n 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 takes in air in a more tranquil rhythm, and now really he just casts a glance from time to time, as he holds it up to the little mirror, then he switches to a completely fine chisel, then to sandpaper, and finally he smoothes the detail being worked upon only with his hands, then once again he stands up and sits down facing the large mirror, holding the mask up above his right shoulder, again he turns it slowly a little to the right, then a little to the left, it really is clear that this time he was able to correct the mistake, and how far away the end still is, how many more times shall he make an obvious mistake, the whole thing is as if he were coming down from Nakagawa-cho on the serpentine path, but without braking even once until the end, coming down from the border of Nakagawa-cho, let’s say from the bridge over the brook, all the way to Gorufu jõ mae — there, where a famous Noh actor lives, if he passes by the Gorufu jõ mae, which occurs often as this is one of his favorite bike routes into Nakagawa — he often thinks of this Noh-Shite, that he lives here — just that, never anything else — in a word, that route is from Nakagawa to Gorufu jõ mae, well, and who could believe it, that it would be possible to come down from there, from the bridge over the creek to the city — completely freely, without braking — impossible, he would say, the path is so steep, there are so many turns, and the bicycle would accelerate so much, that in seconds the whole thing would be a labyrinth of speed, and a hairsbreadth wrong movement with the handlebars, for just a split second, and that would be it, the thought itself is unimaginable, this would be the general consensus, and even he wouldn’t take it on, even with the special mountain bike; this example, however, frequently comes to mind and not by accident, for even this workshop with its own speed, is at the very least, such a labyrinth, at the very least such a life-threatening, perilous labyrinth, where in every single movement of every single phase of the work there exists the possibility of error, beginning with the question of whether he picked out the correct tree at Okari-san’s, whether he ascertained correctly the line-structure of the hinoki — for one must know with utter certainty where the individual lines are placed in the tree, because everything, but everything has to be determined on the basis of these lines, as this decides the location of the central axis, and through that, every single line to be drawn from the stencils — but then comes the drawing of the contours, the decision as to where the tip of the nose will be, then the eyebrows, the forehead, the nostrils of the nose, the depth of the chin, and the ear, he cannot err in any single moment with a single stroke of the chisel, and then where is the end to this — here he isn’t even close to the midpoint, when he must deepen the individual contours of the mask, when he can begin carving the surface of the eye socket, the nose, the cheeks, the ears and the mouth, and where is the end to all of this, he isn’t even at the midpoint, because the days just come one after the other, and he has to carve out the completely concave back half of the mask, then bore through the place where the eyeballs will be, he must attend to the formation of the mouth and the teeth, and only then can he say that he has arrived more or less at the midpoint of the work, and then comes the point when he takes a small nylon bag filled with lacquer and soaks the mask, as well as the horns, which have been carved in the meantime; then he has to wait a good long while, then take the whole thing out of the lacquer, and then place it in boiling water, then dry it, fit the horns into the right points on the forehead and fasten them into place, and only then comes the gilding of the eyes, then the overlay of the teeth with copper, the entire process now requires a different kind of sensitivity and aptitude from a person who suddenly must be a goldsmith and coppersmith, he must have at his disposal these sensitivities and these aptitudes, just as when the inner surface of the mask is being scraped clean, then painted, first with lacquer, then after drying, with the famed and dangerous urushi, then the whole thing is placed in a special drying appliance, then it is removed from the drying appliance, for then what follows is the actual painting: that is, the spraying of the mask’s surface with a white pigment of his own mixture, and then there is the restoration of the gilding of the eyes and the copper overlay of the teeth through the process known as reburnishing, then the application of red paint onto the lips; and in general the operation of the painting of the mask is complex and many-sided — he must paint the hannya mask as well, and he must paint the hair, indeed the individual strands of hair must be painted individually — he must be able to form, on the surface of the mask that is painted white, the blemishes of the skin, its gentle pock marks, and only here, at this point can he say that he is able to begin the last phase of the work, that is, he has to sew from silk, and again, just by himself, the protective pouch for the mask: first to cut out the inner casing from thin white silk, then to prepare the proper lining from torn felt, giving the pouch the soft, thick lining; and finally he has to be able to select, and to select correctly, from the gorgeous woven silks of varying patterns, the one that is truly suitable, the one that will be fitting for this mask and this mask only, then to cut that out as well, and sew the whole thing together, and all of this without a single mistake, but this is impossible: I frequently make mistakes, he has acknowledged to his students — who are admitted again and again into his studio for only brief periods, only from time to time — frequently, he says to them, smiling and nodding; he does not in general show his worry, yet it is perceptible that, at such times, he is angry, in vain does he smile, because one cannot make any mistakes at all, he explains, and despite that, he always and frequently makes mistakes, not to mention the one instance that really threatens him with complete nervous collapse, when the entire completed mask is a mistake, if he may explain it like that, namely that when he has been looking at a mask for two or three days with pleasure, when he feels that he can inspect it with satisfaction, because this mask — clearly thanks to chance — has been successfully completed, then suddenly he just senses a chill around his heart, and he is looking at it with a cold and impartial feeling, he immediately sees that it is bad, that he has ruined it, and do you know why, he then raises his eyebrows, and he himself immediately supplies the answer, at this point he never stammers, he looks around at the students, who are there only occasionally: because no one can make a good mask by chance, to make a good mask by chance is impossible, chance has absolutely no role whatsoever in this, all the while you can’t know of course what does have a role; maybe, he lowers his voice, practice and experience have a role, and only these two things, nothing else, because the mask is just a piece of wood, a painted and carved piece of wood, on the surface of which we glimpse a face, and he can even say this now, and he feels this now too, when the day arrives, pronouncing his latest work, known thus by its exact name, shiro-hannya, the demon-head created for the Noh play entitled Aoi no Ue; he sets to sewing the silk pouch and then he sews it, and he looks for a while at the terrifying creature, at the monster with its huge gaping mouth, its bulging eyes, and the horns on its forehead; he looks at it, he examines his latest masterwork, then he carefully puts it into its final place, into the silk pouch, and he doesn’t even suspect yet — the thought never even occurs to him — that in the space of hardly more than a month and a half, what his hands have brought into the world is a demon, and that it will do harm.