which for the most part tends to last one and a half or two months, maybe a little shorter for a hannya mask — it always depends on how much work he gets done in a day, and has successfully this work turns out — a month and a half, so, roughly, that much time, here on the tatami placed in his work-box from early morning to early evening, and as for speaking, he doesn’t speak, not even to himself; if he makes any sounds at all, it’s only that he is lifting the piece of wood and quietly blowing off the wood shavings chiseled off the mask, and sometimes when he changes his physical position in the work-box and sighs while doing so, and once again he bends toward the block of wood, for at first it all begins with the Okari wood-merchant located in the one-time Imperial Palace, below Gosho to the south, in the person of Okari-san, who is of about the same stature as he, therefore very short, a good fifteen years older, and fairly gloomy, Okari-san, from whom he has been buying wood for years — he just bought this newer piece — he trusts him, the price is always good, the annual rings are thin and dense, the lines are without defects, namely the hinoki from which the chosen block of wood originates grew slowly; in addition, the wood is delivered from Bishu, in the prefecture of Gifu, from a forest that has the highest reputation, from a forest renowned for the quality of its material — the whole thing is a simple rectangular-shaped block of wood, that is how it all begins, with the circular cutting with the saw on the basis of the stencil to the desired proportions; he does not think, because he doesn’t have to, his hand moves by its own accord, he does not have to control its direction, the saw and the chisels know by themselves what they have to do, so it is no wonder that this first, this very first phase of the work is the fastest, the most free from the later, frequently tormenting anxiety; the saw, the large chisel, the mallet, then the vacuuming up of the wood shavings, just like that, he sits in his work-box, using a small vacuum cleaner adapted to his own needs, so that nothing will remain outside of the work-box, no dirt whatsoever on the sensitive tatami, that is what the work-box, where he is sitting, is for, from where, reaching out, he vacuums, and in which the level of wood shavings is growing ever higher; it is so that in the midst of working he can somehow keep up a little cleanliness, he removes the larger pieces with the saw, then with the large chisel and mallet, but this occurs only in the first few days; later, beginning the third of fourth day, he naturally uses ever smaller chisels, varying in degrees of sharpness, and he no longer strikes the chisel with the hammer, but holds it in his hands, and in this way, holding the block of wood tightly in his left hand, he chisels into the soft material, using tiny, accurate, certain and quick movements with his right hand, but always in such a way that he simultaneously holds up the exact stencil needed — taken from countless others — up to the surface being worked upon; he prepares an enormous quantity of stencils in advance from the so-called original, which is usually lent to him under a tight deadline, that is, for a maximum of two or three days, by the owner — then he takes down, let’s say, the measurements, as he cuts out an enormous quantity of cardboard sheets based upon this original, so that there are specifications accurate within a hair’s width, for the forehead, the eyebrows, the eyes, the nose, the cheeks, the chin, and every other single detail of the face, horizontally and vertically, diagonally, and in relation to all the other parts as well, in a word, from every possible dimension, every important angle of vision, these are the stencils, only the stencils, so that in the first two weeks only the outlines of the stencils — taken and drawn from the original, then cut out from cardboard — assist the chisel in his hand, so that their significance is, accordingly, huge, and that is why if someone were able to look at him from afar, which of course would be impossible, as there is no way this could ever happen, then that someone would see something like a person such as Ito Ryõsuke of the Kanze school, the Noh master mask-maker, who just now is chiseling something, and is already trying out the necessary stencil to see if things are proceeding in the right direction — was this last bit of stenciling correct, how much is still missing for this and precisely this proportion — proportion to the whole! — to be completed, to see consequently how much there is still to be carved away, so that the expression will then faultlessly emerge in the Noh mask, made from the block of hinoki-cypress, the original expression as seen upon a hannya mask on the theater stages of the Kanze-school in Kyõto or Osaka is what he has in mind; he saws, he chisels, he cleans up, then he just chisels and blows away the shavings of the soft hinoki, and if he is making it for the Kanze ultimately — as for a commission, there usually are none — the matter begins with him seeing a Noh play, and he sees in the Noh — for instance, as in this case — he sees Aoi no Ue, and in that he sees a hannya mask on the main character known as the shite, then he pictures a different mask from the one he saw, and from that, the feeling that he has seen a Noh mask arises, but he doesn’t want one like that, but another one of that sort has just come into his mind, well, then, he wants to carve one himself, but for this naturally