1. Introduction
Mudan Ting (The Peony Pavilion, 1598), a classic Chinese Kunqu Opera play by the Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu (1550–1616), has often been compared to Romeo and Juliet (first published in a quarto version in 1597) by Xianzu’s contemporary William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Peony Pavilion features an extraordinary love story between Du Liniang, a 16-year-old daughter of a high-ranking government official, and Liu Mengmei, a promising young scholar. On a fine spring day, Du Liniang is persuaded by her maid to take a walk in the family garden, where she gets tired, takes a rest, and falls asleep. In her dream, she encounters a handsome young man, a stranger identified later in the play as Liu Mengmei, with whom she immediately falls in love. Preoccupied with her love affair in the dream, she no longer has any appetite for food and as her sleep is getting worse too she becomes very ill. Before dying, she makes a self-portrait and hides it in the garden. Liu Mengmei, who in his turn has dreamed of a love affair with a young lady, visits the same garden on his way to attend the imperial exam. Accidentally discovering the painting of Du Liniang there, he recognizes her as the woman who has frequently appeared in his dreams. When he gets to know Du Liniang’s sad story, Liu decides to open her tomb. The ‘goddess of flower’ is deeply moved by their love story and agrees to bring Du Liniang back to life. After many setbacks, the young couple marry at last.
Tang Xianzu wrote The Peony Pavilion for Kunqu Opera, which entered upon its heyday at the turn of the 17th century. Ever since its first performance more than 400 years ago The Peony Pavilion has remained on the repertoire of almost every Kunqu Opera house. Known as the ‘mother of hundreds of Chinese operas’, Kunqu Opera has become the ‘living fossil’ of Chinese opera. Over the course of the centuries, Kunqu Opera’s magnificent singing, elegant costumes, beautiful music along with its well-written plots have captured the hearts of countless audiences in China and all over the world. In 2001, Kunqu Opera was listed by UNESCO as the ‘Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.’
Since the 1990s, there have been several important intercultural performances of The Peony Pavilion. Peter Sellars’ version made its debut at the Vienna Festival in May 1998 and later toured London, Paris, and Rome before closing at UC Berkeley in March 1999. Sellars’ postmodern production lasted three hours. That directed by Chen Shi-zheng, known as the first full-length performance of the play, ran for 26 hours over three days, and included all of the play’s 55 scenes. This performance opened in New York in 1999 and toured widely in France, Australia, Italy, Denmark, Austria and Germany in the following two years.
In 2004, the so-called youth edition of The Peony Pavilion directed by Bai Xianyong in collaboration with Suzhou Kunqu Opera Theatre became a huge success, and it has toured many places in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It was also brought to UC Berkeley in 2006. Bai Xianyong himself took part in the adaptation of the classical play, in which the original 55 scenes were remade into 27 scenes after many cuts and readjustments. The new play was divided into three parts and is usually performed over three successive days. According to Bai Xianyong, the three parts of the play emphasize different themes, namely, love in the dream, love between human and ghost, and love in the real world. The youth edition has been extremely popular among young university students across China.
Shortly after the premiere of the youth edition of The Peony Pavilion, Bando Tamasaburo, a famous Japanese Kabuki actor, came to Suzhou Kunqu Opera Theatre to learn Kunqu, and The Peony Pavilion in particular. Named ‘National Living Treasure’ in Japan, Tamasaburo is the country’s leading specialist of ‘onnagata’ – the theatrical portrayal of a female Kabuki character by a male actor. The Sino-Japanese collaboration of The Peony Pavilion with Tamasaburo cross-dressing as Du Liniang premiered in Kyoto in March 2008 and since then has had many performances throughout China and Japan. This Sino-Japanese co-production was invited to perform at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 10–16 February 2013. The performance attracted much attention in European theatrical circles and was widely covered in both local and international media.
In the process of the Sino-Japanese collaboration, the representation of ‘Chineseness’ is problematic. One would ask the following questions: How does Tamasaburo perform a female protagonist in this Chinese classic without speaking the Chinese language? What does he learn from Kunqu Opera? What kind of unique contribution does he make to the performance history of the play? In what ways does the Sino-Japanese co-production connect Kunqu Opera and Kabuki? How is the intercultural performance mediatized, received or perceived in China, Japan and elsewhere?
