How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan—and Japan to the West
Frederik L. Schodt
Stone Bridge Press • Berkeley, California
Published by
Stone Bridge Press
P.O. Box 8208
Berkeley CA 94707
510-524-8732 • [email protected] • www.stonebridge.com
The author and publisher are grateful to The Japan Foundation and The Suntory Foundation for their generous support in difficult economic times.
Text ©2012 Frederik L. Schodt, www.jai2.com.
Book design and layout by Linda Ronan.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Schodt, Frederik L., 1950–.
Professor Risley & the imperial Japanese troupe : how an American acrobat introduced circus to Japan—and Japan to the West / Frederik L. Schodt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61172-009-9
1. Risley, Richard, 1814–1874. 2. Acrobats—United States. 3. Circus performers—United States. 4. Circus—United States—History. 5. Circus—Japan—History. 6. Circus—Japan—Western influences. 7. United States—Relations—Japan. 8. Japan—Relations—United States. 9. Popular culture—United States. 10. Popular culture—Japan. I. Title.
GV550.2.R57S45 2012
791.3'4092—dc23
[B]
2012031056
This book is dedicated, with love, to Fiammetta Hsu
PREFACE
On my desk I have a reproduction of an 1887 children’s pop-up book by Lothar Meggendorfer called International Circus. It’s one of my prized possessions, for it shows not only how cosmopolitan the circus world was in the nineteenth century, but also how popular Japanese acts were. It’s a masterpiece of six scenes that unfold in three-dimensions and spectacular color, revealing Europeans, Africans, and Asians in a variety of acts. A Mr. Funtolo performs stunts atop his horse while it jumps over a flaming gate. Clara Springel leaps and somersaults through a hoop from atop her pony. And a man dressed in a Turkish outfit performs the “Sultan’s Courier,” straddling and standing on the backs of a quartet of galloping horses.
The fifth scene, the only nonequestrian one, is the most exotic. With the caption of “The clever acrobats of the Oriental Company perform amazing tricks,” it unfolds to show two pairs of kimono-clad Japanese acrobats, executing exciting feats of balance in front of an adoring European crowd of top-hatted men and bonnet-wearing women. One pair is doing a “perch” act. A man stands, balancing a soaring bamboo pole vertically from his hips, while a boy, skillfully holding on to the top of the pole, carries out a variety of gymnastic gyrations. Despite the herculean effort required, the man holding the pole is shown nonchalantly fanning himself with a Japanese folding fan. The other pair is performing the “transformation fox scene.” In this stunt, an adult Japanese man lies on his back on a mat on the ground, the top of his tonsured head facing us. His arms are free and he, too, is using one of his hands to fan himself, seemingly without a care in the world, but his legs are pointed straight up at the ceiling. On the soles of his feet he vertically balances a giant shoji screen, on top of which is poised a boy dressed up like a fox. This mischievous fox-boy has smashed many of the rice-paper panels of the screen while cavorting in and out of the frame, and he is making funny gestures at the amazed audience.
Both of these acts were regularly performed by Japanese acrobatic groups that toured the United States and Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth century. And no Japanese acrobatic group drew more attention than “Professor” Risley’s Imperial Japanese Troupe, for it was one of the first, arguably the best, and certainly the most influential. Indeed, the fox character in Meggendorfer’s pop-up book could well be a depiction of Hamaikari Umekichi, a young troupe member affectionately known as “Little All Right,” who in 1867 became a global celebrity, his name a metaphor for agility and panache.
“The clever acrobats of the Oriental Company perform amazing tricks.” Scene from Lothar Meggendorfer’s famous children’s pop-up book, International Circus, first published in 1877. meggendorfer, lothar. international circus: a reproduction of the antique pop-up book. london and new york: kestrel books; viking press, 1979.
*
I have spent much of my adult life writing about Japanese popular culture, technology, and history, and about the flow of information and people between Japan and the rest of the world. My circus connections are tenuous. As a boy I never seriously considered running away to join the Big Top, nor did I have any particular acrobatic talent. But I grew up on four different continents, and since my mother always liked the circus, we often went to see local shows and magic or juggling acts. For the last fifteen years or so, moreover, I have lived and worked only a few steps away from San Francisco’s Circus Center and with fascination watched aspiring young acrobats and jugglers and clowns train in its facilities. That, in addition to my interest in nineteenth-century cross-cultural events, is probably a big reason my curiosity was stimulated a few years back when I came across mentions in Japan of Professor Risley and his Imperial Japanese Troupe.
For me, this discovery of Risley and his troupe was quite an eye-opener. There are other well-documented examples of Japanese popular culture greatly influencing the outside world. The late nineteenth-century Japonisme art movement—when Japan’s “low culture” woodblock prints became the rage among “high culture” European and American artists—is one. The end-of-the-millennium “Cool Japan” movement—which includes modern Japanese manga, anime, fashion, and J-pop music and continues today—is another. Yet despite having studied and written about Japanese culture for decades, I had somehow been unaware of the late-nineteenth-century, short-lived global boom in the popularity of Japanese performers, especially acrobats. This other boom began right after the opening of Japan, after it had been secluded from the outside world for nearly two and a half centuries. It coexisted in time with the Japonisme art movement, yet had little in common with that movement except for its “Japanese-ness.” It involved not things, but people—Japanese commoners who were traveling overseas and viewing the West for the first time, and ordinary Europeans and Americans who were ogling the exotic performers from the East. And it was triggered by the work of Professor Risley.
It was inevitable, perhaps, that Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe, and even the global boom in Japanese performers that he helped spawn, would later be largely forgotten. Risley was literate. He straddled the worlds of both theatre and circus, and he could socialize with both the high and the low. But as far as is known, he never authored a book or diary or left any letters in his own hand that survive. There are numerous illustrations of him. Yet despite living a life that depended on self-promotion and publicity and extended well into the age of daguerreotypes, tintypes, and even modern photographs, the few photographs usually attributed to him—that might make him seem more modern—are difficult to authenticate. And despite his notoriety, he failed to inspire any writers of his era to write at length about him. The reasons for this include timing, his absence from the United States at critical periods, and the ultimate failure of many of his enterprises.
Another factor, however, is that, in both Japan and the West, circus and theatre performers existed on the fringes of normal society. Acrobats