Performing Gender at the Beginning of Modern Chinese Theatre Siyuan Liu

The modern Chinese genre huaju (spoken drama) marked its centenary in 2007. An imported form, huaju is different from traditional Chinese theatre in a number of ways, including its use of gender-appropriate casting rather than female impersonation. However, while actresses started playing female characters in the mid 1910s, gender-appropriate casting only became a standard practice in the 1920s, when modern “scientific” discourse that emphasized the marked differences between the biological sexes made cross-gender casting seem an unreasonable choice in huaju.1 Throughout the first decade of huaju (1907–late 1910s), which is generally referred to

1. In Sex, Culture and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period, Frank Dikötter argues: “With the rise of medical science, differentiation between other groups of people also became more important: through an investigation of their sexuality, people were more rigidly classified according to their gender, age and social position” (1995:9).

Siyuan Liu is a Franklin Fellow and visiting Assistant Professor of theatre at the University of Georgia. He received his PhD in theatre and performance studies from the University of Pittsburgh and has published several research articles on modern Chinese and Japanese theatre in Theatre Journal, Asian Theatre Journal, and Text & Presentation.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 as wenmingxi (civilized drama) or xinju (new drama), female roles were generally performed by actors rather than actresses.2 This was the case with the first huaju production, the 1907 adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin entitled Heinu yutian lu (Black Slaves’ Cry to Heaven). This production was staged in Tokyo by the all-male student group Chunliu She (the Spring Willow Society), comprising Chinese students studying in Japan.3 The practice of all-male casting continued when the students returned to Shanghai, where wenmingxi flourished in the 1910s. Although challenged by the emergence of actresses, first in 1912 in all-female troupes and two years later in 1914 in mixed-sex companies, the practice of female impersonation continued to dominate the wenmingxi stage and was still considered the best performance of femininity throughout the 1910s. If the new, imported spoken drama was supposed to break from traditional Chinese theatre such as jingju (Beijing opera) and follow the conventions of Western dramas and theatrical productions, how can we understand the persistence of female impersonation in the first decade of huaju? Two scholars in the past decade have attempted to tackle this issue as part of their broader studies of Chinese theatre. They offer two perspectives on wenmingxi’s performance of gender: as an appropriation of traditional theatrical conventions in the anti-authoritarian and radical spirit of modernity; and as a mode of performing gender drag that followed Western realism without the benefit of traditional theatrical conventions (Chou 1997:141–50; Lei 2006:101–07). Unfortunately, this dualistic view of female impersonation in wenmingxi as either modern or traditional is historically inaccurate since it overlooks the fact that wenmingxi’s immediate predecessor in cross-gender performance was neither Chinese jingju nor Western realism, but the onnagata (male actors in female roles) of Japan’s first modern theatre,shinpa (new school drama).4 Shinpa started in Japan in the 1880s as a modern reaction to kabuki and reached the height of its popularity in the first decade of the 20th century, when the Spring Willow Society was formed in Tokyo. Like wenmingxi that followed it, shinpa combined elements of Western spoken drama such as colloquial speech and modern staging techniques, with certain conventions of traditional theatre, including female impersonation. By the time the Spring Willow Society staged Heinu yutian lu in 1907, shinpa had been in existence for two decades and had established its own conventions for performing Japanese femininity. Shinpa onnagata were also

Figure 1. (previous page) Kawakami Sadayakko as Tosca with Matsumoto Kōshirō VII as Scarpia in a 1913 production of La Tosca at Tokyo’s Imperial Theatre. (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University)

2. Apart from casting female impersonators, wenmingxi was different from later huaju in several other ways, including the use of scenarios and improvisation instead of written scripts, the occasional inclusion of music and songs, and the appropriation of certain stylized acting conventions from jingju (Beijing opera). 3. In this essay, I use both “Spring Willow Society” (Chunliu She) and “Spring Willow Theatre” (Chunliu Juchang). The former term refers to the group of Chinese student actors in Tokyo. The latter is the name of the company established by the same group in Shanghai in the 1910s. At times, I use “Spring Willow” to highlight the consis- tency of their performance style from Tokyo to Shanghai. 4. In their studies on this subject, Chou Huiling and Daphne Lei do mention the connection between wenmingxi and modern Japanese theatre, but both seem unaware of the shinpa onnagata. Chou mistakenly attributes the Japanese influence to a different and later modern theatrical form, shingeki (new drama; 1997:141, 143). In reality, shingeki emerged around the same time as the Spring Willow Society and followed Western theatrical conventions much more closely than shinpa, including gender-appropriate casting. Similarly, although Lei correctly identifies shinpa as an important source for wenmingxi, she seems unaware of the presence of the onnagata in shinpa, since she considers “the reintroduction of actresses” as part of shinpa’s “Western-inspired experimentation,” along with the “use of Western-style staging and everyday speech, adaptation of Western plays, and so forth” (2006:102). SiyuanLiu

