Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-7pwfn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-12T08:50:05.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Purification’ and ‘Hybridization’: (Re)construction and Reception of Theatrical Nationality in Western Tours of the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui Troupes in 1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2022

YANG GAO

Abstract

The Western tours of the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes in 1930 illustrated how to (re)construct the theatrical nationality of China and Japan through the manifestation and manipulation of the performance of Peking opera and kabuki. Through the ‘purification’ of Peking opera's stage presentation system, the Mei Lanfang troupe forged a ‘pure’ theatrical Chineseness that boosted the Americans’ fascination with the ‘(a)historicality’ of Chinese theatrical tradition. By presenting Westerners with a ‘hybridized’ kabuki, which embodied a ‘historically authentic’ theatrical Japaneseness, the Tsutsui troupe deconstructed Westerners’ psychological expectations of a culturally imagined ‘pure’ and ‘classical’ Japanese theatre. As two sides of the same coin, the two troupes’ (re)construction of theatrical Chineseness and Japaneseness together challenged the West's essentialist views of cultural ‘Others’, which forcibly endowed Eastern theatre with a pure and unchanged ‘otherness’.

Information

Type
Article
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , October 2022, pp. 238 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2022

Introduction

The early twentieth century was a critical period in the history of overseas dissemination of Chinese and Japanese theatre. The two rounds of the Japanese tours of the Peking opera actor Mei Lanfang (1894–1961) in 1919 and 1924 provided valuable experiences for communication and interaction within the East Asian theatre community. Mei Lanfang's American tours in 1930 served as a historic opportunity for direct dialogue between traditional Chinese theatre (xiqu) and the Western public. From the turn of the twentieth century to the late 1910s, two Japanese theatre troupes – the Kawakami and Hanako troupes – toured the Western world over some time. Their performances achieved sensational successes that aroused Westerners’ frenzied fascination with Japanese theatre. After the 1920s, a relatively low period for overseas dissemination of Japanese theatre,Footnote 2 in February 1930, another Japanese theatre troupe, headed by the shimpa (new school) actor Tsutsui Tokujirō (1881–1953), resumed overseas tours of Japanese theatre. In one year and three months, the Western tours of the Tsutsui troupe rivalled those of the Kawakami and Hanako troupes.

The temporal and spatial similarity between the Mei Lanfang troupe's American tours and the Tsutsui troupe's Western tours, especially their New York tours,Footnote 3 could not be regarded only as a historical coincidence but as a significant event of theatrical communication between East and West, which offered a precious chance for the first time for Westerners to compare the stage presentation of two Eastern theatrical traditions within a short historical period. In this context of intercultural dissemination and reception, the difference between the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes’ approaches to (re)constructing the theatrical nationality of China and Japan, through the manifestation and manipulation of the stage presentation of Peking opera and kabuki, was clearly revealed and scrutinized in a power relationship with the West as a cultural ‘Other’.

A ‘purified’ Peking opera: (re)construction of theatrical Chineseness in the Mei Lanfang troupe's American tours

The core ideology of the Mei Lanfang troupe's 1930 American tours could be summed up as ‘promoting Chineseness’. From the outset, the Mei Lanfang troupe's American tours aimed to, borrowing the words of Qi Rushan (1877–1962), one of Mei Lanfang's closest aides responsible for planning the troupe's American trip, ‘promote Chinese theatre and facilitate communication between Chinese and foreign cultures’.Footnote 4 Following this line of ‘promoting the quintessence of Chinese culture’, the troupe's American tours must provide the American audience with a Chinese theatre with ‘original flavours’. As stated by Zhang Pengchun (also known as Peng Chun Chang, 1892–1957), the general counsel and director of the Mei Lanfang troupe, ‘what foreigners make demands of Chinese theatre is to see something traditional in it’.Footnote 5

Mei Lanfang and some intellectuals advising him on the American tours were clearly aware that, for the American audience, who were unfamiliar with Chinese theatrical tradition, the extent to which the nationality of Chinese theatre could grasp their interest and attention would depend largely on the extent to which the xiqu's stage presentation was different from that of Western theatre. To demonstrate this distinctive theatrical nationality to the American audience, the Mei Lanfang troupe needed to keep the stage presentation of its performances away from the infiltration and intrusion of any stage elements of Western theatre.Footnote 6 Moreover, the troupe had to further ‘purify’ this theatrical nationality from within the stage presentation of Peking opera, arguably the most representative of the xiqu the troupe presented the American audience.

Specifically, the main tools the Mei Lanfang troupe adopted to ‘purify’ the stage presentation of Peking opera could be called ‘restoration’ and ‘refinement’. Restoration had two components – ‘artization’ and ‘dancization’. ‘Artization’ means that the various onstage and offstage aspects of the Mei Lanfang troupe's overseas tours, regardless of the performer's appearance onstage, the making of scenes and props, or even the entire atmosphere of theatre venues,Footnote 7 were committed to obtaining inspiration from resources of ancient Chinese fine arts to show foreign audiences ‘the colors of the East and the unique values of Chinese fine arts’.Footnote 8 ‘Dancization’ was mainly based on Qi Rushan's argument that the performer's bodily gestures and movements in xiqu performance ‘evolved from ancient dance’.Footnote 9 By devoting himself to the study of the aesthetics and the practices of kunqu (Kun opera) performance, Qi Rushan concluded that the essential feature of traditional Chinese theatre's stage presentation was ‘all voices being songs, all movements being dances’.Footnote 10 Thus Qi Rushan consciously sought inspiration from various dance imagery depicted in classical literature to create for Mei Lanfang a series of guzhuang xinxi (ancient-costume new drama), which included archaistic dances such as shuixiuwu (water sleeves dance), shouwu (ribbon dance) and beipanwu (cup-and-plate dance). Following the principle of ‘singing and acting being equally important, songs and dances being united’, which was arguably demonstrated in the stage presentation of kunqu performance, Qi Rushan ‘made every song lyric be accompanied with bodily expressions’ in the guzhuang xinxi performance to ‘transform [the performance] into a kind of song and dance show’.Footnote 11 Of the repertoire the Mei Lanfang troupe prepared for its American tours, these guzhuang xinxi productions, in which the core component of the performer's acting was retro dance movements, played a great role in conveying to the American audience the ‘noble and quaint’ quality of Chinese theatre.

