we visited the Victoria and Albert Museum,
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.
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