Death Mask

Death Mask

by Tadami Yamada

　There is the short novel entitled "The Death Mask" that was written by Yasunari Kawabata who was a Nobel prize winner. ------In front of a woman's death mask, two rival men in love clasped hands each other. Reason why every one of death mask is difficult to distinguish regard of sex. This is the gist of the short novel.
　But I guess that is a rhetoric of the Kawabata's way.

　Death mask that I really saw, and that is generally well known in Japan, is of a novelist Soseki Natsume. And I suppose that either a poet Hakusyu Kitahara's or a general Maresuke Nogi's are well known. Of course, Ludwig van Beethoven's or Aleksei K. Tolstoi's too.
　We can see not only these great men, but also, for example, rarely devilish homicide's death mask in the Black Museum of Scotland Yard.
　Neither, I don't think them womanish or sexless death mask.

　In Japan, although there are some death masks of great man, but generally Japanese, if anything, wouldn't make death mask to smear dead face with plaster.
　Making death mask comes from an essential part of European culture, that is to say, that their spirituality would have made efforts to approach to immortality under the pretext of materialization.
　On the other side, Japanese would have tried to resolve both body and soul, both the glory and the misery, all memories of dead parson into "qui"---elements. With resolving into "qui", they gain their immortality.

　"------When they made the death mask, they smeared oil on face of my master who didn't move an inch and press on with plaster . I heard later. A man who was seeing things said to me that was a painful even to look at when they took plaster off face as master's mustache was twitched. With only this I thought I couldn't forget thing ever heard.------" A novelist Hyakken Uchida wrote in his "An Account of Master Soseki's Dying".
　Making death mask, it was an affair that was done a modern intellectual person in Japan. Soseki Natsume was one of a few person who touched the essential of Europe in the Meiji era.

　Anyway, there was one another death mask I really saw in addition to above mentioned. That is-----

　 My friend, a painter, who had studied in Paris returned home since seven years. And he set up his new studio.
　One evening he invited me, I visited his new studio taking a bottle of sake---rice wine.
　The studio that the ceiling, the floor and four walls, everywhere were painted in white, so that it was unaccountable strange.

　The wall looked like a sickroom, a young girl's mask made of plaster was hung on. It was an unusually realistic style, considering that was decorative art, and also odd for an interior.
　He said it was the death mask. It was a girl who killed herself, who threw herself into the Seine.
　And he said that the death mask was selling as a souvenir.
　I guessed it was possible the end of disappointed love.

　The story about the young girl seemed to be well known that place, my friend said.
　I could infer her beauty from her death mask. But it was not as if sculpture possesses beauty. The death mask of the beautiful young girl was dogged by something cruelty of fate.

　He said the girl was beautiful, but it sounded strange for the souvenir of the death mask.
　Thinking that things, I went on drinking sake with him.
　And also I remembered an unsavory reputation of him in Paris.

　Smirking he had said that study abroad won't do these days though, and he had started for Paris to resolve permanent residence. However, for some reason his study had came to a standstill for a while, ----six months.
　After that, he indulged in wine and woman. I heard he had a risky love affair with some twins. It seemed as if he was a ropedancer.

　It is about one hundred fifty years from Soseki Natsume's time till nowadays. In former times, speaking France disease, it meant venereal diseases. But nowadays it seems to mean a depressive psychosis, because although they could go abroad the longed-for place, they would get depression.
　We can go to Paris for about fifteen hours today.
　However, for my friend, Paris might be a far metropolis.

　He went on drinking leaning on the wall. Above his top the young girl's death mask lowered her eyes.
　The liquor had begun suddenly to take effect on me. I was startled to look at my friend.
　His eyes were crooked oddly.

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Copyright(c) 2012 Tadami Yamada. All Rights Reserved.