UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

May 20, 2008

Date:___________________

Christa A. Knox
I, _________________________________________________________,
hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Master of Art
in:
Art History
It is entitled:
Ukiyo-e, Madame Chrysantheme and Babel:
The Persistent Stereotype of Japanese Women from 1885 to 2007

This work and its defense approved by:

Miki Hirayama, Ph.D.

Chair: _______________________________
Diane Mankin, Ph.D.
_______________________________
Diane K. Smith, MA
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
 Ukiyo-e, Madame Chrysanthéme and Babel:
The Persistent Stereotype of Japanese Women
1885-2007

A thesis submitted to the

Department of Research and Advanced Studies

of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in the Department of Art History

of the School of Art
of the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning

2007

by Christa Knox
B.F.A, Art Academy of Cincinnati, 2001

Committee Chair: Dr. Mikiko Hirayama

 Abstract

In this thesis I explore the ways in which Japanese women are viewed in twenty-

first century western culture in conjunction with ukiyo-e prints. Critical to this discussion

is an investigation of how nineteenth-century European and American travelers viewed

Japan and its inhabitants. Images of women in ukiyo-e, woodblock prints and paintings

which were exported and sold in western bazaars, shaped the western misconception of

Japanese women that has persisted into the present. Japanese goods representing graceful

and statuesque women and beautiful men, combined with female impersonators in

Kabuki theater, formed a fairy-tale image of Japan as an exotic culture that could easily

be dominated by the West. By looking at a variety of artwork from nineteenth-century

publications to contemporary films, I reveal the early misconceptions that transformed

the Japanese into the “Other,” and how the racial stereotype survives into the twenty-first

century.
 Acknowledgements

There are many I would like to thank for their assistance in the completion of this

work. First, Dr. Mikiko Hirayama for all your knowledge, time, dedication and most

importantly, for encouraging me to truly explore the subject. Dr. Diane Mankin and

Professor Diane Smith, for you time, encouragement and feedback which allowed me to

present the ideas within. To my parents, JoAnn and Lee, for everything, I thank you. My

brother Kenny for listening to my thoughts late at night and for all you do. To Tammy

Brandenburg, for listening to it, chapter by chapter, your support and time to write when I

needed it most. A big thank you to my daughter, Trinity, for the understanding and quiet

time when I needed to work and you wanted to play. To all of you who where there for

me, I can never thank you enough.

 Table of Contents

List of Illustrations i

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Ukiyo-e Print in the West 14

Chapter 2 Madame Chrysanthéme, Madame Butterfly 22

and the Image of Woodblock Prints

Chapter 3 Sayonara and Babel: 30

The Weak, Mute, Sexualized Japanese
Other in Hollywood

Conclusion 39

Illustrations 44

Bibliography 57
 List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Omon of Shinyoshiwara. Circa. 1903.

http://www.oldtokyo.com/yoshiwara.html

Figure 2. Kitao Shigemasa. Two Girls Standing, One Holding an Open Book. Circa.
1770s. Hanging Scroll, color on silk. From the Smithsonian Freer and Sackler
Galleries Digital Collection: http://www.asia.si.edu/visitor/history.htm

Figure 3. Kitao Shigemasa. Two Girls Standing, One Holding an Open Book. Circa.
1770s. Woodblock print.

Figure 4. Hosoda Eishi. Oiran and Fireflies. Circa early nineteenth century. Hanging
Scroll, color and gold on silk. From the Smithsonian Freer and Sackler
Galleries Digital Collection:
http://www.asia.si.edu/collections.singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=607.

Figure 5. Suzuki Harunobu. Lovers Parting Sorrowfully. Circa mid-eighteenth century.

Woodblock print. From The British Museum Digital Collection:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/
search_results_ids.aspx?IdNum=1906%2c1220%CO.669.

Figure 6. Kashosai Shunsen. Oiran Parading. Circa early nineteenth century.

Woodblock print. From The British Museum Digital Collection:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/
search_results_ids.aspx?IdNum=1906%2C1200%2CO.196.

Figure 7. Ueno Hikoma. Pierre Loti, Pierre Le Cor and O-Kane-san. Circa 1885.
From Jan van Rij, Madam Butterfly (2001), 31.

Figure 8. Ying Huang as Cho-Cho-San. From Madame Butterfly, DVD (2002).

Figure 9. A Japanese Actress, Cosmopolitan (1900). From the collection of Dr. Greg
Waller,
University of Indiana.

Figure 10. Miyoshi Taka as Hana-Ogi. From Sayonara, DVD (1957,).

Figure 11. Miyoshi Taka as Hana-Ogi. From Sayonara, DVD (1957,).

Figure 12. Rinko Kikuchi as Chieko, film still from Babel, DVD (2006).

Figure 13. Rinko Kikucki as Chieko, film still from Babel, DVD (2006).

i
Figure 14. Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, film still from Basic Instinct, DVD
(1992).

Figure 15. Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, film still from Basic Instinct, DVD
(1992).

Figure 16. Bathing. From Abercrombie and Fitch Christmas Field Guide (2003).

ii
 Introduction

An elitist look at Japan by the United States and Western Europe fostered a

misconception of the East as the Other, which fully took hold in the nineteenth century.

The term Other, one of the key terms in the study of Orientalism, was first discussed by

Edward Said (1935-2003) in 1978. 1 It refers to the representation of the Orient in

western consciousness which states that the Other, those that are non-Western European

decent, are considered inferior or alien to the West. Thus, the discourse of Orientalism,

which originated in England and France, primarily focuses on countries of the former

Ottoman Empire states that those countries east of France are culturally inferior to the

West. 2 Victorian societies of the West, however, orientalized the people of Japan as well.

First published in France in 1709, 3 the French translation and subsequent dissemination

of the novel The Thousand Nights and One Night stories, or Alf Layla wa-Layla 4 helped to

classify the many people of the Near East under one unifying umbrella, that of the exotic,

oriental Other, to the western eye. The export and commercial distribution of Japanese arts in

the latter half of the nineteenth century, specifically ukiyo-e woodblock paintings and prints, lent

to the subsequent orientalization of the Japanese people and culture as well those in the Near

East. Though an Orientalist attitude and colonial domination have primarily focused on the Arab

lands in the Near East, they had just as much impact on how Japanese woodblock prints were

viewed in the West.

1
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
2
Ibid.
3
Thousand Nights and One Night was first published in French by Jean Antoine Galland (1645-1715).
Current English edition is available and was published by Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) in 1885.
4
The original date of publication is unknown, but several original manuscripts date to 800-900 AD.
1
 My thesis is not merely an investigation of ukiyo-e works, but the transition of the

Japanese artworks from their original context into a contemporary orientalist context in western

culture. As the beauty and allure of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter were introduced to the West,

Japanese culture became a mere commodity in the West, fueled by Japonisme and the search for

the exotic. The desire was not to enjoy the beauty of the images, but rather to own and repress

the subjects; this would continue for generations, in novels, operas, and even Hollywood films.

With the translation of the Arabic fairy tale, which invaded the Victorian collective

consciousness, Orientalism was further emphasized by artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-

1904) 5 and his paintings of slave markets and harems, sights which the artist never witnessed but

rather created from his imagination. These highly detailed images illustrated the romantic notion

of the Orient and came to represent the desired image of the region. In the modern world of the

mid-to late nineteenth century, they provided a fantasy world where western society could break

free of the invading industrialization. The need for western societies to escape their own

progress led to the desire for domination and colonization of the lands in the Near East and East

Asia 6 . This need to control and dominate the Other coincided with the mystique associated with

cultures deemed exotic by the industrialized west, creating what Guy Debord (1931-1994) later

dubbed the “commodity of the spectacle.” 7

5
Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter in the historical and Orientalist styles. His romantic images of
the Orient are so closely related to Orientalist thought that his paintings are reproduced on nearly every
publication relating to the subject. Many of his works were shown at the Salon of 1857 and helped fuel the
publics’ desire for colonization and imperialism into the Ottoman regions.
6
In contemporary scholarship, the term Near East usually refers to the countries of Armenia, Georgia, Iran,
Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, while East Asia refers to the countries of China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea,
South Korea and Taiwan.
7
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books),
1995.
2
 The spectacle, as discussed by Debord in his 1967 publication The Society of the

Spectacle, 8 is “not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is

mediated by images.” 9 This concept leads to the understanding that the spectacle is not only an

event but also the appearance that it creates, a social relationship within the collective society

that is mediated by the images created by the members of that society. 10 The concept of the

spectacle in society stretches as far back as Plato and his allegory of the cave from the

Republic. 11 In Book VII of the Republic, Socrates discusses the authenticity of images, a

critique of the spectacle within a discourse of power and knowledge. The images on the wall of

the cave are the shadows of a reality unknown to the chained viewers. The shadows of statues

behind the captives cast by flames fed by the captors, creating a spectacle for not just the captors,

but additionally, through the lack of knowledge and misinterpretation, a spectacle for the

prisoners. The knowledge to the truth of the reality of the shadows may only be obtained if the

prisoners are led past the flames and statues, into the light, and showed the truth to their

existence. 12

When discussing the western interpretation of images from other cultures, specifically

Japanese ukiyo-e, an understanding of the spectacle must first be reached. The commodity of the

spectacle, as in the producing, selling and purchasing of images of one’s own society, whether

actual reality, idealized or fantastical, is well understood in twenty-first century society. In the

twenty-first century, every individual even in a semi-industrialized society is inundated almost

every moment with spectacles of their own society, in stores, on the street, and in their homes.

8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 12.
10
Ibid., 12.
11
Plato, The Republic (360 B.C.E.), trans. by Benjamin Jowett, Internet Classics Archive,
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html (Accessed December 2, 2008).
12
Ibid.

