The acrobatic feats, the reporter continued, were “among the most wonderful we have ever seen.” They consisted, among other things, of a man lying on his back, balancing a twenty-foot-long bamboo pole on his feet, while a small boy climbed to the top and performed various maneuvers; a similar act that involved balancing a large tub with the feet and having the boy perform in it; and two men tossing a large keg back and forth, also with their feet. Some of the acts required more space, so it was announced that the following night the show would reopen in the nearby Academy of Music, which had a proscenium that was twenty feet higher and would allow for even more spectacular feats. Like the Opera House, it was owned by Tom Maguire, the highly successful owner-manager of the city’s best entertainment venues.
San Francisco that year was buffeted by unusually harsh winter storms, dense fogs, and—on December 19—even a mild earthquake. Yet save for a few shows that were rained out, the citizens kept going to see the Japanese acrobats and jugglers from the Alert. Advertisements for them continued to appear regularly in the newspapers, along with those of the still-absent Risley group, and from them one could learn that the company on the Alert had been brought from Yokohama by Americans named Thomas T. Smith and G. W. Burgess, and also learn the names of each of the twelve performers, awkwardly spelled “FOO-KEE-MATS,” “KEE-SA-BORO,” and so on. These names sounded completely alien to the audience, and probably to the Japanese as well, because in 1866 there was still no standard system of rendering Japanese in the Roman alphabet, and the results tended to be haphazard.7
Local newspapers vied to run daily reports on the performances. Among the routines performed by the jugglers and acrobats, one of the most popular was a ladder and slackrope trick performed by a young boy named Rinkichi. On December 16, the Daily Morning Call noted that “‘Sing-Kee-Chee,’ whom the ‘outside barbarians’ have christened ‘Little Tommy’ has grown into quite a favorite. He is a bright, intelligent, eight years old, and makes a central point of interest in the group.” The Call reporter further marveled over the tricks performed by magicians, which included “seeming impossibilities with ribbons, mock butterflies, fire, fans, and compartmented cabinets.” Contrary to the “hitherto received opinions of the effeminacy and weakness of the race,” he was also impressed by the strength of the men who held the ladders and supported the lighter acrobats such as Tommy:
The contractor who makes his living by house-raising, would do well to import a few of these iron-legged Asiatics, and dispense with his hydraulic pumps. One thing is certain . . . the lucky hombre who first conceived of the idea of bringing them to America and Europe, and who now has them in charge, will make his fortune, unless the cholera strikes them in New York.8
Tom Maguire was so impressed with his receipts that he purchased a controlling interest in the company for ten-thousand dollars (buying out Burgess’s share) and extended its stay in San Francisco. But while the show remained popular throughout the month and the all-important Christmas holidays, toward the end of December voices of discontent began to be heard. On December 22, the Daily Dramatic Chronicle reported that, at the Academy of Music, “The Japanese jugglers have experienced a sad falling off in the attendance. The public went at first out of curiosity, but the novelty is now paling. The jugglers do some very good gymnastic feats, but their juggling tricks are abominable.”9
Even if Professor Risley could not yet be in San Francisco, he had his local allies who could guarantee him favorable advance publicity and support. On December 30, the Morning Call ran an article on the Japanese troupe still in town, noting that it was going to move to Sacramento before heading to New York, adding, “What, by the way, has become of Risley’s troupe? Compared with which the lot at the Academy are, according to report, ‘mere rubbish.’ It is time the Archibald was here with these daimos. Hurry up, Risley; there is a good feeling in favor of your protégés. It won’t do to allow a Japan lack here.”10
For the first Japanese entertainers, San Francisco would be only one stop along a long journey. They would receive an enthusiastic local welcome there, but it would be unlike what they would experience elsewhere, for the citizens of San Francisco were already far more connected to Asia, and Japan, than their counterparts on the East Coast or in Europe. And in that sense, San Francisco also becomes a good vantage point from which to introduce the complicated and global story of Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe.
The Context
San Francisco is perched on top of a narrow peninsula. It faces the Marin headlands across the Golden Gate, through which the waters of the Pacific surge into one of the world’s best natural harbors. Settled by Spain in 1776, taken over by Mexico in 1821, and then by the United States in 1846, until the Gold Rush of 1848-49 San Francisco was a sleepy town of only a few hundred people. By 1866, however, the population had exploded to over 120,000 and the city had become the commercial and intellectual hub of the entire, brand-new state of California. On the western edge of a now vastly expanded United States, fueled by the notion and vast ambition of “Manifest Destiny,” San Franciscans tended to look even further west, directly across the Pacific Ocean to Asia and Japan.
Outwardly, the city affected a cosmopolitan pose, with tall buildings on its dusty main street and multiple places of entertainment, but it could not yet hide its rough edges and origins as a frontier outpost. One contemporary writer called San Francisco “a monument to California’s march from barbarity to vulgarism.”11 In 1866, aspiring novelist Bret Harte—consoling nervous residents after cholera scares, heavy rains, and another recent earthquake—stated “we have passed through ordeals more serious. . . . Ruffianism, brigandage, chivalry, gambling, scandalous legislation, lynch law and extravagant speculation have in turn retarded our progress. The pistol and the knife, drunkenness and debauchery, have claimed more victims than ever pestilence, flood or volcanic throe.”12 Part of San Francisco’s rawness came from the fact that it was a young city, with young inhabitants, and although an influx of women had improved the gender odds in recent years, the majority was still male, and ravenous in the pursuit of wealth and entertainment.
Gold had also made San Francisco one of the most culturally and racially diverse cities in North America, because it drew hordes of fortune-seekers from all parts of the globe. European Americans of every stripe, Latin Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Chinese; Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and ancestor-worshippers; all coexisted, but not in harmony. The bloody American Civil War had ended only a year earlier, but the city had its faction of “Copperheads” who had sympathized with the Confederacy, and in the 1866 Fourth of July celebrations, the Irish refused to march with the free Negros. There were also thousands of Chinese already living in San Francisco, highly valued as inexpensive good workers but increasingly resented and persecuted by working-class whites, who felt threatened. Still, in 1866 opposition to Asians in general had not yet fully coalesced. A year earlier, a troupe of Chinese jugglers had delighted a San Francisco audience. In December, after the arrival of the first group of Japanese, the Alta even editorialized on the need to instruct young San Franciscans in both Chinese and Japanese in public schools, because the day would surely come when “a knowledge of these Asiatic languages will soon be required, especially by merchants in San Francisco.”13
In 1866, San Francisco was in some ways closer to Asia than New York. With the transcontinental railroad still under construction, rather than risk starvation, attacks by Indians, and being stranded in the wilderness, most people traveling to the East Coast took steamers down to the Isthmus of Panama, crossed overland (there being no canal yet), and then caught other steamers on the other side to travel up the Atlantic seaboard. It could take over a month, and the inconvenience encouraged one writer in 1870, in describing the older residents of San Francisco, to say that they had lived until recently “in a condition of isolation, with respect to the rest of the world, which was almost Japanese in its exclusion.”14
He was referring to the fact that Japan was still famous for its isolation. At the beginning of the 1600s, in reaction to encroachment by the Spanish and Portuguese, the shogun (whom Westerners also called the “Tycoon”) had expelled almost all foreigners,