About the collector
It beganwith a mask.
I’m Daniel, a collector of Japanese Noh masks based in the Netherlands.
I run noh-masks.com, which brings together my collection, an English-language knowledge base and selected masks for sale.
A first encounter
How I came to Noh masks
My interest in Noh masks grew out of reading Japanese literature. In Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, a comparison between a face and a Noh mask sent me looking for an image. What I found was a ko-omote. It was my first handshake with a mask I did not yet know would become so important to me.
Five Modern Noh Plays opened the way into the classical plays behind them. Mishima wrote those five between 1950 and 1955, keeping the strange atmosphere of the originals while setting their characters on modern streets, and Donald Keene’s introduction made the case for the older form better than anything else I had read at the time.
Looking closer
Room for interpretation
What continues to hold my attention is the combination of strictness and openness: precisely established forms with a great deal of room inside them for expression and interpretation. The particular mask used for a role is often a matter of choice. The shite, or principal performer, selects from suitable masks, and that choice is already an interpretation. Nakamura Yasuo opened his study of masks by saying that Noh begins with the selection of the mask.
Reading the masks
A knowledge base, still growing
The Noh mask knowledge base is where I share what I am learning. I approach the subject one mask type at a time, looking at its appearance, its use in performance, how it is made and what is known about its history.
I am interested in how scholars, carvers and performers understand the masks. Their accounts often address different questions, and sometimes they disagree. I try to understand each on its own terms and explain where the differences lie. My hope is that this gives readers more to notice in a mask while leaving room for the meanings it carries within Noh.
This is an ongoing project. Some entries are more developed than others, and parts of the knowledge base are still brief or incomplete. I hope to expand and revisit them as I find further sources and continue learning.
The collection
Collecting and selling Noh masks
I also offer a small selection of Noh masks for sale. These sales help me continue collecting, buying reference books and working on the site.
When researching an individual mask, I look into its condition, inscriptions, attribution and known history. My descriptions reflect what I have been able to establish, with uncertain attributions identified as such. I keep information about the mask type separate from what can be said about the particular object.
View available masks