3
Many of these images are idealized visions of reality. The spectacle of the commodity, in short,

believing the shadows while failing to look at the actual reality behind the image, leads to the

misinterpretation and misunderstanding of that image. Too often, the viewer of images from

other cultures interprets those images, through the lens of their culture, as representations of a

pure reality of that culture, fulfilling a personal or cultural fairy tale, transforming the fantasy

into a reality. This misrepresentation and spectacle creation happened with the image of Japan,

specifically those of Japanese women in ukiyo-e or “pictures of the floating world.” These

idealized bijinga, images of beautiful women, became, in the West, a commodity of the subject,

forming its own spectacle in the West.

Merchandising in the West quickly commercialized the Orient partially because

of the World’s Fairs such as the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893). In

this exhibition visitors could inspect Japanese goods displayed in recreated Japanese

structures. The visitors further misinterpreted the Japanese culture as impulsive, sensual

and child-like with the intricate detail in hand crafted objects and images of relaxation

and play found on porcelains, prints and scroll paintings. 13 New literature and art from

the lands to the East quickly became the favorite pastime of the Victorian Europeans and

Americans experienced who faced social changes at home. Modernization, changing

sexual roles which tended to suppress their desires, and the quickly changing physical

and social landscape brought with it the need for escapism. By 1915, the fantasy of the

Orient had firmly taken hold in American and Western European art, theater and

bourgeois lifestyles, from the 1904 publication of the Garden of Allah by Robert Hichens

13
Nancy McGowan, “Aspects of Fairyland: Amercian Perceptions of the Japanese H

den, Lady’s
Boudoir, and Tea Houses at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893” (Master’s Thesis, University of
Cincinnati, 2007), 7-9.

4
(1864-1950) to the Oriental-themed storefronts of Macy’s. 14 The desires not only to

believe in a far away, exotic and magical place but also to own and dominate it fueled

western expansion for years to come.

In the mid-nineteenth century, western ships expanded their explorations further

east. Beyond the Ottoman Empire to the East Asia, the limited communication and trade

that existed between Japan and only Dutch traders since the seventeenth century ended

with the opening of Japan’s borders and followed with diplomatic contracts and the

export of goods in the late nineteenth century. The western lust for a fairy tale world,

until then only found in children’s books of the Brothers Grimm and Rupert Van Wert,

seemed to have become a reality.

In July of 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858) and his ships landed at Uraga

Harbor near Edo, demanding the opening of Japan’s borders within a year and threatened

military force if denied. He returned six months later in February 1854 with twice as many ships

to establish trade and transport of goods from Japan, the last great frontier for western

colonization. 15 Items such as furniture, clothing, literature and works on paper entered America,

providing the escapism sought within Victorian homes. Among these were ukiyo-e woodblock

prints, many depicting geisha and courtesans who inhabited the pleasure quarters of Edo period

Japan. Acquisitions into museum collections, beginning in the later decades of the nineteenth

century, along with writings by western travelers, further spread the notion of the Japanese as the

Other. Collectors such as Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) and Arthur Morrison (1863-1945),

two leading early collectors of ukiyo-e prints, helped to introduce the image of the geisha and

courtesan of Japan to the West. The images of the fantasy world produced stereotypical

14
William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1993), 104-111.
15
George Sansom, A History of Japan 1615-1867 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963), 233-34.
5
reactions that were twofold. The first was the western lust for escapism, and the other the

western lust for domination.

These images of the “floating world” of Edo, known as Yoshiwara, a walled off section

of the city, created an illusionary world much like a modern day theme park for adults, focusing

on romance, entertainment and play for Japanese men. The high class and high style of the

“floating world” led to a new popular culture within Edo. Prints and paintings were produced as

a means of capturing the spectacle of Yoshiwara for both those who could not visit and those

who did. 16 The spectacle contained in the prints made the adored people within famous far

beyond its confines. The brilliant manners and customs captured in hanging scrolls and

woodblock prints transported the inhabitants into contemporary mainstream Japanese culture,

making them the equivalent of pop icons today. The prints and paintings helped fuel the illusion

of the spectacle by creating images of fantasy. The prints containing courtesans and geisha

illustrated the illusion of the ultimate feminine ideal, an ideal that very few women exhibited in

real life. 17 Within Edo was a non-reality, a theme park, an illusionary world, not much different

than the illusion presented in Arabic fairy tales and American Disney animations.

Established by the Tokugawa government in 1617, 18 the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, a

city within a city, was located at the northern edge of Edo and was physically separated by a

mote and high walls with a single gate for entering and exiting the district. 19 Actors, beggars,

courtesans, geisha, musicians, prostitutes and others that were considered so low in society that

they did not figure into the class system were placed within Yoshiwara in an attempt to regulate

16
Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton, “Reflections of the Floating World,” The Women of the Pleasure Quarter:
Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Floating World (exh. cat.) (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1995),
58-61.
17
Ibid., 61-64.
18
Yoshiwara, along with most of Edo, burned down in the Meireki fire of 1657 and rebuilt in a new
location at the outskirts of town.
19
Craig Hartley, Prints of the Floating World: Japan in the Edo Period (London: The British Museum
Press, 2006), 9.
6
and control unlawful behavior. 20 By establishing a separate district for the non-citizens of Edo,

the government also established a place where samurai and townspeople could legally participate

in behavior that was illegal in the outside world (Fig. 1).

Outside the walls of Yoshiwara, Japan was ruled by a hierarchal class system, with

warriors at the top and the non-producing merchants at the bottom. 21 Sumptuary laws enforced

by the Tokuagawa government dictated how individuals could spend their money. Merchants,

although at the bottom of the class system, soon acquired wealth which they could not spend on

housing or elaborate clothing considered above their station. Limited as to how to spend their

growing wealth, townspeople began not only visiting the pleasure quarters, seeking culture and

diversions from daily reality, but to purchase images of the fantasy within the walls of

Yoshiwara where they could spend freely. Those who lived inside Yoshiwara were social

outcasts, non-members of Japanese society, thus not prone to the regulations and restrictions of

those within the class structure. 22 These men and women were able to purchase elaborate

clothing and adornments from the merchants that would be normally reserved for the nobility. In

this fashion, the pleasure quarters assisted in cyclical economic growth. While the merchants

sold goods produced by others to the inhabitants, the inhabitant’s wealth grew along with the

merchants and the producers, blurring economic status.

The courtesans in woodblock prints, not part of mainstream Edo culture, climbed to the

height of popular culture with their fashionable urban sophistication, beauty, wit, grace,

intelligence and the highest essence of style. 23 Women of Edo purchased ukiyo-e prints, looking

20
Ibid, 9-10.
21
During the Edo period, merchants were ranked as the lowest members of society, seen as parasites.
because they did not manufacture product but only sold products that artists and artisans produced.
22
Elizabeth Lillehoj, Women in the Eyes of Men: Images of Women in Japanese Art from the Field Museum
(Chicago: The Smart Museum of Art, 1995), xiv.
23
Lillehoj, 54.
7
to them as guides in the latest style and trends. During this time a woman who possessed all of

these qualities would embody iki, meaning chic, smart and sophisticated. The resulting cult of

the high class courtesan elevated them to an almost unapproachable status. 24 These women

guaranteed a certain level of craft, selling their art of music, dance, poetry and conversation, not

just sex. With the growing luxury within the pleasure quarter from the mid-seventeenth century

to the mid-nineteenth century, the high style of these women raised them to the higher status

within their own society. The high class courtesan lived as heroines in a performance, a

performance in an imaginary world. 25

The inhabitants of Yoshiwara were not the only performers, but those who visited the

pleasure district were part of the spectacle as well. In the eighteenth century the concept of ts
,

meaning sophistication, became associated with the “man about town” who visited the pleasure

quarters. 26 In ts
, appearance was everything and those who contained it knew the proper ways

to behave and play. 27 They exemplified refinement, urbanity, intelligence, generosity and

consideration. They were seen at the theater and knowledgeable about the pleasure quarter.

Men who contained ts
went to the pleasure quarters not just to seek out sex, but rather to eat,

drink, listen to music, write poetry and be amused by women. 28 Here sex was something that

may happen at the end of the evening. Entertainment and immersion in the illusion was the goal,

not sexual intimacy.

24
Swinton, 44-55.
25
Lillehoj, 55.
26
Hartley, 10 and Swinton, 57-58.
27
Ibid.
28
Swinton, 58-61.
8
 This thesis surveys the formation of the stereotype of Japan as the “Other.” 29

The Orientalism of non-Western cultures parallels with what Sheridan Prasso calls the

“Asian Mystique,” a modern term for the collective fantasy of the Orient which

encompasses all the lands to the east. 30 This concept, which became part of the social

context of the nineteenth century, still feeds the contemporary stereotype of Asian

cultures in the west. The construct of the Other, evident today in the twenty-first century,

began with the Dutch trading settlement on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay in

1641, blossomed in bazaars and storefronts of the West in the late nineteenth century and

has become part of our weekend entertainment today. 31

One of the first publications to help fuel the racial stereotype of Japanese women

was Pierre Loti’s (1850-1923) Madame Chrysanthéme. 32 This short, semi-autobiographical

novel detailed Loti’s stay in Japan while a member of the French Navy. This work illustrated

how the print image of Japanese women influenced the western elitist perceptions of the women

of Japan, which led to an opera that would further enhance that notion for generations. Giacomo

Puccini’s (1858-1924) Madame Butterfly 33 is one of the longest and most popular operas of all

time 34 and further emphasizes the racial stereotype found in its basis, Madame Chrysanthéme.

