This essay was for an Japanese Theatre class.
Interpretations of the Body in Japanese Theatre
Japanese theatre has long interpreted the body in a number of ways. In the classical Nou theatre, for example, the body has been staged as mortal and immortal, male and female, and good and evil. Kabuki’s onnagata interpreted the male form into female, inversely, Takarazuka interpreted female actors dressed and behaving as men into men. Butou interprets the mortality of the human form and as a method of transduction while Miura’s body was interpreted as the essence of Japanese femininity while Yayoi interpreted a rationally feminine object as masculine by affixing the male body to it. The interpretation of the body in Japanese theatre blurred the lines of what is feminine and what is masculine. Among these, the translation of gender from one body to another, and from one stage to another strikes me as most compelling. In this paper I will explore these theatrical translations of gender and the body by looking at examples from Kabuki, Takarazuka, Miura Tamaki, and Kusama Yayoi.
Kabuki, a form of classic Japanese theatre, was created by a woman, Okuni. Its popularity resulted in over-rowdiness, which concerned the government. Anxious of the disorder caused by Kabuki, women were banned from the stage, and young men took their place. The youthful, lithe bodies of these young men were interpreted by the audience as a replacement for traditional female femininity, such as the swell of breast, the curve of hips, and daintiness. In an attempt to reverse this sexualized interpretation, the Tokugawa government created a law that forced young Kabuki’s actor to shave the top of their heads. Along with the whiteness of their skin and sleek frame, even the bald patch came to serve as a badge of youth. Once the young men were completely banned because of this sensuality and elder men took their place, their bodies were interpreted as gods, warriors, women, and evil by their costumes, masks, and makeup. For instance, even today if a Kabuki actor comes out wear a Hannya mask, complete with horns, a devilish grin, and a wild wig the actor’s body is no longer interpreted as even human, but as of a immortal, vengeful spirit. Recalling that women were banned from Kabuki in 1629, when a female role is needed, a male, known as an onnagata, performs it. The same way femininity was projected onto the young male Kabuki actors by their physical appearance, the onnagata dresses, speaks, and moves like a woman so much so that his male body is interpreted onstage and offstage as a female body.
Gender was similarly disconnected from the physical body in the all-women’s theatre, Takarazuka. Reminiscent of the way male onnagata used dress, posture, and gestures associated with women and femininity, the ‘male’ performers, or otokoyaku, of Takarazuka dress to conceal curves and other signs of femininity. They take on a male pattern of speech, and tramp across the stage with an exaggerated swagger in order to interpret the male body. Although the reality is that only women are on the Takarazuka stage, a number of those women have taken their female bodies and morphed into male ones, thus interpreting the female body as the quintessence of masculinity. Much the way onnagata could win fans’ love as ideal women, the onnagata won their fans’ heart with their idealized masculinity.
When Shingeki emerged in the 1910s women, who had for centuries been banned from the stage were reintroduced Japanese theatre, reconnecting gender with the physical body. Miura Tamaki is one of these women. She attained fame worldwide as an opera singer following her performance in Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Miura Tamaki’s numerous performances of Butterfly not only replaced the male onnagata with the body of a biological female in Japan, but her body also interpreted what was Japanese to Western audiences. Her petite stature and wispy frame were perceived by critics as attributes solely belonging to the Japanese. As a result, critics felt that, more than Western opera singers, Tamaki was able to portray the true nature of Madam Butterfly because her body was the essence of Japanese-ness. Takarazuka and Kabuki audiences adored the idealized gender on a stage that was disconnected from the body. In contrast, Western audiences watching Miura’s performances, saw through eye seeking “authentic Japan”, and thus interpreted her not as a performer, but as a racialized, gendered body.
Miura Tamaki’s audience interpreted talent as result of her gender and ethnicity, Kusama Yayoi however used her Western audiences’ perceptions to manipulate the way she was perceived. To do so, she presented her three-dimensional work entitled “Baby Carriage”, consisting of a baby carriage covered in small, stuffed, fabric phalluses, in a gold kimono. Traditionally, Japanese women were in charge of child-rearing so subconsciously, the baby carriage is interpreted as feminine. The gold kimono emphasizes her ethnicity and plays on Western perception of Japanese women being meek and diminutive. By covering the baby carriage with phalluses, an organ exclusive to men, Kusama forces the viewer to force masculine dominance over the feminine baby carriage and the alleged weak Japanese woman. While the onnagata and otokoyaku played on the audiences’ ideal of the perfect man or woman, and Miura’s body was shaped by the audience’s perception of the Japanese woman, Kusama used these perceptions to shape how she and her artwork were conceived.
The stage of Japanese theatre involved not only the perceptions the performers purposefully imposed upon the audience, but the interaction of the audience with these perceptions along with the audiences’ own ideals imposed upon the performer. Gender is seesawed from men to onnagata and women and otokoyaku. Even the construction of gender from ethnicity is shuffled from performer to audience, whether unconsciously, as in the case Miura’s Butterfly performances, or deliberately, in Kusama’s case, to add emphasis to her work.
© Caroline Alicia Harris
post script If you are the copyright owner of anything metioned in the above essay, I do have the bibliography os my sources if you need to see them. I choose not to post them on this site, in the hopes nothing will be reused.