A guide to the Kyōgen mask
Kentoku[賢徳]
A face with many parts to play.
Kentoku has a wonderfully unhelpful face if you are trying to identify an animal.
Name & identity
No particular animal
- Name
- Kentoku 賢徳
- Tradition
- Kyōgen
- Animals
- Horse, ox, dog
- Spirits
- Crab, mushroom
Kentoku can play a horse, an ox, a dog or a crab spirit on the Kyōgen stage, yet resembles none of them very closely. That is part of its usefulness: unlike the more recognizably animal-shaped fox and monkey masks, its features do not commit it to one species.
Kyōgen’s comedy often relies on the actor’s own face. Masks are used for selected roles, including animals and spirits, and Kentoku belongs to this less ordinary company.
The face
A little dignity in the absurd
Its eyes glance upward or sideways, hollows flank the nose, and the upper teeth catch the lower lip. The degree of comic distortion varies. One eighteenth- to nineteenth-century example in the Tokyo National Museum is unusually restrained, close to an ordinary human face.
For the Kyōgen performer Nomura Manzō, humour needed a sense of ease without losing dignity. Too much solemnity could drain away the comedy; poorly judged humour could become coarse. He counted Kentoku among the masks with an established basic form, despite variations between examples. Its makers had room to work, but a recognizable face to work within.
On stage
A horse with theatrical experience
Shidō Hōgaku
In Shidō Hōgaku, a master sends his servant Tarō Kaja to borrow tea and a horse for an outing. The servant returns after considerable trouble, only to be scolded for taking too long. Unfortunately for the master, the borrowed horse reacts violently to coughing and can be calmed by a special incantation. Tarō Kaja has learned both facts, and sees an opportunity for revenge. The horse gives a weary servant a useful advantage over his employer.
Kentoku’s connection with this role also survives in a performer’s recollection. Nomura Mansaku described a large, old Kentoku preserved in his family and still sometimes used for the horse in Shidō Hōgaku. An inherited mask could be brought out to cause fresh trouble on stage.
Kani Yamabushi
In Kani Yamabushi, the same mask type becomes a crab spirit confronting a mountain ascetic and his attendant. Its upward glance can appear comic and strange as it blocks their way. Kentoku’s repertoire extends even to mushroom spirits: resembling no particular animal leaves it with a surprisingly broad range of employment.
The performer completes the picture
On stage, the costume and the performer’s whole role complete the picture. Mansaku emphasized their part in producing expression, and resisted treating Kyōgen masks exactly as Noh actors treat theirs.
History & craft
Old faces, living roles
Kentoku’s name has a suitably human story attached to it. One tradition describes a monk called Kentoku shrinking from a cold wind, his expression lending the mask its name. The story offers an image to remember the face by. Surviving masks also attest to the type’s long history: an early example bears an inscription dated 1504. The inscription does not establish when the mask type began.
Such faces depend on the painted surface as well as the carved form. Manzō argued that the same person should carve and colour a mask, carrying one artistic intention through both. He warned that later repainting could spoil the character of an old example. For him, carving and painting belonged to a single work.
The teeth catch the lower lip.The stage supplies the creature.
Reading & reference
Museum records, play synopses and performers’ reflections on Kentoku, its roles and the art of Kyōgen masks.
- Tokyo National Museum. Kentoku, seventeenth-century example. Cultural Heritage Online.
- Kobayashi Seki. “Kyōgenmen ni tsuite,” in Kyōgenmen raisan (1981), pp. 164–165.
- Tokyo National Museum. Kentoku, eighteenth- to nineteenth-century example. Cultural Heritage Online.
- Nomura Manzō. “Kyōgenmen,” in Kyōgenmen raisan (1981), pp. 140–141, 146.
- Japan Foundation for Regional Art-Activities. Shidō Hōgaku programme synopsis (2013).
- Nomura Mansaku and Kobayashi Seki. “Taidan: Kyōgenmen o saguru,” in Kyōgenmen raisan (1981), pp. 160, 162.
- Kyōgen Kyōdōsha. Kani Yamabushi, play synopsis.
- Sugiyama Minako. An enjoyable introduction to Kyōgen masks (2015). Fukuoka City Museum.
- Wakayama Prefectural Museum. Medieval masks from the Waka Festival’s masked procession (2022).