Parades & Processions of Edo, Japan

Ack, did I really never post about the symposium at which I presented this past February? And the associated small exhibition I co-curated? I’m ever so sorry.

Here’s the story. Some time ago, the National Museum of Japanese History (国立歴史民俗博物館, or Rekihaku for short) was planning to do an exhibition on processions and parades in Early Modern Japan, and decided they wanted to borrow a handscroll painting from the University of Hawaii collection to include in that exhibit. The University of Hawaii – and most especially Tokiko Bazzell, the Japan Specialist Librarian – decided to take advantage of the opportunity, to hold our own small exhibition, in conjunction with the return of that scroll painting from its being loaned to Rekihaku. I’m sure there were all kinds of behind-the-scenes considerations and negotiations, and then, completely unexpectedly, I found myself being invited to co-curate this small exhibition, alongside my MA advisor, Dr. John Szostak.

As I was graduating, I was not able to be on campus to work hands-on directly with the objects, or with the gallery, in order to help figure out what would fit where, or anything like that. But, having handled some of these objects before in person, and drawing upon my MA thesis research, I was able to contribute gallery labels, to suggest which sections of the scrolls to show, etc. It was an absolutely privilege and pleasure to get to have my curatorial debut be in Hawaii, and to be an Okinawa-related exhibit; and, of course, it was a privilege and pleasure to work with Tokiko-san and Prof. Szostak on this.

Long story short, the exhibit, entitled “Picturing the Ryukyus: Images of Okinawa in Japanese Artworks from the UH Sakamaki/Hawley Collection,” opened at the University of Hawaii Art Gallery, and showed from February 7-22 this year. While the Rekihaku exhibit featured a wide variety of early modern processions and parades, from sankin kôtai daimyô processions and festival parades to Korean, Dutch, and Ryukyuan embassy processions, ours focused in on just Ryukyuan (i.e. Okinawan) subjects. The highlights of the exhibit were a 1671 handscroll painting depicting a Ryukyuan embassy procession in Edo in that year, the oldest such Ryukyu embassy procession scroll extant, and another scroll, this one sixty feet long, and in much brighter, bolder colors, depicting a 1710 procession. The 1710 procession is of particular significance as a mission which set new standards in dress, ceremonial, and form of the embassy, precedents which would stand, to a large extent, for the remainder of the early modern period. Plus, it’s simply a wonderfully beautiful object. Given its incredible length, however, we were only able to show a small section.

Here is me talking about the exhibition:

(Backup video link)

Other objects in the exhibition included a scroll painting depicting Chinese investiture ceremonies in Ryûkyû and related subjects, copied by the Japanese artist from a Chinese source; a set of colorful woodblock prints depicting a procession of the 1832 embassy, the year of a so-called “Ryûkyû boom” – 1/4 of all popular publications produced in the early modern period were produced in that year; and, finally, a Meiji period accordion book depicting “customs and folkways of Okinawa.” All beautiful objects, and all just wonderful to see on display like that. I’m sad that the exhibit is gone, existing now only in our memories, in installation photos we’ve taken, and in the various documents we produced in the planning and preparation. But, fortunately, all of the objects are still quite visible and accessible online, either at the Sakamaki-Hawley Collection Digital Archives webpage, or through the UH Library’s Treasures from the Libraries webpage.

You can see all my photos of the installation here.

The exhibition was accompanied by a set of public lectures, and a symposium, held in conjunction. Prof. Kurushima Hiroshi from Rekihaku, Prof. Szostak, and myself, presented on a panel alongside two of the truly top experts in Ryukyuan history, Prof. Yokoyama Manabu of Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama, and Prof. Gregory Smits of Penn State. It was kind of nerve-wracking to be up there along with such prominent scholars, but was really quite pleasant, and extremely informative, in the end. As they say in Japanese, taihen benkyô ni narimashita 大変勉強になりました.

I apologize to not summarize or comment upon the talks here, as I have been doing for the AAS talks I attended last month. But, many of the talks, associated PowerPoints, and even video of the presentations, are now available online, on a UHM Hamilton Library webpage. These will all eventually be added to the University of Hawaii University Repository, also known as ScholarSpace.

And, the full audio from my talk at the symposium can be found via the Samurai Archives Podcast. In the next episode of the podcast, I talk with C.E. West, Shogun of the Samurai Archives website, about the presentation, the symposium, and the exhibit. Now that the following third and final episode in the series is available, I’ve added the link to that here.