2. Cross-dressing, Tamasaburo and Chinese Dan
Female impersonation has been the tradition in both Chinese and Japanese theatres. But in contrast with the continuous popularity of this tradition on the Japanese stage, female impersonation has virtually been abandoned in contemporary Chinese theatre. ‘Women’s parts are traditionally played by male actors, the onnagata, in the Kabuki in exactly the same way as on the Chinese stage. The convention has been more rigidly preserved in Japan than in China for, whereas the actress has been common in the Chinese theatre within recent decades, women have never yet appeared on the orthodox Kabuki stage.’Reference Scott1 The disappearance of female impersonation in contemporary Chinese theatre was consequential to the political movements up to the 1970s. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a nostalgic appreciation of female impersonation on stage again in China. ‘Nan Dan [female role actors] is one of the important characteristics of Peking Opera … It should not just exist but also accommodate innovations and changes based on what has been achieved in the past.’Reference Yao2 In recent years, cross-dressing performance has reappeared on Chinese TV and stage, with the emergence of famous cross-dressing actors such as Li Yugang, playing ancient Chinese beauties for audiences across the country and abroad.Reference He3
Historically speaking, there used to be active exchanges in the art of female impersonation as well as in theatrical performance in general between China and Japan. Yoshizawa Ayame (1673–1729) was regarded as the greatest Japanese onnagata or female impersonator of his time, developing a unique technique of female impersonation which became a model for future actors. His ideas and trade secrets were written down in a book called Ayamegusa, which was later regarded as the Bible of the Japanese female impersonators. In China, Mei Lanfang (1894–1961) was the greatest dan actor in Peking Opera, and made a unique contribution to bringing Chinese opera to the world. During his three visits to Japan, he became acquainted with Tamasaburo’s grandfather, Kanya Morita XIII, and father, Kanya Morita XIV. From both of them, Tamasaburo heard a lot about Mei Lanfang, dan, and Chinese opera, which sowed the seeds for his later interest in Chinese opera. In an interview, Tamasaburo said,
While my grandfather and my father had met with Mr. Mei Lanfang, I have learned The Drunken Concubine from Mei Baojiu, the son of Mei Lanfang. The long-standing relationship between our two families has always touched me deeply. Last year, together with my Chinese partners, I performed The Peony Pavilion in Kyoto, Beijing and Suzhou. While I was performing, I felt as if Mr. Mei had been there watching me, which motivated me to work even harder on my performance. We will always remember the great artist Mei Lanfang.Reference Qing4
In fact, Chinese dan bears resemblances to Japanese onnagata, especially in their attitudes towards and conceptions of the art of impersonation.
One of the important things for an onnagata is attitude of mind. Even though you are good-looking by nature, it appears overdone if you are too conscious of looking pretty. On the other hand, it looks disagreeable if you appear too indifferent to feminine appeal. You cannot be a good onnagata unless you are like a woman in your daily life. The more you become conscious on the stage of playing a woman’s part, the more unsuccessful will you be. You must be exact in your daily life. (Ref. Reference Scott1, p. 173)
This is reminiscent of what leading actors of Chinese dan would confess about the art of female impersonation. Ji Yunba (1724–1805), a well-known writer of the Qing Dynasty, recorded in his notes what a male dan had said about his experience of performing a female role. ‘Taking my body as a female, I have to transform my heart into that of a female, and then my tender feelings and charming postures can become truthful and lifelike. If a trace of male heart remains, there must be a bit that does not resemble a female...’Reference Tian5 Mei Lanfang also claimed that identification was ‘the highest realm’ of the art of female impersonation.Reference Mei and Xu6
Tamasaburo is an ardent and strict practitioner of female impersonation. In an interview, he explained the art of Japanese onnagata: ‘The charm of onnagata is that it cannot be replaced by actresses. The performance of onnagata is not to represent a woman, but to play a woman with the eyes and the feelings of a man. An onnagata has himself transformed into a woman.’Reference Kuai7 Although what Tamasaburo says about the differences between man and woman sounds essentialist from a contemporary feminist perspective, it suggests how female impersonators would perform their roles.