Jan van Rij wrote in Madame Butterfly Japonisme, Puccini and the Search for the Real Cho-

Cho-San about the beginnings of the book, the opera and the influence of the American
29
The social construct of Japan as the Other should not be confused with the French term Japonisme,
which is used globally in regards to the influence of Japanese art on the West.
30
Sheridan Prasso, The Asian Mystique (New York: Public Affairs 2005).
31
After the expulsion of western traders by the shogun, the Dutch trading settlement was established. This
was Japan’s only link to the outside world during their self-imposed isolation from 1641 to 1853.
32
Pierre Loti, trans. by Laura Ensor, Madame Chrysanthéme (New York: BiblioBazaar, 2006).
33
The opera Madame Butterfly was first produced on stage in 1904; the version of the opera that was used
for the purpose of this paper was released on DVD in 2002 and is the most recent version of the classic
operatic production.
34
According to “Opera America, The National Service Organization for Opera,” Madame Butterfly is the
most performed opera in North America. Opera America,
http://www.operaamerica.org/audiences/learningcenter/cornerstones/operalist.html#butterfly (Accessed
February 12, 2008).
9
“romance” with Japan. 35 Jean-Pierre Lehmann wrote about the image, fantasy and reality of

Japanese women in his book The Image of Japan From Feudal Isolation to World Power 1850-

1905, 36 which when looked at in conjunction with Edward Said’s Orientalism, illustrates the

West’s tainted vision of the when looking at East Asia. While publications such as Elisabeth

Lillehoj’s Woman in the Eyes of Men: Images of Women in Japanese Art, Interracial Intimacy in

Japan Western Men and Japanese Women 1543-1900 37 by Gary Leupp and Gina Marchetti’s

Romance and the “Yellow Peril” 38 look at the images and intimate relations between East and

West, none of these publications focus on the ties between prints exported to the West and how

that culture interpreted and viewed them.

My methodology includes a semiotic and cultural analysis of Orientalism in Japan in

combination with social Marxist issues discussed by Guy Debord (1931-1994) in Society of the

Spectacle first published in 1967 and J. Pandian and S. Parman in The Making of Anthropology:

The Semiotics of Self and Other in Western Tradition. 39 These assist me in my investigation of

the misinterpretation of ukiyo-e paintings and prints as well as the subject matter and the culture

in which they were produced. Furthermore, for this investigation I rely on Edward Said’s

Orientalism, especially his observations of how the West views the lands of the Near East. Also

35
Jan van Rij, Madame Butterfly: Japonisme, Puccini and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San (Berkeley;
Stone Ridge Press, 2001).
36
Jean-Pierre Lehmann, The Image of Japan: From Feudal Isolation to World Power1850-1905 (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1978).
37
Gary Leupp, Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women 1543-1900 (London and
New York: Continuum, 2003).
38
Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril:” Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood
Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
39
J. Pandian and S. Parman, The Making of Anthropology: The Semiotics of Self and Other in Western
Tradition (New Delhi: Vedams Books, 2004).
10
useful are Gendering Orientalism 40 by Reina Lewis and the concept of western society taking

part in its own spectacle as discussed by Debord.

My first chapter looks at two painting and two prints of women of the pleasure quarter.

Two early acquisitions by the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., one by Kitao Shigemasa

(1739-1820) and the other by Hosoda Eishi (1756-1829), show scroll paintings of two different

classes of women. Two prints from the British Museum, one by Suzuki Harunobu (1724-70) and

the other by Katsukawa Shunsen (1762-1830), which entered into the collection in 1906,

illustrate the beauty and delicacy of life in Edo period Japan.

My second chapter looks first at one of the most pertinent primary sources regarding the

perception of Japanese women from the nineteenth century, Madame Chrysanthéme by Pierre

Loti. This short novel, part fictional and part autobiographical, is an account of his stay in

Nagasaki in 1886, which gained some popularity in France upon its publication in 1887. What

followed, however, would gain extreme popularity the world over. The opera Madame Butterfly

by Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was adapted from both the

short novel by Loti and a short story entitled “Madam Butterfly” (1889) by John Luther Long

(1861-1927). It represents the Japanese people and nation as the Other in the early twentieth

century and is still one of the longest running operas of all time. These literary and theatrical

works illustrate the romanticized, preconceived image of Japanese women from ukiyo-e prints

that became prominent in Western Europe. Madame Chrysanthéme and Madame Butterfly

demonstrate the transition from the misunderstood printed image on paper to an animated and

enduring image in theater. I will show how the women of ukiyo-e were transformed, through

40
Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation (New Yorkand London:
Routledge, 1996).

11
the spectacle, into a naval officer’s fantasy and eventually the fantasy of the larger western

public.

The investigation of the courtesan image in the theater continues in the third chapter

which examines films of the mid-twentieth century depicting Japanese women. Here I conduct a

feminist, postcolonial and modern socialist critique of the use of spectacle as seen in the

woodblock print images converted to film. One film from 1957, Sayonara, 41 illustrates the idea

of Japanese women as both easy to control and in need of saving by the West. Produced just a

little over a decade after the end of World War II, Sayonara shows how Hollywood used the

previous image and the notion of Japan as the Other to further “feminize” Japan in the post-war

years. The association between the image of the ukiyo-e print, the geisha and Japanese women in

Hollywood continues into the year 2006. In the contemporary film Babel (2006), the idea of the

fantasy Japanese woman as nothing but a pliable, sexual object is continued. Babel shows how

Hollywood and the western public still views the women of Japan as the muted Other whose

only means of acceptance is through sex.

In conclusion, I will show how the West has transformed the ukiyo-e images from

its original context to a misinterpreted ideal of Japanese women. The prints were

originally produced by and for the townspeople of Edo within the illusionary spectacle of

Yoshiwara, but they were later used by the West to emphasize and justify further the

oppression and Orientalization of the non-white, Asian Other.

Furthermore, Hollywood and many white middle-class men still view Asian women in

general as something to be owned. Often the country of these women’s origin is not known and

not important; the assumption is that they still need to be saved and oppressed for Western male

41
Sayonara. DVD, directed by William Goetz (1957; Santa Monica: MGM Home Entertainment, 2001).

12
pleasure. 42 Many Hollywood films and popular literature since the late nineteenth century have

shown that they are nothing more than a mere plaything to be kept for decoration and enjoyment.

These women have been grouped under an umbrella of not just the Other, but also as one of

sexual machines for the enjoyment of middle-age white men.

My thesis adds to the ongoing scholarship of Japanese woodblock prints and the

application of Said’s Orientalism to Asia. Unlike previous scholarship, this study focuses on the

imagery of Japanese women as a commodity, which began with the export of paintings and

woodblock prints in the Victorian age and kept alive in literature, theater, and cinema to the

present day. My research offers not only a critical inspection of nineteenth-century writings

which reflect an elitist view of Japan from outside the culture, but publications and films which

reveal the continued mystique. While discussions by other scholars have been limited to either

purely political or purely erotic justification of western European and American views of

Japanese women, my study focuses on visual culture to show that those views reflected colonial

and imperial ambitions. 43

From the images currently housed in museums in the United States and Great Britain as

well as brief articles in American publications and literary works, the spectacle of the Other

begins to emerge. Illustrated within is a racial stereotype bred from western ignorance,

misinterpretation and power of one society over another. To move past the spectacle of the

illusion one must find the knowledge behind the shadows on the wall, to face the light of reality. 

42
In many films with Japanese women as the subjects, the actors are usually Chinese. In the United States
many people are unable to tell if someone is from China, Japan or even Thailand or Vietnam. Hollywood
further emphasizes this “lack of knowledge” by casting people of one county, for example China, to play
Japanese characters. One such example is the film Memoirs of a Geisha, where most of the main
characters are played by Chinese actors. Memoirs of A Geisha, DVD, directed by Rob Marshall (2005;
Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 2006).
43
Although the western political desire for global domination was no doubt at the basis of orientalization of
Japan, it is the beyond the parameters of this paper to investigate this issue.
13
 Chapter One
The Ukiyo-e Print in the West

Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the
pleasure of the moon, sun, the cherry blossoms and the
maple leaves, singing songs, drinking wine, and diverting
ourselves just in floating, floating, caring not a whit for the
pauperism staring us in the face, refusing to be
disheartened, like a gourd floating along, with the river
current: this is what we call the floating world, “ukiyo”. 44
Asai Ry
i, Tale of the Floating World (c. 1661)

The ukiyo-e prints that were exported to the West in the latter part of the nineteenth

century contributed to the misconception of the Japanese people as the Other for Europeans and

Americans. When looking at ukiyo-e images with the modern western eye, we must ask

questions. Who and what is being represented? What is ukiyo and why was it important to

Japanese culture?

Ukiyo was not purely a world centered on pleasure, but was also a state of mind that

infected the inhabitants of Edo period Japan. The term ukiyo has its origins in Buddhist thought,

meaning “sorrowful world,” referring to the present world of pain in contrast to the world of

heavenly paradise after death. 45 In the seventeenth century the pessimistic meaning of the word

changed to one of optimism and pleasure in the here and now with the establishment of the

Tokugawa government, which ended long civil wars among the various daimyos (land-holding

feudal lords) and restored control to a central ruling body. 46 As ukiyo became the pleasurable

“floating world,” ukiyo-e developed into “pictures of the floating world,” images of illusion and

44
John Reeve, Floating World: Japan in the Edo Period (London: The British Museum Press, 2006), 5.
45
Hartley, 8.
46
Sansom, 3-17 .
14
fantasy. Yoshiwara, the pleasure quarter of Edo, was a world physically and socially set apart

from reality as an enclosed section of the city. 47 Those within represented the beauty, romance,

refinement, and idealized notion of freedom that was not a reality.

After the forced opening of Japan’s borders by Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858)

in 1854, art from the island nation began to be rapidly introduced to parts of Europe and

America. Acquisitions into private and museum collections, already beginning in the later

decades of the eighteenth century, along with writings by western travelers, helped to foster a

notion of the Japanese as the Other by presenting the images of the pleasure quarter as the true

Japan instead of as the small fantasy world it really was.

The date of accession is as important as the image portrayed on these prints. At

the turn of the century, Japan was capturing the imagination of Euroamerican authors,

artists, and the general public in multiple ways. The World’s Columbian Exposition in

Chicago took place in 1893, which showcased Japanese goods in four separate buildings.

