French Journal of Japanese Studies, 5 | 2016 Kabuki’S Early Ventures Onto Western Stages (1900‑1930):Tsutsui Tokujirō in T
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Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies English Selection 5 | 2016 New Perspectives on Japan’s Performing Arts Kabuki’s Early Ventures onto Western Stages (1900‑1930): Tsutsui Tokujirō in the footsteps of Kawakami and Hanako Jean‑Jacques Tschudin Translator: Karen Grimwade Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/cjs/1168 DOI: 10.4000/cjs.1168 ISSN: 2268-1744 Publisher INALCO Electronic reference Jean‑Jacques Tschudin, “Kabuki’s Early Ventures onto Western Stages (1900‑1930): Tsutsui Tokujirō in the footsteps of Kawakami and Hanako”, Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies [Online], 5 | 2016, Online since 15 July 2019, connection on 08 July 2021. URL: http:// journals.openedition.org/cjs/1168 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/cjs.1168 This text was automatically generated on 8 July 2021. Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Kabuki’s Early Ventures onto Western Stages (1900‑1930):Tsutsui Tokujirō in t... 1 Kabuki’s Early Ventures onto Western Stages (1900‑1930): Tsutsui Tokujirō in the footsteps of Kawakami and Hanako Jean‑Jacques Tschudin Translation : Karen Grimwade Original release: Jean‑Jacques Tschudin, « Le Kabuki s’aventure sur les scènes occidentales : Tsutsui Tokujirô sur les traces des Kawakami et de Hanako », Cipango, 20, 2013, 13‑63, mis en ligne le 17 avril 2015. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ cipango/1901 ; DOI : 10.4000/cipango.1901 1 In the 1860s, as Japan opened its doors to the outside world, the previously unknown arts of this mysterious Land of the Rising Sun were unveiled to the West, revealing aesthetic options and techniques that not only aroused its curiosity but also offered its artists and creators novel solutions and stimulating possibilities for their own work. Although this phenomenon is primarily associated with the world of painting, printing and the decorative arts, somewhat away from the influence of Japonism1 and at a slightly later date, theatre also came to be fascinated with the performing arts of Japan. But what was truly known about these arts at the time? By what means and through whose initiative could they be discovered? 2 From the early Meiji period (1868‑1912) through to the eve of World War II (1939‑1945), information generally took the form of narratives published by visitors returning from Japan who described their forays into Japanese theatre. These highly impressionistic accounts were gradually supplemented with studies by leading specialists, many of them long-term residents to Japan and fluent in the language. Nevertheless, this scholarly approach tended to focus solely on the literary—and in some cases liturgical— dimensions of theatre, taking little interest in it as a stage art.2 It was only towards the late 1920s that serious, enlightened studies of the subject began to appear. Generally speaking, theatre practitioners inspired by the Japanese example—such as Appia, Artaud, Brecht, Craig, Copeau, Dullin, Eisenstein, Fuchs, Gémier, Lugné‑Poe, Meyerhold, Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies, 5 | 2016 Kabuki’s Early Ventures onto Western Stages (1900‑1930):Tsutsui Tokujirō in t... 2 Reinhardt, Stanislavski and Yeats—had no knowledge of Japan (with the exception of Paul Claudel, French ambassador to Japan from 1921 to 1927) and drew on an assortment of fragmentary data, themselves based on a handful of performances of questionable authenticity. It is precisely these rare appearances by Japanese theatre on European stages that I propose to examine in this paper. The first international tours 3 A quick tally reveals just four tours throughout the entire first half of the twentieth century! The first came courtesy of the theatre troupe led by Kawakami Otojirō 川上音 二郎 (May 1899-December 1900 and April 1901-August 1902). This was followed by a long sojourn in Europe by Hanako 花子, from 1901 to 1916, and a brief visit to the Soviet Union by Ichikawa Sadanji 市川左団次 (summer 1928). Finally, there was the lengthy tour conducted by Tsutsui Tokujirō 筒井徳二郎 (January 1930-April 1931), taking in twenty-two countries. 4 The first three tours, which are relatively well documented even in the West, will merely be outlined briefly in order to focus on Tsutsui’s as‑yet relatively unknown endeavour. Kawakami Otojirō’s troupe 5 While visitors to Japan were sending home colourful descriptions of their theatre excursions, and French travellers were expressing shock or delight at kabuki-style realism, theatre enthusiasts back in the West were about to discover a curious version of this performing art right on their doorstep thanks to a tour organised by a Japanese actor who arrived in Paris with a programme supposedly representing the great Japanese tradition.3 Although the ircumstances of this tour are well known, a brief summary would no doubt be useful.4 It consisted of course of the performances given by Kawakami Otojirō and his troupe as part of the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. These performances, and the acting skills of Kawakami’s wife Sadayakko 貞奴5 in particular, charmed Parisian aesthetes, eliciting an abundance of sometimes surprising commentary. The situation was paradoxical in that, despite being supposedly traditional, these plays were introduced by a pioneer of modern theatre, performed by actors considered in the world of kabuki to be low‑class showmen, and starred a woman in the main female roles. 