Undoubtedly, one of the major attractions of the Sino-Japanese The Peony Pavilion is that Tamasaburo revives the art of female impersonation in Chinese theatre today. ‘Nan dan [female impersonation] ceased to exist after the Cultural Revolution, and so we have to start reviving the tradition,’ said Tamasaburo in an interview in Suzhou. ‘I believe the right conditions already exist in today’s China. The method exists, and there are some people who remember the nan dan of the pre-Cultural Revolution era who are still alive today.’Reference Nakamura8 The popularity of cross-dressing performance on different Chinese reality TV shows by Li Yugang and his followers proves that what Tamasaburo said is true. Nevertheless, the report in the Japanese media about his role in reviving female impersonation in China through Kabuki is not devoid of nationalistic implications.
One of the major critiques against Tamasaburo is his weak singing. In Kunqu Opera, singing plays the leading role. Compared with the impersonation in Japanese theatre, which is usually restricted to make-up and dance, impersonation on the Chinese stage is much more comprehensive. While female impersonation in traditional theatre is an East Asian heritage, the differences between the Chinese and Japanese performance cultures are interesting to explore.
3. Singing, Kunqu and Kabuki
In ‘Techniques of the body: Toward an anthropology of the actor’, Patrice Pavis asks an interesting question: ‘What kind of body does the actor have at his disposal even before taking on a role?’Reference Pavis9 As a Japanese onnagata, Tamasaburo’s strength is his dancing.
Many popular explanations for the continued practice of men in female roles in kabuki performance focus on physical strength and endurance. This argument asserts that women cannot play onnagata roles because men have created a performance style for Kabuki female role representation that requires a man’s body. First, the size and strength of the male body is considered necessary to carry the weight and massiveness of the costumes; second, the eroticism of the male body performing female-like representation is also considered essential. (Ref. Reference Scott1, p. 33)
While the eroticism of the male body also holds true for Chinese dan actors, their costumes are usually soft and light compared with the heavy costumes in Kabuki.
For Chinese opera, a great play must be based on a great script. By contrast, the literary value is not of such importance for Kabuki.
A Kabuki play is not meant to be a literary work in itself, it is considered in the first place as stage effect. It is primarily visual in appeal and everything else is subordinate to that … The Kabuki is not concerned with any particular message, it is first and foremost entertainment, designed solely for the ordinary citizen; everything is devoted to making a vivid appeal to the eye and creating atmosphere by all possible artistry to keep the audience enthralled. In short, it is superb theatre.Reference Mezur10
In contrast, The Peony Pavilion is one of the great classics of Chinese literature. These differences between the Chinese and Japanese theatres constitute an important challenge for Tamasaburo.
What’s more, a Chinese opera usually contains a large variety of different tunes. For example, there are over 1000 tunes in Kunqu Opera. Because of its emphasis on strictly following the tradition, Kunqu Opera has successfully preserved some ancient Chinese music, even from the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, on the Chinese opera stage, skilful and individualized singing is crucial to the success of the performance. In Kabuki, however, the singing is often done by the orchestra rather than by the impersonator himself. Tamasaburo not only had to learn how to recite Kunqu dialogues in Suzhou dialect, but also study the various tunes for singing, which was a formidable task. It was truly extraordinary of Tamasaburo to undertake this most difficult work, which, however, testifies to the open-mindedness to experiment he has shown throughout his career.