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 beginning to establish conventions of performing Western female identity, following the example set by shinpa’s only female star Kawakami Sadayakko, who had seen Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, and other top European actresses during her theatrical tours to the US and Europe with her husband Kawakami Otojirõ and his Company. It was in reality this shinpa model of female impersonation—a combination of kabuki and European melodramatic conventions, a liminal form between tradition and modernity, East and West—that was the direct precedent of cross-gender casting in wenmingxi. There is a clear link between shinpa and gender performance in kabuki. Shinpa’s impact on Spring Willow’s productions in Tokyo and Shanghai and, via Spring Willow, on gender performance in wenmingxi, is part of the “sedimentation” or “materialization” of modern, European- oriented sexuality in China. It is only through this broader socio-historical context that we can truly understand the performance of femininity in early modern Western-style theatre in China. Shinpa: Spring Willow’s Model for Gender Performance Shinpa originated in Japan in the 1880s from two sources. The first was the so-calleds õshi shibai (rough young men’s theatre) that arose in Osaka out of post–Meiji Restoration discontent among a group of young men who used theatre to promote their ideas of social and political reform. Its most famous representative, Kawakami Otojirõ, brought the form from Osaka to Tokyo and national prominence in 1893. Between 1899 and 1902, Kawakami Otojirõ and Sadayakko together toured the US and Europe twice, performing kabuki-style plays and observing, among other things, mainstream Western theatre’s performance of womanhood. Upon returning to Japan, they set out to reform Japanese theatre, calling their brand of shinpa seigeki, a direct translation of the Western “straight theatre.” As Ayako Kano points out, although they aimed to “straighten” Japanese theatre by eliminating such conventions as singing, dancing, and cross-gender representation—which they deemed incompatible with modern, “direct” theatre (Kano 2001:57–84)—they were only partially successful, especially in the realm of gender performance. The couple did succeed in introducing Sadayakko as the first (and only) female shinpa star by billing her, in the newspaperYomiuri shinbun on 28 Janu-ary 1903, as knowledgeable of and experienced in the performance of female roles in the West (reprinted in Shirakawa 1985:374). It was her performance of Desdemona in a localized production of Othello in 1903 that set her on the path to stardom,5 and she continued with other heroines favored by Bernhardt and Terry in such plays as Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice (both in 1903), and other European dramatic and melodramatic classics. Since Sadayakko introduced these European plays to Japanese audiences, her style had a great influence on shinpa’s performance of Western womanhood. However, Sadayakko’s popularity failed to undermine the legitimacy of shinpa onnagata, even in the realm of performing Western womanhood. In fact, she often shared the spotlight with shinpa onnagata, who undoubtedly benefited from her direct experience with Western melodramatic conventions which, as Michael Booth points out, were just as stylized as the techniques of the onnagata: “Gesture, facial expression, speech, and movement were strongly

emphasized within set acting patterns” (1965:190) and strict conventions governed “the Performing Gender in Chinese Theatre specialized acting necessary for the portrayal of the stock character types” for both men and women (198). As can been seen in a picture of Sadayakko in a 1913 production of La Tosca (fig. 1), the actress was clearly utilizing melodramatic gestures and postures. Shinpa onnagata borrowed Sadayakko’s techniques and blended them with their kabuki-based conventions to create their own performance of Western womanhood.