Meanwhile, you can also read about the Rekihaku exhibit here; I myself did not get to see the exhibit, which sounds like it was spectacular, but, at least I’ve managed to get my hands on the catalog, and a mighty beautiful catalog it is, for just 2000 yen.

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33rd UHM Art Department Graduate Exhibition

The annual University of Hawaii Art department “grad show” exhibition opened a few weeks ago, displaying work by MFA students in glass, ceramics, textiles, painting, photography, and sculpture (am I missing anyone?). I was truly stunned, and blown away, by the skill and talent and sheer artistic creativity of my friends. … It is one thing to note that a work is skilled, masterfully made, impressive, but furthermore, a big part of what makes these works amazing is that they are not purely conceptual, but rather actually speak to their concepts – the ideas and concepts are evident in the works, or can be read into the works. They are not inscrutable, too abstract, nor too obscure, leaving the visitor genuinely capable of getting meaning out of the works, and having an emotional reaction as well.

I had seen some of the pieces, or at least the concepts, over the course of last term, as they began to germinate and develop, but in many cases the final project was honestly levels beyond what I’d imagined it to be.

The atmosphere, that is, the space, was great too. In a show like this, where each artist has one or two pieces, and you’re trying to show everyone equally, it can be really tempting (or just the most obvious option) to sort of section it off and make the whole gallery into corners and alcoves and tiny rooms, so that each artist can have their own space. But here, this year, they left much of the gallery wide open, allowing pieces to interact, creating a dialogue between the pieces, and also a more open, airy environment (a less claustrophobic one) in which the visitor can feel freer and lighter, and thus in a better frame of mind to enjoy the art.

Now, I’m only going to talk about a few of the artworks. I hope no one is offended if I leave them out; I love you, too, guys, and I love your work, I do.

Jessica Orfe is one of the few artists who did take/get her own alcove, and it was brilliant – absolutely necessary for the effect I assume she was seeking to achieve. A white rabbit painted directly onto the wall greets you as you approach her section of the gallery. Following the white rabbit, you are pulled into her world, her dream sequences. They melt and blend into one another, to create a dreamscape that still feels quite fresh and original, no matter what anyone may say about the core idea being tired or cliché. Jessica pulls it off in such a way that it doesn’t feel tired or cliché at all, but rather a nod to the classic amidst a very fresh, new work.

Ghostly figures, described only roughly, walk into a building that is itself not quite there. Shadows melt and flow, like puddles of ink on the ground.

A rectangular form serve, Escher-like, as both window and fridge.

And one sole burst of color, in sky blue, highlights a rope just about break. Is the unseen figure being dropped helplessly into dream? Or is she desperately trying to pull herself up and stay in this fantasy world, to avoid returning to the banal?

Against this monochrome background, it takes the eye a moment to realize that a string, a thread, connected to a sewing needle painted on the wall is itself three-dimension, emerging from the wall, an actual piece of black string that is not painted on.

This is work is just filled with the kinds of hidden touches and little things to find, each with their own meanings or clever tricks or amusing gimmicks to them, that I love. It means you’re not just taking in the work in one go, but you’re really examining it, really exploring it, venturing through the depicted environment along with the travelers depicted in it, like in a Chinese landscape painting, walking up the paths and into the mountains, towards the temple, with your eyes and in your mind.

—-

Gideon Gerlt has constructed a deer or antelope of some sort out of metal, rope, and other materials, which is meant to recall ideas of totems and animal spirits. He called it a “boli,” which I assumed was a reference to an African native traditional practice, a concept akin to the totem of the Pacific Northwest Native American tribes; but Googling it now, I am having trouble finding any such term.

The creature itself is cute, its form really kind of amazing in how well done it is – a form fully recognizable as an antelope, out of scrap metal, rope, and whatever else – and cute in how small it is: maybe, what?, one foot off the floor, two at most. Cute, yet dangerous, its sharp, pointy antlers of wrought iron twisting all around. It’s easy to imagine emotions or expressions on its face, as it gazes up in awe or amusement at Gideon’s other work in the show, entitled “A Classic Example of Self-Defeat.”

I really appreciate his gallery text for the work, which reads:

“Eagles may soar, but this thing would never get sucked into a jet engine.”
“It looks like something da Vinci would have invented… if he were a dolt.”
“It’s just sad, really…”

There’s something wonderfully amusing in the idea of an artist intentionally creating a failure, intentionally creating something he might consider “sad” or “made by a dolt.”