In a sense, the Mei Lanfang troupe thought that the theatrical nationality of Peking opera's stage presentation could highlight to the American audience the ‘childlike’ innocence and simplicity of Chinese civilization. However, to Mei Lanfang and his aides, the theatrical nationality of Peking opera was not flawless but rather mingled with some ‘impurities’, which would expose the ‘childish’ immaturity and primitiveness of Chinese traditional culture.Footnote 12 Therefore, for the Mei Lanfang troupe, to further underscore a ‘pure’ nationality of xiqu to the American audience, it was necessary to ‘eliminate those aspects that exceeded the foreigners’ capacity for appreciation’.Footnote 13 Specifically, any stage element of Peking opera performance the troupe deemed ‘corrupt custom’, ‘vulgar’, or incompatible with Westerners’ aesthetic tastes had to go through a process of ‘refinement’. For instance, in selecting the plays to be included in the Mei Lanfang troupe's repertoire for its American tours, Qi Rushan repeatedly stressed that the troupe should choose plays that had an elegant subject and content.Footnote 14 By adding to the troupe's orchestra musical instruments with a soft tone, such as the yueqin (moon guitar), hulei and Chinese lute,Footnote 15 the Mei Lanfang troupe tried to harmonize the tones of musical instruments, such as the gong, drum and huqin,Footnote 16 used in the orchestra of traditional Peking opera performance, the sound effects of which sometimes might be quite harsh to the ears of Western audiences.Footnote 17 Moreover, the Mei Lanfang troupe abolished some stage practices alleged to be ‘bad habits’, such as yinchang, jianchang, and throwing cushions,Footnote 18 which were typical of orthodox Peking opera performances.Footnote 19

The above discussion shows that, by means of ‘restoration’ and ‘refinement’, the Mei Lanfang troupe tried to exhibit to the American audience a ‘purified’ theatrical Chineseness. The main purpose of (re)constructing this theatrical Chineseness was to appeal to the American audience that there was a clear distinction between Chinese theatrical nationality and Western theatrical modernity represented by realist theatre,Footnote 20 a posture ‘that denied Peking opera's contemporaneity with the modern West’.Footnote 21 However, this ‘purified’ theatrical Chineseness was essentially (re)constructed artificially in an ‘ahistorical’ way, which was neither historically ‘authentic’Footnote 22 nor nationally ‘pure’.Footnote 23

Furthermore, the ‘purification’ practice adopted by the Mei Lanfang troupe somehow displayed a ‘modern’ orientation by stripping Peking opera of so-called ‘impurities’, which were thought to contradict the aesthetic and ethical values of Western modern civilization. Besides this negative way of eliminating ‘premodernity’, in some cases the Mei Lanfang troupe, in a more positive manner, grafted a superficial form of Western-style ‘modernity’ directly onto xiqu's stage practice,Footnote 24 and even tried to personally ‘perform’ this ‘modernity’ at the level of offstage social etiquette.Footnote 25 That said, these ‘modern’ manipulations adopted by the Mei Lanfang troupe could only play a role in supplementing and accentuating a clearer onstage manifestation of the ‘purified’ theatrical Chineseness in an ‘invisible’ manner. That is to say, the troupe would never allow the intrusion of ‘visible’ Western theatrical modernity into the stage presentation system of its performances tailored to show to the American audience. All this demonstrates that the ‘pureness’ of a theatrical Chineseness deliberately (re)constructed by the Mei Lanfang troupe is quite problematic. Hence it could be said that the ‘purification’ of theatrical Chineseness practised by the Mei Lanfang troupe could never constitute an ‘authentic’ nationality in the sense of cultural representativeness.Footnote 26

A ‘hybridized’ kabuki: (re)construction of theatrical Japaneseness in the Tsutsui troupe's Western tours

Contrary to the Mei Lanfang troupe's ‘(re)classicizing’ of the stage presentation of Peking opera, which was committed to manifesting a ‘pure’ theatrical Chineseness, the Western tours of the Tsutsui troupe adopted a more complicated approach to demonstrating theatrical Japaneseness to Westerners.

During overseas tours, although the Tsutsui troupe intentionally billed itself as an ‘orthodox’ kabuki company out of commercial considerations,Footnote 27 the fact was that most of the troupe's plays for its overseas tours fell into the category of so-called kengeki (sword drama). While preserving the fundamental framework of a traditional kabuki performance, kengeki treated stylized dance and fight scenes in kabuki performance more realistically. Based on the overall performance style of kengeki, the Tsutsui troupe adopted more Western-stylized stage practices in its productions, such as the introduction of realistic scenery,Footnote 28 and some stage innovations in terms of the configuration of performers (e.g. using only actresses in some scenes) and in the way of articulation (e.g. converting the chanting of some orchestra accompanists into the performers’ spoken lines). This resulted in a ‘hybridity’ in the overall performance style of the troupe, which mixed stage elements representative of classical kabuki performance and features indicative of Western realist theatre.