5. Desdemona was also the role played by the first professional actresses on the English stage in 1660. It was seen as “a part well suited to an alluring emphasis on an actress’s femininity: she is gentle, passive and vulnerable, she is suspected of being a whore and she is ultimately the victim of horrific bedroom violence” (Howe 1992:39).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 While Kawakami’s branch of shinpa grew out of political activism and was considered artistically crude, the other impetus behind the birth of shinpa was the growing frustration among politicians, intellectuals, and amateur actors with kabuki’s inability to depict life realistically. The first presentation of this style of shinpa, the 1891 performance of a group of actors called Saibikan, featured a dance by the actress Chitose Beiha sandwiched between two plays. Saibikan disbanded after this one show, and almost all subsequent productions in this style by shinpa groups other than Kawakami’s featured actors performing female roles in a reformed version of the traditional kabuki onnagata’s style. As kabuki scholars have pointed out,6 kabuki onnagatas perform what is considered the paragon of womanhood. This role is not based on real women but on the wakashu, the junior partner in a homosexual relationship between two samurais that is traditionally initiated as an apprenticeship and rite of passage. Early kabuki onnagata in the late 17th Figure 2. Takada Minoru (left) and Kawai Takeo. (From Engei and early 18th centuries were former Gaho 1910). wakashu kabuki players, and the manuals of the onnagata’s art emphasized achieving the qualities of ideal womanhood through meticulous gender training both on- and offstage.7 Applying gender theory to onnagata analysis, Maki Morinaga points out that this practice underscores the following principles: “(1) gender identity can be divorced from sex identity, (2) the gender dichotomy is actually based on the gender spectrum, and (3) gender is presentation and not representation” (2002:263). Early shinpa onnagata directly inherited the premodern kabuki tradition of presenting gender as cited conventions. One of the first generation of shinpa actors, Yamaguchi Sadao, was trained as a kabuki onnagata (Toita 1956:268), and Kawai Takeo, often considered the best shinpa onnagata, was the son of a kabuki actor. Critics hailed his style as “brilliant and florid,” reminiscent “no doubt of his Kabuki origins” (272). Stage shots of Kawai in kimono roles reveal him as indeed using some kabuki onnagata conventions with a slightly realistic and contemporary twist. One such example is a picture of him standing in front of Takada Minoru, a leading shinpa star specializing in tough men roles (fig. 2). As Katherine Mezur notes, the convention of the onnagata standing posture is well established: The onnagata keeps his knees slightly bent and turned inward. With one knee slightly behind the other, he presses one knee into the back of the other knee. In standing

6. Maki Morinaga (2002) and Katherine Mezur (2005) have provided some detailed discussion on this topic. 7. Among these manuals are those written by the first generation of kabuki onnagata, such as Ayamegusa (The Words of Ayame) by Yoshizawa Ayame I (1673–1729) and Onnagata hiden (Onnagata Esoterica) by Segawa Kikunojō I (1693–1749). SiyuanLiu

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 postures, the onnagata twists his upper torso opposite to the knee angle, creating a twist up through the spine, which complements the front wrap line of the kimono. This basic posture makes the onnagata appear small. Further, it lowers the koshi (pelvic region), the center of gravity. (2005:184) When we compare the description of the kabuki onnagata standing posture with this picture, it becomes obvious that Kawai’s appeal indeed lay in his kabuki roots. As a tall man, he stands in front of the male lead, striking a kabuki-like pose with his feet, knees, and torso following the kabuki convention, enhanced by his left hand lifting the kimono and right hand holding a handkerchief, thus appearing smaller and more “feminine” than the man standing behind him. What he has done here is to adapt these techniques—with the help of more realistic scripts and mise-en-scène—to portray contemporary middle-class women who were the anchors of shinpa’s domestic melodramas. In the early 1900s, shinpa onnagata, like Kawai, benefited from Sadayakko’s melodramatic style and added it to their shinpa-based repertoire to perform Western femininity, sometimes even acting in the same play with her. Sadayakko and Kawai appeared side by side in two French plays, Pour la couronne (For the Crown; 1905) by François Coppée and Patrie (The Fatherland; 1906) by Victorien Sardou (Matsumoto 1980:381, 385). In both productions, Kawai played aristocratic women while Sadayakko played young girls.8 Of the two, Patrie was a semihistorical melodrama concerning a suppressed Flemish rebellion against Spanish occupiers in the 16th century. Sardou, the playwright, recommended his play to Kawakami during the latter’s second tour in Paris in 1901 (Fuller [1913] 1977:217– 20). The shinpa version of Patrie was staged in October 1906 with Kawakami as Count de Rysoor, the leader of Flemish rebels; Sadayakko as Rafaela, the compas- sionate and moribund Figure 3. Kawai Takeo as Tosca with Fukasawa Kōzō as Scarpia in the 1907 shinpa daughter of the tyrannical production of La Tosca. (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Spanish oppressor; and Waseda University) Kawai as Rysoor’s treacherous wife Dolorès, whose affair with her husband’s best friend leads her to betray the

Flemish rebels to the Spaniards. Both Sadayakko and Kawai played juicy female roles with ample Performing Gender in Chinese Theatre room for emotional and melodramatic display. Playing these roles apparently added European melodramatic touches to Kawai’s portrayal of Western women, who were portrayed with a somewhat straighter posture and a formulaic set of melodramatic gestures and facial expressions. This can be seen if we compare two stage shots of Sadayakko and Kawai as Tosca. In the picture of Kawai as Tosca stabbing the police chief Scarpia (fig. 3), his posture is much more upright than his kabuki-based posture of the ideal Japanese woman, and his foreboding facial expression is reminiscent of European melodramatic