It’s an intentional failure, with a wonderful sense of whimsy. Does it have deeper meaning? Perhaps.

The simplicity and naturalness of the wood and rope combines with the clean and manmade but still very pre-industrial, for a nostalgic, romantic sort of aesthetic. Knowing that Gideon is from Alaska, and likes to draw upon the aesthetics or environment of that part of the world, we can sense the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest in this work, alongside the Renaissance Italian workshop. It is held down to the ground by a very raw section of tree, more tree really than “lumber” or “wood” as material, as media.

I hadn’t realized that it spins. I don’t tend to touch artworks, especially if I’m nervous about breaking it or something. I need a sign that says “please touch me,” or even better, someone present in the gallery verbally telling me, encouraging me.

Gideon’s work plays well off of that of Chad Steve.

Chad has explicitly spoken of these ceramic constructions as reminiscent of Polynesian voyaging canoes. He fills them with unpainted, unglazed pieces in the form of Greek or Phoenician urns or amphorae or the like, calling to mind maritime trade and commerce, shipping these jars from the center of ceramics production to another city or another island, where they are to be painted. And in doing so, he evokes the voyaging aspect inherent in all our histories, connecting peoples and cultures across time and space.

The wooden scaffolds and ropes, like a drydock for the boats, somewhat plain, simple, and straightforward, play off of Gideon’s work quite nicely, reflecting some of the same aesthetics, and implying again a romantic pre-industrial past. The sentimentality for the homemade and artisanal nature of trade and life, society, back “then”, whenever and whereever that might be.

And then there was a piece by my good friend Katie Small.

Katie’s work (almost?) always deals with themes she encountered doing volunteer work in Kosovo. Her works can be kind of abstract sometimes, though the tar paper ground and other aspects do an excellent job of evoking the right emotions or atmosphere. The more you examine her works and really think about them, they can be quite dark and serious. They’re certainly not what one would expect from a smiling, bubbly, sunny girl like her… but then, these are very important messages and themes, and it’s obviously very meaningful and important to her to address them.

Here, she uses many of the same elements as other works of hers that I’ve seen – heavy black tar paper, torn and burned, recalling the damage and horrors of war and of genocide. But where her previous works portray somewhat abstract scenes of burnt-out cityscapes, here she reproduces something more concrete and lifesize, which one can easily imagine having actually existed, almost exactly as it is portrayed.

Coats, nearly all of them small enough to belong to children, hang on a wall, covered in orange, which drips like rust onto the wall below. Orange and black as though the coats have been chemically altered and merged into the wall by the extreme heat and flame of a dramatic bomb blast, or just by unnamed ravages of war, weathering, over time exposed to the elements after being abandoned, the shop window long ago smashed.

I gasped when I first saw this work, and was immediately reminded of the piles of shoes and suitcases at the Holocaust Museum in DC, and of photos of the storefronts of German cities after Kristallnacht.

The gallery label describes a storefront, but this could just as easily be a schoolroom. Where have the children gone? Are they safe, having fled? Or are they truly gone, these coats an eerie and terribly upsetting reminder of their lives, their existence, their great potential, so innocent, cut short by violence and evil?

….

I do apologize to end on such a note. I would like to congratulate and applaud all my friends in the show – Megan Bent, Abi Good, Shiori Abe, Kumi Nakajima, Mark Enfield, Gideon Gerlt, Jacob Guerin, Michael Hengler, Sheri Lyles, Noah Matteucci, Jessica Orfe, Katie Small, Chad Steve, and Jonathan Swanz – for their amazing technical skills and astonishing creativity and insights.

The Graduate Exhibition will continue to be up at the Art Building, here at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, through.. whoa. Only February 4? I’m sorry. I really thought it was going to be open longer. I guess it takes a full 3 weeks to install The Reformer’s Brush, the modern Chinese calligraphy exhibit that opens on Feb 27 (and which I am super excited about!). Well. Come and see the Graduate Exhibition while you can!! Last days!!

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History of Hawaii Kabuki

In my final post about the kabuki symposium, I thought I would provide a summary of the history of kabuki at Hawaii, as described by the extremely prominent kabuki scholar and UH professor emeritus, James Brandon.

