Acting like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theater, Gender and Nationalism

by A. Kano

Overview

Weaving together careful readings of plays and reviews, memoirs and interviews, biographies and critical essays, Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan traces the emergence of the first generation of modern actresses in Japan, a nation in which male actors had long dominated the public stage. What emerges is a colorful and complex picture of modern Japanese gender, theater, and nationhood. Using the lives and careers of two dominant actresses from the Meiji era, Kano reveals the fantasies, fears, and impact that women on stage created in Japan as it entered the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312239978
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	10/29/2001
Edition description:	2001
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

AYAKO KANO is Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on Japanese theater, literature, and gender studies. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She is currently at work on a book about Japanese feminist debates.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

Acting Like a Woman

Acting like a woman does not come naturally. It has to be taught, learned, rehearsed, and repeated. It does not arise from a moment of inspiration, but from many years of persistent inculcation. In an acting woman, the cultural and social desires of an age are concentrated, molding her every gesture, every glance. In turn, her movements and words, watched and heard, applauded and critiqued, enforce and revise those desires. Of all acting women, it is the professional actress who most clearly embodies the fantasies and fears of the age. Hence, at the most general level, this book is about acting like a woman in modern Japan, while at the most specific level it is about two actresses who were pioneers in channeling and shaping new desires in a rapidly changing society.1

The historical link between theater and prostitution is documented in many areas of the globe. Japan is no exception. Advertising their sexual services through sensual and sensational dances, certain women had made the stage their showcase by the early seventeenth century. When scandals and riots involving the ruling classes ensued, the authorities blamed the sellers, rather than the buyers: From 1629 to 1891, women were officially prohibited from performing in theaters. Initially they were replaced by young men, the wakashu, akin to the boy-actors in English theater of the Elizabethan period.12 It soon became apparent, however, that these boys were as prone to igniting scandals and riots as the women, and they were banned from the stage as well. It thus fell upon adult male actors to carry the stage, and to carry the female roles in particular.

The house was crowded. The acting was fair. The play was full of love and murder, with many amusing incidents. . . . Clandestine meeting of wife and old lover. Jealous husband detects paramours. Murder of the guilty pair. The husband finds that the pipe-mender [i.e., the lover] is his dear friend in humble disguise. Remorse. Commits hara-kiri. Finale. . . . The interest centers in the bloody scene, when heads, trunks, blood, and limbs lie around the stage promiscuously. The deliberate whetting of the sword with hone, dipper, bucket, and water in sight of the frantic guilty pair, the prolongation of the sharpening and the bloody scene to its possible limit of time--twenty minutes by the watch--make it seem very ludicrous to me, though the audience look on breathless. During this time all talking, eating, and attention to infants cease. . . . The theatre is large, but of a rather primitive order of architecture. . . . As a rule, the better class of Japanese people do not attend the theatres for moral reasons, and as examples to their children. The influences of the stage are thought to be detrimental to virtue.14

These were precisely the concerns that led to a government-led effort to reform the theater. With the support of the ruling elite and the explicit purpose of raising the status of theater so that it would reflect Japan's new status in the world, the Theater Reform Society (Engeki Kairy@@kai) was founded in 1886. Replacing onnagata with actresses was among the top items on the group's agenda, along with improving the quality of plays and building modern theater buildings.15

What did the increasing visibility and popularity of women like Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako signify? Did it contribute to the advance of women into the public sphere by placing women's bodies on stage and giving them a voice? Or did it signal the repressive institution of a definition of gender as naturally grounded in the body rather than constituted in performance? As actresses gained prominence, male performers of female roles did not disappear from the stage, but their significance changed. No longer regarded as the embodiment of ideal femininity, their presence was debated, derided as backward, decadent, even perverse. The rise of the actress, then, brought with it a marginalization of the onnagata.

cultural representation, through women's bodies? This present study seeks to be a part of an emerging scholarly effort to answer many of the above questions.34

The following pages will take readers into the historical milieu of Meiji Japan. Starting with a survey of the debates surrounding the emergence of the actress in the early twentieth century, chapter 2 maps out a shift taking place in the Meiji period that defined gender and performance in a way that necessitated the presence of the female body on stage, and relates the shift to the building of Japan as a modern nation-state. Analyzing the various debates for and against the replacement of onnagata by actresses, the chapter shows that the debates are structured by assumptions about the nature of woman and the nature of theater. It then outlines the modern formation of the definition of woman as a gender grounded in the body, and of the definition of theater as a type of desexualized performance, and shows how the process of forming categories of gender went hand in hand with theater reform.

