Page from Hagoromo (Feathered Robe), Shôwa period, circa 1984-1986

This page from Matsubara's Hagoromo artist's book likely marks the opening of the celestial dance (tenmai), the dramatic and narrative center of the Noh play. The tennin, robed again, begins her performance for the gathered audience and the watching fisherman. Matsubara's woodblock carving captures motion through directional mark-making — repeated gouge strokes radiating outward from a figure suggest rotation and ascent without depicting sequential movement. The composition may employ a strong vertical axis to anchor the dancing figure while surrounding lines spiral or curve away, conveying the upward pull of the maiden's return to heaven. The dance is described in the original Noh text as an act of devotion and transformation, and Matsubara's spiritual sensibility — shaped by both Buddhist practice and her engagement with Western religious communities — would bring particular attentiveness to this threshold between the earthly and the divine.