8. According to the posters of the two productions.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 acting. The facial expression is similar to that of Sadayakko playing the same role in a much more realistic production in 1913 (fig. 4). Although it was impossible for Sadayakko to have had any specific impact on Kawai in his portrayal of Tosca, it is entirely probable that their earlier experiences together provided Kawai, who had never been to the West, with a glimpse of European melodramatic acting, which he then adopted to modify his kabuki-based conventions. Although the Chinese students saw Sadayakko onstage, what they found imitable in shinpa was its onnagata performance of a fusion of Eastern and Western womanhood, a practice they must have found completely natural given the fact that it was also the norm in both jingju and kabuki. Even in shingeki (new drama), a more literary and foreignizing form of Western-style Japanese theatre that was just beginning to emerge in 1906,9 men still played most female roles for the first few years due to a limited talent pool of women actors. For example, in the productions of The Merchant of Venice (1906) and Hamlet (1907) mounted by Bungei Kyõkai (the Literary Society), Figure 4. Kawakami Sadayakko as Tosca in a 1913 production one of the two founding shingeki groups, at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo. (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi men played Gertrude and Portia while Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University) an actress portrayed Ophelia (Powell 1998:44). Spring Willow’s Emulation of Shinpa Onnagata Three art students studying oil painting at Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkou (the Tokyo Fine Arts School)— Li Shutong, Zeng Xiaogu, and Huang Er’nan—founded the Spring Willow Society in 1906. As students of Western painting, Li, Zeng, and Huang were particularly keen observers of Western costume and movement, and found evidence of it in the paintings they studied (Ouyang [1939] 1990:12–13). At the same time, many of the Spring Willow members were avid jingju fans capable of singing both male and female roles (see Huang 2001:50–53; Ouyang [1939] 1990:8). Yet, neither the still images of oil paintings, nor the highly sophisticated code of female impersonation in jingju can adequately explain how the realistically inclined Spring Willow members portrayed women. From their first performance, which was Act Three of Alexandre Dumas fils’s La Dame aux Camélias, Spring Willow sought direct inspiration from shinpa by asking shinpa star Fujisawa Asajirõ to be their director (Lin [1944] 1991:41–42). The Spring Willow’s script of La Dame aux Camélias was based on both a popular Chinese rendering of Dumas fils’s novel and a Japanese translation of the play by Osada Shutõ, which was

9. Shingeki was the modern Japanese theatre genre that followed Western realistic dramatic and theatrical principles in staging both foreign and native plays. It started in the first decade of the twentieth century. SiyuanLiu

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 inspired by Kawakami’s viewing of Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Marguerite Gauthier in 1893 (Downer 2003:64). When Kawakami and Sadayakko made their second European tour in 1901, they performed the play in Paris (Salz 1993:63). In 1903, Nakamura Nakakichi, an actress who had been part of this tour, staged the play for the first time in Japan at Tokyo’s Masago-za (Matsumoto 1980:383). Also a member of Kawakami’s 1901 tour, Fujisawa had direct knowledge of these shinpa productions when the Chinese students asked him to be their director in January 1907. Therefore, Fujisawa probably used both Western melodramatic and shinpa onnagata techniques to help Li perform Margurite Gauthier. The success of this performance paved the way for Fujisawa’s next and more eminent project with Spring Willow: directing their first full- length production—Heinu yutian lu—in June of the same year, which he rehearsed “twice a week for over twenty times” (Ihara 1907:113). It was not surprising that some of the actors were praised by Japanese critics for their emulation of shinpa stars. Ihara Seiseien, a famous theatre critic who wrote extensively on both kabuki and shinpa, found Zeng’s sobbing and crying as Eliza quite natural, resembling the style of Kimura Misao (1907:111), a shinpa onnagata known for his portrayal of mild-mannered women (Ishin 1936:362). Besides emulating individual actors, beginning with their next major production, La Tosca, in early 1909, Spring Willow adopted the practice of restaging popular shinpa productions by its top stars, especially Kawai and his chief rival onnagata Kitamura Rokurõ, who were imitated by Spring Willow actors Ouyang Yuqian and Ma Jiangshi, respectively. Their emulation of these top shinpa onnagata in the restaged productions would make Ouyang and Ma the best-known female impersonators—called nandan in Chinese —in wenmingxi, setting the standard for performing Eastern and Western femininity in Shanghai in the 1910s. By 1909 Ouyang had replaced Li, who had quit the stage, as Spring Willow’s top nandan. As Ouyang recalls in his 1939 memoir, by then he and Lu Jingruo, who became Spring Willow’s de facto leader in both Tokyo and Shanghai,10 had set their sights on shinpa’s top romantic pair, Kawai and Ii Yõhõ: Jingruo’s acting somewhat emulated Ii Yõhõ. Since I had seen quite a number of Kawai Takeo’s plays, I was greatly influenced by Kawai Takeo. Kawai was quite tall and strong; however, his movement and expression were exquisite. According to the Japanese, there was nothing in Kawai’s movement that showed the slightest difference from a woman. Moreover, even some women could not attain his dignity and smoothness. I enjoyed his plays the most. His roles were mostly active and vibrant women, with occasional older women. Since I liked the type of characters he played, I paid special attention to him. ([1939] 1990:20)11 Here, Ouyang views Kawai’s success through the kabuki prism. As one of the most dedicated actors of wenmingxi, Ouyang records how much he and Lu rehearsed their lines, applied makeup “three or four times a day,” and practiced laughing, crying, and movement in the mode of Kawai and Ii, with Lu even going so far as shaving his eyebrows in the tradition of kabuki (20).