As a leading Kabuki actor, Tamasaburo is different from his more conservative colleagues in that he has engaged in many innovative experiments, especially in terms of intercultural performance. He is well-known for having taken on Shakespearean roles such as Lady Macbeth and Desdemona. In 1976, Tamasaburo played the part of Lady Macbeth and ‘brought power and poise to this role’ at the Nissei Gekijo.Reference Brandon11 In 1993, Tamasaburo played the title role of Elizabeth I of England in Elizabeth, a play written by Spanish playwright Francisco Ors and directed by Spain’s female director, Nuria Espert. The performance was so successful that it was revived in 1995.Reference Bowers12 In addition, Tamasaburo has shown an active interest in the movies. In the 1990s, he played the leading role in two European directors’ films. In Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s Nastasja (1994) he played both a male and a female role. In Daniel Schmidt’s fictitious documentary The Written Face (1995) Tamasaburo recounted his journey of becoming an onnagata actor in front of a mirror.Reference Yomota13 Dissatisfied with the old customs then prevalent in the Japanese film industry, Tamasaburo also directed a number of films himself. The three films he has so far directed are mainly about women, two of which are adapted from stage plays in which he had earlier performed. Most famous is his 1992 Yume no onna (Dream Woman), which was screened at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival. Apart from those non-Kabuki projects, Tamasaburo also seeks to enrich Kabuki by cooperating with artists from other fields. In 1996 he collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, performing Kabuki dance to the music of J.S. Bach, and in 1998 he danced alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov.Reference V.14 Tamasaburo has been a dynamic and courageous experimentalist in his artistic pursuit.
Like his grandfather and father, Tamasaburo became so interested in Mei Lanfang and Chinese opera that he decided to learn how to perform in it. A quarter of a century ago, he studied Peking Opera with Mei Baojiu and then created Yokihi, a Kabuki piece based on the Chinese play Yang Guifei (Empress Yang), which premiered in Japan in 1991. Tamasaburo encountered Kunqu Opera and The Peony Pavilion when he was studying Mei Lanfang because The Peony Pavilion was one of the classical plays that influenced Mei the most while he was learning Kunqu Opera. Therefore, the experience of performing Yokihi foreshadowed Tamasaburo’s so-called ‘first’ encounter with Kunqu in The Peony Pavilion. As Gabriele Brandstetter put it, ‘ [A]t the same time the allusion to these “first encounter scenes” makes clear – with the resources of the theatre – that in our age there is always a pre-history to every “first time”, which means that referencing or quoting it under the conditions of contemporary culture is to transform it.’Reference Brandstetter15 We may therefore conclude that Tamasaburo’s performance in the Sino-Japanese The Peony Pavilion was anticipated by his own experimentation in different cross-cultural performances as well as by the exchanges between Kabuki or Japanese theatre and Chinese opera.
Nevertheless, this Kunqu performance of The Peony Pavilion presents many challenges to Tamasaburo. ‘Tamasaburo doesn’t know Chinese. It’s hard for him to memorize all the lyrics and tunes, let alone perform in Chinese on stage’, said Wang Fang.Reference Han16 Moreover, pronouncing Chinese words correctly in the play is another challenge. Tamasaburo started with mimicking the movements of Kunqu actors’ tongues and lips. Suzhou dialect is pronounced differently from mandarin and contains some sounds that are absent from mandarin, which makes it a difficult dialect even for people from the neighbouring regions. Tamasaburo did not hide his problems in reciting and singing. Certainly, the audience would from the very beginning know that this is a unique performance by a great Japanese actor who does not speak Chinese.Reference Zheng17 Familiar with the story and the Chinese opera performances of the play, they would expect to experience something new and would not be too much bothered by his understandably ‘weak’ singing. In the media reports of the Sino-Japanese production of The Peony Pavilion, it was widely acknowledged that Tamasaburo’s impersonation of Du Liniang contributes to a somewhat different understanding of this character and of performance aesthetics by blending Chinese and Japanese performance traditions.
4. New Aesthetics of Interculturalism
There is an interesting image of Tamasaburo playing the female part of Du Liniang, which appeared in the official brochures of the performance (Figure 1). At first sight, this picture presents an elegant Chinese woman with the typical hairdressing and costume on the Chinese opera stage. However, at a closer look, the make-up is unmistakably Japanese, with white face and little red mouth, which is characteristic of Japanese Kabuki. ‘The whiteness of the makeup is traditional in Japanese theatre as a sign of the ideal white complexion of the nobleman, who can afford to keep out of the sun, and the pallor of the protected young woman (or trained geisha) even today.’Reference Garber18
Tamasaburo playing the part of Du Liniang (courtesy of Suzhou Kunqu Opera Theatre.)