In 1887, author and French Naval officer Pierre Loti (1850-1923) released his semi-

autobiographical novel Madame Chrysanthéme. This short and relatively uncelebrated

book would lead to, in 1904, the release of an opera that would become the number one

opera in the world, Giacomo Puccini’s (1858-1924) Madame Butterfly. 48 Another book

that was released at this time was Art and Art Industries in Japan by Sir Rutherford

Alcock (1809-1897), 49 the first British diplomatic representative in Japan. His book,

published in 1878, highlighted the various arts of Japan as a way to awaken England’s

47
Liza Dalby, “Courtesans and Geisha: The Real Women of the Pleasure Quarter.” The Women of the
Pleasure Quarter: Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Floating World (exh. cat.) (New York: Hudson
Hills Press, 1995), 54.
48
Van Rij, 62. The opera Madame Butterfly was first produced on stage in 1904. The version of the opera
that was used for the purpose of my thesis was released on DVD in 2002 and is the most recent version of
the classic operatic production.
49
Sir Rutherford Alcock, Art and Art Industries in Japan (London; Virture and Co, 1878).
15
interest in Japanese art. Coupled with these incidents, the images in woodblock prints

perpetuated the image of Japan was a fairy tale land in the west.

Collectors such as Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) and Arthur Morrison (1863-1945),

two leading early collectors of ukiyo-e prints, helped to introduce the image of the geisha and

courtesan of Japan to the West. Freer, an American railroad car manufacture from Detroit,

Michigan, traveled extensively throughout the Near East and Asia, purchasing works of art on

his travels. 50 He later founded the Freer Gallery of Art, now the Smithsonian Institution’s

museum of East Asian Art, which opened to the public in 1923. 51

A painting in the museum’s collection, purchased in Japan by Charles Freer in

1898, is a hanging scroll, in color on silk entitled Two Girls Standing, One Holding an

Open Book (Figure 2). 52 This piece, painted by Kitao Shigemasa in the 1770s, may have

led to a woodblock print by the same artist around the same time (Figure 3). 53 This

painting, one of the earliest acquisitions in the United States, represents two geisha

“floating” on a plain background.

There are several clues that identify these women as geisha instead of high-class

courtesans of Edo period Japan. First, the headdress or shimada, while ornate by western

standards, is subdued compared to that of the courtesan. The outer kimono, layered over

two under linings, the first of a pale pink and the second red,54 are subtle with little

embellishment. The first geisha with the shamisen (stringed instrument) is wearing a

kimono of deep purple, lightly patterned with a simple geometric design, while her obi,

50
Freer and Sackler Galleries. http://www.asia.si.edu/visitor/history.htm (Accessed February 26, 2008).
51
Ibid.
52
Freer Gallery, http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=622 (Accessed February
26, 2008).
53
History of Art. The Art of Asia. http://www.all-art.org/history330-5.html (Accessed February 26, 2008).
54
A red underlining was referred to as k itten, or touch of scarlet. The color red is denoted as the color of
beauty and happiness in Japanese culture.
16
tied in a large knot in the back, is also of a geometric pattern of light blue and brown on a

tan background. The second geisha, holding a book, is clad in a dusky purple kimono,

the hem highlighted with a growth of delicate flowers. Her obi, also tied in the back, is a

brocade print of blue and white flowers. Another clue as to the occupation of these

women is the treatment of the feet. In images of the courtesan at least one foot is usually

shown, bare of covering, one toe pointed up, possibly a symbol of excitement. In this

image, the only foot shown is peeking out from the hem of the kimono of the first geisha

as she walks, clad in a tabi. 55 The final clues to the identity of these women are the items

they carry. The shamisen, a stringed musical instrument used by musicians and

entertainers, is a symbol of her dedication to the life of an artist. The book illustrates the

geisha’s literary knowledge, demonstrating the high aesthetics of conversation. Thus,

one can conclude that this is an image of two geisha, women of the arts, possibly on the

way to a tea house to sing, dance, and play music while also conversing with clients so

the men may forget the worries of the day.

The geisha, literally meaning “arts person,” still entertains usually large groups of

men in tea houses so they may relax in a tranquil atmosphere, separated physically and

emotionally from reality. She was known for her skill of conversation, music and dance,

not for her skills in the bedroom. Men will hire a geisha to entertain them with song and

dance while they escaped the outside world and business alliances are formed. 56 The

geisha rose to the forefront of society in the late nineteenth century, becoming queens of

55
A tabi is a Japanese toe sock, made to that they can be worn with sandals. Tabi were worn by geisha,
while the courtesans did not, showing the hint of bare flesh, even in winter, to help induce sexual
excitement and longing in men who would catch a glance. Immortal Geisha,
http://www.immortalgeisha.com/faq_geisha.php (Accessed February 25, 2008).
56
A party with entertainment by geisha is sometimes a relaxing venue for business negotiations surviving,
although limited, to the twenty-first century.
17
the counterculture who were the trends setters, fashion leaders and sometimes even

confidantes of powerful men. 57

The second image from the Freer Gallery, also purchased by Charles Freer in

1898, is a hanging scroll on silk entitled Oiran and Fireflies (Figure 4), 58 painted by

Hosoda Eishi, an artist originally of samurai rank who abandoned his position for a career

in painting and print design. 59 His early works consist of color prints of literary classics

like the eleventh-century novel Tale of Genji. 60 Oiran, a term which is often confused

with geisha in western culture, was a high-class courtesan of Edo. 61 Vastly different

from the previous image, here Eishi has presented a statuesque figure in a rather simple

kimono, which seems to gradually emerge with added color and design from the

background. Her obi, tied in the front, is also a delicate tan color embellished with dark

flowers, suggesting that perhaps this is an autumn costume. Her kimono is open at the

neck, falling slightly away from her breast with more than just a hint of suggestion and

seduction. Her hair, the crowning coiffeur of the Oiran, radiates out with golden combs

and pins encompassing her hair, announcing her status. Her only prop is a delicately

painted fan she holds in her right hand. The mentioned fireflies flit lightly above her

head, as if they wrote the poem which lingers above. One of the most distinguishing

symbols between a geisha and courtesan is the tying of the obi. The obi on a geisha is

traditionally tied in the back. The courtesan traditionally tied her obi in the front, much

57
Ibid.
58
Freer Gallery, http://www.asia.si.edu/collections.singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=607. (Last Accessed
February 29, 2008).
59
Anne Nishimura Morse, ed. Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating
World 1690-1850 (Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 2006), 117-122.
60
First written about 1000 A.D. by Murasaki Shikibu, the Tale of Genji has been reproduced numerous
times, including a manga version for modern twenty-first century readers. This work is considered to be the
first Japanese novel consisting of 54 chapters
61
Immortal Geisha, http://www.immortalgeisha.com/faq_geisha.php (Accessed February 25, 2008).
18
like married women in Edo period Japan since a courtesan was considered “married” to

her clients. 62

Another early collector, Arthur Morrison, was a British journalist, chronicler of

London slums, writer of detective fiction, and a collector of Japanese prints. Morrison

compiled a two-volume work, The Painters of Japan, published in both England and

America in 1911; he sold his vast collection of prints to the British Museum in 1906. 63

One such print, produced by Suzuki Harunobu, is Figure 5, depicting two lovers with a

poem which reads:

Lovers parting sorrowfully

as the first bird
of the new day flies by. 64

Harunobu, a leading artist of prints of beautiful women in the 1760s, made a

major contribution to the establishment of woodblock prints with the production of

nishikie or brocade prints. 65 Known for lyricism and purity of feeling, Harunobu’s prints

invite his viewer into a dream-like world by placing the viewer in vicinity of the two

lovers. This print combines a scene of two lovers, the woman kneeling sorrowfully with

her head turned away from her lover, a young man who is standing, preparing to leave. 66

A black bird is shown flying past the window. The woman’s kimono is tied loosely

around her, barely covering her torso, while the full blanket behind her is rumpled, its

62
Ibid. Married women in Edo period Japan wore their obi tied in the front, possibly because once married
they no longer had their mother to tie it for them.
63
The British Museum of London,
http://www.britishmuseum.ogr/research/search_the_collection_database/search_results_ids.aspx?IdNum=1
906%2c1220%CO.669 (Accessed February 26, 2008).
64
Ibid.
65
Morse, 117-122.
66
The British Museum of London,
http://www.britishmuseum.ogr/research/search_the_collection_database/search_results_ids.aspx?IdNum=1
906%2c1220%CO.66 (Accessed February 26, 2008).
19
form mimicking hers. The figures, slender and willowy, seeming to be made of clay, are

characteristic of Harunobu’s style. This print of highly idealized subjects in a delicate

palette depicts contemporary life in Edo in a romanticized manner, conveying the

spectacle and fantasy of the times. The depiction of the subjects and how they are read

with the western eye will figure very predominantly for generations to come. This print

was not practically chosen for this investigation for the image of the woman, but that of

the man portrayed. By western standards the male has feminine characteristics. This

treatment of the male in ukiyo-e, in conjunction with the concept of female impersonators

in Kabuki Theater, translated to the West that Japan was delicate and weak, easy to

dominate.

Another image, acquired by the British Museum from Arthur Morrison in 1906, is

a print by Katsukawa Shunsen of an Oiran Parading (Fig. 6). 67 In this image, there is

little doubt that she is a high-ranking courtesan. This long, vertical print in the guise of a

scroll painting is filled with just the single image of the courtesan. She is cropped on the

sides, as if she is walking past a narrow window and the viewer can only glimpse sections

as she passes. The courtesan, clad in a voluptuous brocade kimono, is so different from

the subdued geisha. Her elaborate headdress with large combs and several picks radiates

from her head like rays from the sun. Her multiple layers of under dress, each more

decorative then the one beneath, is topped by a grand kimono embellished in a colorful,

all over print, comprised of auspicious symbols. 68 Her checkered obi is tied in the front,

forming a large knot, her body seemingly curving and bending to its will. To add to her

67
The British Museum,
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_results_ids.aspx?IdNum=1
906%2C1200%2CO.196 (Accessed February 26, 2008).
68
Ibid.
20
statuesque figure, a single foot is shown, bare and clad in a platform sandal that can be

seen peeking out of her many robes as she walks. 69

All are images of the beautiful women of Edo period Japan, of the pleasure

quarters and the spectacle of the society. These images, when viewed by the western eye,

depict graceful, willowy figures, curving, bending and quiet. Their delicate nature may

give the impression of slight, doll-like figures that are easy to manipulate. Their shy

smiles may have seemed simple and unintelligent to the western viewer . The figures are

quiet, muted and non-confrontational with their delicately painted mouths . While the

beautiful men were perceived as feminine and weak, the women were seen as little dolls

with thoughtless faces. Ukiyo-e artists produced images of women which illustrated

grace, beauty, refinement and chicness: in short, iki. To the people of Edo period Japan,

these women were the super models of the day, shining stars to be held in awe and

admired. Tragically she was viewed, in the West, not as the strong and independent

super star but as a plastic, blank-faced Asian Barbie doll, able to be bent and manipulated

by the oppressive West.

