens, but his true curiosities lie in Noh theater and Geisha culture; the "beauty, understatement and feminity" of the book's subtitle is merely a place to hinge his thoughts and, let's be honest, keep his page count to a trim (for Vollmann standards) 400 pages.
And why not? Noh theater is such a strange and fascinating-on-the-page that it seems both both hard to ignore as a man of letters and yet impossible to take on directly (even by those masters that Vollmann somehow charms to candidness throughout the book): where else does an art form slow down over time? In an era where movies, songs, books and seemingly ever other art form is shrinking to fit shortened attention spans, it is so strange to hear of anything that has become longer, slower, and somehow more arcane over time.
Where else is falling asleep during a performance an accepted norm? Per Vollmann's description, Japanese salary men move in strange synchronicity to pay to watch heavily make-up'd women sing, pay more to have themselves made-up and hidden away to watch themselves gender-transformed, and then catch their Z's while masked men sing in baritones to represent young girls.
The subject is fascinating as long as you don't actually have to sit through a Noh play and in Vollmann's hands its damned enjoyable too; just don't expect to fully understand his extensive, extended metaphors and allusions nor his desire to kiss a centuries-old wooden mask of a young girl as an old Noh actor's adam's apple bobs in song beneath.
Kissing the Mask is classic Vollmann:his frighteningly extensive depth of literary knowledge combined with his love of prostitutes (and their culture) is allowed to run rampant in his take on centuries old aspects of Japanese culture; which is the true aim of this book.
Consistently, but not constantly, reminding the reader of his position as an "ape in a cage" when it comes to Noh theater (even if he seems to effortlessly discuss handfuls of plays with the simplicity of a subject-master), Vollmann may be more interested in women as a subject (or just in general) than the aspects of ancient Japanese culture that act as his lens, but his true curiosities lie in Noh theater and Geisha culture; the "beauty, understatement and feminity" of the book's subtitle is merely a place to hinge his thoughts and, let's be honest, keep his page count to a trim (for Vollmann standards) 400 pages.
And why not? Noh theater is such a strange and fascinating-on-the-page that it seems both both hard to ignore as a man of letters and yet impossible to take on directly (even by those masters that Vollmann somehow charms to candidness throughout the book): where else does an art form slow down over time? In an era where movies, songs, books and seemingly ever other art form is shrinking to fit shortened attention spans, it is so strange to hear of anything that has become longer, slower, and somehow more arcane over time.
Where else is falling asleep during a performance an accepted norm? Per Vollmann's description, Japanese salary men move in strange synchronicity to pay to watch heavily make-up'd women sing, pay more to have themselves made-up and hidden away to watch themselves gender-transformed, and then catch their Z's while masked men sing in baritones to represent young girls.
The subject is fascinating as long as you don't actually have to sit through a Noh play and in Vollmann's hands its damned enjoyable too; just don't expect to fully understand his extensive, extended metaphors and allusions nor his desire to kiss a centuries-old wooden mask of a young girl as an old Noh actor's adam's apple bobs in song beneath.
October 20, 2023
As a William Vollmann “fan” living in Japan, ignorant of but curious about the mysteries of Noh, I thought I would eat this up.
I did not. I felt quite exhausted by the end.
But to give the book its due, I found myself taking a much greater interest in people’s faces as I read this book. The people on the metro must have thought me a strange, and rather rude, interloper.
I also found the part on the Norse Sagas really gripping - perhaps in part because I loved the Ice Shirt so much, and it was wonderful to get another glimpse into how he reads those texts.
But on the whole, this was the most difficult time I’ve had with one of his texts yet. The second half of the book seemed much more Vollmann-esque than the first part, with its flights into a floating poeticism and reveries about princesses and goddesses, but by about page 300 I just couldn’t keep up the fascination (in Zeami’s sense) - I was too conscious of my own sensation to be able to stay in that floating world.
