抄録
A Noh mask, carved out of wood, is often said to be a byword for impassivity.
However, a Noh mask expresses various emotions during traditional Japanese Noh per
formances. A Noh mask that looks upward expresses happiness, while a mask looks
downward expresses sadness. Nevertheless, previous studies reported the opposite re
sults: people recognize pictures of masks with upward inclinations as being sad, whereas
masks with the larger downward inclinations were perceived as happy. This absurdity
seems to be occurred partly due to something realized in Mona Lisa’s smile. Livingstone
(2000) pointed out that we cannot directly see Mona Lisa’s smile. Her smile appears
only when we look at her eyes with seeing her mouth peripherally. A recent empirical
study confirmed that this peripheral vision for smile makes a face more mysterious than
a neutral or continuously smiling face. I will argue that a smiling mouth of Noh masks
with downward inclinations makes a Noh mask mysterious during Noh performances,
because hardly Eastern Asia people look at a mouth when they judge facial expressions (i.e., people see a mouth only peripherally). In experimental settings, people look at a
mouth of a Noh mask directly, that causes the oppsite results from those expected in
the framework of Noh world. I will also discuss similarities and differences between a
Noh mask and “Hello Kitty”, which is a fictional character that also expresses countless
facial expressions without a mouth.