Above: A scene from the 1924 UH production of “The Faithful.”

As his presentation for the symposium, Dr. Brandon gave a summary of the 87-year history of English-language kabuki here in Hawaii, starting with a 1924 performance of “The Faithful,” by John Masefield, a play written originally in English, loaded with Orientalism, intended to introduce Western audiences to Eastern culture, and loosely based on the story of the 47 Ronin but not really based on the kabuki Chûshingura.

In this first decade of kabuki productions, theatre at UH was very much dominated by Caucasians. Though the student body was something like 60-75% Chinese or Japanese, roughly 90% of the casts of shows performed by the “Dramatic Club” were Caucasian. A new UH Theatre Guild was formed in 1931, dedicated explicitly to providing theatre opportunities for those who had been denied them before on account of their ethnicity/race. The group was to organize one Chinese, one Japanese, one Hawaiian, and one Western play each year, this final category being referred to as “haole plays,” in what I perceive today as a snarky jab. In an interesting twist, however, the casts were divided by race, so Japanese plays had all-Japanese casts, Chinese plays had all-Chinese casts, and haole plays continued to have all-white casts. In addition to serving many other purposes, such as introducing Asian high culture to the Hawaiian public etc., it was believed that studying performance would be a great way for non-whites to learn to speak standard English, so they could get better jobs, and be better off in life.

It’s troubling and painful to be reminded that this sort of racial discrimination went on, and it being brought up created, I felt, an interesting tension in the room as those who share ethnic background with the victims of this discrimination had of course a different reaction to it from those of us who happen to share the skin color of the perpetrators of this kind of discrimination. I must admit, there is something to be said for actually having people who look Japanese play Japanese roles, and for the aesthetics of it actually looking right. But, of course, excluding anyone of any background from participating in anything is today considered quite racist and inappropriate.

In any case, racially mixed casts just didn’t happen at this time, and wouldn’t for decades. While it may seem on the surface to be reflective of Chinese and Japanese (and native Hawaiians) getting revenge or something, in fact, this was still very much reflective of the race relations environment we all lived in back then, in which Chinese, Japanese, and others had to forcibly create these kinds of experiences for themselves, and in which even in those contexts, the thought of mixing races (e.g. allowing haoles, or having haoles choose to, participate in spaces carved out for Chinese/Japanese activity) was apparently just out of the question.

For about five years from the bombing of Pearl Harbor until the end of WWII, Japanese cultural expressions were severely suppressed in Hawaii, so there was no kabuki, though of course that was hardly the worst consequence of this suppression. I have heard stories of people today who lament that their parents or grandparents destroyed their family’s heirloom kimono and other such family treasures at this time, in order to try to appear more loyally American. And, of course, as we all know, that too was hardly the worst of it.

Kabuki returned after the war, revived by Earle Ernst, chief theatre censor for the Occupation forces (who would later go on to be a super major kabuki scholar), who came to Hawaii in 1947 or so and organized a production of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami in 1951. Our current movement teacher, Onoe Kikunobu, was involved in this production, and in most, if not all, since. Unlike was done before, Ernst made a point of declaring this to be real kabuki, and not just some American imitation or version or adaptation, an important discursive move, which has helped solidify the idea down to today that Hawaii Kabuki is a regional form, a local “troupe” so to speak, performing “real” kabuki just as genuine as any rural, regional, local (jishibai) troupe in Japan.

Above: David Furumoto and Gertrude Tsutsumi (Onoe Kikunobu) in rehearsals for “The Road to Kyoto”, 1976-77

Beginning around 1963 with a production of Benten Kozo which opened the new Kennedy Theatre, and peaking in the 1970s under the leadership of James Brandon, UH Kabuki experienced its Golden Age. It had great funding, was able to borrow costumes, wigs, and other things from Shochiku, and was able to bring professional kabuki actors such as Nakamura Matagoro II (see also) to Hawaii to train up the students. One of the professors who spoke later, David Furumoto, was a UH student at the time, took part in 7 productions, and was extremely emotional about how powerful that experience was for him. My friends, current grad students in the Theatre Dept, were amazed at the resources evidently available at that time, evident in the quality of the sets, etc, since such resources are certainly not available today. At one point, they apparently even somehow reconstructed an early Edo period style stage, and perhaps the whole theater, with box seats.

