On May 26th and 27th, we held “Making Noh mask” workshop.
Tada who had sometimes participated in ACAC workshop planned to set up time to concentrate on making something together with the participants.
The instructor was INOUE Kyoka living in Misawa city.
She visited her older brother who had worked in Misawa before. She liked the place and decided to live there.
Now she runs a café which has Noh mask gallery called “Ao” in Misawa. She makes Noh masks and teaches making them in various places.

Carving Noh mask is said “utsu”. It is proceeded with
three steps of “rough carving”, “medium carving” and
“finish carving” from one square wood using chisels and gravers.
Though the size of the Noh mask is about 20 cm in length Usually, this time we
made half size of the mask in two days.
Aomori hiba which wood has a very good fragrance that Inoue uses for making the
masks. Firstly, participants place the front and side patterns on the wood and
copy them.

Then they start carving like pulling off corners of the wood.
When participants started engraving all at once, sound
of striking by wood hammer echoed in the workshop studio.

After they make it like a semicylindrical shape, they
cut part of the nose and mouth with a saw.
Sometimes they measure each length using a compass to make it symmetrical.
At the process of engraving the face part, they repeatedly draft with a pencil,
and carve using gravers, etc..

It is important to compare the face and mold, how much height the forehead, nose, and lips are, overturning the top and bottom, looking at various angles and observing well.

As the part of the face is formed, carving the back side, they make holes in the eyes, mouth and nose with a drill.
When engraving the back, it is unlike how to carve on the front side, they move
their wrist and scoop out.
When the detail of the face was made after opening the hole and finishing carving, the expression appeared at once.

 

Inoue advises them depending on the progress of each
participant, so it seems that participants were also able to concentrate and
produce themselves at their own pace.
Some said that two days passed quickly because they were able to concentrate happily.

Though some people couldn’t participate because the workshop was for a small
number of participants, please apply to the next workshop!