Consequently, it was Kawai’s combination of kabuki and melodramatic conventions that Performing Gender in Chinese Theatre Ouyang set out to emulate in La Tosca. This is clearly revealed in two strikingly similar stage shots of the same scene in La Tosca, one with Kawai as Tosca and Ii as her lover Cavaradossi,

10. Lu Jingruo was the most dedicated member of the Spring Willow Society and had studied both shinpa and shingeki. An aesthetics and psychology major at Tokyo Imperial University, Lu studied at Fujisawa’s Tokyo Haiyū Yōseijo (Tokyo Actor’s School) and appeared as a supernumerary in a shinpa production that featured some of the genre’s brightest stars (Nakamura 2004:18). He later joined the Literary Society, where he played minor roles in its 1911 productions of A Doll’s House, Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet (see Nakamura 2004:24–26; Ouyang [1958] 1985:34). 11. All translations unless otherwise noted are my own.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 and the other with Ouyang and Lu in the same roles (figs. 5 and 6). In this scene, the police chief Scarpia tortures Cavaradossi in order to find out where he has hidden the revolutionary refugee Angelotti. As Cavaradossi faints time and again under torture, Tosca eventually relents and gives up Angelotti’s hiding place. These photographs show exactly the same Figure 5. The torture scene of the shinpa aversion of L Tosca in moment at the beginning 1907 with Ii Yōhō (center), Kawai Takeo (right), and Fukasawa of this scene: Cavaradossi is sitting in the Kōzō (left). (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre middle with Tosca standing by his left Museum, Waseda University) and Scarpia to his right. The two pictures reveal a remarkable degree of affinity in costume, blocking, posture, and expression. Ouyang, wearing the same kind of white dress, hairdo, and necklace, was obviously trying to follow Kawai’s example, but he was not completely successful. He holds a handkerchief with both hands in a three-quarter pose with his eyes looking at the camera while Kawai holds onto Cavaradossi’s shoulders with his/her worried eyes looking at Scarpia. This was only Ouyang’s fourth time onstage, so he had just barely started to imitate shinpa onnagata conventions, but all this would change as he continued Figure 6. The torture scene of the Spring Willow’s version of playing both Western and Eastern female La Tosca in 1909 with Lu Jingruo (center), Ouyang Yuqian roles in Tokyo and Shanghai. In addi- (right), and Wu Wozun (left). (From Xiaoshuo shibao 1911) tion, he also took an interest in jingju, which, just as kabuki had done for Kawai, complemented his stage presence and helped augment his stature as one of the most influential nandan actors of wenmingxi. After La Tosca, Spring Willow more or less settled on transporting shinpa productions to China. Apart from European plays, they also brought some well-known shinpa domestic melodramas to Shanghai, including Hototogisu/Burugui (The Cuckoo; 1901/1914),12 Chikyõdai/ Ru zimei (Foster Sisters; 1905/1916), Ushio/Meng huitou (The Tide; 1908/1910), and Kumo no hibiki/Shehui zhong (The Echo of Clouds; 1907/1912). These plays showed shinpa at its maturity as an art form, and they were popular both in Tokyo and in Shanghai. In these plays, shinpa’s adaptation of kabuki for performing femininity was obvious.