Hence what the Tsutsui troupe demonstrated to Westerners was a kind of ‘hybridized’ kabuki. This ‘hybridized’ kabuki, in Tsutsui's mind, however, represented not a ‘fake’ but an ‘authentic’ Japanese theatre.Footnote 29 Nevertheless, this ‘authentic’ Japanese theatre did not pursue a kind of ‘pure classicality’, but rather historically exhibited the development of ‘Japanese modern theatre’ in early twentieth-century Japan. Encompassing various old and new theatrical genres such as kabuki and shingeki (new theatre), this ‘Japanese modern theatre’ took on a kind of mixed, ambiguous and integrative theatrical Japaneseness. An integral part of this theatrical Japaneseness, kabuki, as a ‘traditional’ theatrical genre,Footnote 30 in the process of interacting with emerging modern theatrical forms such as shingeki, had developed an orientation of modernity to a certain extent by adding various aspects of Western theatre into its stage practice since modern times.Footnote 31

It was this theatrical landscape in modern Japan that shaped the ‘hybridity’ of the kengeki-style kabuki performances that the Tsutsui troupe exhibited to Westerners. Not being a ‘pure’ and ‘classical’ kabuki notwithstanding, this ‘hybridized’ kabuki nevertheless to a certain extent embodied the ‘historical authenticity’ of kabuki over the course of its development in modern times. This reflected a trend of ambiguous integration intrinsic to theatrical Japaneseness at the time, which did not draw a clear distinction between kabuki and shingeki, but rather directed both of them towards Western theatrical modernity.Footnote 32 This might explain why some modern-minded Japanese theatre practitioners, such as playwright Tsubouchi Shinkō (1887–1986), loudly extolled the Tsutsui troupe's Western tours while expressing negative views of the Soviet tour conducted by the famous kabuki performer Ichikawa Sadanji II (1880–1940). While a ‘hybridized’ kabuki demonstrated by the Tsutsui troupe on overseas tours was thought to swim with the development tide of constructing a shinkokumingeki (new national people's theatre) fusing kabuki and shingeki,Footnote 33 the ‘(re)classicized’ kabuki that the Ichikawa troupe showed the Soviet audience was dismissed for deliberately moulding a ‘pure’ theatrical Japaneseness, which would only result in foreigners’ superficial exotic reception of Japanese theatre.Footnote 34 Ironically, the Ichikawa troupe's staging a ‘classical’ kabuki for the Soviet audience could be regarded as a ‘reaction’ against Ichikawa Sadanji II's own commitment to Westernizing kabuki in his early years.Footnote 35

Construction and deconstruction of otherness: Western reception of theatrical nationality manifested by the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes

Since modern times, chinoiserie and japonisme, as two cultural booms sweeping successively in the Western world whose core part was the dissemination and reception of a great variety of Chinese and Japanese arts and crafts, had greatly provoked Westerners’ exotic desire for all things Eastern. In the eyes of Westerners, within the atmosphere of ‘orientalism’ cultivated by chinoiserie and japonisme, various artistic forms originating from China and Japan emanated a charming ‘orientalness’, which was thought to derive from the heaviness of history innate to old cultural traditions. However, this obsession with the ‘historicality’ of ‘oriental’ things exposed Westerners’ ahistorical imagination of non-Western cultures, which indicated that Eastern arts had already reached their peak in an extremely distant time and had subsequently been keeping their original ‘nationality’ intact to this day as a kind of cultural fossil without the intrusion of evolution and foreign things. Based on this ahistorical perception of the ‘otherness’ of Eastern arts, Westerners made different value judgements on the artistry of the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes.

The theatrical Chineseness (re)constructed by the Mei Lanfang troupe, through the ‘purification’ of the stage presentation of Peking opera, indeed considerably stimulated the American audience's orientalist exotic fascination with Chinese theatre.Footnote 36 The American audience was ecstatic about the old and arrested ‘otherness’ of traditional Chinese theatre illustrated by the troupe's performances.Footnote 37 Hence numerous American spectators were apt to view the Chinese theatre represented by the Mei Lanfang troupe's performances as a theatrical form totally different from American theatre culturally and historically.Footnote 38 However, it is worth noting that there was still someone who argued that Mei Lanfang was ‘not in the purest sense a fundamentalist’, but rather ‘applied himself to the observation and study of such Western theatrical performances’.Footnote 39 This subtle fluidity and flexibility within the American audience's reception of the ‘purity’ of theatrical Chineseness shown by the Mei Lanfang troupe might explain why a few American critics even thought that some of the Mei Lanfang troupe's performances were not exotic enough due to catering to ‘the taste of Western theatre and to be as close as possible to the manner and style of the Western theatre’.Footnote 40 This reflects that some American audiences desired an extremely ‘pure’ theatrical ‘otherness’ in the stage presentation system of the troupe's performances.Footnote 41

In particular, the injection of various imagery, extracted by Qi Rushan from the bulk of fine-art resources in previous Chinese dynasties, into the design and making of the performers' hairstyles, clothing, stage settings and gifts attributed to the spectators further reinforced and perpetuated in the troupe's overall image an ‘otherness’ unhooked from specific historical contexts. This, coupled with the encyclopedic textual compilations prepared by Qi Rushan to explain to the American audience all aspects of xiqu, evoked in the minds of Americans a dense ‘(a)historicality’ of Chinese theatre; its intent, as argued by Goldstein, was ‘as much to facilitate understanding as to reproach Western ignorance’ of Chinese theatre.Footnote 42 However, the strategy adopted by the troupe here might be not so much ‘reproaching’ as a kind of ‘exposing’, or, say, ‘defiance’,Footnote 43 the purpose of which was to make the American audience realize that they were neither eligible to understand, nor capable of understanding, the extensiveness and profoundness of Chinese culture, and hence could not really grasp the aesthetic essence of xiqu.Footnote 44 Therefore what was left for the Americans in their reception of the Mei Lanfang troupe's performances was only to glorify the exotic ‘otherness’ of Chinese theatre with an orientalist gaze.Footnote 45

