25 November 2012

Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe

I started writing Japan-focused nonfiction and art book reviews for JQ Magazine this fall, and my first piece for them was published online yesterday: JQ Magazine: Book Review'Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan—and Japan to the West' 

I had heard about Professor Risley in its early stages from Stone Bridge Press (and saw some stunning promo images of Victorian Japanese circus ephemera), and I was immediately intrigued! Author Frederik L. Schodt is a writer, scholar and cultural observer whom I greatly admire, and his latest project was so much fun to read and review. You can just feel from his writing how excited he was about this project! I think that Fred has greatly inspired my generation of Japan observers and academics for his work in Japan-US cultural relations, and his work truly shows that popular culture has immense power in shaping our mindsets, histories and interactions. Check out this extensive, inspiring interview with Fred by my colleague, Justin Tedaldi.

As you can probably tell from my review below, I really enjoyed exploring this fascinating era of performing arts history. This book highlights an amazing chapter in Japanese cultural studies that, until now, was only known to niche academics and circus aficionados.

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Book Review: Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan—And Japan to the West
by Jessica Sattell
Originally published at JQ Magazine, 11/24/2012

Image courtesy of Stone Bridge Press
We’re still riding the “Cool Japan” wave that crested at the turn of the millennium, but our fascination with the country and its culture didn’t quite stem from just anime, Harajuku fashions, or J-pop. In Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan—and Japan to the West, award-winning author Frederik L. Schodt argues that contemporary interest in Japan’s popular culture has its roots in the travels and cross-cultural interactions of a band of 19th century Japanese circus performers and a colorful American impresario.

Published in November by Stone Bridge Press, Professor Risley explores a critical and exciting time in history, when an interest in foreign cultures was rapidly expanding beyond the privileged parlors of the upper class and Americans and Europeans were greatly fascinated by anything Japanese. Schodt offers an intriguing case study of both early Japanese conceptions of the West and the West’s first looks at modern Japan, but it is also a mystery of sorts: Why did a group of acrobats that were incredibly popular with international audiences in the 1860s fade from the annals of performing arts history? How was the life of “Professor” Richard Risley Carlisle, arguably one of the most extraordinarily talented and well-traveled performing artists in history, buried in the folds of time? Schodt suggests that we may never know the answers, but we can sit back and enjoy the show as their histories unfold.

This story begins, fittingly, with the question, “Where Is Risley?” Schodt artfully traces “Professor” Risley’s early travels and performance history like an elusive game of connect-the-dots, piecing together itineraries, publicity notices and press clippings until a clear pattern of a fascinating life emerges. Risley seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, and led a full life of jet-setting and adventure-seeking at a time where transcontinental travel was only beginning to open up to those outside of the diplomatic realm. We follow him on a decades-long journey across the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, China…and finally to Japan.

Risley arrived in Yokohama in early 1864 and immediately went to work setting up a fantastic Western-style circus to delight foreign residents and Japanese locals alike. As the country had re-opened to the world just five years earlier, it was a risky time to be in Japan, and non-Japanese residents lived with underlying worries of Shogunate-dictated expulsion and violence from disgruntled ronin. That didn’t quite stop Risley’s entrepreneurial spirit, but he did eventually run into a series of difficulties with his shows—and a stint in dairy farming, which, in the process, led him to introduce ice cream to Japan. He hadn’t originally intended to stay in Japan for long, but most likely due to the Civil War raging back home in America, he bided his time and explored his options. Thankfully, his stay there—paired with an almost desperate talent for improvisation—would lead to the world’s first taste of Japanese popular culture.

At Risley’s arrival, Japan already had a solid and intricate history of circus acts and exhibitions (misemono), and Japanese performers were all the rage with Yokohama’s foreign community. Eventually, he invited local artists to perform in his theater, and while it’s not exactly known what prompted Risley to take a Japanese troupe of performers on to travel in America and Europe, it’s obvious that the idea stemmed from seeing glowing audience reactions to renditions of the beautiful “butterfly trick” (using a fan to make little origami butterflies appear to flit and flutter), top spinning and juggling. After the necessary arrangements of investors and contracts (as well as securing passports, which had never before been issued to Japanese civilians), Risley left Japan in late 1866 with eighteen acrobats, magicians, top-spinners, musicians, costumers and administrators, also known as the “Imperial Japanese Troupe.”