12. The titles are in Japanese and Chinese respectively (Japanese/Chinese). The dates show their premiere dates in Japan and Shanghai. SiyuanLiu

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 One of these plays in which Kawai starred and Ouyang again imitated was Chikyõdai,13 which tells the story of two young women, Kimie and Fusae, raised as foster sisters. When Fusae turns out to be the daughter of a marquis, Kimie disguises herself as Fusae, goes to the marquis’ household, and succeeds in marrying his chosen heir, who in fact loves Fusae. In time, Kimie’s former lover returns to demand that Figure 7. The beach scene in the shinpa Chikyōdai with Ii Yōhō and Kawai Takeo she honor their vow to during a 1907 production at Tokyo’s Shintomi-za. (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi marry. Their fateful Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University) meeting takes place at the beach where Kimie, in a rage, jumps into the water and drowns herself, thus bringing poetic justice to the saga. In the photographs of Kawai and Ouyang playing Kimie during the beach scene (figs. 7 and 8), it again appears that Ouyang followed Kawai’s model, playing this time a coquettish and cunning woman. Here, Kawai has his back turned away from his/her pursuer yet is evidently keenly aware of the latter. The lowered head and foot slipping out Figure 8. The beach scene in the wenmingxi Chikyōdai with Wang Youyou and of the zori sandal further Ouyang Yuqian during a 1916 production at Shanghai’s Xiaowutai Theatre. suggest an imprudent

(From Youxi zazhi 1915) Performing Gender in Chinese Theatre woman. While Ouyang saw this production in Tokyo, it would have been impossible for him to follow Kawai’s every move a decade later in Shanghai, but by 1916, he was much more proficient at performing Japanese womanhood. He followed what is known in kabuki and shinpa as kata, which, in the words of James R. Brandon, means the “form, pattern, or model” of the “actor’s vocal and movement techniques” and “production elements such as costuming, makeup, and scenic effects” (1978:65). Ouyang’s tilted

13. The play was adapted from a Meiji novel of the same title by Kikuchi Yūhō that was, in turn, based on a Victorian dime-store novel entitled Dora Thorneb y Bertha B. Clay, penname for Charlotte Mary Brame (Iizuka 1998:94).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 head, turned upper torso, and posture with one knee behind the other reveal his mastery of shinpa’s “patterned acting” of femininity. Other members of the Spring Willow Society also modeled their acting on shinpa onnagata. The most notable example is Ma Jiangshi’s emulation of Kitamura Rokurõ, Kawai’s rival for the title of top shinpa onnagata. Excelling in performing suffering and tragic Figure 9. The final act of the 1907 shinpa production of Kumo no hibiki with women, Kitamura was Takada Minoru (middle), Kitamura Rokurō (right), and Fujisawa Asajirō (left). best known for his (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University) portrayal of Namiko, the misunderstood and tuberculosis-infected heroine of Hototogisu, the most famous shinpa domestic melodrama. Kitamura and shinpa’s tough man, Takada Minoru, also created some of the most memorable roles of contemporary low-class Japanese, such as the peasant sister and brother pairs in Ushio and Kumo no hibiki (fig. 9), two plays on social issues written especially for shinpa by the journalist and playwright Satõ Kõroku. In contrast to Kawai and Ii Yõhõ, who were both praised for elevating shinpa acting by using kabuki conventions, Kitamura and Takada were known for their more naturalistic styles, which emphasized breathing techniques and real-life observation. Lu and Ma adapted these three plays for the Chinese audiences in Shanghai, where the suffering heroines and Kitamura’s stylization of them was enacted by Ma. As one of the original members of Spring Willow Society, Ma adapted Hototogisu, with “its structure and certain skills following the style of Kitamura Rokurõ” (Ouyang [1958] 1985:37). With a small build and a haunting voice just like Kitamura ([1939] 1990:22), Ma also followed the latter’s example by living a womanly life away from the public (Ishin 1936:357; Ouyang [1939] 1990:38). Onstage, he was committed to emotional realism and even fainted once in a romantic scene (Ouyang [1939] 1990:47). As a result, Ma was widely hailed as wenmingxi’s best performer of tragic women. Spring Willow as Wenmingxi’s Model of Gender Performance As a result of their pioneering efforts, Ouyang and Ma were considered by the Chinese to be the best performers of Western and Eastern womanhood. But more importantly, it was their work in Chunliu Juchang (the Spring Willow Theatre)—which was formed in Shanghai in 1913 by former members of the Spring Willow Society—that set the wenmingxi standard of gender performance. This can be seen from two photographs of wenmingxi all-male companies other than the Spring Willow Theatre. The first one (fig. 10) fromHototogisu is of the same act as was depicted in the shinpa production starring Kitamura, Ii, and Fujisawa (fig. 11). The second photograph (fig. 12) is from a play calledJiating enyuan ji (Love and Hate in a Family; 1912) by Lu Jingruo, who wrote the play in very much the same mode as shinpa domestic melodrama. SiyuanLiu