By contrast, the image of a ‘hybridized’ Kabuki, (re)constructed by the Tsutsui troupe's performances on its overseas tours, deconstructed to a certain extent Westerners’ cultural imagination of the ‘pure otherness’ of Japanese theatre. Westerners were bewildered by an elusive ‘in-between’ quality in the overall performance style of the troupe's productions in which Japanese nationality and Western modernity mingled with each other.Footnote 46 This shaped a selectivity in the Western audiences’ reception attitude towards the troupe's performances. On the one hand, they identified and praised certain elements and aspects of the troupe's stage works for embodying to some extent the ‘classicality’ of Japanese theatre;Footnote 47 on the other hand, they nevertheless faulted the troupe for not completely complying with the ‘historical accuracy’ of Japanese theatre's stage practices,Footnote 48 and especially ‘deplored the Japanese troupe's imitation of Western realism, especially its use of naturalistic sceneries and décors’.Footnote 49

This selectivity was also reflected in some European avant-garde theatre practitioners’ reception of the Tsutsui troupe's performances. For instance, French theatre director Jacques Copeau (1879–1949), who saw the troupe's performances in Paris, highly extolled the skilled physical acting of the troupe's performers while accusing the troupe of showing a ‘dangerous naturalistic tendency’ in the overall performance style of their productions.Footnote 50 Similarly, a disciple of Copeau, the French actor and theatre director Charles Dullin (1885–1949), while impressed by the Tsutsui performers’ acting virtuosity in terms of bodily expression,Footnote 51 was nevertheless disappointed by the fact that the troupe's performance style was Westernized to such an extent that it was no longer representative of Japanese theatrical tradition.Footnote 52 He particularly pointed out that the disharmony between the naturalistic scenery of the troupes’ productions and the performers’ acting style was ‘disastrous’.Footnote 53

In a sense, the selectivity in Copeau's and Dullin's reception of the Tsutsui troupe's performances was established on their ‘ahistorical Orientalist presumption of the “authenticity” of Japanese theatre’.Footnote 54 This culturally imagined ‘authenticity’ of Japanese theatre denoted a ‘pure’ theatrical Japaneseness, the perfection of which was not allowed by these Western avant-garde theatre practitioners to be ‘contaminated’ by Western theatre.Footnote 55

In addition, this preoccupation with the ‘pureness’ of theatrical Japaneseness exposed another disposition in these Western avant-garde theatre practitioners’ reception of Eastern theatrical traditions – a quality of ‘self-affirmation’. In other words, the primitive, pure and intact ‘otherness’ inflicted on Eastern theatre largely served as a tool for validating and reinforcing Western avant-garde theatre practitioners’ anti-realistic theatrical innovations. With this reception orientation of ‘self-affirmation’ in mind consciously or unconsciously, these Western avant-garde theatre practitioners censured the Tsutsui troupe for presenting an impure ‘hybridized’ kabuki that partly contradicted their reformation views of Western theatre.Footnote 56 In the same vein, they eulogized the ‘pureness’ of xiqu exhibited by the Mei Lanfang troupe's performances and demanded that this ‘pure’ theatrical Chineseness be kept intact forever without the intrusion of Western theatrical modernity.Footnote 57

The selectivity and self-affirmation in Western avant-garde theatre practitioners’ perceptions of Chinese and Japanese theatre revealed that they were Eurocentric in terms of the power relationship between Western and Eastern theatre. While Western theatre was qualified to assimilate the good qualities of Eastern theatre to reform itself, Eastern theatre was expected to keep its ‘better primitiveness’ wholly intact to satisfy these Western avant-garde theatre practitioners’ orientalist cultural imagination of a ‘pure’ theatrical ‘otherness’.Footnote 58

Conclusion

Within the landscape of a world hierarchy with Western civilization at its height in the early twentieth century, the West perpetuated and canonized the image of the East as a ‘pure Other’. This ahistorical perception of the cultural identity of Eastern ‘Others’, deeply embedded in Westerners’ cognitive structure, profoundly regulated the way of manifesting and manipulating the tension between theatrical ‘nationality’ and ‘modernity’ in the Western tours of the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes in 1930.

The Mei Lanfang troupe, through the ‘purification’ of Peking opera by means of ‘restoration’ and ‘refinement’, elaborately forged an image of theatrical Chineseness that greatly satisfied and facilitated the Americans’ fanaticism over the ‘(a)historicality’ of Chinese theatrical tradition. By contrast, the Tsutsui troupe provided Western audiences with a ‘hybridized’ kabuki indicative of the evolving features of theatrical Japaneseness in modern times. This ‘hybridized’ kabuki, however, due to its ‘impure historical authenticity’, offended Westerners’ psychological expectations of the perfect ‘otherness’ that a culturally imagined ‘pure’ and ‘classical’ Japanese theatre was supposed to have.Footnote 59

The discrepancy in the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes’ approaches to (re)constructing theatrical nationality in an intercultural context led the Chinese and Japanese troupes’ overseas tours to be received differently in the West. This reception distinction was reflected both in the Western public's value judgements of the two troupes’ performances and in some Western avant-garde theatre practitioners’ Eurocentric perception of Eastern theatrical traditions.Footnote 60 Nevertheless, the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes’ (re)constructions of the theatrical nationality of China and Japan could be regarded as two sides of the same coin. Together they challenged Westerners’ essentialist views of cultural ‘Others’ which, under the cognitive framework of dichotomies such as ‘primitiveness–civilization’ and ‘tradition–modernity’, forcibly endowed Eastern theatre with a ‘pure’ and unchanged ‘otherness’.

Footnotes

1

This article is an intermediate result of research entitled ‘A Comparative Study of Western Tours of Traditional Chinese and Japanese Theatre in the Early Twentieth Century’, which is supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Funding Program of Yangzhou University (grant number: xjj2021-21).

References

NOTES

2 Throughout the 1920s, only one kabuki troupe, headed by the famous Japanese kabuki performer Ichikawa Sadanji II (1880–1940), toured the Soviet Union in 1928.