69
Courtesans wore koma-geta, platform sandals that could be anywhere from twelve to fifteen inches high,
requiring skill of balance. Due to the high shoes and the immense weight of their elaborate kimono and
hair, they developed a “Figure 8” step, twisting their ankle outward, gliding the inside edge of the geta out
and around in a smooth walking motion. Immortal Geisha,
http://www.immortalgeisha.com/faq_geisha.php#faq09 (accessed April 27, 2008).
21
 Chapter Two

Madame Chrysanthéme, Madame Butterfly and

the Image in Woodblock Prints

Supposing I marry this one, without seeking

any further. I should respect her as a child
committed to my care; I should take her for
what she is; a fantastic and charming
plaything.

-Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthéme 70

The willowy, colorfully bound women with delicate features and downcast eyes

produced an image, in the eyes of western men, as delicate “yellow dolls” 71 that could be

purchased. As illustrated in Madame Chrysanthéme and Madame Butterfly, western men

traveling to Japan wished to purchase one of these women to decorate their arms, much

like woodblock prints decorated their walls back home. Much like the prints they could

be simply forgotten when they are no longer needed or en vogue. The conversion of the

figure in woodblock prints to the stereotypical image of Japanese women as perceived by

the West is partially due to Pierre Loti.

Julien Marie Viaurd, born to Théodore and Nadine in 1850, grew up as a secluded

child in Rochufort in western France and joined the French Navy in 1867 to help pay

family debts. 72 Viaurd wrote several novels illustrating his many travels and marriages

throughout the Near East and East Asia under the nom de plum Pierre Loti. His novel

Madame Chrysanthéme would be one of the first publications to characterize the images

of women in ukiyo-e prints sold in many countries throughout Europe and in the United

70
Loti, 25.
71
Ibid.
72
Lesley Branch, Pierre Loti, The Legendary Romantic (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 13-
14.
22
States. O-Kan-San, renamed Chrysanthéme by Loti, is described by him as a delicate

“yellow flower” who has been seen by any who have visited the bazaars in France. 73 Loti

sees Chrysanthéme as an image on prints and paintings sold in French bazaars which he

had seen living in France. Chrysanthéme, a young woman of eighteen, was one of several

thousands of women purchased by and “married” to visiting Foreign Service men while

they were stationed at one of several ports in Japan after it opened its borders in 1854.

Loti introduces this writing by announcing to his shipmate and friend, Yves, that

he shall marry a “little yellow skinned woman…Not much bigger than a doll.” 74 He lays

out his plan to Yves of his “scheme” for the “absurd marriage” with the intention of

taking “temporary vows” as a way to pass the time while in the country. 75 Loti discusses

how the desire to purchase brides in Japan has very little to do with companionship, but

more to do with the aspiration to own a young girl from the prints, to have them be the

“insignificant little thoughtless faces” 76 chosen only for amusement. He, like many

others, went to Japan on naval assignment with the preconceived notion of marrying the

“yellow flower” from the woodblock prints, a thoughtless doll without a voice.

While thousands did marry these women, those thousands left them at the end of

their stay to return home to marry women from their own culture, as did Loti and Captain

Pinkerton from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. By purchasing one of these temporary

brides, the men were hoping to purchase the image in the prints, the ideal created by their

own fairy tale interpretation of the images. 77

73
Loti, 36.
74
Ibid., 9.
75
Ibid., 9.
76
Ibid., 37.
77
Ibid, 33. Loti purchased Chrysanthéme for twenty dollars a month.
23
 Upon landing in Nagasaki Bay, Loti describes the people of “comical Japan” as

“little” and “monkey like” in their mannerisms. Meanwhile, the island itself is an

“enchanted” and “fairy like” country with its towering black mountains hovering over the

tiny numerous lights from the town below.

On his first day ashore, Loti seeks out a M. Kangourcu, a marriage broker whom

he hires to find a wife for him. The first women Loti is shown is Mdlle. Jasmine, whom

he turns down, stating that “she is too white, much like our own women. I wish for a

yellow one just for a change.” 78 Though it is explained that she is painted for the

meeting, he chooses instead a member of Jasmine’s group, Chrysanthéme (Fig. 7). She,

along with the other women Loti records throughout his novel, the reader may find, are

never referred to as women, but as “little dolls” or “fairies.” Pierre Loti describes her as

“extremely decorative,” 79 the “little china doll with whom I play married life” 80 and that

“as a mere outline, little Chrysanthéme has been seen everywhere and by everybody.” 81

Loti indicates that prints and paintings that filled the French bazaars contained images of

women like Chrysanthéme with her stiff head-dress, leaning figure, the large obi and

clinging dress with falling sleeves. 82

Pierre Loti continues his description of Japan and its people as child’s toys, dolls,

fairies and little dancing dogs living in a fairy-tale land. For him they are “Lilliputian

people” that contain a “hereditary insignificant and incurable monkeyishess,” 83 perhaps

showing to himself and his readers that Japan and its inhabitants deserve little respect,

78
Loti, 31.
79
Ibid., 52.
80
Ibid ., 51.
81
Ibid., 36.
82
Ibid., 36.
83
Ibid., 133.
24
surely no more than he has shown them in this publication. Loti not only identified the

spectacle in ukiyo-e as perceived by western consumers and participated in it himself, he

also emphasized the distinctions between the West and Asia. He showed his readers that

these child-like monkeys living in a fairy-tale land were in fact not human, but rather toys

for his amusement, thus, the Other.

In 1898, a relatively unknown author of short stories, John Luther Long (1861-

1927) published an adaptation of Loti’s story entitled “Madam Butterfly” in

Philadelphia’s Century Magazine. 84 Long’s version was then adapted by playwright

David Belasco (1853-1931), whose play Madam Butterfly opened in New York in

1900. 85 That same year, Belasco’s Madam Butterfly was performed in London with

composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1927) in the audience. 86 Puccini’s opera Madame

Butterfly, which premiered at La Seala in Milan in 1904, 87 would come to be one of the

most successful and longest running operas of all time.

One major change in Long’s story was the naval officer is not a Frenchman, but

rather an American naval lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton. Combining Long’s Pinkerton

character with Loti’s sarcastic attitudes, the naval lieutenant of Puccini’s opera came to

life, personifying the singular view of the Japanese by the West. The quiet and

melancholic Chrysanthéme from the novel becomes the devoted and naïve geisha Cho-

Cho-San (Butterfly) in the opera. She falls in love with Pinkerton, gives birth to his child

after his departure and waits for his return, only to find that when he does, he brings his

American wife with him. Her lasting devotion ends with the handing over of her son to

84
Van Rij, 62.
85
Ibid., 76.
86
Ibid., 78.
87
Ibid., 104.
25
his wife, and Cho-Cho-San’s suicide further emphasizes the myth of the quiet and

obedient “geisha girl” 88 image. The character Cho-Cho-San comes to life in the opera as

the living embodiment of the image in the woodblock print, transformed from an ink

outline to a fairy tale befitting a Shakespearian tragedy.

The opera Madame Butterfly begins much like Madame Chrysanthéme with a

young woman’s marriage to a naval officer who states “life is not worth living unless he

can pick the flowers on every shore and love a woman in every port.” 89 While Pinkerton

laughs at the “parade of temporary relatives,” his friend, the Consul, pleads with him not

to marry Butterfly stating that she trusts his love and believes in the “farce.” Pinkerton,

infatuated with the “tiny and dainty” Butterfly (Fig. 8), the “painted figure on a screen,”

laughs the thought away. 90 While the Consul toasts Pinkerton and his new family from

far away, Pinkerton toasts to “the day I marry a real American wife.” 91 The fifteen-year-

old Butterfly, prompted by Pinkerton, professes her love and devotion for him by turning

her back on her religion and adopting his. With this act, Butterfly not only is disowned

by her family but also gives up her people and her country. After her marriage, she is no

longer part of Japan and its people. Thanks to Pinkerton, who has rescued her from her

culture, the United States is now her country. 92

Possibly another inspiration for the now immortal work of Puccini was a Japanese

actress, Sada Yacco (1871-1946). Sadayakko Kawakami, also known as Sada Yacco,

88
Puccini inaccurately labels Butterfly a geisha in his opera, showing possibly his ignorance of Japan and
the pleasure quarters. Geisha were not prostitutes, but rather artist that entertained. Because of their stature
in the pleasure quarters they would not be for sale or available for marriage to a non-patron. There are
several publications on geisha, and their role will be discussed in chapter three of my thesis.
89
Madame Butterfly, DVD, directed by Frédéric Mitterrand (2002; Culver City, CA: Columbia Tristar
Home Video, 2002).
90
Ibid.
91
Ibid.
92
Ibid.
26
born in the Nihoambashi district of Tokyo in 1871, was adopted into a geisha house at

the age of six after her father’s business collapsed. She later left behind the life of a

geisha and married a kabuki actor, Otojir
Kawakami. In 1896, Otojir
, his theater troop

and Sada Yacco 93 began a world tour, performing famous kabuki plays throughout

Europe and America. 94 To help attract western audiences Sada Yacco was cast in the

female roles in the plays, replacing female impersonators. This propelled her to

popularity, providing an inspiration for the character of Cho-Cho-San in Puccini’s

Madame Butterfly. 95 An article about Sada Yacco published in Cosmopolitan in February

1900 (Fig. 9) 96 illustrates the stereotypical image of the Japanese as the Other. Here she

is described as “an advanced woman, if such as thing as a Japanese advanced woman is

possible” and not as “doll-like” as other Japanese women. 97 The article states that Sada

Yacco expressed her desire to live in America, furthering the unsaid notion that only

those Japanese who wished to live in America were “advanced.” This brief article, in

conjunction with the writing of Loti and Puccini’s grand opera, illustrates how the West

viewed the land and the people of the Far East. Terms such as “monkeyishess,” “fairies,”

and “little dolls” were not limited to novels about Japan, but were part of the everyday

culture of America and Western Europe, a stereotype that was to last in western popular

culture for more than 150 years.