he needs a mask that is as close as possible to what he wants, and naturally he needs a hannya mask from his master, the famous Hori Yasuemon, hence he needs one to prepare the stencils from and the other to use as a model; he has hardly begun, here it is already the third or fourth day when the piece of word he is working on is now drawing toward the imagined end result, he can essentially tell less and less what is going to happen on a given day, in terms of the coarsened view of things, his life is filled with successive imperceptible changes, all the while with every tiny, exact, certain, and quick carving, he gets closer and closer to the mask he has sensed, it’s just that until that point, so very many days and so very many hours, so many early mornings and noontimes and evenings are yet needed, roughly a month and half’s worth of them, perhaps two entire months; he may be uncertain, and with the details burnished together with more difficulty; or — as does occur now and then — he may make a mistake, and have to to correct it, it is a loss of time, although he works quickly, as mostly he works by natural light, he chisels, he lifts it up, he blows away the shavings, he tests the stencil, and he chisels again, the silence is great, inside the house it is complete, and from outside only very rarely do sounds filter in, so that it is he in the first place who breaks the silence, and most often, amidst his rapid movements, by putting down now and then the chisel on the floor of the box, or little further away, but still next to him, he puts it outside of the work-box, on the tatami mat; he puts it down, or rather in the vehemence of movement he tosses it down, he lets drop a chisel in order to exchange it for another, or holding it away from himself he looks at the mask from a distance, and at such times it happens that the chisel he has tossed down makes a loud clattering sound as it hits against the others, but usually there is just the sound of breathing, a dull thump, as he sometimes changes his bodily position in the box, and he sighs, there are no other sounds, essentially he works in total silence, from early morning to early evening, that is to say more precisely, first from early morning until noon, as he then takes a short break for so-called lunch-time — this cannot exceed one half-hour, although in contrast to breakfast he sits down at lunchtime, either inside, in the kitchen, or if the weather is good, by the little table set up in the shady garden; he eats for the most part, only vegetables, meat almost never, perhaps fish, but for the most part vegetables and more vegetables, he starts with some kurama vegetables, cut into thin strips and marinated in sour brine, then a miso soup follows, then with his favourite gemma rice, three or four fried avocado halves, fried mushrooms, fried tofu, cooked bamboo, or he makes an udon or a soba, with perhaps yube, that is, tofu-skin, soybean sprouts, or clustered edamame beans, finally there may be a little natto — fermented soy bean — then a little sour plum, namely the umeboshi, which he particularly likes; all the while just mineral water and mineral water, and all of this of course within the space of only one half-hour, because he has to work, he has to go back to the studio, because in the meantime, while he has been eating, he didn’t even really break away from that phase of work or that problem to be solved, from which he only somewhat distanced himself during lunchtime, so that already he is up there, on the second floor, he lowers himself down into the work-box, he picks up and holds the mask he’s preparing at a distance, and he looks, slowly turning it around in his hands, he looks, at last, with a somber face; he begins again, he takes the chisel, he blows away the shavings, he raises the mask, looking at it, then he takes it and chisels into it again, he holds the stencil up to it, and he chisels and he blows, and he looks, then he chisels into it again, he holds the stencil up to it, and he chisels, and he blows, and he looks, and in the meantime, he doesn’t, as it were, think about anything, particularly not about whether he is now preparing a wonderful hannya mask, or just a satisfactory one, within him there is no desire for the exquisite; if there ever even was, his master taught him in his youth — or rather fulfilling the prophecy of his master, his own experience taught him that if there is within him the desire to create an exquisite mask, then he will unavoidably and unconditionally create the ugliest mask possible, this is always, and is unconditionally always so, hence for a long time now that desire has not been within him, to put it precisely, there is nothing at all within him, the thoughts don’t whirl around, his head is empty as is if he had been stunned by something; only his hand knows, the chisel knows why this must happen; his head has become empty, but in a sharp way, however, it is sharp when his hands hold up the mask under preparation, and he looks at it to see if things are proceeding in the right direction, only then is his head clear, but only while he is still looking at the mask under preparation; then he lets it fall back into his lap, and his hand, holding the chisel, sets to the task again, then again his head is not clear, but rather completely and immediately empty; various thoughts extinguishing each other do not twist and turn, whirl and swirl, do not wriggle here and there, only the complete emptiness in his head, there is the complete emptiness in