By Mariah Wahl

The circus captures a fundamental paradox of racism against Asians in the United States: otherness is only as valuable as it is consumable. East Asian performers were lauded as talented acrobats, aerialists, and exotic spectacles, and simultaneously denied basic rights and opportunities of citizenship by nature of that exoticism. Though this exhibit is focused on Japanese and Chinese performers in the circus, many other groups were exhibited and performed as part of American audience’s Orientalism: Filipino performers, Indian and other Southeast Asian performers, and others from Western Asian and Northern Africa. The lens of otherness both created opportunities for both Japanese and Chinese performers in the show, and served as an excuse to exclude and persecute them.

The obsession with both Chinese and Japanese culture (Japonisme and Chinoiserie) as material commodification led to the dehumanization of East Asian people, while simultaneously creating demand for them as performers. The appropriative study and commodification of Asian culture and aesthetic is known as Orientalism. Though this exhibit is focused on Japanese and Chinese performers in the circus, many other groups were exhibited and performed as part of American audience’s Orientalism: Filipino performers, Indian and other Southeast Asian performers, and others from Western Asian and Northern Africa.

Chinese  immigrants were the first ethnic group to be explicitly banned from the United States, in response to an outcry about the Chinese laborers who came to the United States in order to build the transcontinental railroad system. The 1882 Chinese exclusion act also created suspicion and heightened racism around other Asian immigrant laborers, due to racist American interpretations of Asian laborers as a foreign monolith. Though the act banned Chinese laborers, performers with the opera and acrobatic troupes were generally excepted by legislation, though their status was hotly contested in the court system from 1883 to 1922. Japanese immigration was explicitly banned in 1924, when Congress passed the Johnson-Reed act. This left many circus performers, some of whom had only known a home in the United States, suddenly unwelcomed by a country that they entertained on stage every night.

At the turn of the century, anti-Chinese hysteria was at its peak in the United States. The obsession with Chinoiserie had shifted into a virulent, and often violent, anti-Chinese sentiment. In 1885, this violent sentiment came to a head in the Rock Springs Massacre on September 2nd. In Sweetwater County, Wyoming, white miners attacked Chinese immigrants who they perceived as stealing their jobs. Twenty-eight Chinese miners were murdered, and at least fifteen others were injured. The massacre set off a wave of anti-Chinese violence, especially in the Puget Sound area of Washington territory.

The entertainment industry, specifically the circus and vaudeville show, was one place where Asian performers were still relatively welcome in the United States. Impresarios, theater managers, and other professionals in entertainment pressured the Bureau of Immigration to expand the temporary laborer status of Chinese and Japanese performers, in response to overwhelming public demand for shows featuring these “exotic” acts. In other words, immigrants who were willing to trade their humanity for “spectacle,” could still travel into the country and earn a significant living, though they were hardly welcome with open arms. Albert S. Uyeno was one such performer, who first came to the US as a baby traveling with an acrobat troupe from Japan. Though he lived and worked his entire life in the United States, even assisting the US Navy during their occupation of Japan in the 1950s, he was not eligible for citizenship. Other Japanese performers, like Prince Youturkey and King Sarbro, even married American citizens and had American children, but were denied any opportunity to pursue citizenship.

The lives of Japanese and Chinese performers with the circus reflected the truth of the lives of many Asian laborers in the country at that time: opportunity, in limited and controlled quantities. In the circus, on the high-wire or in the big tent, Asian performers were loved and celebrated. Outside of the circus, they endured vicious racism fueled by US foreign policy well into the 20th century.