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The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado
Long before Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation , long before Barthes explicated his empire of signs, even before Puccini’s Madame Butterfly , Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado presented its own distinctive version of Japan. Set in a fictional town called Titipu and populated by characters named Yum-Yum, Nanki-Poo, and Pooh-Bah, the opera has remained popular since its premiere in 1885.
Tracing the history of The Mikado’s performances from Victorian times to the present, Josephine Lee reveals the continuing viability of the play’s surprisingly complex racial dynamics as they have been adapted to different times and settings. Lee connects yellowface performance to blackface minstrelsy, showing how productions of the 1938–39 Swing Mikado and Hot Mikado , among others, were used to promote African American racial uplift. She also looks at a host of contemporary productions and adaptations, including Mike Leigh’s film Topsy-Turvy and performances of The Mikado in Japan, to reflect on anxieties about race as they are articulated through new visions of the town of Titipu.
The Mikado creates racial fantasies, draws audience members into them, and deftly weaves them into cultural memory. For countless people who had never been to Japan, The Mikado served as the basis for imagining what “Japanese” was.
Tracing the history of The Mikado’s performances from Victorian times to the present, Josephine Lee reveals the continuing viability of the play’s surprisingly complex racial dynamics as they have been adapted to different times and settings. Lee connects yellowface performance to blackface minstrelsy, showing how productions of the 1938–39 Swing Mikado and Hot Mikado , among others, were used to promote African American racial uplift. She also looks at a host of contemporary productions and adaptations, including Mike Leigh’s film Topsy-Turvy and performances of The Mikado in Japan, to reflect on anxieties about race as they are articulated through new visions of the town of Titipu.
The Mikado creates racial fantasies, draws audience members into them, and deftly weaves them into cultural memory. For countless people who had never been to Japan, The Mikado served as the basis for imagining what “Japanese” was.
280 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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January 28, 2019
In her Acknowledgements, Lee credits "the generosity of so many who helped turn an unwieldy research project into a book". This reader for one finds that transf0rmation frustratingly incomplete.
It is not that she avoids opinions. There are many here, and I suspect generally insightful. Lee's analyses of the racial elements in the work, its productions, and several derivations from it--the essential theme of the book--are thoughtful and convincing.
It is rather that she avoids opinion: What are we to make of The Mikado, and how ought it to be presented--if it is presented--in the present day?
Symptomatic, I think, is Lee's use of "yellowface" to mean any presentation whatever by a white actor of an Asian character, with or without stereotyping or exaggeration via makeup, costume, or body language. That was continually jarring for me, who would restrict it to a parallel with "blackface" as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary: "Makeup for a conventionalized comic travesty of black people, especially in a minstrel show."
Worth reading so long as you don't thirst for a conclusion, easy or otherwise.
It is not that she avoids opinions. There are many here, and I suspect generally insightful. Lee's analyses of the racial elements in the work, its productions, and several derivations from it--the essential theme of the book--are thoughtful and convincing.
It is rather that she avoids opinion: What are we to make of The Mikado, and how ought it to be presented--if it is presented--in the present day?
Symptomatic, I think, is Lee's use of "yellowface" to mean any presentation whatever by a white actor of an Asian character, with or without stereotyping or exaggeration via makeup, costume, or body language. That was continually jarring for me, who would restrict it to a parallel with "blackface" as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary: "Makeup for a conventionalized comic travesty of black people, especially in a minstrel show."
Worth reading so long as you don't thirst for a conclusion, easy or otherwise.
Displaying 1 of 1 review