Enmei Kaja
[延命冠者]

Long life has a surprisingly young face in Enmei Kaja. The name means a youth endowed with longevity, and the mask greets the world with a broad smile, rounded cheeks and an untroubled forehead. It belongs to the Okina group, whose masks accompany ceremonies of blessing and prayer. Among their deeply wrinkled elders, Enmei Kaja brings the promise of life still ahead.

Nakamura explains the name through the blessing of prolonged life, the same sense of enmei found in Enmei Jizō. Enmei Kaja’s cheerful expression belongs within that world of blessing; its youth gives a different form to wishes also carried by the old men.

The eyes are cut right through the wood in upward-curving crescents, a feature shared with the white Okina mask, Hakushikijō. Below them, a broad nose and dimpled cheeks lead to an open mouth showing an even upper row of blackened teeth. A dark band crowns the smooth forehead. The complexion can be white or tan, and facial hair varies: some examples have painted whiskers, others short hair implanted in the chin, and others no beard at all.

The construction makes an equally clear distinction. Hakushikijō, Kokushikijō and Chichi-no-jō have a separate lower jaw fastened with cords; Enmei Kaja has a fixed jaw. Its youthful face also brings it closer in appearance to the masks of young people elsewhere in Noh.

Red lips can stand out against a white surface, and some examples have small bamboo pegs set decoratively into the chin. Those pegs should not automatically be read as the remains of a lost beard: older examples can have bamboo plugs inserted without hair.

An example held by the Umewaka Rokurō family makes the youthful character especially clear, with its smooth forehead, full cheeks and prominent teeth.

Okina gives these features their setting. Its dances preserve an older ceremonial world of prayers for peace, harvests and long life. The masks could themselves be revered as sacred presences.

Youth and age

The family relationship is less settled than the familiar father-and-son pairing suggests. Chichi-no-jō and Enmei Kaja are commonly understood as father and son, but surviving chants do not make the relationship wholly clear. Marvin reports Yasuo Nakamura’s view that Chichi-no-jō was originally Okina’s father, and suggests that Enmei Kaja may therefore depict Okina in his youth. The secure point is the association of youth and age within the ceremony; a precise family tree remains an interpretation.

In special stagings of Okina, Enmei Kaja is worn by the performer who ordinarily appears unmasked as Senzai, taking the child role opposite Chichi-no-jō. Nakamura also records its occasional use in the auspicious play Sagi: boys and elderly actors normally perform unmasked, while performers of other ages sometimes wear Enmei Kaja.

A different face in Kurokawa

Local practice gives Enmei Kaja another life. In Kurokawa Noh, Sanbasō moves from an unmasked dance with vigorous stamping to a bell dance performed in a mask. For this second section, the lower troupe uses Enmei Kaja and the upper troupe uses Kokushikijō, the black Okina mask. This is a specific Kurokawa distinction, and a useful reminder that a mask’s role depends on the tradition in which it is performed.