Meiji Kabuki

Samuel L. Leiter

doi:10.5771/9781666926798

Summary

A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title

This book is an annotated collection of English-language documents by foreigners writing about Japan’s kabuki theatre in the half-century after the country was opened to the West in 1853. Using memoirs, travelogues, diaries, letters, and reference books, it contains all significant writing about kabuki by foreigners—resident or transient—during the Meiji period (1868–1912), well before the first substantial non-Japanese book on the subject was published. Its chronologically organized chapters contain detailed introductions. Twenty-seven authors, represented by edited versions of their essays, are supplemented by detailed summaries of thirty-five others. The author provides insights into how Western visitors—missionaries, scholars, diplomats, military officers, adventurers, globetrotters, and even a precocious teenage girl—responded to a world-class theatre that, apart from a tiny number of pre-Meiji encounters, had been hidden from the world at large for over two centuries. It reveals prejudices and misunderstandings, but also demonstrates the power of great theatre to bring together people of differing cultural backgrounds despite the barriers of language, artistic convention, and the very practice of theatergoing. And, in Ichikawa Danjuro IX, it presents an actor knowledgeable foreigners considered one of the finest in the world.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-6669-2678-1
ISBN-Online: 978-1-6669-2679-8
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 424
Product type: Book Titles

1. Dedication No access
2. Contents No access
3. List of Figures No access
4. List of Figures No access
5. Acknowledgments No access
1. 1. Notes No access
2. 1. The Meiji Restoration No access
  2. Kabuki: 1868–1878 No access
  3. 1879–1889 No access
  4. 1890–1904 No access
  5. 1905–1912 No access
  6. Notes No access
1. 1. Wednesday, November 16, 1859 No access
  2. Friday, June 29, 1860 No access
  3. Notes No access
2. 1. Notes No access
3. 1. Monday, April 15, 1861 No access
  2. Friday, May 24, 1861 No access
  3. Notes No access
4. 1. Notes No access
5. 1. Notes No access
6. 1. Notes No access
7. 1. Notes No access
8. 1. Notes No access
1. 1. I No access
  2. II No access
  3. III No access
  4. “Bumbuku Chagama: Or the Bubbling Teapot” No access
  5. IV No access
  6. V No access
  7. Notes No access
2. 1. Notes No access
3. 1. Notes No access
4. 1. H.B.M.’s Legation, Yedo, June 7 No access
  2. Notes No access
5. 1. Monday, December 2 No access
  2. Notes No access
6. 1. Tokyo, March 1, 1879 No access
  2. Notes No access
7. 1. Wednesday, July 16 No access
  2. “A Western-Style Drama” (1879) No access
  3. Thursday, September 11 No access
  4. Notes No access
8. 1. Notes No access
1. 1. Notes No access
2. 1. Notes No access
3. 1. Notes No access
4. 1. Notes No access
1. 1. Tokyo, May 1890 No access
  2. Notes No access
2. 1. Notes No access
3. 1. Nikko, May 15th No access
  2. Notes No access
4. 1. Notes No access
5. 1. Notes No access
6. 1. I No access
  2. II No access
  3. “Afternoon Calls” No access
  4. Notes No access
7. 1. Notes No access
1. 1. Notes No access
2. 1. Note No access
3. 1. Tokyo, September 20, 1903 No access
  2. Notes No access
4. 1. Notes No access
5. 1. Notes No access
6. 1. Notes No access
7. 1. Notes No access
8. 1. Notes No access
9. 1. Notes No access
10. 1. Note No access
11. 1. Notes No access
Glossary No access Pages 393 - 398
Bibliography No access Pages 399 - 406
Index No access Pages 407 - 422
About the Editor No access Pages 423 - 424