Gina Marchetti discusses the Butterfly tale in Romance and the “Yellow Peril” as

how the tale, in its many forms, looks to the West as the norm and that despite how the

93
Lesley Downer, Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha (New York:
Broadway Books, 2001), 152-159. Sadayakko Kawakami would come to be known throughout the world
as “Sada Yacco”: therefore I will refer to her as Sada Yacco throughout my thesis.
94
Downer, 152-159.
95
Ibid., 158.
96
Indiana University Museum of Bloomington, Japan- in- America,
http://www.indiana.edu/~jia1915/butterfly.html, (Accessed February 26, 2008).
97
Ibid.
27
western male mistreats the minority, he must still remain the victor. 98 The ignorant

Butterfly character is the fool, falling in love with the Caucasian man. She gives birth to

his child, waits for his return, gives up her child to his American wife and then removes

herself from the scene through suicide. By sacrificing her child and her life to the man

from the West, she ultimately solidifies his dominance over those who are not white and

male. This affirms the notion that in order for the West to dominate, the non-white races

must be sacrificed. 99 The non-white Butterfly sacrifices herself not only to the

dominance of the white victor, but also so her mixed race child could be absorbed into

the white culture of America. While Butterfly is depicted as a fool who was purchased

for marriage, Mrs. Pinkerton 100 is the essence of the Victorian woman, forgiving her

husband’s past escapades and taking the child to raise as her own. Butterfly’s sacrifice

legitimizes the western authority and provides a model for women--her mission is to

sacrifice herself for her man. 101 Butterfly, and by extension, Japan, is powerless and

fragile, unable to resist the allure of the “superior” West or to avoid her own destruction

in the end. 102

Gina Marchetti discusses the “Victorian Cult of the Virgin Child” in regards to

pedophilia and the pure, untouched child, which fueled the male passion for lust.103 The

virgin child is both a passive fiction and an elevated object of desire. While authors such

as Lewis Carroll and John Ruskin wrote several stories regarding sexual fantasies with

young girls, pedophilia was and still is today taboo in western society. As part of their

98
Marchetti, 78.
99
Ibid., 78-79.
100
There have been several versions of Madame Butterfly; in each Mrs. Pinkerton has either the name of
Adelaide or Kate. In the operatic film version used for this research her name was Kate, but to stem any
confusion between the versions I will simply use Mrs. Pinkerton.
101
Marchetti, 79-80.
102
Ibid., 80.
103
Ibid., 39.
28
lust for young girls, fairy tale stories about young girls with mad hatters were written, and

images of young girls were collected. Sex with “insignificant” girls of other races was

not questioned and even accepted. In Madame Chrysanthéme Loti purchases not only a

“yellow doll” but a “mere child trusted to my care” 104 while for Pinkerton in Madame

Butterfly, Butterfly is “at the age of candy and toys.” 105 Both men enter into a sexual

relationship with the girl, who is portrayed as naïve and foolish in her love for the naval

officer.

These men could not be at fault for entering into these taboo relationships; they

were, after all, seduced by the image of Japanese girls before they even left home. In

Madame Chrysanthéme and Madame Butterfly the fault is placed not on Loti and

Pinkerton, but rather on the Japanese women themselves for their art, culture and

naturally small stature. One can assume that if Japan and its people were more European,

they would not be “child-like fairies” living in a fairy tale world. To the western eye, the

art exported from Japan to be sold in French bazaars and American store fronts contained

images of little dolls, monkeyish toys to be played with at the discretion of the western

visitor. Since these girls were not human, the indulgences enjoyed by the men are easily

overlooked. As will be shown in the next chapter, the sex with an early teen child is

forbidden, unless of course that child is the Other.

104
Loti, 3 and 25.
105
Madame Butterfly, DVD.
29
 Chapter Three
Sayonara and Babel:
The Weak, Mute, Sexualized Japanese Other in Hollywood

I want you to imagine that little girl.

Now imagine she’s white. 106

The early to mid-1950s saw an increase in Hollywood films set in East Asia,

particularly Japan and China. Post-war films such as Love is a Many Splendored Thing

(1955), Sayonara (1957), The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958) and The World of Suzie

Wong (1960) illustrated what Gina Marchetti calls the “white knight” of Hollywood

fiction. 107 Many of these variations of the Butterfly story, on the surface, focus on

“bettering” interracial relations and intercultural understanding following the U.S. victory

in World War II and its involvement in the contemporary Korean War (1951-53). The

early years of the twenty-first century ushered in a renewed vision of the Japanese

woman, including the exotic geisha and the overly sexual young Japanese girl in the

blockbuster Hollywood films Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Babel (2006).

The continuation of the “white knight” story from Sayonara to the contemporary

film of Babel illustrates over fifty years of cultural misunderstanding and stereotypical

sexuality in Hollywood and the western consumer culture. At the time Sayonara was

produced, the landscape of American social and economic roles was facing its own post-

war turbulence. American women were emerging from the war years as forces of

106
A Time to Kill, DVD, directed by Joel Shumacher (1996; Hollywood, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1997).
A Time to Kill is a film about a white attorney, played by Matthew McConaughey, defending a black
manfor killing the two white young men who brutally raped, beat and attempted to kill his ten-year old
daughter. These are the final two lines from the closing argument at the trial to a jury of white men and
women.
107
Marchetti,109.
30
strength and independence, reflecting “Rosie the Riveter” 108 who led the women into the

work force while the men fought overseas. As Gina Marchetti illustrates, the emergence

of post-war films set in Asia was part of a social reaction to the reluctance of women to

leave the work force upon the end of the war. 109 While American women were gaining

strength in their independence, the men were seeking the quiet and obedient girl to come

home to. Hollywood provided her, not only as a fantasy for the male viewer but also as

a warning for the female viewer. This they did by revisiting the Butterfly image, the

obedient and submissive women of the woodblock prints that were made popular by the

earlier generations.

Sayonara opens with Major Lloyd Gruver (Marlon Brando) exiting a fighter plane

in Korea during the war in 1951 after a bombing mission. Later he learns that he is being

sent to Kobe, Japan for not only rest from the war at his future father-in-law’s request but

also to talk one of his airmen, Joe Kelly (Red Buttons), out of marrying a Japanese girl,

Katsumi, whom he met while posted in Japan. Gruver shows Kelly photographs of his

fiancée, Eileen, since he must have forgotten what an American girl looks like. Kelly in

return shows Gruver a picture of Katsumi, and the two women could not be more

different. The first photograph of Eileen is that of the smiling “girl next door” posing

with her mother, while the second portrays her scantily clad in a bathing suit, an image of

1950s pin-up. As Marchetti discusses, both are images that threaten Gruver’s sense of

identity. 110 The first is that of a proper general’s daughter, who represents beliefs about

108
“Rosie the Riveter” was a cultural icon developed by J. Howard Miller in a poster for Westinghouse.
She was dirty in overalls and a work shirt. Rosie represented the six million women who worked in
manufacturing plants throughout America during World War II and afterwards became a feminist icon of
women’s economic strength and power.
109
Marchetti, 178.
110
Marchetti, 132-133.
31
the war, a war he is starting to question. 111 The second is that of female sexuality that

Gruver is unable to control. The photograph of Katsumi is that of a young Japanese

woman, wrapped in a basic cotton kimono, hands folded and smiling shyly. While Eileen

represents military values and the American women’s rising sexual freedom, Katsumi

represents the meek, obedient and submissive image of the East.

Upon landing in Kobe, Gruver agrees to be Kelly’s best man even though he feels

that he is marrying a “slant-eye runt.” As Kelly rushes off to meet Katsumi, Gruver is

surprised by not only General Webster and Mrs. Webster, his future in-laws, but also

Eileen, whom he quickly criticizes for wearing a form fitting dress. When at dinner that

evening, Eileen asks Gruver if he had ever thought of hauling her off to a shack.

Appalled, Gruver replies that she was a “proper girl” and he would never think of doing

something like that to his future wife.

The following day, Gruver attends the marriage of Kelly and Katsumi, held in the

Consul’s office. The evening before, Gruver had been in the presence of Eileen, in a

strapless dress, begging for intimacy. At the wedding, Katsumi is covered throat to toe in

a cotton kimono, speaking almost no English and standing passively next to Kelly. Kelly

tells her in a slow, even tone as one would a child, what she is to do and say, further

emphasizing her child-like status vis-à-vis those in the room. Her passiveness and

obedience is illustrated later when she is shown bowing to and serving Gruver and Kelly

in their home. She is also shown bathing him, scrubbing his back and performing all

household tasks so her husband may relax and sip sake stating, “This is the life.” Her

unquestioning devotion to her husband is evident not only in their home and in public,

111
Ibid.
32
but also when she considers self-mutilation through eyelid surgery so she will look

Caucasian.

On leave, Gruver splits his time between Eileen in his uniform, representing his

American values, and Kelly’s home by the canal in kimono. As soon as Gruver enters

their home, in which he has his own room, he removes his uniform and dons a Japanese

robe to enter another world so he may escape his own.

While out walking one day, Gruver passes a bridge which the Matsubayashi girls

group takes to the theater. 112 Here he spots Hana Ogi, the lead performer of the dance

company, wearing a turtleneck, slacks and a felt hat adorned with a pheasant plume (Fig.