the house, and there isn’t even anything in particular to think about, for there is emptiness in the house, and there is emptiness in the neighborhood, and if someone were to inquire of him, as the students, taken on for short periods, in every single instance are wont to do, asking for example, how from this piece of hinoki there will emerge a mask — it is free, in his view, from all mystical intervention; that is, after a series of not particularly special sculptural operations, the mask will in his judgment be completed — a Noh mask that will terrify people; in other words what makes something like this spellbinding, what makes it not spellbinding — what are the fine or not-so-fine differentiations that decide this question, particularly, by the comprehending eye, unequivocally and immediately — whether the work here has been successful and the mask is splendid, or just an awkward, a painfully unskillful ignominious disaster, and thus not even worthy of mention; finally, what does the Noh want, what is the Aoi no Ue, by chance, all about, and so on, such questions, in his studio inside his work-box, visibly trouble him, not only because the mere fact of someone asking him any question at all troubles him, but in his completely empty head, there is really nothing with which, even if he were to rely on it, he could, for that matter, reply, he does not to occupy himself with such questions as what is the Noh, and what makes a mask “spellbinding,” he merely occupies himself with doing the very best he can within the limits of his abilities, and with the aid of prayers recited secretly in shrines; he only knows movements, methods of work — chiseling, carving, polishing — that is to say the method, the entire practical order of operations, but not the so-called “big questions,” he has absolutely no business with those, no one ever taught him what to do with that, so that this empty head always was and always remains his only response, a head that contains nothing in response to questions that contain nothing, but how can this be stated, there’s no way, especially to the students coming from the West, so that at such times the situation is such that an empty head stands facing the seemingly weighty, unexpected, and — due to their unexpected nature — even too crudely grasping questions, and not only does he not have any answers, but it is also very hard for him to cope with having to break the silence to say something, so that he begins to stammer, in the strict sense of the word he stammers when he speaks, as if he were searching for the English word in the language of his visitors, he would, however find it faultlessly and quickly if he were in the habit of using language, any language; he stammers out something, but it is, as he himself knows full well, not even audible, and he himself sees that it can’t go on like this, the students mutely, a little dumbfounded, prod him on to say something already, something essential, but well, what can he do, nothing essential to reply to the posed question comes to mind, his head is buzzing, he tries to step out of the vortex in which he lives, he tries to understand the glances of the visitors who have questions and who would listen, and it seems that he is hoping that finally he won’t have to say anything at all, but then it appears that well, this hope is in vain, for the gazes — curious and insistent, urging him to say something already, for god’s sake — are fixated upon him; then he pulls himself together, and he says something in reference to the given question, very cautiously and circumspectly, with elegant restraint, and refraining from using big words, he says something, something about the mask, that here is such and such a mask, and in a certain play, it more or less means this and this, but when it comes to what does the Noh want, or what is the essence of the Noh, and so forth — the dreadfully tactless questions — he doesn’t know what to do, he genuinely doesn’t understand, he can’t even understand how someone can even ask such a question, the kinds of questions children ask, if at all, not grown-up people, there is no place for such questions here, in the simple studio of a simple maker of Noh masks, as he calls himself; for that, Ito Ryõsuke says, stammering, we would have to ask the great masters, not him, he just does what he can within the limits of his abilities, but he doesn’t want to hurt their feelings when he sees, on the faces of these Western students admitted to his studio for a brief time, obvious disappointment, he doesn’t want — and not because of them, but rather because of himself — to see this disappointment, it is unpleasant, he still has to say something, so he pulls together with great difficulty a few sentences to answer one of the complicated questions, he musters up something from his memory of what he heard from some great master, and he presents it, haltingly, in his own particular way of speaking, and then the relief in him is far greater when he sees that those around him are satisfied with the response, as this satisfaction can be seen on their faces, so much for that, he leans back again over his work, then looks up occasionally to see if the signs of satisfaction really can be seen on their faces, then he can hardly wait for the visit to come to an end, or for the time that they decided upon to come to a close, but the entire visit has unsettled him so, that when they have finally gone, and he has decided that he will never again, as much as possible, admit anymore Wester