3 The Tsutsui troupe's New York tour started on 4 March 1930 at the Booth Theatre, which lasted two weeks. On 11 April, the Tsutsui troupe began a new round of performances at the Roxy Theatre for one week. The Mei Lanfang troupe's New York tour started at the Forty-Ninth Street Theatre on 17 February; its duration was extended to three weeks from the initially planned two weeks, then it moved to the Imperial Theatre. The Mei Lanfang troupe's New York tour at the two theatres lasted thirty-five days.

4 Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan tan Mei Lanfang (Qi Rushan Talks about Mei Lanfang) (Beijing: Wenhua Yishu Chubanshe, 2015), p. 9.

5 Quoted in Dianqi, Huang, Hua ju zai bei fang de dian ji ren: Zhang peng chun (Zhang Pengchun: The Founder of Spoken Drama in the North) (Beijing: Zhongguo Xiju Chubanshe, 1995), p. 269Google Scholar.

6 As pointed out by Qi Rushan, ‘the reason why we decided to go to perform in the West was to show them (Westerners) a Chinese theatre with a strong personality, and their intent was to see a pure Chinese theatre. If there were Western elements introduced into [our performances], then [the performances] could not be regarded as real Chinese theatre which they want to see.’ Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan tan Mei Lanfang, p. 55.

7 As pointed out by Rao, the theatres where the Mei Lanfang troupe's performances took place, ‘from the lobby to the stage, were decorated with elegant Chinese lanterns, paintings of Chinese opera, and various Chinese artifacts’. Rao, Nancy Yunhwa, ‘Racial Essences and Historical Invisibility: Chinese Opera in New York, 1930’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 12, 2 (2000), pp. 135–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 141.

8 Lanfang, Mei, ‘Mei Lanfang you e ji’ (Records of Mei Lanfang's Trip to Russia), in Yan, Liang, ed., Mei Lanfang yu jing ju zai hai wai (Mei Lanfang and Peking Opera Overseas) (Zhengzhou: Daxiang Chubanshe, 2016), pp. 492–528Google Scholar, here p. 512.

9 Qi Rushan, ‘Guo ju shen duan pu’ (Illustrations of Bodily Gestures and Movements in National Theatre), in Lianjing Shiye Chuban Gongsi, ed., Qi Rushan quan ji di yi juan (The Complete Works of Qi Rushan), Vol. 1 (Taipei: Lianjing Shiye Chuban Gongsi, 1979), pp. 347–562, here p. 373.

10 Rushan, Qi, ‘Zhong guo ju zhi zu zhi’ (The Organization of Chinese Theatre), in Lianjing Shiye Chuban Gongsi, Qi Rushan quan ji di yi juan, vol. 1, pp. 1–138Google Scholar, here p. 31.

11 Rushan, Qi, Qi Rushan hui yi lu (Memoir of Qi Rushan) (Beijing: Zhongguo Xiju Chubanshe, 1998), p. 113Google Scholar.

12 On how the West divided the ‘primitiveness’ of old Eastern civilizations, such as India, into the ‘childlike’ and ‘childish’ facets see Zhou Yunlong, Yue jie de xiang xiang: Kua wen hua xi ju yan jiu (zhong guo, 1895–1949) (Border-Crossing Imagination: Intercultural Theatre Studies (China, 1895–1949)) (Xiamen: Xiamen University Press, 2010), pp. 171–9.

13 Guy, Nancy, ‘Brokering Glory for the Chinese Nation: Peking Opera's 1930 American Tour’, Comparative Drama, 35, 3–4 (2001–2), pp. 377–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 385.

14 When explaining the reason for creating some guzhuang xinxi works with mythical themes, which were included in the repertoire of the Mei Lanfang troupe's American tours, Qi Rushan stated bluntly that traditional Chinese ‘ghosts and gods plays’ (guishenxi) were not as ‘elegant and pure’ as Western myth plays because they were ‘too worldly’. Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan hui yi lu, p. 101.

15 Hulei is a stringed instrument used in ancient China, especially in the Tang Dynasty.

16 Huqin is a bowed stringed instrument used in Chinese music.

17 Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan tan Mei Lanfang, p. 27.

18 Yinchang is a practice of the actor drinking water or tea to moisten his throat onstage during xiqu performance. Jianchang are special service staff members in charge of some chores onstage while the performance is ongoing, such as moving props, helping change the actor's costume and serving tea to the actor. The purpose of throwing cushions onto the stage in xiqu performance is to avoid dirtying the actor's costume when the actor makes certain motions such as worshipping on bended knee.

19 Zhang Pengchun was the first person in the Mei Lanfang troupe to request the removal of these stage practices from the troupe's performances, and he advised Mei Lanfang to ‘abolish the corrupt custom of jiangchang to purify xiqu performance’. Qi Rushan also insisted that ‘all types of actors should not practice yinchang onstage and it is not allowed to throw cushions when the actor makes the motion of worshipping on bended knee’. Ma Ming, ‘Zhang Pengchun yu xiandai zhong guo hua ju’ (Zhang Pengchun and Chinese Modern Spoken Drama), in Zhongguo Renmin Zhengxie Tianjinshi Weiyuanhui Wenshi Ziliao Yanjiu Weiyuanhui, ed., Tianjin wen shi zi liao di shi jiu ji (Archives of Literature and History on Tianjin), vol. 19 (Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Chubanshe, 1982), pp. 112–39, here p. 136; Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan tan Mei Lanfang, p. 41.

20 In an interview with an American journalist upon arrival in New York in 1930, ‘Mei Lanfang's statement was intended to underline the essence of the Chinese theatre and to draw a clear line between his art and Western realist theatre’. Min Tian, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 73.