10). Taller than the younger women who are all dressed in kimono, Hana Ogi, dressed in

men’s attire, catches Gruver’s eye but bluntly dismisses him. After much persistence

from both Gruver and Katsumi, Hana Ogi accepts a dinner invitation from Katsumi so

she may formally meet Gruver. As Gruver enters the room after his physical shift from

West to East, he sees Hana Ogi, no longer in trousers, but dressed in a silk kimono,

flowers in her hair, eyes downcast and hands folded in her lap (Fig. 11). As Gruver

transitions between West and East, Hana Ogi transforms from a strong, independent

woman to the idealized vision of the East. 113

As the film progresses, Hana Ogi transforms more into the obedient woman of

Japan: quiet, pleasing and demur and needing to be saved from her life on stage and

Japan itself, the opposite of Eileen whose independence threatens Gruver’s authority.

Gruver enters into a sexual relationship with Hana Ogi, something he would not do with

112
The film refers to the theater group as the “Matsubayashi girls,” a theater troupe based off the
Takarazuka Revue, an all female musical theater. The opposite of kabuki, where men performed both male
and female roles, in the Takarazuka women played all the roles in lavish Broadway-style productions.
Takarazuka Revue, http://kageki.hankyu.co.jp/english/history.html (Accessed April 27, 2008).
113
Marchetti, 133-140.
33
his well-bred American fiancée, further emphasizing the lower status he associates with

Hana Ogi. Hana Ogi, Katsumi and Eileen in this film are not individual women but

symbols of their cultures. Eileen is the strong, independent woman of the United States

finding her own voice, while Katsumi is the ideal wife, bowing and scrubbing her

husband’s back. Hana Ogi, although a strong woman of Japan, transforms into the weak,

ideal companion to the western man, thrusting her independence away as Gruver thrusts

away Eileen.

The taboo associated with Eileen’s own intercultural relationship with kabuki

actor Nakamura is illustrated by casting Ricardo Montalban as Eileen’s Japanese love

interest. Casting Montalban in the role instead of a Japanese man, along with the lack of

physical contact between Eileen and Nakamura, allows the sexual tension between the

two characters to be acceptable to the western public. 114 Also by having the character of

Nakamura as a female impersonator in kabuki, he is further emasculated and therefore no

real threat to either Eileen or western men. The Japanese girl may be a plaything, and an

obedient wife to the white officer in the end, but the well-bred white woman could never

have an intimate relationship even implied with a real Japanese man. Thus Hollywood

cast Montalban. 115

In 1957 Sayonara was nominated for four Golden Globes and seven Academy

Awards, with Miyoshi Umeki (Katsumi) and Red Buttons (Kelly) winning Oscars for the

Best Supporting Actress/Actor categories. Miyoshi Umeki, for her role as Katsumi, was

the first Asian to ever win an Oscar.

114
Ibid, 142.
115
Ibid.
34
 In 2007, fifty years later, the film Babel was nominated for seven Academy

Awards, including a nomination for supporting actress for Rinko Kikuchi in her role as

Chieko, a fifteen-year old deaf-mute in Japan. Babel is not a typical twenty-first century

film that many may think of when discussing the image of Japanese women. For many

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) may be a more obvious choice. Looking at Babel opens a

larger discussion about the image of Japanese women, nudity and what is considered

acceptable in contemporary American society. 116

Babel starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett takes place in Morocco, Tunisia,

Mexico and Tokyo. Several simultaneous story lines happen across the globe and are

interwoven around a single rifle. 117 One section of this film, the story line that takes

place in Tokyo, does not begin until twenty minutes into the film with a scene taking

place during a girl’s indoor volleyball game at a school for the deaf in Tokyo, Japan. The

focus of the Japanese story is Chieko, who is a teenage deaf-mute played by Rinko

Kikuchi (Fig. 12). She argues with her father after the game as he drives her to a trendy

café, J-Pop, populated with young teens. After she is snubbed by a young man due to her

disability, Chieko enters the bathroom, removes her underwear and returns to her friends’

table. Clad only in her school uniform, with a skirt that falls to just below her buttocks,

she faces the boys and spreads her legs, allowing all to see what she calls her “hairy

monster.”

Later when the film flashes back to Tokyo, Chieko is in her dentist’s office. As

he checks her teeth, Chieko attempts to kiss and lick him, even letting him know that she

116
Due to the film’s very recent release, there has yet to be a discussion regarding the portrayal of the
Japanese teen Chieko until now.
117
Babel, DVD, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2006; Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures,
2006).
35
is missing her underwear. Chieko then walks home after the dentist kicks her out of the

office. She returns home to find her father at work and the police waiting to question

him regarding a shooting in Tunisia. Chieko leaves with friends for the evening, again

clearly showing to her girlfriend and the viewer that she is not wearing underwear. After

Chieko is yet again snubbed by a boy for another girl at a club, she returns home, asks the

doorman to call the policeman who wished to speak to her father earlier. After he arrives,

he explains that they want to question her father about the rifle he gave to his guide in

Morocco. Chieko then leaves the room and reenters fully nude, presenting herself to the

officer for sex, which he refuses (Fig. 13). He explains that she is just a young girl and

he cannot think of her in a sexual fashion. He leaves the penthouse apartment, and

Chieko’s father returns home to find his daughter nude and on the balcony overlooking

Tokyo.

Chieko seeks attempts to gain acceptance and power through sex, a power she

feels she lacks due to her disability. Her reaction is similar to the rising Japanese street

culture which Veronica Chambers discusses in Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern

Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation. The street culture of Japanese girls and

young women is a quest for power over their bodies and a reaction against the ever

popular “geisha-girl” image. 118 While nineteenth-century stereotypes of Japanese

women as child-like, docile and submissive still survive into the twenty-first century,

some young women attempt to gain power through sex. Unfortunately, their quest will

remain unsatisfied, as Chieko’s does, because they do not realize that power gained

through sex is an empty and temporary one.

118
Veronica Chambers. Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation.
(New York: Free Press, 2007) 8-10.
36
 Sexual imagery abounds in American ad campaigns and Hollywood films today.

Most of them contain Caucasian women or girls and have been publicly ridiculed and

censored, limited only to director’s cuts. Sharon Stone’s famous “crossed legs” scene in

Basic Instinct (Figs. 14 and 15) shocked and appalled many viewers. The split second

distant camera shot of Stone’s character crossing and uncrossing her legs while under

police interrogation, allowing barely a glimpse of her panty-less vagina, caused many to

scream about banning certain body parts from the silver screen, while others ran to the

movie theater. Thus far there has been a lack of screaming over the longer, closer and

clearer vaginal shots of Chieko. Sharon Stone’s character in Basic Instinct was also an

adult woman; in Babel the twenty-five-year old Rinko Kikuchi is portraying a fifteen-

year old girl.

In December 2003, Abercrombie and Fitch pulled its Christmas catalog and

corresponding ad campaign after public outcry nationwide over the sexual imagery and

the use of teen models, all of whom were over eighteen.119 The images showed

Caucasian men and women nude and some in sexual poses (Fig. 16). The Abercrombie

and Fitch ad included none of the products that were sold in their stores or catalog, and

their use of sex to sell their absent product to teenage customers spurred outrage by

parents nationwide in the United States. Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu has

not been questioned about his use of a teenage girl in Japan using sexual imagery and full

nudity.

While looking at the imagery found in Babel, the question needs to be asked:

would there be outrage over Chieko’s nudity if her name was Claire and the story took

119
SFGate, San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/03/MNGN83EUGH1.DTL (Accessed April 12, 2008), Abercrombie and
Fitch Christmas Field Guide, http://www.othercrap.com/abercrombie.htm (Accessed April 12, 2008).
37
place in Toledo? Would Alejandro González Iñárritu have portrayed a deaf-mute seeking

acceptance through sex if the character was a fifteen-year-old fair skinned blond? By

looking at the reaction to Caucasian nudity in the past it is safe to say that a film that

includes a fair-skinned, blond-haired teenage character in full nudity and sexual situations

would not be nominated for Oscars.

In Sayonara, Hana Ogi transforms herself from a strong, independent and

outspoken Japanese woman to a shadow of her reality, the desired reality of Gruver,

solidifying the western dominance over Japan. She moves from the independence

displayed by Eileen to the quiet, decorated woodblock print image, quiet and passive with

head bowed in all her finery. Fifty years later in Babel, Chieko is a mute, young Japanese

girl; her body is stripped of its decoration and put on display, not just for those she tries

to seduce, but for the male American audience in the theater. Although she may be a

representation of modern Japanese street culture, the character also reflects the

stereotypical innocent and sexual image of Japanese women preferred by the West. She

is the silent girl who can only talk back if you look directly at her. The character of

Chieko again answers the lustful call of the Cult of the Virgin as discussed earlier in

regards to the Butterfly character. Here, the mute teenage virgin is presented as sexually

available, to not only other characters in the film, but also to the audience. The taboo

desire for sexual intimacy with an underage girl is satisfied, at least visually, by the full

presentation of her quiet, sexual body. This is considered acceptable since she is the

“Other.”.

38
 Conclusion

The genre of ukiyo-e, created by and for the townspeople of Edo, Japan, saw its

peak between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. 120 Earlier screen and scroll

paintings were “higher” art forms for the aristocracy, while ukiyo-e focused on the

preoccupation with the lavish fashions and lifestyles of the popular urban culture. 121

Although ukiyo-e was an expression of the illusionary world of the pleasure quarter in

Japan, the images contained within came to represent Japan as a larger cultural fiction

outside its borders.

In their original context, ukiyo-e paintings and prints reveal the many different

ways in which Japanese artists imagined the ideal feminine elegance. The blending of

fantasy and reality elevated these women to a status that was far beyond their stations.

