Reinhardt and the Hanamichi

By having recourse to the constitutive elements of Japanese performing arts, European avant-garde movements created not only a new but also a modern theatre. The new aesthetics that were brought forth are by no means to be regarded as an intrinsically artistic phenomenon alone. Rather they were often accompanied by new concepts of space and the body as well as by modes of perception that affected the surrounding culture.

In his pantomime Sumurun (after Friedrich Freska, 1910), for example, Max Reinhardt’s use of the hanamichi, originally a device from Japanese Kabuki theatre, led to significant changes with respect to all three aspects. While stage and auditorium had so far been strictly separated from each other, the hanamichi now connected the two. At times, actors entered both spaces simultaneously. The spectators experienced space in an entirely new manner, forcing them to break with perceptual conventions. The spectators were exposed to a mode of perception that demonstrated that they could no longer perceive the surrounding events in their entirety. A spectator could miss something that a neighbour witnessed who in the process missed something else. Ten years on, the spectators’ experience in the theatre was to become the standard metropolitan condition of perception.

The hanamichi also redefined the relationship between actors and spectators. The proscenium stage with its darkened auditorium kept the spectators at a distance from the actors, which they were meant to overcome through empathy. The hanamichi, however, transferred the actors into the midst of the spectators, who could touch the actors simply by reaching out. This new relationship between actors and spectators – based on physical proximity rather than distance – not only affected the spectators’ perception but also formulated a new body concept. The actors’ bodies no longer formed a part of a picture or tableau to be beheld from a distance; they moved in a three-dimensional space that changed with their movements.

Different audience members observed a single actor from the front, back, left, and right. The actor might come so close to some spectators that they could hear him breathe, smell his sweat, touch the seam of his costume, or discern his make-up. The actors’ phenomenal body jostled up to the spectator and allowed the latter to become aware of and experience the co-presence of actor and spectator. Such changes in space and body concepts and modes of perception, brought about by processes of interweaving, have proven to be highly consequential for cultural history. At the same time, they mark an important step in the development of modern theatre.9

Ibsen in Japan

In Japan, performances of Ibsen’s plays in particular paved the way for the modernization of society, including the foundation of a new, modern theatre. The first Ibsen play to be performed in Japan was John Gabriel Borkman, directed by Osanai Kaoru in 1909. He recruited actors from a Kabuki company, the lead role being entrusted to Ichikawa Sadanji II (who was to tour Russia with his troupe in 1928; Sergei Eisenstein watched their acting and subsequently wrote his famous article on Japanese acting entitled ‘Behind the Screen’ in preparation for his work with sound film). The women’s parts were played by onnagatas, that is, male actors specializing in female roles. Yet, this was not the first Western play to be performed in the Kabuki style. Several Shakespeare plays and Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell had been performed by Kabuki companies since the 1880s, interweaving Japanese and Western cultures.

In 1911 A Doll’s House was produced by the Bungei-kyokai, the ‘Literary Society’. Nora was played by Matsui Sumako, who received her training at the theatre school founded by Tsobouchi Shoyo in 1909. The study of Shakespeare and Ibsen formed an important part of the training. While Matsui Sumako was not the first actress to return to Japanese stages, the experience of watching an actress on stage was still unfamiliar to Japanese audiences of the time. Moreover, she was the first to practice a wholly new style of acting. The performance of A Doll’s House triggered the emergence of a new theatre genre – shingeki (‘new drama’), a form of Japanese spoken theatre – and at the same time established a new mode of interweaving Japanese and Western cultures.

The production introduced two major novelties beyond the mere appearance of an actress on the stage. The first referred to the possibility of discussing topical social problems, such as women’s issues, on the stage; the second marked the invention of a completely new acting style. These went hand in hand – that is to say the new theatre form shingeki introduced spoken theatre and a realistic style of acting in order to grant theatre a new social and political function.

Just as it would be absurd to accuse Max Reinhardt of trying to ape Japanese theatre by introducing the hanamichi to German theatre, it would make no sense to view the production of A Doll’s House as an imitation of European theatre. Rather, in both cases there was a mode of productive reception based on the interweaving of cultures in performance. It was meant to enable theatre to serve new functions within the respective cultural context that it seemed unable to fulfill in its present form.

In the case of Japan, Ibsen’s plays acted as the principal catalyst in paving the way for such a new performance art. Matsui Sumako surprised and enchanted her spectators with an illusionistic acting style in A Doll’s House that allowed the spectators to observe ordinary people as they discussed issues that were gradually becoming more pressing. Nevertheless, the new acting style was in contrast to the actors’ costumes; they were not dressed in everyday Japanese style, but European clothes, giving them an estranged appearance and keeping the spectators at a certain distance. Thus, the Western clothes served a completely different purpose here than in European realistic and psychological theatre.

9. Cf. Erika Fischer-Lichte, ‘From Theatre to Theat- ricality. How to Construct Reality’, in Fischer-Lichte, The Show and the Gaze of Theatre (Iowa City: Iowa University Press,1997), p. 61–72. [↩]