21 Goldstein, Joshua, Drama King: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera 1870–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 273CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 In a sense, the Mei Lanfang troupe's practice of excluding ‘impurities’ from the stage presentation system of its performances concealed and distorted the actual situation of Peking opera's stage practice at the time in China. Actually, some Chinese critics criticized the troupe's performances in America for ‘obliterat[ing] the essence of Peking opera’ by, for example, moving the orchestra offstage and underplaying the gongs, which was dismissed ‘as maiming Chinese culture beyond recognition’. Cosdon also noted, ‘The program that Mei Lanfang presented to American audiences was hardly of the theatrical fare normally presented in the playhouse of Beijing’. Goldstein, Drama King, p. 278; Cosdon, Mark, ‘“Introducing Occidentals to an Exotic Art”: Mei Lanfang in New York’, Asian Theatre Journal, 12, 1 (1995), pp. 175–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 181.

23 In fact, Qi Rushan's theories and practices of guzhuang xinxi, which largely contributed to the ‘dancization’ treatment of the Mei Lanfang troupe's Peking opera productions, were probably influenced by the Western avant-garde dance movement to which Qi Rushan was exposed when he was staying in Europe in his early years. For example, the formation and development of Qi Rushan's views of ‘all voices being songs, all movements being dances’ was to a great extent inspired by the performances of the Russian avant-garde dance group Ballets russes, which Qi Rushan saw at Opéra de Paris. Regarding Tiannu san hua (The Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers), a guzhuangxinxi production Qi Rushan created for Mei Lanfang, it bore many similarities with the experimental dance works of the Paris-based American female dancer Loie Fuller (1862–1928) in terms of choreography. For a further discussion of this issue see Catherine Vance Yeh, ‘Experimenting with Dance Drama: Peking Opera Modernity, Kabuki Theater Reform and the Denishawn's Tour of the Far East’, Journal of Global Theatre History, 1, 2 (2016), pp. 28–57.

24 For instance, due to ‘the realization that the melodies and tones of guoju (national theatre) could not be understood by Westerners’, prior to the Mei Lanfang troupe's American tours, Mei Lanfang specially entrusted the famous Chinese composer and music educator Liu Tianhua (1895–1932) with the task of translating the arias to be sung by Mei Lanfang in the troupe's overseas performances, which were initially composed in a traditional Chinese music notation method called gongchepu, into the form of the staff and printing them with lyrics into pamphlets for the American audiences. Mei Lanfang, ‘Preface I’, in Liu Tianhua, ed., Mei Lanfang ge qu pu (Books of Mei Lanfang's Songs) (Shanxi: Shanxi People's Publishing House, 2018), p. 5.

25 As far back as three or four months before the Mei Lanfang troupe departed for America, Qi Rushan had organized a series of training seminars for the troupe members on how to behave and dress themselves decently in America on various occasions, such as on public transport, in the street or at the hotel. Moreover, every day after the troupe's performers finished their rehearsals of the plays for the overseas tours, they had to ‘do rehearsals for eating’. To this end, the troupe even specially engaged people who were familiar with dining protocols in the West to demonstrate the correct dining manners for the troupe members. Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan tan Mei Lanfang, p. 26.

26 Qi Rushan seems to have already acknowledged this fact even before the Mei Lanfang troupe's American tours. As far back as in 1919 when Mei Lanfang was setting out on a tour of Japan, Qi Rushan was initially opposed to the inclusion of Tiannu san hua in the repertoire because he thought this kind of guzhuang xinxi production created by himself could not qualify as orthodox ‘national theatre’. Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan hui yi lu, p. 127.

27 For example, when touring Paris, the Tsutsui troupe billed itself as kabuki japone and professed that its ‘plays are from the repertoire of kabuki in the 18th century’. Le Figaro, 12 May, 1930, p. 17.

28 For instance, the scene of the Tsutsui troupe's stage work Koi no Yozakura (Romance in Cherry Blossom Lane), according to a British reviewer, ‘is almost crudely realistic in the fashion of an English musical comedy’. ‘The Japanese Players’, Manchester Guardian, 26 June 1930, p. 21.

29 Throughout the overseas tours, Tsutsui seemed to have been arguing that what his troupe would offer to Westerners was the staging of an ‘authentic’ Japanese theatre. For instance, ‘In France, Tsutsui emphasized that he “wants to put the Western audience in the presence of the true Japanese theatre such as the Japanese conceive it”.’ Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre: The Displaced Mirror (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 135.

30 The ‘traditionality’ of kabuki is quite problematic. As pointed out by Japanese theatre scholar Kamiyama Akira, the concept of ‘classical kabuki’ was constructed and reinforced by some cultural nationalists (e.g. Orikuchi Shinobu and Mishima Yukio) in the post-Second World War era to confront the discourses of radical cultural iconoclasts. Throughout modern times, kabuki had always kept a lukewarm and detached relationship with classical traditions. Historically speaking, as a shimpa performer, what Tsutsui Tokujirō conceived of as a ‘true’ kabuki during his troupe's overseas tours could hardly be ‘classical kabuki’ to be culturally (re)constructed in later years. Kamiyama Akira, ‘Ōdan teki ni miru kabuki to shingeki’ (Seeing Kabuki and Shingeki in a Cross-sectional Way), in Kamiyama Akira, ed., Kousatsu suru kabuki to shingeki (Kabuki and Shingeki Intersected) (Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2016), pp. 8–28, here pp. 8–9.

31 As pointed out by Kamiyama, the various stage practices of kabuki in modern times, regardless of preceding shingeki in first staging adapted or translated Western dramas or having been actively participating in various theatre reform movements since the early Meiji period, took on an appearance of distinct modernity. In particular, there had been complicated personal and contextual interconnections among kabuki and some sub-genres of shingeki, such as shimpa and shinkokugeki (new national theatre), in terms of playwriting, acting, directing and scenic design, which altogether constituted a kind of ‘cross-sectional realism’. Kamiyama Akira, ‘Ōdan teki ni miru kabuki to shingeki’, p. 27.

