NO Plays Research Articles

Intercultural Intersections in a Noh-style Hamlet: (Re)presentations of and Exchanges between Shakespeare and the Japanese Stage

At first glance, Kurita Yoshihiro’s noh-style Hamlet (2007), an installment of the Ryutopia Noh Theatre Shakespeare series, may seem like a straightforward translation of a Shakespearean text to a Japanese context. However, the re-conceptualising of Hamlet to fit a traditional noh stage can itself be an intercultural process, as creative decisions become a way in which (inter)cultural interactions and negotiations can take place. Paying close attention to Kurita’s Hamlet/Hamlet, this paper will discuss the various intercultural exchanges between Shakespeare and culture(s) that appropriate and adapt him and his texts. Additionally, the close reading of this performance will assess how intercultural praxis has shaped and changed the relevance and development of both indigenous and Western theatre practice and performance modes in Japan. The intermingling of traditional Japanese art forms and modern performance modes in this production alerts us to the continuities and divergences of Japan’s (theatre) culture and history, and Japanese identity. As such, this case study will also examine how the cultural and aesthetic interactivities in contemporary Japanese Shakespeare productions are not only negotiated interculturally but intraculturally as well.

How can Westerners study Japanese Noh? An interview with Richard Emmert, Director of the Noh Training Project and Theatre Nohgaku

Is it really possible to study Japanese Noh theatre outside of Japan? Can Noh training be meaningful to non-Japanese, yet faithful to traditional training methods? Is amateur training outside of Japan actually all that different to amateur training inside Japan? In this interview, conducted in September 2013, Richard Emmert explains his approach to Noh training inside and outside of Japan, its relationship to traditional modes of instruction, and the possibilities for innovation. He articulates his rationale for the production of Noh in English, and explores how a lack of skilled performers for these projects led to the creation of the various Noh Training Projects held around the world. Above all, he argues that an understanding of Noh's formal complexity is central to training. He suggests that such knowledge enables the full significance of training to be realised, the meaning of innovation in Noh to be discerned, and the discovery of subtle transferable performance skills through a recognition of the relationships between music, movement, and voice.

Another Stage: Kanze Nobumitsu and the Late Muromachi Noh Theater by Lim Beng Choo (review)

Reviewed by: Another Stage: Kanze Nobumitsu and the Late Muromachi Noh Theater by Lim Beng Choo Eric C. Rath ANOTHER STAGE: KANZE NOBUMITSU AND THE LATE MUROMACHI NOH THEATER. by Lim Beng Choo. Cornell East Asia Series. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 2012. 241 pp. $39.00. With most scholarship on nō theater focusing on the playwrights and theoreticians Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443) and Konparu Zenchiku (1405–1470?), performers less than a century after these giants have not received sufficient attention. To begin to remedy this, Lim Beng Choo’s Another Stage profiles actor, musician, and playwright Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu (1435 or 1450–1516) to understand his contributions in the latter half of the Muromachi period (1336–1573). Lim provides thoughtful readings of Nobumitsu’s plays, which are his most lasting achievements. After a brief introduction that locates Nobumitsu within a historical overview of the development of nō theater, Lim lays out a three-part study. Part 1 provides a discussion of Nobumitsu’s life in two chapters. The first chapter is a translation of a biographical source, which the second chapter references in sketching out the highlights of Nobumitsu’s career. Part 2 follows with three chapters each devoted to a different style of Nobumitsu’s plays. Part 3 examines the “lively” and “spectacular” furyū style synonymous with Nobumitsu and other late Muromachi-period playwrights (p. xxiv). The book lacks a separate conclusion but provides five appendices that include a catalog of Nobumitsu’s plays with brief synopses of his extant works, a chronology of his life, and an explanation of the role categories in nō plays such as waki and shite. Chapter 1 undertakes an analysis of the Kanze Kojirō Portrait Inscription (Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu gazōsan), an intriguing source rare in the history of nō theater. Zen monk Keijō Shūrin (1429–1518) authored this lengthy dedicatory verse around 1488 for a painting of Nobumitsu that is now lost. Lim affirms that the inscription is evidence that Nobumitsu and his father, On’ami (1398–1467), for whom a similar inscription survives, had reached a level of status and wealth that would allow their visages to be painted and their contributions valorized in writing. Contrary to the terse and rather formulaic verses for On’ami’s portrait, Nobumitsu’s inscription is detailed and includes a history of nō theatre that traces the art back to sacred Buddhist and [End Page 631] Shinto prototypes. Lim compares these origin stories to similar accounts in Zeami’s writings to conclude that nō had become part of the cultural world of the elite in Nobumitsu’s time. Lim does not consider the audience for Nobumitsu’s portrait inscription, the reasons for its creation, or the work’s historical reception. For the latter, I had to refer to her article on which the chapter was based to learn the specifics about the “various historical texts” in which the inscription appears (p. 3). According to this article, the earliest extant copy is by scholar Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), who apparently worked from another copy or the original belonging to the Kanze family (Lim 2000: 569). Razan, a prominent Neo-Confucian intellectual, demonstrated a keen interest in history, including the genealogy of performing arts; he also penned a short treatise on knife ceremonies (shikibōchō) of professional chefs. Razan’s duplication of the document suggests its importance for the Kanze lineage in the late seventeenth century. One wonders why Nobumitsu commissioned this inscription (and portrait) and how and when he meant it to be displayed. Elsewhere Lim explains away Nobumitsu’s lack of interest in creating secret artistic writings like his predecessor Zeami, stating that by Nobumitsu’s time the “function of secret treatises—to transmit secret strategies to outdo other competitors—was no longer important” (p. 44). But secret writings clearly had other purposes beyond what Lim allows because Nobumitsu wrote two, and after his lifetime an increasingly wide variety of nō performers from musicians to kyōgen actors authored secret texts. One reason for this heightened activity in creating secret writings was that such treatises within nō and other arts such as cooking, the tea ceremony, and flower arrangement symbolized the...