In the latter half of the book, Schodt painstakingly retells the intricate details, scandalous trials and wild successes of the troupe’s world travels with a detective’s logic and the help of a wellspring of primary material: the diary of Hirohachi (Hamaikari Iwakichi), the group’s manager. We follow the artists across the metropolises of America and to the grand 1867 Paris Exposition, to the rural towns of England and eager audiences in Holland, Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal. We fall in love with the star of the show, “Little All Right” (Hamaikari Umekichi), a charming and fearless preadolescent boy who took to confidently shouting “all right!” and “you bet!” after nailing his death-defying acrobatic acts. And most of all, we are easily transported across time, space and place to worlds of Victorian intrigue and remarkable creativity.

The Imperial Japanese Troupe captured the hearts of thousands, spawned a wide array of imitators, and inspired artists, poets and musicians with their talent and professionalism (as a Wisconsin native, I would have loved to have heard the “All Right Polka”). Schodt’s study argues that the group and their performances in the U.S. and Europe have effects that ripple today; their travels triggered the West’s first wave of interest in Japanese popular culture, and for the first time, Japan was seeing the West. The echoes of a craze for all things Japanese would soon find new footing in the aesthetic movement of Japonisme, and Western technologies and philosophies streaming into Japan at the dawn of the Meiji era helped position the country as a major player in the modern world. The seeds of cross-cultural interaction spread by this small band of traveling performers are still flowering today.

The book is indeed a history of the Imperials, but at the core, it is a portrait of Risley as an extraordinary cultural game changer and a puzzling man. Perhaps Schodt’s greatest successes here are resurrecting both Risley’s larger-than-life persona and recreating the engaging world of 19th century international circus through limited primary source material scattered across the globe. His passion and fascination with his subject is clear from the very start, and the book’s inspiring preface and afterword add warm personal context to the project. Chock-full of illuminating illustrations and gorgeous printed ephemera that would make any contemporary typographer swoon, Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe is a jet-set adventure in pop culture scholarship sure to appeal to anyone interested in Japan’s history on the world stage.

17 November 2012

JET Alum Artist Beat: LeJarie Noguchi, Artist's Representative at ARTas1

I'm thrilled to announce the first post in a new series that I've organized along with JETwit.com, the JET Program's online alumni magazine/publicist/newsfeed. "JET Alum Artist Beat" will profile program alums working as artists or in the arts world, aiming to shed some light on how their experiences in Japan have inspired their creative careers.

HARUKA kiri-e
I couldn't have been more pleased to have interviewed LeJarie Noguchi, an Artist's Representative who works exclusively with Japanese artists through her California-based arts marketing company, ARTas1. ARTas1 positions itself as a unique firm in that it represents exclusively Japanese artists, aiming to bridge the Japanese and North American art worlds through organizing gallery exhibitions and licensing opportunities. They work with a wide variety of companies, and help to connect their artists to organizations looking for everything from branding/imaging consultations to illustrating manuscripts or book cover art to greeting card design. Basically, she has my dream job!


LeJarie is a fascinating woman with an extensive background in culture reporting and Japanese media consulting. She also shares my love of Japanese contemporary art and my fascination of seeing how young Japanese artists continue to draw from traditional Japanese techniques to inform their modern visual sensibilities. She was kind enough to share the work of one of her favorite up-and-coming artists, HARUKA (formerly Tamagiku).

HARUKA specializes in kiri-e, a delicate form of cut paper art. Her pieces are delicate juxtapositions of fine lines against bold fields of color, and they exude an eerie beauty. She especially likes depicting bones and flowers, enhancing the inherent fragility of her medium. I find it amazing that many of her pieces are constructed from a single piece of paper!

If you may know of any JET alums currently working in the art and design worlds, I'd love to know about them-- feel free to email me!

Images courtesy of ARTas1.com