In February Of 2022,

we visited the Victoria and Albert Museum,

you can see the full post here, during our visit we saw these,

Noh (能, Nō) masks, 

which immediately reminded us of a film we had watched, Onibaba (鬼婆, lit. Demon Hag), it is a 1964 Japanese historical drama horror film, written and directed by Kaneto Shindo, the film is set during a civil war in the fourteenth century, Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura play two women who kill soldiers to steal their possessions, and one, the mother, appears to conjure up a demon, and just today I found out how the masks are made, 

 starting with a solid block of Japanese cypress, Nakamura chisels the round face, eyes, nose, and teeth,

the block is carefully chiselled,

to form the face, which is then coated with a lacquer traditionally derived from crushed seashells mixed with glue, the form is then dried before being pierced on each side with a hot awl to tie strings through,

the artist mixes pigments by hand to add colour to the features, including blackening the teeth in a practice known as ohaguro, a fashion that was popular in Japan during the Heian period, 

above is a video of the artist making a Noh mask, if you have time, it is a mug of coffee video, have a look, the skills involved are fascinating, the application of the faces colours is a skill set on its own, Process X explores how the craft of carving the props by hand is kept alive by artisans like Mitsue Nakamura, what an amazing process and skill set.