Purified Before It Is Ever Put On

Reflecting this special status, the okina mask is treated with a degree of ceremonial care well beyond that given to an ordinary Noh mask, historically stored separately from the rest of a troupe's mask collection, presented to the performer through its own small rite before the performance, and in some lineages purified with salt or through other rituals of the kind more usually associated with Shinto shrine practice than with a stage prop. The performer who will wear the mask traditionally undergoes a period of ritual abstinence, monoimi, in the days before a performance of Okina, avoiding certain foods and activities in a manner far closer to preparation for a religious rite than to an actor's ordinary rehearsal.

Carved from cypress wood and finished in lacquer and pigment with attached horsehair for the beard and eyebrows, the mask's physical construction follows the same craft traditions as other Noh masks, but its treatment before, during and after the performance marks it out as functioning less as costume than as an object through which the invoked blessing is understood to become present, a distinction Noh practitioners themselves have maintained across many centuries of continuous performance.