The Noh masks of the Konparu school are a set of 47 noh masks formerly owned by the famous Konparu family of noh actors and playwrights, now part of the collection of the

Tokyo National Museum The or TNM is an art museum in Ueno Park in the Taitō ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the four museums operated by the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage ( :ja:国立文化財機構), is considered the oldest national museum in Japan, ...

. These masks span five centuries, from the

Muromachi The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

to the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

(15th to 19th century), and are designated Important Cultural Properties. The Konparu school was originally led by

Konparu Zenchiku was a skilled Japanese Noh actor, troupe leader, and playwright. His plays are particularly characterized by an intricate, allusive, and subtle style inherited from Zeami which convolved yūgen with influences from Zen Buddhism (his Zen master ...

(1405 – ca. 1470) and his grandson

Konparu Zenpō was a Japanese Noh actor and playwright of the Konparu school. He was the grandson of Konparu Zenchiku. Zenpō's plays were more popular and dramatic, novel and crowd-pleasing with large casts and more elaborate effects and sets, than the plays o ...

(1454 – ca. 1532). The troupe prospered during the

Azuchi–Momoyama period The was the final phase of the in Japanese history from 1568 to 1600. After the outbreak of the Ōnin War in 1467, the power of the Ashikaga Shogunate effectively collapsed, marking the start of the chaotic Sengoku period. In 1568, Oda Nobuna ...

(1573–1603), with a critical factor for their success being the patronage of the ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...

(1537–1598), at a time when the leader of the Konparu school was Konparu Ansho (1549–1621), a retained actor of Toyotomi. During the late

(1603–1868) the troupe faced difficulties and started to lose vitality, and during the

Bakumatsu was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government ...

and the period of the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

in the late 19th century, many of the noh masks and other properties of the Konparu family were sold throughout Japan. In around 1868 this set of masks together with some other noh costumes and stage props were transferred to the

Kasuga-taisha is a Shinto shrine in Nara, Nara Prefecture, Japan. It is the shrine of the Fujiwara family, established in 768 CE and rebuilt several times over the centuries. The interior is famous for its many bronze lanterns, as well as the many stone lan ...

shrine in

Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...

. It was a group of ten volunteers in Nara, known collectively as ''Teirakusha'', who dedicated themselves to preserve and protect them, purchasing many of the items and allowing the actors to continue using them. In 1950 after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

the 47 masks and 196 costumes in the possession of the ''Teirakusha'' became part of the collection of the

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, where they are now kept and exhibited occasionally.

References

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External links

Website of the masks (National Institutes for Cultural Heritage)
Noh Important Cultural Properties of Japan