Supernatural Beings from Japanese Noh Plays of the Fifth Group: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary by Chifumi Shimazaki and Stephen Comee (review)

Supernatural Beings from Japanese Noh Plays of the Fifth Group: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary by Chifumi Shimazaki and Stephen Comee (review)

Traditions transfigured: the Noh masks of Bidou Yamaguchi

The face has inspired artists around the world for millennia, and Japan's Noh theater has provided a complex domain for exploring human emotion. Inspired by these practices, Traditions Transfigured examines fourteen contemporary works by Noh mask-maker and artist Bidou Yamaguchi. These apply the forms, techniques, transformative spirit, and mysterious elegance of Noh masks to iconic female portraits from the European art historical canon, and to Kabuki actor prints by Sharaku, Japan's 18th century portrait master. This book explores these masks in the context of Noh through essays by art historians, a Noh specialist, and an award-winning novelist.

From the Editor

From the Editor Ricardo D. Trimillos Aloha kākou! Issue 45(2) presents a variety of perspectives about the study of Asia and its musics, ranging from the highly personal to the “objectively” scientific and technological. It is in keeping with our intent to offer variety and diversity in each issue. Regarding geocultural diversity, the review sections discuss items from Central Asia, South Asia, and West Asia—Uzbekistan, India, and Israel, respectively. The four feature articles discuss East Asia (Japan), South Asia (India), and Southeast Asia (Vietnam and Burma). Further, they reflect diversities of theme and approach. We begin with a personal reflection on our field. Bonnie Wade’s contribution is a print version of the lively keynote address presented at the 2012 annual meeting in New Orleans. A departure from the author’s usual and established register of discourse, the essay provides an absorbing and very personal account of lifelong engagement with ethnomusicology. At the same time unwittingly (or perhaps wittingly!) she fashions an artful vehicle that encapsulates the field, spanning some six decades of American academe. I am delighted that the written form communicates some of the flavor and spirit of the oral presentation. For those who know the author primarily through publications, this narrative reveals an accomplishment-filled odyssey of a model exemplar. It reinforces the interconnections of scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and service to the field. For those who know the author personally, the account invokes and recalls shared people, places, and events, finding resonance with individual, personal, and lived experiences. Turning from subject positionality and performance, we next consider changes in meanings and ecologies for music making among Hmong youth in “Minorities Onstage: Cultural Tourism, Cosmopolitanism, and Social Harmony in Northwestern Vietnam” by Lonán Ó Briain. Already marked as an ethnic minority and geographically marginalized, the northwestern Hmong must contend with issues of identity and notions of culture within the reunified nation of Vietnam, with all its nascent economic and political trajectories. For the Hmong, issues of globalization and tourism loom large, for which Ó Briain documents, analyzes, and problematizes local responses. He reports a dialogue courtship song tradition, reframed for the tourist industry, incredibly, as “The Love Market”! Rather than present a perpetrator-victim [End Page 1] binary in terms of agency, the author suggests there is a tension among state bureaucrats, local economic stakeholders, and cosmopolitan Hmong youth in negotiating outcomes. The third piece also invites our consideration of performance change in the environment of a hegemonic Other—however, this time in the diaspora. Heather MacLachlan discusses the transplantation of the Karen, an ethnic minority from Burma, into an American