Vollmann incessantly refers to himself as an ape in a cage, and I feel a little apish writing this review. He also at one point lightly chastises those who feel boredom at his book as being similar to those salarymen who fall asleep at Noh performances. I don’t think I was ever bored pure and simple, and there were moments of beauty here that justified the book fourfold - but my attention wavered, and sometimes (I admit it, ape that I am!) my eyelids grew heavy.
Postscript - not to be “that guy” (and my Japanese is bad enough to make this an embarrassing point to bring up), but let me just interject here to say that macrons are important in Japanese: my wife has been angry with me for ignoring the difference between long and short vowels in Japanese and consequently calling ladies in her family “grandmother” instead of “aunt” enough for me to be painfully sensitive to this. The word that Vollmann uses frequently to refer to the distant and obscure quality of things should be written yūgen (幽玄).
I did not. I felt quite exhausted by the end.
But to give the book its due, I found myself taking a much greater interest in people’s faces as I read this book. The people on the metro must have thought me a strange, and rather rude, interloper.
I also found the part on the Norse Sagas really gripping - perhaps in part because I loved the Ice Shirt so much, and it was wonderful to get another glimpse into how he reads those texts.
But on the whole, this was the most difficult time I’ve had with one of his texts yet. The second half of the book seemed much more Vollmann-esque than the first part, with its flights into a floating poeticism and reveries about princesses and goddesses, but by about page 300 I just couldn’t keep up the fascination (in Zeami’s sense) - I was too conscious of my own sensation to be able to stay in that floating world.
Vollmann incessantly refers to himself as an ape in a cage, and I feel a little apish writing this review. He also at one point lightly chastises those who feel boredom at his book as being similar to those salarymen who fall asleep at Noh performances. I don’t think I was ever bored pure and simple, and there were moments of beauty here that justified the book fourfold - but my attention wavered, and sometimes (I admit it, ape that I am!) my eyelids grew heavy.
Postscript - not to be “that guy” (and my Japanese is bad enough to make this an embarrassing point to bring up), but let me just interject here to say that macrons are important in Japanese: my wife has been angry with me for ignoring the difference between long and short vowels in Japanese and consequently calling ladies in her family “grandmother” instead of “aunt” enough for me to be painfully sensitive to this. The word that Vollmann uses frequently to refer to the distant and obscure quality of things should be written yūgen (幽玄).
May 25, 2010
An interesting narrative on how femininity is symbolized and codified by culture with a special emphasis on Japan, Noh theater and geisha with side trips into Norse legends. Because the author is an outsider, i.e. a male trying to understand what it means to be female, he circles around the truism that the rules for being female are so stylized that it's hard for a woman to feel comfortable with her femininity, a woman has to study to perform as a female.
June 18, 2010
Vollmann focusing a whole work on beauty and femininity and of course Noh theater? How could this not be great? Exactly, it is great. He makes jokes about how unlikely it is for him to write about understatement since he is the maximalist's maximalist but my favorite Vollmann book is "The Atlas" and he shows how well he can handle gentle, understated prose (he was inspired there by Kawabata). This book is a great tight concise work of non-fiction treating the subject well.
December 6, 2010
This is unquestionably the greatest exploration of the Japanese ideal of beauty and femininity possible by a white American male. I'm kinda damning with faint praise, but... kinda not. It's written in that Vollman clever and dry way, but it's never really boring.
December 15, 2013
Not an easy read but rewarding to get thru this book. I learned about a study in Feminiity in Japenese Noh Theatre. I will read more books from this author.
maybe-someday
April 16, 2010I want to know what Oriana thinks.
February 14, 2013
Have you ever stumbled across a book that's so dense and so good that it intimidates you with its sheer awesomeness? I think I'd need a week of uninterrupted reading just to do this book justice.
July 15, 2014
Nuestra reseña por acá http://hermanocerdo.com/2012/01/barre...
January 17, 2025
unbelievably beautyfull as femininity itself is
as women are
as women are
Read
January 28, 2015Won this book via First Reads.
September 29, 2010
Awkward, and poorly written. Also assumes familiarity with Japanese cultural history.
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