6 Indeed, far from being an actor born and bred, Kawakami Otojirō (1864‑1911) was originally a sōshi 壮士, a political agitator within the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement (Jiyū minken undō 自由民権運動). It was within this agitprop context that he staged politicised plays and cabaret acts. He continued his theatre activities after political calm was restored by developing a new genre known as shinpa 新派 (new school), which gradually won over Japanese audiences with plays examining contemporary society and performed in a more realist style that was neither truly modern nor clearly modelled on Western theatre. As for his wife Sadayakko (1871‑1946), she was a former high-ranking geisha and talented dancer, but only truly began her acting career with the American tour. Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies, 5 | 2016 Kabuki’s Early Ventures onto Western Stages (1900‑1930):Tsutsui Tokujirō in t... 3 7 To the great consternation of the traditional masters, these curious individuals were thus to be the ambassadors of Japanese theatre overseas. Having arrived in San Francisco in late May 1899, they travelled across the United States and then to London where they were hired by the dancer-promoter Loie Fuller (1862‑1928)6 to perform at the Exposition Universelle. These were the unexpected circumstances in which the Kawakamis came to embody—somewhat involuntarily—an approximation of Japanese tradition alongside Fuller’s avant-garde experiments. 8 They presented four plays very loosely adapted from the kabuki repertoire (The Geisha and the Knight; Kesa and Morito; Jingoro; and Takanori) and were such a triumph that they eventually stayed at Fuller’s theatre for four months, signing a contract for a lengthy tour (April 1901‑August 1902) that would take them to all the major European stages. 9 Their performances were enthusiastically received and Sadayakko hailed as a triumph by artists and high society. Painters, theatre professionals, writers, critics and essayists all flocked to admire her, showering her with praise and making countless drawings, sketches and photographs of her.7 This textual and iconographic body of work was recently supplemented with two newly discovered documents: a collection of twenty‑nine gramophone records featuring ballads, monologues and melodies performed by members of the Kawakami troupe, and a fragment of film showing a samurai performing martial kata amongst the swirling white dresses of Fuller’s dancers. 8 Hanako: a new Japanese star 10 The following episode confirms both the appetite of theatre enthusiasts for such performances and the blatant commercialism with which they were proposed. 11 Just as with the Kawakamis, the success of this new tour was largely due to the encounter between Loie Fuller and a former geisha who arrived in Europe with an unlikely troupe of music‑hall performers. Thanks to the World Fairs, Japanese fairground artists—jugglers, acrobats, illusionists and dancers—were highly appreciated in the West, encouraging a relatively large number of them to try their luck.9 And so it was that Hanako (Ōta Hisa 太田ひさ, 1868‑1945), 10 an impoverished geisha from Gifu Prefecture, came to be hired as a dancer in a troupe leaving Japan in March 1901. After a series of shows in Copenhagen, she found herself working in a Japanese restaurant in Antwerp and was subsequently hired by a producer of variety shows in Dusseldorf. Performing alongside a small troupe of locally recruited actors, she played the lead female role in a play entitled Bushidō 武士道 (The Way of the Warrior), set in a pleasure quarter. The plot sees two debauched samurais draw their swords after a quarrel and ends with the disgraced loser committing hara‑kiri. The reception in Germany encouraged Hanako to form an independent troupe. She performed first in England, then (having come under Fuller’s management) all around Europe. 12 Rodin discovered Hanako at the Marseilles Colonial Exhibition in 1906, having come to admire the Cambodian dancers, and later made several portraits of her.11 When the troupe disbanded leaving Hanako alone, she hit a slump before once again finding success. She performed throughout the West for over a decade, until the war put a stop Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies, 5 | 2016 Kabuki’s Early Ventures onto Western Stages (1900‑1930):Tsutsui Tokujirō in t... 4 to her activities in 1916. She then opened a Japanese restaurant in London before permanently returning to Japan in 1921. 13 Whereas the plays performed by the Kawakamis retained links to kabuki, little trace of this stage art remained in Hanako’s shows, invariably designed by Fuller to culminate in murder or suicide, thereby allowing the heroine to shine in scenes of tragic demise.