The 1900 Exposition Universelle witnessed a tremendous show
of Japanese art. First of all was the
new inclusion of the official school of Japanese oil painting, led by the
figure of Kuroda Seiki, in the Beaux-Arts division from which Japanese art had
been excluded as “decorative” in 1889. Japanese artists maintained their success in the field of decorative arts,
however, with the Kawashima textiles company winning first place for its
designs in the textile division and Kamisaka Sekka and Kishi Kokei winning a gold for their lacquered writing desk. [i]
Hoping to assert its prominence as a model of culture and civilization outside
of the European sphere, the Japanese government published an aggressively
historicizing tome, The History of the Arts of Japan (https://archive.org/details/histoiredelartdu00japa).
Weighing in at 277 pages, the book began with prehistoric painting and swept
through centuries of Japanese artists and their biographies, reflecting recent
Japanese efforts to excavate its cultural history and serving as a complement to
the thirteen centuries of Japanese culture and lacquer on display at the
exposition. [ii]
In connection with the Japanese-sponsored display of Japanese woodblock prints
and the Bing Pavillion, the imperial representation of Japanese art sought to
anchor its popularity in Europe in a careful historical record and teleological
narrative of cultural progress. The Japanese Pavilion itself had a close historical referent in the Golden Pavilion, Kinkakuji, in Kyoto.
This is not to say that popular spectacle
had no place at the Japanese exhibition. This role was played by the theatrical
performances of Sada Yacco, whose feminine persona and splendid costuming
played into the anticipation of the Japanese arts as at once refined
and visually impressive in color and pattern, as well as based on
natural form mysterious and incomprehensible. Quotes from the onlookers
demonstrate this fascinations, and refer to Yacco’s "supple movements of a reed swaying in
the wind," "a lotus flower on the water or a field of long grass in
the wind," or the "the swift curve and flicker of a
flame."[i]
The troupe accompanying Yacco
specialized in three plays: The Geisha and the Knight, the Loyalist,
and The Inspired Sculpture. These were performed in the theater on the exhibition grounds, and are reported to
have become a major attraction for the exhibition. Although praised for their
remarkable display of costumed fabrics, based on kimono designs, and the feminine grace and poise of the central
actress’ geisha persona, the plays and
dances drew heavily from European sources. For example, the Inspired Sculpture
tale was a retelling of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea in a Japanese setting,
complete with a conflict in dance between the ideal woman and the sculptor’s
extant wife. The dances themselves were incorporated vivacious elements of
flamenco and other European dance, constructing an active spectacle for the
viewers presented nonetheless as kabuki dance (one French commentator expressed
his enthusiasm for the hara-kiri scene in the Geisha and the Knight and
describes it in vivid dramatic detail.) These disparate qualities were kept in
check by Yacco’s performance of physical constraint and emotional control, subduing
cultural dissonance through the image of her geisha training. Needless to say,
these elements differed from Japanese Kabuki, first in the inclusion of women (who
had been banned from the art since the early Edo period) and then in her relatively physically
and emotionally activated performance. Yacco, herself an adamant and active
proponent of women’s rights, voiced her enthusiasm for performance in
the West, which demanded the actress to smile, frown, and gesture, while kabuki
demanded the stillness of a "doll-like" woman. Yacco and her troupe thus adapted Japanese performance
modes to be legible to European audiences, building on the European image of
Japanese arts and geisha to result in a successful and widely praised series
of performances.
Berg, Shelley. "Sada Yacco in London and Paris, 1900: Le Reve Realise." Dance Chronicle. 1995, Vol. 18 Issue 3, p343-404.
[i]
379
[i] Tsen, Hsuan, Scott Bukatman, Wanda M. Corn, Jim Reichert, and
Bryan J. Wolf.Spectacles of Authenticity: The Emergence of Transnational
Entertainments in Japan and America, 1880-1906. , 2011.
P120
[ii]
370