Midwest mainstream—Fort Wayne, Indiana. Two iconic music-dance genres have undergone musical, choreographic, and social changes in this diaspora, including negotiations of Buddhist/Christian factionalism and the possibility of a more inclusive and secular identity as overseas Karen. MacLachlan marshals voices of elders and youths from the community to articulate issues, describe compromises, and express community goals related to this deliberate and proactive cultivation of heritage identity. We conclude with a highly technical study that is both challenging in its sophistication and exciting in what it portends for one of the “last bastions” of music analysis—timbre. By subjecting sound data from Japanese noh to very specific psychoacoustic protocols, collaborators Michael Gardiner and Joyce S. Lim provide us with a model for understanding timbre beyond such cantometric descriptors as “harsh” and “rich.” The chromatope offers a new tool for serious engagement of timbre as a domain of the musical-technical. Although at first glance primarily in the comfort zone of the psychoacoustician, the article is in fact broadly reader friendly; it illustrates how understandings won from chromatope microanalyses have implications and applications for intersense modalities, a totalized (rather than differentiated) soundscape, and a greater appreciation of noh theater writ large. “Chromatopes of Noh” evidences the dynamism and the ongoing growth of our field celebrated by Bonnie Wade in her opening essay. As such it provides a fitting end piece for this issue’s offerings. [End Page 2] Ricardo D. Trimillos University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Copyright © 2014 University of Texas Press

My Child Deus

Manoel Barreto’s Japanese miscellany contains “Dialogues on the Instruments of the Passion,” which show how closely complex cultural structures are intertwined with the machinery of grammar. Featuring the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, the dialogue sublimates maternal and erotic energies in turn while contemplating the usual series of violent instruments. The speeches display not only linguistic competence but literary skill in their use of the personless poetic flow of renga linked verse and the noh theatre. However, the Latinate double-entendre on filho [son (of God and of Mary)] misfires because the Japanese language uses honorifics to maintain stable intersubjective reference and so cannot simultaneously refer to Jesus as both a superior and an inferior. This failure is supplemented with Portuguese marginalia and bold catachresms. Mary Magdalene’s erotic sublimation is presented with less success as excessive literalism frequently produces comedy. Then, an appendix entitled “The Meaning of the Passion” repeats the exercise in halting, clinical prose marred by occasional errors of grammar and style, cataloguing the instruments as dōgu (implements), the word used for art objects in the tea ceremony, and outlining their theological function with attention to precise doctrinal formulations. Frequent use of Portuguese loanwords conveys a (justified) anxiety with regard to the ability of the Japanese language to transmit (European) truth. I identify the dueling Zeami and Aquinas of this piece as a Japanese convert and his or her European mentor, then venture a hypothesis as to the precise historical figures behind these voices in tension.

Noh Drama and the Samurai

Previous articleNext article No AccessDance, Costume, and CampaignNoh Drama and the SamuraiYukie KadowakiYukie Kadowaki Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts Volume 88, Number 1-42014Japanese Art at the Time of the Samurai A journal of the Detroit Institute of Arts Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/DIA43493631 Views: 68Total views on this site © 2014 The Detroit Institute of ArtsPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Process Drama in the Japanese University EFL Classroom: The Emigration Project