32 As argued by Kamiyama, under historical circumstances in which a strong aspiration to Western modernity was pervading all aspects of Japanese society, kabuki and shingeki, as two parts of ‘Japanese modern theatre’ that was expected to play an important role in ‘the revival of new arts’, were equally endowed with a mission to ‘lean towards the value of realism’. Kamiyama Akira, ‘Ōdan teki ni miru kabuki to shingeki’, p. 17.

33 Tanaka Tokuichi, ‘Tsutsui tokujirō no kaigai kōen to kindai engeki no mondai’ (The Overseas Tours of Tsutsui Tokujirō and the Issues of Modern Theatre), in Kamiyama Akira, ed., Engeki no jyaponisume (Japonisme in Theatre) (Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2017), pp. 323–58, here pp. 351–3.

34 As argued by Tsubouchi, the main reason for the Soviet audience's obsession with the Ichikawa troupe's performances was the ‘bizarre impressions’ brought to the audience caused by ‘inscrutable performing means’ such as hara-kiri (disembowelment) and onnagata (female-role actor). Tsubouchi Shikō, ‘Hisenmonteki na kabuki’ (Unspecialized Kabuki), Takarazuka Kokuminza (National Theatre of Takarazuka), 11 (1928), pp. 28–31, here p. 28.

35 From December 1906, Ichikawa Sadanji II, accompanied by Japanese theatre director and playwright Matsui Matsuyō (1870–1933), who was a Western-oriented theatre reformist, conducted a theatrical investigation in European countries (mainly in Britain, France and Germany) for eight months. After returning to Japan, Ichikawa and Matsui applied what they had learnt and experienced from theatre schools and theatre-going in the West in terms of actor training, directing and the design of lightning and scenery, to the staging of productions for the so-called daiikkai kichō kouen (the first round of performances after returning home). For a detailed discussion of this issue see Azuma Harumi, ‘Nidaimei ichikawa Sadanji no houō to “narukami”: 1907nen no yōroppa to 1910nen no nihon bundan no kakawari kara’ (Ichikawa Sadanji II's Visit to Europe and Narukami: In Terms of Its Relationship to European Theatre in 1907 and the Japanese Literary Movement in 1910), Nihon kenkyū (Japan Studies), 44 (2011), pp. 305–22.

36 As pointed out by Tian, ‘exoticism indeed played an important part in America's reception of Mei's performances’. Min Tian, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage, p. 84.

37 Some American critics seem to have recognized that a certain amount of ‘modernity’ could be found in the theatre productions presented by the Mei Lanfang troupe. For example, the famous theatre critic Stark Young pointed out that Mei Lanfang combined the various traditional stage elements of Peking opera ‘with his country's modern theatrical art’ such as by setting ‘the old classical dances of China … to the music of to-day’. Nevertheless, many American critics paid heavy attention to the antiquity of Chinese theatre demonstrated by the Mei Lanfang troupe's performances. For instance, Herbert L. Matthews, a reporter working for the New York Times, stated that what the troupe prepared for the American audience was an art with ‘two millenniums of tradition’. The noted American theatre critic Brook Atkinson considered Peking opera ‘an arrested form of class drama’ that was ‘as old as hills’. Some Chinese people also played a role in forging this ahistorical understanding of Chinese theatre. For example, Hu Shih, the famous Chinese progressive intellectual, in an article written for the playbill for the troupe's San Francisco tour, argued that ‘[t]the Chinese drama is historically an arrested growth … nowhere in this modern world are to be seen such vivid presentations of the irrevocably lost steps in the slow evolution of the dramatic art as are seen on the Chinese stage today’. Young, Stark, ‘Mei Lan-fang’, Theatre Arts Monthly, 14, 4 (1930), pp. 295–308Google Scholar, here pp. 295–6; Herbert L. Matthews, ‘China's Stage Idol Comes to Broadway’, New York Times, 16 February 1930, p. X2; J. Brooks Atkinson, ‘China's Idol Actor Reveals His Art’, New York Times, 17 February 1930, p. 18; Shih, Hu, ‘Mei Lanfang and the Chinese Drama’, in Moy, Ernest, ed., The Pacific Coast Tour of Mei Lan-fang (New York: China Institute of America, 1930), p. iGoogle Scholar.

38 For instance, Brooks Atkinson contended that Chinese theatre is ‘a completely exotic art’ that ‘has no resemblance to American theatre and is far removed from anything in American theatrical experience’. Min Tian, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage, p. 84; Brooks Atkinson, ‘China's Idol Actor Reveals His Art’, p. 18.

39 Mary F. Watkins, ‘The Colorful Meeting of East and West at Current Performances in Forty-Ninth Street Theater; Dance Events Crowd This Evening’, New York Herald Tribune, 23 February 1930. Quoted in Ernest Moy, ed., Mei Lan-fang: What New York Thinks of Him (New York: s.n., 1930), p. 34.

40 Min Tian, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage, p. 85.

41 For example, one critic recommended that all stage elements of the troupe's performances should be ‘as remote as possible from our practices … [to serve] better to whet our interest and to avoid the pitfalls of dullness’. Min Tian, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage, p. 85; John Martin, ‘The Dance: an Exotic Art’, New York Times, 23 February 1930, p. X11.

42 Joshua Goldstein, ‘Mei Lanfang and the Nationalization of Peking Opera, 1912–1930’, Positions, 7, 2 (1999), pp. 377–420, here p. 413.

43 As pointed out by Goldstein, Drama King, p. 273, ‘Qi's tomes were intended to stun Westerners with the richness of Chinese tradition through a kind of polemical empiricism’.

