Acting Like a Woman

in Modern Japan
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Acting Like a Woman in
Modern Japan
Theater, Gender, and Nationalism

Ayako Kano

Palgrave
*
ACTING LIKE A WOMAN IN MODERN JAPAN
Copyright © Ayako Kano, 2001. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published 2001 by PALGRAVE™

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New York, N.Y. 10010 and
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PALGRAVE is the new global publishing imprint of St. Martin's Press LLC Scholarly
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ISBN 978-0-312-29291-1 ISBN 978-1-137-04050-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-04050-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kano, Ayako, 1966-
Acting like a woman in modern Japan : theater, gender, and nationalism / by
Ayako Kano.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Kawakami, Sadayakko, 1871-1946. 2. Matsui, Sumako, 1886-1919.

3. Women in the theater-Japan-History-19th century. 4. Women in the
theater-Japan-History-20th century. I. Title.
PN2928.K375 K36 2001
792' .028'0820952-dc21
2001032762

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design by Letra Libre, Inc.

First edition: September 2001

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Vll

Preface lX

PART I
SETTING THE STAGE

Chapter 1 Acting Like a Woman 3

Chapter 2 Modern Formations of Gender and Performance 15

PART II
KAWAKAMI SADAYAKKO

Chapter 3 Wifeing the Woman 39

Chapter 4 Straightening the Theater 57
Chapter 5 Reproducing the Empire 85

PART III
MATSUI SUMAKO

Chapter 6 ANew Woman 123

Chapter 7 A New Theater 151
Chapter 8 Feminists and Femmes Fatales 183
Epilogue Revealing the Real Body 219

Notes 231
Bibliography 283
Index 313
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 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover illustration Actress Matsui Sumako in the title role

of Maurice Maeterlinck's Manna Vanna
Illustration 2.1 Geisha from Engei gaho (September 1910) 16
Illustration 2.2 Actresses of the Teikoku Gekijo
training institute, Engei gaho (September 1910). 17
Illustration 2.3 Male actors in a performance of Gerhart
Hauptmann's Lonely People. Onnagata
Ichikawa Enjaku as Anna Mahr is pictured
on the top left and bottom right. Engei gaho
(December 1911) 20
Illustration 3.1 Kawakami Sadayakko as a wife,
bottom right, with Kawakami Otojiro
on top. Engei gaho (October 1908). 43
Illustration 4.1 Triptych of Kawakami troupe's
Sino-Japanese War. Kawakami Otojiro as
war reporter is making a speech in front of
General Li. Onnagata Ishida Nobuo as the
Japanese maiden is crouching behind the hero.
Courtesy of Waseda University's Tsubouchi
Shoyo Memorial Theater Museum. 63
Illustration 4.2 Triptych of Kawakami Troupe's
Sino-Japanese War. Courtesy of
Waseda University's Tsubouchi Shoyo
Memorial Theater Museum. 65
Illustration 4.3 Kawakami Sadayakko surrounded by
actresses of her "platoon." Engei gaho
(October 1908). 82
Illustration 5.1 Geisha and the Knight at the Paris
World's Fair 1902 [sic]. Kawakami Otojiro
as the samurai, far left; Sadayakko as the geisha,
third from left. Courtesy of Waseda University's
Tsubouchi Shoyo Memorial Theater Museum. 87
Vlll AcTING LIKE A WOMAN

