Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books, 1875-1925

Tracing the Origins of Yellowface




Japonisme and Japonaiserie fueled the creation of two popular operas, Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado in 1885 and Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in 1904. Both instill fantasized, imagined racial perceptions of the Japanese people and culture. These operas were performed in yellowface and still continue in present day due to the operas' continued popularity.  The racial interpretation manifested in the performance imparts imaginary ideas of what Japanese meant in everyday life and in the unconscious and conscious minds of the audience. The human-ness and reality of the Japanese person are eliminated in these creations.59  
 

The Mikado - Playing Japanese and Yellowface

In 1885, Gilbert & Sullivan created an imaginary, fictional Japan for their comic opera the Mikado with white actors. Setting the opera in a faraway place from Britain, the exotic Japan, allowed Gilbert and Sullivan to satirize British politics and institutions. The costumes, settings and decorations were completely Japanese. The Mikado takes place in a make believe Japan with stereotypical attitudes, and comical "Japanese" names like "Nanki-Poo" and "Pooh-Bah," Due to its overwhelming popularity, at least 150 companies had productions of the opera playing throughout America and Europe by the end of 1885.60

 The Mikado is an example of Japonaiserie, a term that signals, unlike Japonisme, a lack of authenticity. Both Japonaiserie and Japonisme represent a larger combination of orientalism into Western decorative arts and thought. The Mikado transferred the desire for Japanese goods onto the stage with imaginary characters whose Japanese personification was identified with familiar decorative objects such as swords, fans, screens. It disseminated the notion of racial impersonation that relied on the use of objects, songs, and gestures of the opera.61

In “Our Captious Critic: Gilbert and Sullivan’s New Opera,” Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, March 28, 1885:

Heavens! why, I know her already! Long before setting foot in Japan, I had met her, on every fan, on every teacup with her silly air, her puffy little face, her tiny eyes, mere gimlet-holes above those expanses of impossible pink and white - Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthème62


To many, the static human figures depicted on lacquer trays, screens, plates, or vases, became actionable human form in the opera.

In the opening lyrics of The Mikado, the characters announce that they are indeed the same as the figures on decorative arts :

If you want to know who we are,

We are gentlemen of Japan;

On many a vase and jar—

On many a screen and fan,

We figure in lively paint:

Our attitude’s queer and quaint—

You’re wrong if you think it ain’t, oh!63

As Toshio Yokoyama suggests, the 1880s marks a shift in attitudes toward Japan “from about 1880, the image of an unreal Japan became firmly established and began to exert a broader influence.” Second, the late 19th century shift into mass consumer culture increasingly makes commodity fetishism a part of everyday life.”64

Yellowface is a transparent disguise in which racial impersonation is performed simply by picking up the right objects. Toys, dolls, Kimonos, swords, and fans became common elements of masquerades for private photography sessions and parties. Yuko Matsukawa has noted, “yellowface practices were spread by advertising as well as by performances of the opera.” Many of these images were copied directly from cabinet photographs of the U.S. Mikado production with no racial representation. Japan had become an invention of one’s creation, no real Japanese representations or bodies, just things. This is a defining property of commodity fetishism. The white performers of yellowface step in as possessors of the objects and lead the fantasy the things represent, an unabashedly racial performance.64 

The success of Gilbert and Sullivan’s make-believe world in their comical Mikado opera initiated yellow facing as an acceptable form for Europeans and Americans to express themselves in society. "The popularity of Japonaiserie crossed over to masquerading and playing Japanese in every day life. Americans and Europeans on trend with Japanese-ness, dressed up in kimonos to liven up their leisure lives. Japanese femininity enhanced white people’s personal lives publicly as the aesthetic movement popularized in America. The masquerades provided fantasy to enhance their intimate and leisure lives while staying securely white. Many white women who bought fancy kimonos or dressed for Japanese-themed tea parties, saw themselves to be worldly and cultured in their society."65

The Mikado generated many parodies. Soon after the American production opened, Thatcher, Primrose, and West Minstrels began a run of The Mick-ah-do on November 2, 1885 and other minstrel shows followed to profit from the opera’s popularity. The Black Mikado later performed that year into 1886.



The perceptions and references to The Mikado in daily life conveyed the widespread popular characterization and belief on living Japanese persons. In this route book, to describe an incident where a Japanese performer turned ill, the performer is described as Nanki Poo, a character from The Mikado, even though there was no performance of the opera listed in the circus’ season.