44 For example, one critic argued that the American audience could not ‘pass judgement [on the Mei Lanfang troupe's performances], until we, too, have a few thousand years of “finished” civilization behind us’. Arthur Ruhl, New York Herald Tribune, 16 March 1930, p. 10.

45 Similarly, some people in China believed that Westerners’ ignorance of the conventions and traditions of xiqu would make them maintain reverence for the artistry of Chinese theatre. For instance, a Chinese critic argued that ‘given the fact that Mr. Mei is generally acknowledged as the most gifted celebrity in the community of Chinese theatre, Westerners, who know they do not have a deep understanding of Chinese theatre, definitely will not cast slurs against but make compliments on [Mei's performances]’. Le Tian, ‘Mei Lanfang fu mei cheng bai lun’ (On the Success or Failure of Mei Lanfang's American Trip), Beiyanghuabao (Beiyang Pictorial), 10, 473 (1930), pp. 2–3, here p. 3.

46 For instance, a British critic found the Tsutsui troupe's performance a ‘curious blend of violent realistic expressiveness and extreme conventionalism’. Desmond MacCarthy, ‘The Japanese Players’, New Statesman, 5 July 1930, pp. 408–9, here p. 408.

47 For example, when the Tsutsui troupe was touring Paris, a French reviewer viewed some of the troupe's performances as ‘expressionistic’, ‘conventional’ and ‘executed perfectly according to a long and secured tradition’. Maurice Brillant, ‘Notes et réflexions: Spectacles d'Asie’, La vie intellectuelle 7 (1930), pp. 488–514, here p. 500. Quoted in Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre, p. 137.

48 The absence of hanamachi (flower path), a typical part of the stage structure in orthodox kabuki theatres in Japan, made the manifestation of the Tsutsui troupe's performances on European stages ‘constitute inevitably a false representation of Japanese theatre’. Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre, p. 186.

49 Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre, p. 186.

50 Jacques Copeau, Copeau: Texts on Theatre, ed. and trans., John Rudlin and Norman H. Paul (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 256. Copeau was greatly impressed by the strong bodily expressions of the Tsutsui troupe's performers, to such an extent that he exclaimed, ‘the life of theatre lies in the abundant dynamic movements of the Japanese performers with speechless silence’. Osaka Asahi Shimbun, 27 June 1930, p. 6.

51 Recording later the impressions of the Tsutsui troupe's performances he saw in Paris in an essay titled ‘On the Japanese Performers: A Correspondence in May 1930’, Dullin, like Copeau, sang the praises of various physical techniques used by the troupe's performers and thought these impressive bodily expressions were only made possible by the rigorous body training the performers had received: ‘The bodies of the Japanese performers, different from the bodies of those extremely competent dancers that are merely flexible, get developed and trained for and by theatre. They receive education from their masters and inherit their titles and techniques. With such an education, they have become highly specialized.’ Charles Dullin, Haiyō no shigoto ni tsuite (On the Work of the Performer), trans., Watanabe Jun (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1955), pp. 68–9.

52 For Dullin, ‘It is very regrettable that the Japanese actors did not give us their performance in the traditional system of the Japanese theatre.’ Charles Dullin, Souvenirs et notes de travail d'un acteur (Paris: Gallimard, 1946), p. 59. Quoted in Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre, p. 136.

53 Dullin, Souvenirs et notes de travail d'un acteur, p. 59.

54 Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre, p. 136.

55 During a conversation with Tsutsui Tokujirō, Copeau expressed his confusion over why Japanese people wanted to imitate Western modern theatre, given that they already had such a beautiful theatrical form. Tsutsui Tokujirō, ‘Mandan: Ōbei no tabi’ (Gossip: Travel to Europe and the United States), Dōtonbori, 6 (1931), pp. 42–5, here p. 45.

56 As pointed out by Min Tian, ‘Copeau examined the Japanese troupe's performance evidently from the magnifying glass of his anti-naturalistic perspective.’ Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre, p. 120.

57 For instance, viewing traditional Chinese theatre as ‘the purest theatre of the world’, Dullin was ‘strongly opposed to reforming it [Chinese theatre] by imitating European theatre’. Although he had never seen the performance of an ‘authentic’ Chinese theatrical tradition, for Dullin, Chinese theatre's values functioned ‘as a confirmation of the ideas that had long been fermenting in his mind: his ideas of a theatre of transposition that imaginatively evokes Eastern Asian theatre’. Min Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre, pp. 142 and 147.

58 Tao [Gordon Craig], ‘Japan: Tokio: Women in the Theatre’, The Mask, 3, 6 (1931), pp. 95–6, here p. 96.

59 When talking about the reason the Mei Lanfang's New York tour won out over that of the Tsutsui troupe, Qi Rushan put it bluntly: ‘there was a Japanese theatre troupe, who advertised its engagement like this: “our performances squarely met the Americans’ tastes”. This single statement made [the Tsutsui troupe's New York tour] doomed. The American public was upset, saying that we hope to see the theatre performance of your country, [your performances do not] need to cater to our tastes; if [we] want to satisfy our own tastes, then [we] would better see the performance of American theatre.’ Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan hui yi lu, p. 141.

60 In this regard, the American audience's responses to the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupe's New York tour were representative. While some American critics indeed identified ‘a punctilious ritual’ in the Tsutsui troupe's performances and thought that the ‘theatre art of Mei Lan-fang is not completely without realism’, most critics ‘found Mei's classical, ceremonial, and stylized art superior to the performances of the Japanese players, which were considered artistically distinctly inferior because they were modern, popular, and thereby less interesting in their naïve and clumsy imitation of Western realism both in scenery and acting’. Miriam Beard, ‘Come the Japanese: Their Kan-Geki Plays Will Bring an Exotic and Exciting Drama Form to New York’, New York Times, 2 March 1930, p. 120; Young, ‘Mei Lan-fang’, p. 300; Min Tian, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced, p. 76.