Noh Drama

The stage is bare cypress, the drum sounds once, and a masked figure takes a very long time to cross it.

Japanese woodblock prints of Noh drama are mostly by Tsukioka Kogyo, who drew the masks, costumes and still gestures of the Noh stage from the 1890s until his death in 1927. His prints of 1922-26 present plays such as Tsurukame, the crane and the tortoise; Teika, the love of the poet and Princess Shokushi; Semimaru, the blind prince and his sister; Sotoba Komachi, Ema and Ukai, some in tall vertical format. Prints of the heroines of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s plays, Koharu, Osan, Yugiri and Ochiyo, carry the theater into bunraku and kabuki. Mica, metallic pigment and embossing give the brocade costumes real weight.

Framed singly against a dark wall, each reads like a lit stage.

Slow theater. Quick work for the eye.