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 Although both Chinese productions were Sinicized, they clearly followed shinpa conventions, including its gender performance, imported and popularized by the Spring Willow Theatre.14 In the two pictures (figs. 10 and 11) depicting the first act of Hototogisu from shinpa and wenmingxi productions, there are general similarities in set, properties, and blocking, while in the following two stage shots (figs. 12 and 13), the feminine postures are also strikingly similar, from the tilted head, the use of the Figure 10. The first act of Hototogisu in a wenmingxi production, with (from handkerchief as a symbol of left) Qingxing, Zhou Jianyun, and Yifeng. Notice the difference in the character femininity and its application at right as compared to figure 11. (From Jubu congkan, ed. Zhou Jianyun to the mouth, and the slight [1918] 1922:104) Performing Gender in Chinese Theatre

Figure 11. The first act of Hototogisu in a 1908 shinpa production at the Hongo-za theatre, with (from left) Kitamura Rokurō, Ii Yōhō, and Fujisawa Asajirō. (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University)

14. Although the Spring Willow Theatre was not the most commercially successful company in wenmingxi, it was universally acknowledged among wenmingxi practitioners as possessing the highest aesthetic standard and as the ideal for other actors.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 angle of the body, to the positioning of the feet. The citational nature of these gestures is even more obvious when we contrast them with the generally upright postures of the emerging actresses who did not follow the conventions of female impersonators, as can be seen in the following stage shot by two actresses (fig. 14), Ye Wenying and Xie Tongying, from a mid-1910s production of Xielei bei (The Monument of Blood and Tears). In fact, wenmingxi’s debate over the appropriateness of having actresses assuming female roles essentially focused on the issue of citationality, with its supporters arguing that the practice was more natural than female impersonation and its opponents resorting to moralistic arguments that held that mixed-gender casting resulted in obscenity (Ma 1914:7). This is the argument made by Zhou Jianyun, a well-known wenmingxi actor and critic: New drama is realistic, pursuing verisimilitude in every way. It is not Figure 12. An all-male cast production of Jiating enyuan ji. like old drama, which is restricted (From Youxi zashi 1915) by rhyming and conventions. While old theatre refrains from frankness in its portrayal of romantic or erotic scenes, [in new drama] this is usually the most disgusting moment when the two parties flirt and act as if it were for real, revealing all forms of sickening behavior in front of the audience. ([1918] 1922:749) As Elizabeth Howe shows in the case of the first English actresses in the 17th century, the novelty of actresses’ bodies onstage was exploited and often fueled societal bias against the emerging actresses (1992:37–65). Contemporary and subsequent accounts of the first mixed- gender wenmingxi company, the Minxing She (Prosperity Society), often cited commercial opportunism as its true motive (Wu [1918] 1922:339–40; Zhou [1918] 1922:749; Xu 1957:60; Ouyang [1939] 1990:57). While this may be true, the aversion to naturalistic portrayal of romantic scenes underscores a general uneasiness among wenmingxi actors and critics about the shifting ground under wenmingxi’s gender performance, revealing it to be what Judith Butler calls “a constituted social temporality”: If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the spatial metaphor of a “ground” will be displaced and revealed as a stylized configuration, indeed, a gendered corporealization of time. ([1990] 1999:179) Indeed, if the trajectory of shinpa’s gender performance is any indication, it was right around this time, in 1914, that the battle of the sexes in modern Japanese theatre took a decided turn as the two divas of shinpa and shingeki, Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako, performed in SiyuanLiu

