Hannya mask
A Noh theatre mask of a woman turned into a demon by jealousy: two horns, gilded eyes, and a mouth split from ear to ear with gold teeth and fangs.
Meaning
The Victoria and Albert Museum describes its hannya, carved in Japan between 1650 and 1750, as a female serpent-demon filled with malicious jealousy and hatred. Two sharp horns grow from the temples, metallic eyes stare from under scowling brows, and the gaping mouth is full of gold teeth with fangs above and below. The mask is worn by the lead actor (shite) in the second half of four Noh plays: Aoi no Ue and Dōjōji, about women betrayed or spurned by their lovers, and Kurozuka and Momijigari, about demons who first appear in human form to trap the unwary. The hannya belongs to the Noh theatre.
Origin and history
The name has several explanations, the V&A says; the likeliest is that it comes from Hannyabō, a mask carver of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Noh itself was codified in the fourteenth century by the actors Kan’ami and Zeami under the patronage of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.
Rage and sorrow in one face
The mask shows a woman partway through becoming a demon, and the carving keeps traces of who she was. On the V&A’s mask the top of the head is painted with the parted hair of a beautiful woman’s mask, while loose strands straggle round the forehead and veins throb on the brow. ColBase, the collections database of Japan’s national museums, reads the brow and the dishevelled hair of a hannya in its collection as signs of her deep sorrow.
Pale and red hannya
Hannya masks come in different skin tones, and the tone tells the audience something. The V&A notes that a lighter face marks a woman of higher rank. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts explains that a paler hannya, expressing feminine delicacy, is worn in Aoi no Ue, and a dark red one, for great passion, in Dōjōji and Kurozuka.
Masks off the stage
Henri Joly, cataloguing Japanese art in 1908, lists the hannya, “female demon with horns, open mouth and sharp fangs”, among the masks used in Noh and other theatre, and notes that small masks were also carved as netsuke.
Often confused with
The horns and fangs make the hannya look like an oni, but the hannya is a woman’s mask from the Noh stage, and every museum record here describes the jealous woman behind it.
Read next
- Next in Japanese symbolsDaruma dollA round, legless doll of Bodhidharma, the monk said to have brought Zen to China, usually red and sold with its eyes blank. Its owner paints in one eye when making a wish and the other when the wish comes true.
- The same shape in Taíno symbolsAtabey (the Woman of Caguana)Atabey is the mother of the Taíno supreme being in the account Ramón Pané wrote in the 1490s, a mother with five names. Many Taíno today see her in La Mujer de Caguana, a frog-legged woman carved on a stone at the Caguana ceremonial park in Puerto Rico.
See also
Oni (and the oni mask), Oni (and the oni mask), Torii (shrine gate), Komainu (guardian lion-dogs), Amaterasu (the sun kami), Raijin and Fūjin (thunder and wind).
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum, Hannya (Nō mask, 1650–1750), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, “Hannya”, Nō mask of a female demon, Japan, 1650–1750, museum number 314-1886 (collections record O75140), Victoria and Albert Museum, summary and object description
- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Nō Mask of Hannya, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, “Nō Mask of Hannya”, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald W. Birks, inv. 1949.50.Ee.1, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, object description
- ColBase (National Institutes for Cultural Heritage), Noh Mask: Han’nya, ColBase: Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan, “Noh Mask: Han’nya”, via Japan Search, National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan, English description
- Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art (1908), Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art: A Description of Historical Episodes, Legendary Characters, Folk-lore, Myths, Religious Symbolism Illustrated in the Arts of Old Japan, London: John Lane, 1908, John Lane (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), nos. 284 (“Hannya”) and 577 (“Masks”)
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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