Illustration 5.2 Kawakami Sadayakko as a Western lady,

and as a Japanese woman. Engei gaho
(October 1908) 91
Illustration 5.3 Kawakami troupe's performance
of Dumb Travel, with Kawakami Sadayakko
as an English actress, below right, and as
the goddess of peace, above. Engei gaho
(October 1908) 105
Illustration 5.4 Kawakami troupe's performance of Othello,
with Kawakami Otojiro as Othello, center.
Engei gaho (February 1910). 108
Illustration 5.5 More scenes from Othello, with
Kawakami Sadayakko as Lady Tomone.
Engei gaho (February 1910). 109
Illustration 6.1 Matsui Sumako dressed in kimono.
Courtesy of Waseda University's
Tsubouchi Shoyo Memorial Theater Museum. 136
Illustration 6.2 Matsui Sumako in manteau. From Peony Brush. 137
Illustration 8.1 Matsui Sumako in the Tarantella dance
scene from A Doll House. Engei gaho
(October 1911). In the insert on the
upper right, she is dressed in a manteau,
ready to leave the house. 193
Illustration 8.2 Matsui Sumako as Magda. Courtesy of
Waseda University's Tsubouchi Shoyo
Memorial Theater Museum. 206
Illustration 8.3 Matsui Sumako as Magda with manteau.
From Peony Brush. 207
Illustration 9.1 Kawakami Sadayakko as Salome.
Courtesy of Waseda University's
Tsubouchi Shoyo Memorial Theater Museum. 221
Illustration 9.2 Matsui Sumako as Salome.
Courtesy of Waseda University's
Tsubouchi Shoyo Memorial Theater Museum. 222
Illustration 9.3 Magician Shokyokusai Tenkatsu as Salome.
Courtesy of Waseda University's
Tsubouchi Shoyo Memorial Theater Museum. 223
Illustration 9.4 Comic strip of Salome. Engei gaho (June 1915). 226
 PREFACE

THIS BOOK WAS HATCHED OVER TEN YEARS AGO and its growth took place in cof-
fee shops and libraries in three cities, Tokyo, Ithaca, and Philadelphia. The idea
came to me while writing an undergraduate thesis on the adaptations of Japan-
ese theater by Bertolt Brecht, William Butler Yeats, and Benjamin Britten. As I
neared the completion of that thesis, I became increasingly conscious of the
fact that its pages were dominated by men: There was one striking female fig-
ure, but she was portrayed on stage by a man, and all the playwrights and
composers whom I discussed were also men. Sipping my scalding cup of cof-
fee at a donut shop near Keio University in Tokyo, I resolved to myself that in
graduate school, I would study Japanese theater and women. That is what I set
out to do when I arrived at the Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature at
Cornell University in the fall of 1989.
My first explorations in identifying the presence of women in Japanese the-
ater yielded mildly interesting results. I translated Kamabara, a comic kyogen
play, which features a strong female character chasing her lazy husband around
the stage, threatening to hack him to pieces with a sickle and driving the man
close to committing suicide with that same instrument. The translation was
eventually published as The Sickly Stomach in Traditional Japanese Theater: An
Anthology of Plays, edited by Karen Brazell (Columbia University Press, 1998).
The play, however, ends exactly where it started, with the wife chasing her hus-
band off the stage. And the wife is portrayed on stage by a man, according to
the conventions of kyogen. This did not seem a very encouraging sign for a pro-
gressive change in women's status, in theater or in society.
My search for women in Japanese theater also led to the works of a few fe-
male playwrights, including those of Enchi Fumiko. Although best known as a
novelist, Enchi wrote a number of interesting plays in her youth, and I was able
to translate one of them, The Storm (Arashi), which deals with abortion and
sexual antagonism between women and men. But I was still disappointed: It
seemed that the equivalent of a Murasaki Shikibu or a Yosano Akiko, famous
for their prolific production in prose and poetry respectively, was not to be
found in the realm of drama. Was my attempt at feminist criticism of Japanese
theater doomed to engage, once again, only with works by men, staged by men?
X ACTING LIKE A WOMAN