The impact of Tamasaburo’s make-up on the audience is difficult to know. However, this image of mixing Kabuki and Chinese opera is very revelatory about the performance as a whole. Concerning the significance of make-up in theatre, Patrice Pavis says that ‘nothing is closer to the actor’s body, and nothing serves or betrays an actor more than this paper-thin coating’ (Ref. Reference Pavis9, p. 181). When playing together with his Chinese partners in this Kunqu play, Tamasaburo consciously or unconsciously asserts his Japanese identity and has Chinese and Japanese performance cultures interwoven. Thus, the representation of ‘Chineseness’ in this Kunqu performance becomes complicated.
Compared with Kunqu Opera, the performance of Kabuki is more quiet and less emphatic. ‘In ordinary situations, only slight movements of the eyes, a tiny puckering between the eyebrows, and pursing the lips make up the standard vocabulary of facial expressions’ (Ref. Reference Mezur10, p. 191). It is noticeable that Tamasaburo blends Kabuki into his performance in The Peony Pavilion. This is also made obvious in my interview with Shen Guofang, playing Chunxiang, the maid of Du Liniang, in the play.
He: Does Tamasaburo’s performance in The Peony Pavilion relate to his career as Kabuki actor in Japan?
Shen: Yes. Kabuki is very quiet. Mr. Tamasaburo excels in playing tragic roles. His performance in the scene ‘The Soul Departs [Li Hun]’ was exceptionally moving. After the Hong Kong performance, there were many negative reports, denouncing Tamasaburo’s reciting of dialogues as inauthentic. Nevertheless, I think it is very understandable, for he has done his best. The image of Du Liniang he enacted onstage is very different from the traditional Chinese ones. His is purer, neater, quieter, and more introspective and not catering to the audience.
He: Does he dance differently from what it is in Kunqu Opera?
Shen: Certainly. As a little huadan [role for young, unmarried woman], I have many typical movements to highlight my vivacity. When I performed with Tamasaburo, he did not have many gestures and focused on the movements of his eyes, which made it very difficult for me to interact with him.19
Knowing that singing in Chinese is his weakness, Tamasaburo would expect his audiences to pay attention to his gestures and movements. His mastery of the situations in ancient times and his deep concern with the presentation of details during the performance have impressed his audiences. The image of Du Liniang enacted by Tamasaburo looks very reserved, dignified and graceful. There is an anecdote told by the Chinese actors from Suzhou Kunqu Opera Theatre, which goes as follows: Tamasaburo avoided making unnecessary contact with the actor playing Liu Mengmei off stage for he believed that being too familiar with each other would exert some negative impact on their performances. He insisted that the sense of mystery on stage should not be broken, and this has been true also between him and his long-term Kabuki partners.
The Sino-Japanese production of The Peony Pavilion has to a large extent achieved its intended effects: the Chinese audience is no longer preoccupied with the singing of Tamasaburo, but tries to look for the different, yet valuable aspects of his performance. The intercultural performance in the co-production shaped a new aesthetics of spectatorship. ‘An intercultural semiotics invites us to relativize our choices, priorities, and habits in the analysis of performance. For example, it warns us against our obsession to describe a visible and readable space, to seek out and quantitatively process information and redundancies, to valorize all that deviates from the norm and shows originality’ (Ref. Reference Pavis9, p. 28). Similar to its reception in China, the Sino-Japanese co-production was also a huge success in Japan. Because there were too many of Tamasaburo’s fans who wanted to watch the performance, it was made into a movie in 2009 and shown throughout Japan. Both the Chinese and Japanese audiences saw something familiar in it, and yet they were amazed at what was new and unexpected. This co-production crosses the boundaries between the Chinese and Japanese theatres as well as the two cultures at large.