Race-blind casting was not introduced until 1970, far later than I would have expected, and even at that time it was described as only an experiment. Brandon’s 1970 production of Sukeroku was described as “blue-eyed kabuki,” though whether that was a criticism, or an amused, intrigued comment, I was not quite clear; I imagine there were those who held each view. This production also took the bold move of (re-)introducing a love scene between Sukeroku and Agemaki which is not normally performed in Japan, ever, anymore. A 1978 production toured the country.

Above: A clip from a 1995 UH performance of “Sukeroku”.

Hawaii Kabuki continues today under my teacher, Dr Julie Iezzi, who organized a performance of Nozakimura in 2004, and is leading us all in preparing for Ise Ondo Koi no Netaba (The Vengeful Sword) which will debut April 2011. After today’s symposium, and all the videos shown of students participating and everything, I really want to continue to be involved somehow. I had set my mind on not auditioning for the play, since I know I’m not really up to it in terms of my skills and such, either in voice or in movement, nor am I particularly motivated to go through hours and hours and hours of rehearsals. But, now I am once again thinking that this is an opportunity not to be missed, to actually participate in a performance. How will I feel come April if I am to go to just one performance, sit in the audience, and just be a regular audience member, totally divorced from being “one of them”, part of the cast? How will I feel years down the road, when I know I could have had the opportunity to be in a kabuki, and let it pass me by?

Auditions are on Monday. Wish me luck!

…

PS I have added videos to my post Kabuki Symposium Part 2. If you are interested in seeing the demonstrations of some of what we have been working on, please take a look.

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UH Peking Opera Exhibit in Engrish

I’m going tonight to see a Peking Opera performance of “The White Snake,” here on campus at UH, and am very excited about it. It’s a wonderful thing to attend a school where one can enjoy these kinds of non-Western performance arts events (we never had any kind of kabuki workshops, Beijing opera, or anything of the sort at Brandeis, but it seems there was one at least once a month at SOAS, and there’s always Asia-Pacific stuff going on at UH).

In conjunction with the performance, the Art Dept is hosting a small exhibition on Mei Lanfang (梅 蘭芳), a famous Peking Opera actor of the 1920s-40s, the first to spread Peking Opera overseas.

As a major kabuki enthusiast, it was wonderful to see the costumes, props, and other objects on display from this very similar, but markedly different, tradition, and to warm myself up as it were to build up my anticipation for the performance.

Sadly, however, it would seem that no one at UH – not the Art dept or Gallery staff, not the Theatre dept or Kennedy Theatre staff who are coordinating the performance – no one took the time to make any effort to proofread or fix the gallery labels before they went up. I only ended up getting a photo of one panel, but I don’t think any of them are lacking in spelling or grammar mistakes. Indeed, on some, the grammar is so poor, it is incomprehensible.

I quite genuinely feel bad to write such a scathing review, particularly of an exhibit organized in part by my own department, my own university, but handing in a final draft with serious spelling and grammar mistakes is a pretty high school thing to do. It does not reflect well at all on the people responsible. The exhibit reflects poorly not only on China, but on the university as well, as it would seem that no one has taken the time or effort to ensure that things we show in our space, on our campus, are written in proper English.

This exhibition reinforces the stereotype of China not as a worldly, cosmopolitan nation, but as one where, apparently, no one speaks proper English. Which is not to say that I (or anyone else) should equate speaking English with being modern and worldly; I am not saying that the average person on the street should be expected to speak English. Hardly. Rather, what I mean to get at is the fact that if any American organization were to be sending an exhibit to China, it would have someone competent in the language – either someone from within the organization, or someone from without – translate the relevant materials into proper Chinese, to then be proofread and copyedited by the Chinese counterparts who would be receiving the exhibit, and who would not want to lose face by putting up something in poor, incomprehensible Chinese.

I worked at a small operation last year in New York, and yet, if it ever came up that we needed something translated into or from Chinese, Spanish, French or any of a handful of other languages, there was someone in the office who could do it (not to mention that half the people working there were natively bilingual in both English & Japanese); and if we couldn’t, we could get someone from the outside to do it for us.

I am shocked that the Mei Lanfang Museum in Taizhou, the Taizhou City Bureau of Culture, and the Jiangsu Province Department of Culture couldn’t seem to find anyone within their organizations or without to translate these signs properly into proper English, and that the relevant depts at UH went ahead and put up this exhibit without being concerned about losing face over the terrible presentation.

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