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 dueling productions of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. According to Ayako Kano:15 Salomé marks a moment in Japanese history when the alignment between gender, sex, sexuality, and performance thus registered a recognizable shift: from gender defined as theatrical achievement, to gender defined as grounded in the visible body and as basis for theatrical expression. There is a shift from gender as the endpoint of acting to gender as the beginning of acting. The title role of Salomé epitomized the new definition of womanhood as rooted in the physical body and of woman’s body as the basis for acting. (2001:219) Specifically, it was the gradual revela- tion of the female body in the “Dance of the Seven Veils” that made it “inconceiv- able for a male performer of female roles” (220). At a time when well-known new dramatists like Zhou found love scenes between actors and actresses repulsive, it is hard to imagine a Chinese Salomé moment in wenmingxi, a form that was deeply rooted in the transitive era of the 1910s. Only a few years after the fall of the Qing dynasty, the mid 1910s was just at the beginning of the New Culture Movement (1915–1924), during which “the sexual order maintained by Confu- cianism” was challenged by a powerful wave of “open talk of sex” based on the Figure 13. A scene from Hototogisu with Kitamura Rokurō (left) modern European dualistic concept of and Ii Yōhō (right). (Courtesy of The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre human sexuality, which “rapidly became Museum, Waseda University) a sign of liberation from the ‘shackles of tradition’ among modernizing elites” (Dikötter 1995:1). In this sense, Chou Huiling is correct to assert that fierce attack of actresses from the nandan actors “reveals the male artists’ deep fear of competition from women actors” (1997:149). At the Performing Gender in Chinese Theatre same time though, it still had not dawned on the nandan actors that the emergence of actresses would eventually mean that “gender is no longer a pattern to be cited but becomes an identity to be expressed” (Kano 2001:73). Ouyang actually did try to learn the “Dance of Seven Veils” from

15. Matsui Sumako was one of the best-known actresses in early shingeki whose roles included Ophelia in the 1911 Literary Society production of Hamlet. Her romantic relationship with the Literary Society’s most prominent director, Shimamura Hōgetsu, effectively split the Society when she was expelled in 1913 and the couple created their own company, Geijutsu-za (Art Theatre).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 a Russian woman with the hope of performing Salomé himself, and it is possible that Ouyang was prompted by the news of Sadayakko’s and Matsui’s productions, yet he had to give up the ambition in the end. His stated reason was that he could not afford the lessons, although it is hard to imagine him actually taking them, even with funding (Ouyang [1939] 1990:73). In fact, his stage life soon took a turn in another direction, toward Figure 14. Wenmingxi actresses Ye Wenying and Xie Tongying in The Monument the completely conven- of Blood and Tears. (From Jubu congkan, ed. Zhou Jianyun [1918] 1922:105) tionalized world of jingju. For a decade that began in the late 1910s, he was a professional jingju actor in female roles. During this time his fame briefly rivaled that of Mei Lanfang, as underscored by the saying “Mei of the north and Ou[yang] of the south” (bei Mei nan Ou).16 Therefore, it is possible to see his move to jingju as a result of the decline of female impersonation in wenmingxi. Conclusion As Ouyang’s case indicates, there was much fluidity between wenmingxi and jingju, which further underscores the fact that even though wenmingxi was inspired by modern Western theatre, its concept of gender performance, just like that of shinpa, also had a great affinity with jingju and kabuki, where gender performance was based on the premodern notion of male and female as complimentary parts of a whole instead of directly opposite of each other. As signified by the wakashu root of kabuki, the modern straight/gay dichotomy was nonexistent. This attitude changed in the 1920s after the New Culture Movement, when the modern “scientific” discourse that emphasized the incompatibility of biological sexes paved the way for the eventual elimination of cross-gender casting in huaju in the 1920s. Consequently, viewing wenmingxi’s gender performance as either drag or radical transgres- sion not only ignores the role of shinpa onnagata, but also fails to identify the historicity of gender construction in modern China as, in Butler’s words, “materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter” (1993:9). In a sense, the 1910s in China was just at the beginning of this process of materialization of China’s Western-oriented modern sexuality. On this account, Kawakami and Sadayakko’s brand of “straight theatre”—seigeki—set the tone for what was to come: The fluidity that characterized premodern kabuki’s “intertextuality”—understood as the regime of possible channels between genders and sexualities—is thus framed onto the

16. In the late 1910s, both Mei Lanfang and Ouyang Yuqian created a group of reformed jingju plays based on the Chinese classical novel Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber). Since Mei was based in Beijing and Ouyang was based in Shanghai, their performance of the same characters created a sense of competition and, therefore, equal stature, thus the saying “bei Mei nan Ou.” SiyuanLiu

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.35 by guest on 25 September 2021 bodies of males and females, closing off the kinds of polymorphous desires that were previously possible. (Kano 2001:83) As I have shown, gender identity in shinpa and wenmingxi was much more complicated than allowed by a dualistic East/West, tradition/modernity framework. The examination of the specific connection between gender performance in shinpa and wenmingxi is crucial to our understanding of gender performance in the beginning of modern theatre in China.

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