Notes Chapter 1

1. A clarification of terminology: In this book, I use "actress" rather than "female actor" because of the complex cultural connotations that the term "actress" carried at the turn of the century in English-language theater. "Joyû" carries similar connotations in the Japanese context. Although I believe "actor" ought to be a gender-neutral term when applied to individuals today, historically it makes more sense to call Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako "actresses" rather than "actors." I use "performer" to translate the Japanese term "haiyû." "Haiyû" is an ungendered term that subsumes "dan'yû" (male actor) and "joyû" (female actor, which I usually translate as "actress").
2. See for example the first line of the editor's "Introduction" in Laurence Senelick, ed., Gender in Performance: The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992), ix-xx.
3. Ibid., ix.
4. Texts on the theatricality/performativity of gender include essays in Sue-Ellen Case, ed., Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992). Judith Butler's work is of course central to the debate. See her "Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse," in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990), 324-40; "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 270-82; Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993).
5. In considering the sociological concept of "sex role," R. W. Connell suggests that the dramaturgical metaphor of "role" is "apt for situations where (a) there are well-defined scripts to perform, (b) there are clear audiences to perform to, and (c) the stakes are not too high (so it is feasible that some kind of performing is the main social activity going on)." Thus he concludes that the metaphor of "sex role" is inappropriate for most social contexts, except in specific situations like ballroom dancing. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 26.
6. Butler, Bodies that Matter, x.
7. Ibid., 12.
8. Butler, Gender Trouble, 146-47.
9. Butler, Bodies that Matter, 12.
10. The double meaning of "acting" is summarized by Naoki Sakai: "on the one hand, to act is to behave, to initiate a movement of the body; on the other hand, it is to disguise, to hide the inner self, to imitate and take the role of another." See Naoki Sakai, Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 301.
11. Butler, Bodies that Matter, 12-13.
12. For a more nuanced account of the history of kabuki performed by women (onna kabuki), by young men (wakashu kabuki), and by adult men (yarô kabuki), see Maki Morinaga, "The Gender of Onnagata as the Imitating Imitated: Its Historicity, Performativity, and Involvement in the Circulation of Femininity," Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique (Forthcoming).
13. See Morinaga, "The Gender of Onnagata," for a description of the circulation of femininity as a set of signs. See also Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993).
14. Italics in excerpt are in the original. William Elliot Griffis, vol. 2 of The Mikado's Empire, 2 vols., 11th ed. (New York: Harper, 1906), 515.
15. Suematsu Kenchô's Engeki kairyô iken (Views on theater reform), 1886, quoted in Komiya Toyotaka, ed., Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker and Donald Keene, vol. 3 of Japanese Culture in the Meiji Era, 14 vols. (Tokyo: Ôbunsha, 1956), 217. Suematsu was the chairman of the Engeki Kairyôkai and a prominent politician. Engeki kairyô iken was the transcription of a speech made by him in October of 1886. The full text of was published in one newspaper, detailed summaries were given in two others, and the full text was reprinted in three issues of the journal Bijutsu shimpô before appearing in book form in November of the same year. This suggests the high level of general public interest in theater reform. The group's call for modern theater buildings was to eventually culminate in the opening of Japan's "imperial theater," the Teikoku Gekijô, in 1911. This theater, which was not a state-run institution but an enterprise sponsored by prominent industrial as well as political figures, symbolizes the oblique relations that would bind theater and the state in modern Japan. See Mine Takashi, Teikoku Gekijô kaimaku (The opening of the Teikoku Gekijô) Chûkô Shinsho, no. 1334 (Tokyo: Chûô Kôronsha, 1996).
16. Ôzasa Yoshio, Nihon gendai engeki shi (History of Japanese contemporary theater), 6 vols. to date (Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 1985-1999), 1:15-28. This meant that while the social status of performers rose substantially, the performers were also incorporated into the state. Homogenization and incorporation were the principles at work, as in the case of the physical space and performance time for theater, described later.
17. Ôzasa, Nihon, 1:32. See Karatani Kôjin, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. Brett de Bary, et al. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), 56-57, for discussion of the significance of the kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjûrô appearing without makeup or wig at this performance.
18. See, for example, Fukuzawa Yukichi's account in his Fukuô jiden, translated as The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi, trans. Eiichi Kiyooka (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1992), 104-23.
19. See Lorraine Helms, "Playing the Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism and Shakespearean Performance," in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1990), 196-206; Phyllis Rackin, "Androgyny, Mimesis, and the Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the English Renaissance Stage," PMLA 102, no. 1 (1987): 29-41; Juliet Dusinberre, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women (New York: Macmillan, 1975); Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Brighton, Great Britain: Harvester, 1983); Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540-1620 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984); Joan Kelly, "Did Women Have a Renaissance" in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton, 1977), 137-63.
20. I use "male performers of female roles" rather than the more familiar "female impersonator" for the sake of clarity. I realize that by doing so I may be reinscribing the binary opposition between the male and the female, the impersonating body, and the role performed by that body.
21. Elizabeth Howe, The First English Actress: Women and Drama 1660-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xi.