This paper examines the impact of using a process drama project in a Japanese university EFL class focusing on the social issue of emigration from a historical perspective while simultaneously developing English communicative skills. Speaking in English is a skill that many Japanese people find challenging. There are a number of cultural reasons for this, for example the enormous linguistic gap between Japanese and English communicative patterns in terms of explicitness/implicitness, hierarchy, gender, and the role of silence. Therefore, the overt aim was to help students develop English language skills while learning about Japanese historical emigration through the medium of English with Japanese scaffolding. This is in keeping with the needs of the average Japanese university EFL student, who has had six years of accuracy-based study for the short-term target of the university entrance examination and who sees English in terms of mathematical code, rather than as a communicative tool. The narrative arc of the paper follows the Noh theatre JO-HA-KYU, Enticement- Elaboration-Consolidation trajectory to take the reader through the emigration process drama project held in the spring semester of 2009 at the School of Human Welfare Studies (HWS), Kwansei Gakuin University (KGU), Japan. The research approach was a mixed-method one and data was collected through digital recording of role-plays, student self-critical reflection by writing-in-role and writing out-of-role in an online class group, qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and teacher observation. Results indicated that process drama projects can have a positive influence on Japanese university EFL learners from the perspective of both linguistic and intercultural communicative competence.

<i>What is `Noh Play'?</i>

<i>What is `Noh Play'?</i>

Performativity in the Interpretive Discourse of Yugao : The Doubleness of the Shite, or the Representation of Absence in the Noh Play "Yugao"(Theme Paper,<Special Issue>"The Performative in Narrative)

Performativity in the Interpretive Discourse of Yugao : The Doubleness of the Shite, or the Representation of Absence in the Noh Play "Yugao"(Theme Paper,<Special Issue>"The Performative in Narrative)

Another Stage: Kanze Nobumitsu and the Late Muromachi Noh Theater by Lim Beng Choo (review)

Another Stage: Kanze Nobumitsu and the Late Muromachi Noh Theater by Lim Beng Choo (review)

The Aesthetics and Politics of “Dreaming Back”: Yeats, Pound, Japanese Noh Plays, and Their Stone Cottage Collaboration

1913년부터 1916년의 기간 동안 예이츠와 파운드는 영국 서섹스의 애쉬다운 포리스트에 소재한 조그만 카티지에서 함께 겨울을 보냈다. 이른바 “스톤 카티지 영혼의 워크샵”이라고 명명할 수 있는 이 문학적 공동작업은 모더니즘 운동의 효시가 되었다. 그들의 문학적 공동작업의 결과 『평온한 달의 부드러운 침묵』의 산문집과 『해골의 꿈』이라는 극이 탄생하였다. 전자는 1925년판 『비전』의 초판이전에 등장한 예이츠의 시학의 가장 체계적인 이론서라 할 수 있고, 1917년 판 『해골의 꿈』은 일본의 니시키기와 같은 노극을 본격적인 모델로 하여 탄생한 것이다. 두 작품 다 예이츠의 극이론과 시론의 이면에 자리잡은 열린 영혼의 시학의 미학적 선언문을 제시하고 있다. 니시키기와 모토메주까 등의 노극을 모델로 예이츠는 그의 후기 극에서 “죽은 자의 환몽”의 극적 재현을 창안하게 된 것이다.

Throne of Bloodand the Metaphysics of Tragedy

The aim of this paper is to explore the metaphysical foundations of Throne of Blood , Kurosawa's reworking of Shakespeare's Macbeth . Using Hegel's theory of tragedy, I develop the distinction between Greek and modern tragedy, with their differing bases in ethical and subjective freedom. I then show that Noh drama also includes a very different metaphysical account, stemming from its theoretical roots in Buddhism. I then use these three differing accounts (Greek, modern and Noh drama) to explore the effect of Kurosawa's use Noh aesthetics in Throne of Blood on the metaphysical ground of the film itself.