The connection between Japanese theater and feminism was an elusive

one, with one important exception. All accounts of Japanese women's history
mentioned the Japanese premiere of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House in 1911, and
the discussion of women's issues it occasioned. I started researching the recep-
tion of A Doll House in Japan, reading the commentaries by members of the
feminist literary journal Seito and contrasting them with the reception of the
play in Germany and the commentary by feminists in that country. Soon, my
attention was drawn to the Japanese actress who premiered the role of Nora,
the heroine of A Doll House who abandons her husband and children in order
to find her true self. The actress, Matsui Sumako, was one of the first women
in modern Japan to be trained in European acting techniques, and she had left
her husband in favor of a married man who was also her teacher and director.
Surely, I thought, this actress must have been a fierce and forthright feminist.
Surely, I had found my perfect topic, my link between Japanese theater and
feminist studies.
The actress turned out to be a much more complex character than I had
anticipated. She was the target of intense gossiping and personal attacks both
while she was alive and after her death. Her director-lover was the one who
came across in the historical accounts as the true artist and true feminist, a
martyr to the cause who was seduced by the femme fatale, Matsui Sumako.
This was a puzzle, I felt, that was worth a closer look. A casual look at other
actresses of the time pointed to the same puzzle. Why were actresses such con-
troversial figures, and why were their relations to feminism so vexed and dif-
ficult? The attempt to answer this question eventually turned into my Ph.D.
dissertation. I focused on two pioneering actresses in modern Japan, Matsui
Sumako and Kawakami Sadayakko, and explored their relation to the process
of nation-building. A small part of this early exploration was published as
"The Roles of the Actress in Modern Japan," in New Directions in the Study
of Meiji Japan, ed. Helen Hardacre (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997).
In the years since, my interest in the figure of the actress developed and di-
versified in several directions. These new areas of exploration formed the basis
of two articles, "Japanese Theater and Imperialism: Romance and Resistance,"
in U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, English version, no. 12 (1997), and "Visuality
and Gender in Modern Japanese Theater: Looking at Salome," in Japan Forum
11, no. 1 (1999). These new explorations, further revised and refined, found
their way into chapters 5 and 9, while chapters 4 and 7 were newly written.
What follows, then, is the result of ten years of research and countless cups
of coffee.
It is also the result of countless acts of guidance and friendship by many
people. I owe many thanks: to Brett de Bary, J. Ellen Gainor, and Biddy Mar-
tin for supporting the beginnings of this project at Cornell University; to
Karen Brazell, Victor Koschmann, and Naoki Sakai for stimulating seminars
 PREFACE XI

and reading groups; to Kanai Yoshiko, Ehara Yumiko, and Ueno Chizuko for
their feminist work in Japan; to Mike Bourdaghs, Joanne Izbicki, Beng Chao
Lim, Joseph Murphy, Robert Steen, and Jan Zeserson for friendship during
and beyond graduate school; to Ikeda Shinobu, Chino Kaori, Wakakuwa Mi-
dori, and other members of the Image & Gender Group, as well as Nakano
Toshio and Iwasaki Minoru of the Workshop in Critical Theory for opportu-
nities to share my work in Japan; to Norma Field, Carol Gluck, David Good-
man, Barbara Molony, Jennifer Robertson, Barbara Sato, and Kathleen Uno
for their intellectual guidance and inspiration; to my colleagues at the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, especially Linda Chance, G. Cameron Hurst, Hiroko
Kimura-Sherry, William Lafleur, and Cecilia Segawa-Seigle, for the daily ca-
maraderie; to Toshiyuki Takamiya for providing an academic home base at
Keio University; to Sabah Al-Ghandour, Regina Bendix, Ann Farnsworth-
Alvear, Laura Grindstaff, Demie Kurz, Mary Martin, Barbara Savage,
Matthew Sommer, Emily Thompson, and Liliane Weissberg for their friend-
ship at the University of Pennsylvania; to Julia Paley for our writing alliance;
to all of my students for keeping me excited about teaching as well as about
my research; to my junior colleagues Dina Amin, Sara Davis, Noriko
Horiguchi, Maki Morinaga, and Seiko Yoshinaga for their intellectual com-
panionship; to Diane Moderski and Peggy Guinan for holding it all together;
to Fuji Shuppan, Shinshokan, Yiishodo and the Tsubouchi Shoyo Memorial
Theater Museum at Waseda University for permision to reproduce pho-
tographs; to the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Foundation, the Mellon Foun-
dation, the Department of Comparative Literature and the East Asia Program
at Cornell University, the Research Foundation, the School of Arts and Sci-
ences, the Trustees Council of Penn Women, the Center for East Asian Stud-
ies, and the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University
of Pennsylvania, for fellowships, grants, and leave-time that made this re-
search possible; to the Harrington family for always welcoming me; to my
parents, Eisuke and Miyoko, for always being there; to my sister Rie for al-
ways surprising me; and to my best friend and partner, Lewis E. Harrington,
for more than I can ever express.