22. John Stokes, Michael R. Booth, and Susan Bassnett, Bernhardt, Terry, Duse: The Actress in Her Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
23. Examples of feminist critique of theater include: Gayle Austin, Feminist Theories for Dramatic Criticism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990); Sue-Ellen Case, Feminism and Theatre (New York: Methuen, 1988); Gay Gibson Cima, Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights, and the Modern Stage (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); Tracy C. Davis, "Questions for a Feminist Methodology in Theatre History," Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance, ed. Thomas Postlewait and Bruce A. McConachie (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), 59-81; Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1988); Lesley Ferris, Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre (New York: New York University Press, 1989); Gail Finney, Women in Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press); J. Ellen Gainor, Shaw's Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Constructions of Gender (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991); Lynda Hart, ed., Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women's Theatre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989).
24. Loren Kruger, The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
25. For example, James Fujii, Complicit Fictions: The Subject in the Modern Japanese Prose Narrative (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); David Pollack, Reading Against Culture: Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992); Mary N. Layoun, Travels of a Genre: The Modern Novel and Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
26. Important English-language work in modern Japanese theater includes: David Goodman, Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s: The Return of the Gods (London: M. E. Sharpe, 1988); Brian Powell, Japan's Modern Theatre: A Century of Change and Continuity (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001); J. Thomas Rimer, Toward a Modern Japanese Theatre: Kishida Kunio (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Ted Takaya, Modern Japanese Drama: An Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
27. Nonetheless, this was an important and beautiful exhibit. For the exhibit catalogue, see Samuel Leiter, ed., Japanese Theater in the World (New York: Japan Society, 1997).
28. Representative recent anthologies include Egusa Mitsuko and Seki Reiko eds., Onna ga yomu Nihon kindai bungaku: feminizumu hihyô no kokoromi (Women reading modern Japanese literature: Experiments in feminist criticism) (Tokyo: Shin'yôsha, 1992); Egusa Mitsuko and Seki Reiko, eds., Dansei sakka o yomu: feminizumu hihyô no seijuku e (Reading male writers: Towards the maturation of feminist criticism) (Tokyo: Shin'yôsha, 1994); Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A. Walker, eds., The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
29. For example, Donald Shively, "The Social Environment of Tokugawa Kabuki," in James R. Brandon, William P. Malm, and Donald H. Shively, Studies in Kabuki: Its Acting, Music, and Historical Context (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1978), 1-61. Other significant analyses of sexuality in the Tokugawa period can be found in Gary P. Leupp, Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
30. Jennifer Robertson's work on the all-female Takarazuka is crucial in this area. See especially Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). See also my review in Journal of Japanese Studies, 25, no. 2 (1999): 473-478. See also Kawasaki Kenko, Takarazuka: shôhi shakai no supekutakuru (Takarazuka: Spectacle of consumer society) (Tokyo: Kôdansha, 1999).
31. See Ayako Kano, "Towards a Critique of Transhistorical Femininity," in Gendering Modern Japanese History, ed. Kathleen Uno and Barbara Molony (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies Publications, Harvard University, forthcoming) for a full discussion of this issue.
32. It should go without saying that the categories of "Japan" and the "West" need similar historicization, though they will receive less attention than the category of "woman." Naoki Sakai's writing is suggestive in this regard. See for example, "Nashonariti to bo(koku)go no seiji," in Nashonariti no datsukôchiku, ed. Sakai Naoki, Brett de Bary, and Iyotani Toshio (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobô, 1996), 9-53.
33. Muta Kazue, Senryaku to shite no kazoku: kindai Nihon no kokumin kokka keisei to josei (Family as strategy: Women and the formation of the modern Japanese nation-state) (Tokyo: Shin'yôsha, 1996); Ôgoshi Aiko, Kindai Nihon no jendâ: gendai Nihon no shisâteki kadai o tou (Modern Japanese gender: Interrogating the philosophical task of contemporary Japan) (Tokyo: San'ichi Shobô, 1997); Ueno Chizuko, Nashonarizumu to jendâ (Engendering nationalism) (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1998).
34. Important recent analyses include: "Chapter 3: Performing Empire" in Robertson's Takarazuka; Ueno, Nashonarizumu to jendâ; Wakakuwa Midori, Sensô ga tsukuru josei zô: dainiji sekai taisen ka no Nihon josei dôin no shikaku teki puropaganda (Images of women created by war: Visual propaganda for the mobilization of Japanese women under World War Two) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobô, 1995); Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). See also Molony and Uno, eds., Gendering Modern Japanese History. On Japanese imperialism in general, see also W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895-1937 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

--From Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theater, Gender, and Nationalism by Ayako Kano. (c) 2001, Palgrave USA used by permission

Table of Contents

PART I: SETTING THE STAGE Acting Like a Woman Modern Formations of Gender and Performance PART II: KAWAKAMI SADAYAKKO Wifeing the Woman Straightening the Theater Reproducing the Empire PART III: MATSUI SUMAKO A New Woman A New Theater Feminists and Femmes Fatales Epilogue: Revealing the Real Body

Editorial Reviews

'A sophisticated analysis of the relationship between the 'new theater,' the 'new woman,' the new nation, and the new empire in turn of the twentieth-century Japan, engagingly told through the stories of the two actresses who pioneered women (rather than men) playing women's roles on the Japanese stage. A meaningful and mesmerizing book.' - Carol Gluck, Columbia University

From the Publisher

A sophisticated analysis...A meaningful and mesmerizing book.

Carol Gluck