The Japanese Proverb “Parent-child Relations Last but One Lifetime” in Noh Plays

Abstract Japan's six-century-old Noh theater appears on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Noh librettos are literary works that contain expressions related to proverbs and allude to works written in both kanbun (Chinese) and wabun (Japanese) styles. Whereas Noh specialists are apt to focus on issues of interest only to other specialists, this study attempts to open up a new area of research in the hope that it will attract the interest of those in other fields. One more distinctive feature is that the plays investigated include those in and outside the current repertoire, works dating from both the Muromachi (c. 1338-1573) and from later periods. Through an investigation of Noh plays concerning parent-child relations, this study finds that the most frequently found expression is the proverb “Parent-child relations last but one lifetime”, or expressions conveying that meaning. They are employed in both sad and happy contexts by both parents and children. The paper argues that in most of these plays the playwrights emphasize the great strength of parent-child relations to the point that, contrary to this proverb, even death cannot break them. There are many plays using this expression in the context of a parent's grief while traveling in search of a lost child, waiting for his return, or after learning about his death. The paper argues that the expression is more likely to be employed not only to vent the grief of parents, but also to mask their protest against the belief expressed by this proverb. The paper also argues that this protest is more explicit when it is through the voice of mothers. These playwrights seem to be arguing against the proverb, which in full states, “Parent-child relations last but one lifetime. That of husband and wife, two lifetimes. That of lord and vassal, three lifetimes”. Male characters probably could not as easily reveal their weakness or their resistance to the values that feudal society wanted them to follow. In most of the plays using this kind of expression, the separated parent and child are reunited in a happy ending. The reunion in some cases is the result of the parent's travel in search of the child while in some it is due to the miraculous aid from deities. The playwrights may have wanted to propagandize faith in the deities mentioned in those plays.

Lear Dreaming (review)

Reviewed by: Lear Dreaming Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco Lear Dreaming. Conception and direction by Ong Keng Sen. Text by Kishida Rio. Singapore Arts Festival 2012. School of the Arts Drama Theatre, Singapore. 31 May–1 June 2012. My expectations were high for this revisiting of the King Lear theme that the auteur-director Ong Keng Sen first explored in 1997. Ong is a celebrated figure in intercultural theatre practice, mounting works in New York and European Festivals as well as in Asia.1 His works are studied as intercultural performances in theatre journals and books on performance, and this was an opportunity to see how he remounts a work that gained international popular applause and yet also roused critical hackles (a cultural pastiche, thought some; an appropriation of Western intercultural bad practices by an Asian subject, said others; politically incorrect or hyper-masculinist, said a few when it first played).2 Aesthetically, this 2012 performance was strong, with striking visual design, virtuoso performers, and unexpected juxtapositions. Nō master-performer Umewaka Naohiko re-enacted his role as Lear. The only trained actor onstage, he was accompanied by music artists rather than “actors” to fill the other roles. All of these performers had considerable intercultural musical experience. Contemporary female pipa virtuoso Wu Man played Lear’s ungrateful Daughter, and she has been a major collaborator with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road project. Kang Kwon Soon, a leading female vocalist of traditional Korean court music (junga) and a member of the Tori ensemble who has collaborated in creating Korean fusion jazz, played Lear’s (dead) wife. Piterman, a specialist in the Minang music-dance-theatre (dikia rabano) of Sumatra who has collaborated with noted modern dance artist Boi Gumarang Sakti, played the loyal fool. Japanese expert Toru Yamanaka provided electronic music, and celebrated Javanese composer Rahayu Supanggah led a contemporary ensemble of gamelan musicians. Set design (Justin Hill), lights (Scott Zielinski), costume (Mitsushi Yanaihara), and graphics (Hanson Ho) were crucial to the work and made the piece a feast for the eyes. The lavish production also raised questions about intercultural work for me as a Filipino theatre scholar who has not previously experienced such intercultural projects. I will describe the production, note some of the alterations [End Page 532] from the 1997 version, and give my own response to the work as a Southeast Asian viewer, acknowledging that what formed my deepest critique may not have been consciously intended by the director. But unequal cultural capital, persistent historical memory, and current economic realities ground art creation and viewing. While some issues regarding gender representation that were raised in the original production were rebalanced in this one, the intercultural inequalities born of casting ethnic bodies in certain roles seemed even more striking in this reincarnation. Part of the 2012 Singapore Arts Festival, Lear Dreaming re-imagines the Shakespearean tragedy “on patriarchy and succession through the pristine philosophy of Japanese Noh theatre” (Lear Dreaming Program 2012). Ong, an Asian postmodern director who trained at New York University (MA, 1995) and has regularly toured the international festival scene, has, like Robert Wilson or Suzuki Tadashi, adopted an auteur approach to the classic he adapts. He emphasized during a post-show dialogue that this piece, which was written by Japanese author Kishida Rio, is no longer the Shakespearean tragedy, though it derived inspiration from it. For example, in the Shakespearean text, Lear has three daughters: the betraying Goneril and Regan and the loving Cordelia. In Ong and Kishida’s rendition, the Old Man (Lear character) has only two daughters, only one of whom has lines and (in 2012) only one of these two appears onstage; however, we get the impression that the Old Man favors her, referring to the absent one as his “daughter” and never using the term for the present child. Thus Goneril and Regan are combined into the solo Daughter, and the absent daughter (Cordelia character) is only discussed. The missing daughter, as mentioned by Ong during the post-show dialogue, was a strategy to embody the “presence of an absence.” Other changes include the onstage presence of Lear’s wife (albeit as a ghost), someone not encountered in Shakespeare and who...

Kissing The Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater with Some Thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines. By William T. Vollmann. New York: HarperCollins, 2010; 528 pp.; illustrations. $17.99 paper, e-book available

<i>Kissing The Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater with Some Thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines.</i> By William T. Vollmann. New York: HarperCollins, 2010; 528 pp.; illustrations. $17.99 paper, e-book available

Performing Ritual: Physical and Musical Gesture in Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River

Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River (1964) defies traditional genre labels, exhibiting characteristics of opera, Japanese Noh drama, and religious ritual. Set in medieval England and given a Christian theme, Curlew River is based on the Noh play Sumidagawa and uses a unique language of physical gesture inspired by Noh traditions. The integration of these physical gestures with the music is one of the ways in which Curlew River projects an atmosphere of ritual. In this paper I examine two passages from Curlew River, each of which demonstrates a close connection between the development of individual musical gestures and the progression of physical actions performed at the same time. In the arietta “Near the Black Mountains,” sung by the character of the Madwoman, the subtle development of a single musical figure is linked to the gradual transformation of the actor’s posture. A similar relationship is present in the Ferryman’s introductory scene, in which physical movements act as punctuation for a sequence of musical statements. In both instances, musical and physical gesture are integrated into a unified form of expression, the intensity and focus of which lend Curlew River its ritual quality.

Ezra Pound's Early Cantos and his Translation of Takasago

In 1917, Ezra Pound wrote to Harriet Monroe that the ‘theme’ of The Cantos was ‘roughly the theme of Takasago’, a Japanese Noh play. Hugh Kenner in The Pound Era referred to this letter but did not elaborate on it, commenting that Pound ‘never got round to’ the translation of Takasago. It has more recently been discovered, however, that Pound did translate Takasago. In light of this discovery, I wish to contend that the play is an important structuring device for The Cantos from the latter’s beginnings in 1915 into the 1920s, and, furthermore, that the foregrounding of benevolent imperial rule in Pound’s Takasago translation anticipates his turn in the 1920s from the apparently apolitical poetics of the ‘Unity of Image’ to a more explicitly political ‘symbolism of the center’. I will do so by referring to original Japanese versions of the play; by examining Pound’s drafts for the early cantos, and by analysing the peritexts of these cantos in editions published by small presses in the 1920s.

Shadows Alter Facial Expressions of Noh Masks

BackgroundA Noh mask, worn by expert actors during performance on the Japanese traditional Noh drama, conveys various emotional expressions despite its fixed physical properties. How does the mask change its expressions? Shadows change subtly during the actual Noh drama, which plays a key role in creating elusive artistic enchantment. We here describe evidence from two experiments regarding how attached shadows of the Noh masks influence the observers’ recognition of the emotional expressions.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn Experiment 1, neutral-faced Noh masks having the attached shadows of the happy/sad masks were recognized as bearing happy/sad expressions, respectively. This was true for all four types of masks each of which represented a character differing in sex and age, even though the original characteristics of the masks also greatly influenced the evaluation of emotions. Experiment 2 further revealed that frontal Noh mask images having shadows of upward/downward tilted masks were evaluated as sad/happy, respectively. This was consistent with outcomes from preceding studies using actually tilted Noh mask images.Conclusions/SignificanceResults from the two experiments concur that purely manipulating attached shadows of the different types of Noh masks significantly alters the emotion recognition. These findings go in line with the mysterious facial expressions observed in Western paintings, such as the elusive qualities of Mona Lisa’s smile. They also agree with the aesthetic principle of Japanese traditional art “yugen (profound grace and subtlety)”, which highly appreciates subtle emotional expressions in the darkness.