Madama Butterfly - Italian Opera in Yellowface

Giacomo Puccini produced the opera Madama Butterfly at the height of Japonaserie popularity in 1904. There were three versions of the narrative from 1885-1900 before the creation of Puccini’s opera, all overwhelmingly popular and successful. First was Madame Chrysanthemum in 1885 by French writer Pierre Loti; Madame Butterfly in 1898 by American lawyer and writer John Luther Long; and Madame Butterfly in 1900, a play production based on Long’s story. In all variations, the story parallels the thoughts of the period, Western imperialism and the dominant power over the East, Japan specifically. They reinforced the idea of the Asian person as an outsider, the  consumption and disposal of the Asian female person; all acceptable and strengthened by Western government policies and laws. The basic premise in the stories is  the doomed relationship of a Western man and a Japanese woman. These stories were produced at a period of growth for the US and Western imperial dominance and expansion into the exotic Pacific, likely assisting in garnering praise and success for them. Puccini’s opera still continues to be popular and performed today.



Puccini’s Madama Butterfly tells the tragic story of a Japanese bride, Chou-Chou-San who is married and abandoned by her American husband, Lieutenant Pinkerton in 19th century Japan. In the end, the bride commits suicide. The imaginary figure of Cho-Cho-San reflects the feminization of Asian nations ready for conquest and Pinkerton represents masculine dominance of the US military. In the story, Pinkerton is stationed at the same city Nagasaki that US Commodore Matthew Perry threatened to attack if Japan did not open their ports in 1853. Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson argues the opera also communicates exclusion-era ideas about Asian racial difference. The story begins with the exclusion of Cho-Cho-San’s family from Pinkerton’s home. Chambers-Letson suggests this scene reflects the legislative debates about Asian exclusion occurring in both federal and state courtrooms at the turn of the century. It is an example of a place where law and performance blend together to promote the racialization of Asian immigrants as outside the law and belonging outside the nation. Aihwa Ong suggests the opera continues to contribute greatly to the collective thought about Asian and Asian American racial differences. Madama Butterfly has played a significant role in the shaping of cultural stereotypes of Asian races in US law and Asian feminininess.67





Perhaps the success of The Mikado and the four Madame Butterflys in their portrayals of the Japanese predicted an incoming beliitling and disparageing attitudes toward Japanese persons in the country. forteeeling of what was to come and treatment of Japanese persons in the country.

Competition for jobs and a depression in the 1870s all led to a racist backlash against the Chinese. Eventually Chinese immigration was ended with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Widespread anti-Chinese attitudes and violence led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, an immigration act that excluded a group of people explicitly on the basis of race or ethnicity. The Chinese American population dropped soon after, and by the 1890s America’s widespread anti-Chinese sentiment had paused.68

During the 1880-1890s, the Japanese personified feminine civility and artistic refinement. By 1900, the representations would switch as the Chinese became civilized, educated men who valued education and the Japanese became aggressive fighting entities. Similarly to the Chinese, the Japnese sentiments changed as their population grew, fear of competition for jobs and agricultural land. Also contributing was the fear of Japan’s rise as an international military power, as they defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The United States government now viewed Japan as a threat and aggressive imperial Asiatic nation over trade and territorial agreements.69

In a 1912 film, Girl at Gate a white character states that the Japanese are “bright alright but they don’t remain servants!” and “There’s only one thing worse than a Jap!...another Jap.”70

The same publications that had not so long ago spoken positively about the Japanese now did the exact opposite. Japanese men now “invaded” U.S. farmland with no moral integrity, “poor whites” would be robbed of financial resources to build families. Anxiety was constructed around the  “invading horde of brown men” invading on California’s “rapidly vanishing fertile soil.” The Japanese had “cunningly” tricked Americans with their “politeness”. The Gentlemen’s Agreement wrongly allowed them to bring “their women” into California for “propagation.” An article on the Alien Land Law (forbidding "all aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning land). This law targeted Japanese who were becoming successful farmers. This law later expanded to include a prohibition on leasing land as well, and twelve other states created similar laws. The shift now was to criminalize Japanese men in the media.71

By the time World War II broke out, the Japanese faced increasing negative treatment, yet a shift had occurred, the Chinese were treated more positively. To suit the US government’s agenda to keep China as an ally in the war, President Roosevelt’s administration quickly worked to mend and improve the perceptions of Chinese Americans. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed on December 17, 1943.This was really a gesture as many aspects of the exclusion law were still in place. Only 105 Chinese were allowed to enter the United States a year, but the Chinese already in America were now allowed to become naturalized citizens if they met requirements.72

SImultaneously, the treatment of the Japanese increasingly worsened and created a racial divide with the Chinese. After the Pearl Harbor bombing, President Roosevelt enacted an Executive Order which placed any person of Japanese descent on the West Coast into internment camps. 

This page has paths:

This page has tags:

This page references: