The okina mask, most often carved in the hakushikijo, white old man, or kokushikijo, black old man, forms, is worn in Okina, the oldest surviving piece in the Noh repertoire and one performed as a ritual invocation of peace and abundance rather than as dramatic storytelling in the ordinary sense. Unlike the masks used in narrative Noh plays, which represent specific characters within a plot, the okina mask represents no single dramatic figure at all; the performer is understood to become, briefly, a vessel for an old man deity associated with blessing and long life, and the piece has no plot conflict, no villain and no resolution in the way conventional Noh drama does.
Ortolani's history of Japanese theatre traces Okina back to shamanistic ritual antecedents that predate formalised Noh drama as an art form altogether, arguing that the piece preserves, embedded within a later theatrical tradition, something closer to the older ritual performance out of which Noh itself eventually grew, which is part of why performers and scholars alike have long treated Okina as standing slightly outside the rest of the Noh canon rather than simply as its earliest example. Photography and even casual sketching of the mask itself is treated cautiously by some troupes, another mark of the reverence given to this single piece among the many masks a Noh company otherwise owns and uses freely.