Images of parading courtesans and geisha portrayed the floating world as both a

commercial and aesthetic spectacle. In the West, these images were used to promote the

image of exotic Japan after the opening of its borders in the mid-nineteenth century. As

ukiyo-e images were brought to the West, the western public’s supercilious attitudes

toward Japan exemplified not only their need to oppress that culture but also their

complete misunderstanding of it. The graceful and statuesque female figures on prints,

fans and porcelain exported to Europe and America were seen as dolls in an enchanted

world. Before the first western visitors entered the once secluded nation, the fairy-tale

had already been written. Westerners then traveled to Japan, looking for the embodiments

of the ukiyo-e images found in their hometown bazaars. They sought the young women,

120
Tadashi Kobayashi, Ukiyo-e: An Introduction to Japanese Woodblock Prints (Tokyo and New York:
Kodansha International, 1997), 65.
121
Ibid, 65-67.
39
seemingly portrayed in these art works as children’s toys that could be owned, then

discarded. What they found was not simply a culture vastly different from their own, but

also a fairy-tale world full of “doll-like” people, the spectacle image they perceived in the

prints come to life.

To the western traveler entering Japan, time stood still. The abundance of nature

Loti found as he exited his boat, the “unlooked-for Eden” welcomed a slower pace and

innocence, with lush vegetation and small structures hidden with its depths. 122 He found

living within the Eden of Japan, women who were “little creatures” and bird- like

fairies. 123 These travelers would return home with tales of the exotic island nation, of a

people seen through the tainted lenses of western perspective, glasses that would color

the people of Japan as the Other for decades to come.

As the image of Japanese women expanded from artworks to nineteenth-century

literature to opera and Hollywood films, social and racial stereotype of those in the island

country spread throughout western culture. The women of Japan, seen as fairy-like

creatures, needed to be saved from their culture. As Jean-Pierre Lehmann wrote, “no

aspect of Japan captivated the Western male imagination as much as Japanese

woman.” 124 In order for the West to secure domination over the last great frontier of East

Asia, the fantasy needed to be enforced. The feminine Japanese men were easily pushed

aside, too meek for the strong, masculine white man. By the same token, the white

woman could only claim her man through the death of the child-like Japanese woman. 125

122
Loti, 12.
123
Ibid, 44.
124
Lehmann, 68.
125
Prasso 9.
40
In an attempt to feed the taboo sexual lust for the virgin child, the young women of the

woodblock prints are animated on the silver screen as teen-age girls put on display.

The once mass-produced prints of courtesans and geisha, like small posters of the day’s

supermodels, become commodities for museums and collections the world over. Although the

appreciation for the art form has grown, the same cannot be said for the images contained within.

In the twenty-first century, the geisha is still misunderstood and misrepresented in western

popular culture. The stunning popularity of Memoirs of a Geisha and lack of popularity for

Geisha, A Life, 126 the story which Arthur Golden chose not to tell, illustrates how the western

public prefers the fantasy to reality. Golden interviewed Mineko Iwasaki who, in the 1970s, was

hailed in Japan as one of the most prized geisha in Japanese history. 127 The story of her life, one

of struggle, determination and beauty was not the erotic tale America wanted to read. After

Golden published his bestselling novel, Iwasaki published her autobiography, so that the world

may know the truth of the geisha. The film Memoirs of a Geisha followed the popularity of the

novel with six Academy Award nominations and allowed the western public to enter the

mysterious and exotic world that is purely one of fiction. The graceful women of the woodblock

prints are idealized in a fairy tale by the West, who wished to dominate Japan and its women

both politically and sexually. . The courtesan and geisha transformed, in the western

imagination, from strong, independent women to meek and delicate victims who needed to be

saved by the white knight across the seas.

The spectacle of the Other begins to emerge in images currently housed in museums in

the United States and Great Britain as well as brief articles in American publications and literary

works of the nineteenth century. Illustrated within is a racial stereotype bred from ignorance,

126
Mineko Iwasaki with Rande Brown, Geisha, A Life (New York: Atria Books 2002).
127
Ibid 1.
41
misinterpretation and the lust for power of one society over another. The fairy-tale “Lilliputian

people” 128 of Japan, beginning with the western interpretation of ukiyo-e works, live on today in

Hollywood fiction, further ingrain the stereotype in the minds of movie goers throughout

America and Europe.

Today, Japan is a major economic power with Tokyo as the largest metropolitan area in

the world, 129 it is still seen in America as the meek, docile and sexualized Other. On the surface,

films such as Sayonara ask the viewer to consider interracial relationships, but in fact, it states

that such relationships can only take place as long as Hana Ogi converts to Gruver’s ideal. The

Butterfly character does not just represent Japanese women as the Other, but also the country of

Japan. Both must be sacrificed to the will of the West, the dominant factor whom neither woman

nor country can defeat. Chieko in the film Babel clearly presents the American public with the

mute, sexual Other, earning Oscar nominations. Chieko is a modern Butterfly, a young innocent

but sexual girl, the modern image of the ukiyo-e print, who needs to be saved from herself.

Many Japanese women portrayed for western entertainment, from Cho-Cho-San to Chieko, are

quiet passive victims, images of the “geisha-girl” 130 put on display as one would hang a print.

The spectacle of Yoshiwara, captured within the ukiyo-e prints, is transformed into a new

spectacle in the West through literature, opera and that further embed the notion of Japan as the

Other, and thus inferior, to the western public. The mystique of the East captures the western

imagination, through the fantasy of the erotic. 131 Because of this mystique, the long instilled

notions and stereotypes associated with Japanese people and culture allow the taboos set for the

128
Loti, 133.
129
CIA: The World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/ja.html#Econ. (Accessed May 2, 2008).
130
Prasso 2-9 and Marchetti, 80-175.
131
Ibid.
42
Caucasian race to not apply to the “yellow” race across the sea. 132 The Asian mystique,

conceived through western perceptions, transformed ukiyo-e from the spectacle of the illusionary

world of Yoshiwara to a misrepresentation of Japanese women overseas. The quiet women from

the paintings and prints became, through Hollywood’s interpretation, a deaf-mute teenage girl.

Chrysanthéme gave birth to Butterfly, a character who still lives in the American subconscious to

represent the women of Japan. Hana-Ogi became the 1950s version of Madame Butterfly,

sacrificing her independace and identity, to be “saved” by Gruver. In 2007 Chieko attempts to

sacrifice her body to be saved from her silent life. Literature and film since the late nineteenth

century has “alluded to the decadent and sensual Oriental, who will indulge as no western

woman can.” 133 Her sensuality is also a warning for western women. She must be obedient,

sacrifice herself, and scrub her mans back; only then will Butterfly depart.

Images of beauty, relaxation and play of ukiyo-e have earned their place in museums and

collections throughout the world. Images that were known to the people of Edo as a shadow of

reality are images that the West still desires to be a reality. When the fairy tale land could not

live up to the preset beliefs of the West, they developed their own fairy tale, with the happy

ending of the “white knight” riding off into the sunset after saving another Japanese girl from her

fate. While the Japanese created images which were idealized popular icons and fashions of the

time, the West failed to look past the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave, to the reality of the

fantasy behind the images, creating a spectacle from which there is no easy escape.

132
Ibid.
133
Ibid, 4.
43
Figure 1.
Omon of Shinyoshiwara.
The Great Gate was the entrance to the Yoshiwara
pleaure quarter.
1903.
©Old Tokyo.com

44
Figure 2.
Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820).
Two Girls Standing, One Holding an Open Book, 1770s.
Hanging scroll; color on silk.
95.0cm x 36.7cm.
© Smithsonian Institution.

44
Figure 3.
Kita Shigemasa (1739-1820).
Two Girls Standing, One Holding an Open Book, 1770s.
Woodblock print.

45
Figure 4.
Hosoda Eishi (1756-1829).
Oiran and fireflies early 19th century.
Hanging scroll, color and gold on silk.
84.4cm x 31.3cm
© Smithsonian Institution

46
Figure 5.
Suzuki Harunobu (1724-1770).
Lovers parting sorrowfully, mid-eighteenth century.
Woodblock print.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.

47
Figure 6.
Kashosai Shunsen (1762-1830).
Oiran Parading, early nineteenth century.
Woodblock Print.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.

48
Figure 7.
Ueno Hikoma.
Pierre Loti (right), Pierre Le Cor (Yves) and
O-Kane-San (1886).
Photograph.

49
Figure 8.
Film still from Madame Butterfly (2002).

In this scene, Cho-Cho-San arrives at Pinkerton’s

Nagasaki house for the wedding with her family and
attendees.

50
Figure 9.
Cosmopolitan (1900).
“A Japanese Actress.”
Courtesy of Dr. Greg Waller.

51
 Figure 10.
Film still from Sayonara (1957)

Hana-Ogi is dressed in men’s

attire the first time that Gruver
sees her. Her clothing identifies
her as the strong leader of the
dance company.

Figure 11.
Film still from Sayonara (1957).

Here Hana-Ogi has transformed herself from the

independent women in drag to the decorated image of
Japan, complete with down-cast eyes.

53
 Figure 12.
Film still from Babel (2006).

Figure 13.
Film still from Babel (2006).

In this scene, Chieko enters the living room, fully nude to present
herself to the police detective.

54
 Figure 14.
Film still from Basic Instinct (1992).

This scene is just moments before the

next image.

Figure 15.
Film still from Basic Instinct (1992).

Sharon Stone’s famous “crossed legs” caused both uproar

and excitement.

55
Figure 16.
Abercrombie and Fitch Christmas Field Guide (2003).
“Bathing.”

Just two weeks after the release of their Christmas catalog,

Abercrombie and Fitch was forced to pull it due to uproar from
several parent groups.

56
 Bibliography

Primary Sources

Abercrombie and Fitch. Christmas Field Guide.

http://www.othercrap.com/abercrombie.htm.

A Time to Kill, DVD, directed by Joel Shumacher. 1996; Hollywood, CA: Warner Bros.
Pictures, 1997.

Babel, DVD, Directed by Alejandro González Iñárrito. 2006; Hollywood:

Paramount Pictures, 2006.

Barbarian and the Geisha, DVD, Directed by John Huston. 1958; Hollywood: Twentieth
Century-Fox Film Corporation, 2007.

Basic Instinct, DVD, Directed by Paul Verhoeven. 1992; Hollywood: Artisan

Entertainment, 1997.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Sepctacle. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith.

New York: Zone Books, 1995.

Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

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