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 Western curiosity-seekers, he is for a long while incapable of returning to his work, he does not sit back down in the work-box, just paces up and down, straightening an object now and then in the studio, then he begins to put things in order, he vacuums up, he arranges the tools around himself as if that were meaningful when he has no need for that now, the proper time for straightening up is at the end of the day; he rises, and he puts everything in order, packing up and cleaning, he is so discomfited after such a meeting that everything in his head churns back and forth, the questions swirl around there in larger and smaller broken fragments: what is the Noh, and what is the meaning of the hannya mask, and how can there be “something sacred” from a simple hinoki tree, but what kinds of questions are these — Ito Ryõsuke shakes his head despairingly — how can this be; and he sighs; when everything has been put back he sits down in his place, takes the piece of hinoki being worked on, holds it at a distance with his left hand and as much as possible, leans back in the work-box, so as yet to see it from the greatest possible distance, he looks at it then lets it fall again into his lap, takes the appropriate chisel in his hand, and he chisels, and he lifts it up, and he blows the wood shavings away, and that night he finishes a little earlier; he packs up again, he puts things in order, he cleans up, so that the next morning the studio will await him as it should every morning; then he goes out of the house, he takes his specially designed bicycle, and sets off before dinner to cycle out of himself all the assembled disturbances of the visit, for that, the bicycle, is his one recreation, and his is a completely particular model, not simply a mountain bike, but a specially designed bike that can do anything, or almost anything, its gears, its ease, its fittings, everything about it is satisfactory — at one point a long time ago, he decided to get one and to begin cycling in the mountains — he turns out from the house, and he is already racing down the steep slope of Shakadani, then within ten minutes he is out by the northern mountains, and now the hardest part begins, the drive to the top, and he gets properly sweaty, he just keeps pressing the pedals going uphill, the perspiration streams down from him by the time he reaches the point he has decided upon that day, but then comes the downward run, and the wondrous, the inexpressible tranquility of the forest, its refreshing beauty, its inconceivable monumentality, its silence and purity, and the fragrance of the air, and the muscles at rest and the speed, as he only has to glide along going down, glide, gliding back into the city, at such times he would be happy not even to use the brakes; this descent is so good, for it takes him back once again to the emptiness that is within him, and which was disturbed; but it has been restored by the time he gets back and puts the bike in its place against the wall of the house, the peace within him is complete, there is no trace whatsoever in his head of confusion or nervousness; he sits outside in the garden or sets the table inside in the kitchen, and he has dinner, so that early tomorrow morning he can sit again with the hannya mask in his hand, holding it at a distance, leaning backward, and looking at it, then taking it into his lap, with his left hand and with his right, he begins to chisel, now with only completely minute movements, just as delicately as he possibly can, for now even a single cut that is too deep or too long can ruin it; so in part he makes ever smaller cuts, in part he still tries out the stencil frequently — at short intervals — to see how much, how much yet he needs to remove in order to finally reach that phase when it is not merely just the stencil, just the stencil, that is when the use of stencils is not enough; this is the point from which he is no longer able to decide if he should remain in the work-box and look at it in his outstretched hand, when it is already not enough for him to turn the mask around as frequently as is possible, slowly, first to one side, then to the other, once looking at the front, and once in semi-profile — the time has arrived, he determines at such moments — as it occurs now — for him to come out of the work-box, and to look at the mask in the special system of mirrors that he has set up; it is hard to decide when a day like that comes, but it does come; when he is leaving off work on an early evening, he feels that it is close; maybe tomorrow, he thinks, then the next day, early in the morning, taking the mask again into his hands, it is clear that it is not maybe, but now, this is the morning, now he must look at it, or to put it more precisely, the time has come to look at it in the mirrors, which are set up in such a fashion that he sits with the mask in his hand, and he faces the open door of the workshop that looks out onto a narrow hallway, as does the small tilting mirror already set up on the tatami behind him but highly visible from his work-box; and then facing him at the end of the narrow hallway, thus a good ten meters away, is a large mirror covering the wall; then there is roughly in the middle of the hallway, temporarily installed, a little tilting mirror, or rather a mirror that can be adjusted to the desired angle; there is also a little mirror on the hallway’s ceiling, exactly above the little mirror placed in the middle: this is the system, and he, facing the large mirror, accordingly displays with his right hand the mask to the large mirror, picking it up with greater caution than before and lifting it above his right shoulder; he sees first of all in the large mirror what he is displaying, what he has been doing during these long days, and of course he also sees his own face too and above his right shoulder, the mask at this point in the work-process — but he doesn’t look there, of course, but only and exclusively at the mask — slowly, along an invisible central axis — he turns to the right, then suddenly he pulls the mask back, so that, held at a moderate angle, it shows the left profile, as a Shite might do very frequently later on upon the Noh stage, and generally he is not very pleased with these first inspections in the system of mirrors, something is not really right in the face, that is, on his face, his features grow even more somber, if that is possible; he almost speaks, saying something, but then not even that, only the somber face remains, and he sits back down in the work-box, and continues carving at a different tempo, this is therefore always an essential development, this first and then second and third reflection in the mirrors, for a fundamental error always emerges only, but only, in this way, which does not mean that the problem will be solved, just that he suddenly sees that he is going in a wrong direction: something there beneath the eyes, as is the case now, has been deepened too much, or not deepened enough, this must be fixed; he takes up a different kind of chisel than the one he was working with before, but then he stops to think, and he exchanges this chisel for a third one, he bends a little bit forward, and in this different, somewhat more feverish tempo, again he begins to work, at times displaying — so as to check his work — the mask in the little tilting mirror facing him on the tatami, above which, as well, as in the double mirror on the hallway’s ceiling, he displays the part to be fixed, he shows it there above his shoulder, but in a curious fashion, as if he weren’t even looking, as if he weren’t even really examining it again, he holds it up and glances into the little mirror, and he lets the mask fall back already into his lap, as if knowing automatically where the problem is, he does not need the little mirror for that, as if he were saying that he doesn’t need any helping devices, he automatically knows that something is not good in the creases under the eyes this time, they are not deep enough, or they are, precisely, too deep, he is perceptibly nervous, only he knows why, that here, in this workshop, one movement can destroy everything, and until he fixes it, it will not be clear if it can be fixed at all; now, however, yes, this time it can be fixed, it is clear as the minutes pass how he