Tamasaburo’s performance in The Peony Pavilion also won recognition from some well-known Chinese Kunqu actors and scholars. Zhang Jiqing, who coached Tamasaburo for the play, thought that Tamasaburo’s performance combined the best of Kabuki and Kunqu Opera. Zhang said that Tamasaburo had a profound understanding of his role of Du Liniang and was very successful in recreating her onstage (Ref. Reference Zheng17, p. 35). Chinese Kunqu scholars also spoke highly of Tamasaburo’s achievement in the play. ‘Chinese opera performance is particularly impressionistic and shares with Chinese painting the historical tradition of “cherishing spiritual resemblance rather than visual similarity” … Tamasaburo’s performance fully embodies the philosophical idea of “vigorousness and verve” and the impressionism that traditional Chinese aesthetics propounds.’Reference Feng20
The Sino-Japanese The Peony Pavilion creates a ‘third space’ (to borrow Homi K. Bhabha’s term) in which both collaboration and contestation between cultures occur. The intercultural performance brings about a new aesthetic experience that affects the spectators’ perception of world culture in general and national cultures in particular. It fosters new ideas of an East Asian community, comprising members from different yet closely connected cultures. This echoes what Erika Fischer-Lichte says about the significance of intercultural performance in different parts of the world:
In Asia, this state of in-betweenness by the spectators might have enabled the anticipation of some kind of a new ‘pan-Asian’ cultural identity that does not destroy or annul different local traditions but is able to interweave them productively, although there will always remain domains not to be understood. Here the political dimension of such processes of interweaving in the production as in the course of the performance was therefore foregrounded. So the community that might have come into being in and through the performance in different Asian countries, at the same time reflected on the conditions of its very possibility.Reference Fischer-Lichte21
Given that the recent relationship, on the political level at least, among the East Asian countries has been ‘cold’ and complicated, the success of the Sino-Japanese collaboration in The Peony Pavilion becomes all the more significant, and endows people with infinite imagination for and expectations of the future.
5. Conclusion
The intercultural performance of the Sino-Japanese Peony Pavilion has transformed the usual understanding of ‘Chineseness’ in Kunqu Opera. In this globalized and globalizing era, there cannot be a so-called authentic ‘Chineseness’. Like other ethnic or gender identities ‘Chineseness’ is by nature performative, meaning that it is constructed, negotiated, and even commodified. In Tamasaburo’s collaboration with Chinese Kunqu Opera in The Peony Pavilion, ‘Chineseness’ has undergone a process of both making and unmaking, and this has become an increasingly common cultural phenomenon in China today.
Furthermore, this Sino-Japanese co-production presented an opportunity to reflect on intercultural performance, which hitherto has been dominated by an East–West paradigm, with the West as the centre and source of influence. Rustum Barucha is concerned with intraculturalism in Indian culture as a critique of the East–West norm in intercultural theatre. This Sino-Japanese performance serves to reflect on the prevailing models of East-West cross-cultural praxis, too. It represents a new East Asian paradigm of interculturalism, which is characterized by different conceptions concerning the interactions between cultures, namely, connecting instead of othering, sharing instead of influencing, complementing instead of exploiting. The traditional post-colonial discourse, which has been effective in East–West intercultural studies, appears to be inadequate or rather misplaced in discussing East Asian practices of interculturalism in the theatre and beyond.
Acknowledgments
A longer full version of this paper was first presented at the International Research Center for Interweaving Performing Cultures, Free University Berlin, where I was a fellow in the fall of 2012. I wish to thank Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte for inviting me to IRC and for giving me insightful comments and suggestions on my research project.
Chengzhou He is Changjiang Distinguished Professor of English and Drama, Nanjing University, and Chinese Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins University–Nanjing University Centre for Chinese and American Studies. He holds a PhD from the University of Oslo. He has published more than ten monographs and edited books in English and Chinese. His articles have appeared in Comparative Literature Studies, Gender, Place and Culture, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Studies, Modern Language Quarterly, Neohelicon, Comparative Drama, Ibsen Studies, and other international and Chinese academic journals. He was former President of the International Ibsen Committee and won the Ibsen Medal in 2002. He is a Foreign Member of Academia Europaea.
