HIS 272H,
CULTURAL INTERACTIONS: JAPAN

MADAME SADAYAKKO: THE GEISHA WHO BEWITCHED THE WEST

“Orientalism” has been defined as “the study of the East by Americans and Europeans shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Because of this, the term Orientalism has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters, implying old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples. This viewpoint was most famously articulated by Edward Said in his book Orientalism (1978).

Following the ideas of Michel Foucault, Said emphasized the relationship between power and knowledge in scholarly and popular thinking, in particular regarding European views of the Islamic Arab world. Said argued that Orient and Occident worked as oppositional terms, so that the "Orient" was constructed as a negative inversion of Western culture.… Some post-colonial scholars would even say that the West's idea of itself was constructed largely by saying what others were not.

Said puts forward several definitions of Orientalism in the introduction to Orientalism. Some of these have been more widely quoted and influential than others:

• "A way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience." (p. 1)
  
  
• "A distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts." (12)

Recently, the term Occidentalism has been coined to refer to negative views of the Western world sometimes found in Eastern societies today.

[excerpts from “Orientalism”, Wikipedia, accessed 02/07/06]

QUESTIONS, THEMES AND TOPICS TO CONSIDER

In your analysis of Lesley Downer’s Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West (or in your preparation for our in-class discussion of the book), examine the “cultural interactions” marking her extended presence in the West through one or more of the following “lenses”:

• To what degree is Sadayakko an “Orientalist” creation? That is, how much does she accurately reflect Japanese theatrical traditions and cultural expectations of the feminine rather than European and American wishful thinking about the Exotic East? Give examples of gaps between imaginings and realities, East and West, to support your interpretation.
  
  
• How complicit is Sadayakko in creating her own “mythology” as an idealization of the Japanese geisha in Western eyes? Does she resist or embrace European and American attempts to cast her in this role? Why / why not?
  
  
• In Japan Sadayakko’s husband, Otojiro, was considered a proponent of the avant garde, known for his forward-looking modern New Wave productions. How do tatemae / honne and gesellschaft / gemeinschaft distinctions play into the adjustments he made in bringing his wife and his theatrical productions to the Western stage?
  
  
• Otojiro is quoted as saying of his production of The Geisha and the Knight, “If a Japanese had seen it, he would have thought it very strange. But it was intended for foreigners, so it was okay.” (page 126) Beisai Kubota’s review for the Japanese Yomiuri newspaper (pages 178 – 179) was far more devastating. Discuss the “Occidentalist” points of view present in both these critiques.
  
  
• Were early twentieth century Japanese interpretations of Western cultures more or less accurate than European and American assessments of Japan? What did each contribute to the creation of its opposite (Japanese views of Japan; Western views of the West)?
  
  
• What characteristics of Japanese femininity and the role of women in Japanese life and culture emerge from Sadayakko’s various encounters with the Western press and Western audiences? What does her presence in Europe and the United States contribute to the emerging stereotype of “the Japanese woman”? To what degree in reality does her personal life reflect these stereotypical impressions?
  
  
• In your opinion, in the final analysis, is “Sadayakko” more the product of Western misinterpretation or Japanese dissembling? Support your contention with specific examples and illustrations drawn from Downer’s book.
  
  
• In what ways do European and American perceptions of Madame Sadayakko promote “old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations” of Japan in the early twentieth century? Are the resulting stereotypes at all responsible for the inability of Japan to win equality in the eyes of the West as a forward-looking modern industrialized and technologically advanced nation state during this time?
  
  
• In what ways does the experience of Sadayakko in Europe and the United States illustrate the construction of the “Orient” as a “negative inversion of Western culture” as “based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience “and thus as well “the relationship between power and knowledge in scholarly and popular thinking” characteristic of the Orientalist critique?

 

OTHER TOPICS AND APPROACHES MAY BE CONSIDERED BUT SHOULD FIRST BE DISCUSSED WITH AND APPROVED BY THE INSTRUCTOR