Japanese Culture and Traditions

Why Is the Jason Ice Hockey Mask Scary?

Last week I went to see an ice hockey match. Here in Hokkaido, skiing and skating are the two major winter sports, but ski and skate areas are completely separate. My hometown is a ski area, and I haven’t skated so much and had never even once seen a professional ice hockey match. How was it? It was awesome, without exaggeration! To tell the truth, I have no idea of the rules but could enjoy it to the full. The problem is its speed. I know the speed of play is one of the attractions of ice hockey, but the players’ moves were so quick that I couldn’t fully understand what was going on.

By the way, did you know that ice hockey goalkeepers have no longer worn the iconic mask of Jason in the Friday the 13th series? I was disappointed by the fact and somehow thought about Japanese Noh masks (please see the above image) during the match. Both of them are creepy, but in two different ways. The ice-hockey mask scares us by the absence of expression; the Noh masks by the expression slightly changing depending on the viewing point. On second thought, I think it’s almost the same in a broad sense why we’re scared of the masks. We may just make our imagination go wild and project the image of something evil onto the masks.