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76 2 “America’s Japan,” the Performing Arts, and Japan Society, New York Decisions about how cultures are presented reflect deeper judgments of power and authority and can, indeed, resolve themselves into claims about what a nation is or ought to be as well as how citizens should relate to one another.1 “In this modern era, where boundaries—national, cultural and conceptual —are constantly bent and traversed, Japanese culture is no longer confined to the geographical borders of Japan,” Japan Society told readers of its brochure for Japan Transatlantic: Tokio-Berlin, its fall 2009 performing arts season. The three “Japan-themed performances . . . were developed in Berlin by international artists in collaboration with Japanese artists based outside of Japan.”2 These were Heavenly BENTO, by post theater, identified on its website as an “interdisciplinary performing arts unit”3 based in New York, Berlin, and Tokyo, founded by media artist Hiroko Tanahashi and director Max Schumacher; Ame to Ame, by inkBoat, a dance project of Shinichi Iova-Koga based in San Francisco and Berlin, and cokaseki, the Berlinbased butoh artists Yuko Kaseki and Marc Ates; and there is no end to more, by Berlin-based choreographer Jeremy Wade in collaboration with, among others, New York-based manga artist Hiroki Otsuka and Berlin-based video artist Veith Michel. This chapter looks at Japan Society, New York, in its role as the leading producer and presenter in the United States of Japan-related performing arts. As illustrated by Japan Transatlantic: Tokio-Berlin, twenty-first-century arts programming at Japan Society directly engages with complex issues of identity—an approach that reflects the administrative voices now in place. In 2003 Yoko Shioya became the society’s first director of the performing arts who was born and educated in Japan.4 An expert on arts management and funding who regularly publishes articles on those topics in Japanese newspapers and magazines, Shioya started working at Japan Soci- “America’s Japan,” the Performing Arts, and Japan Society, New York 77 ety in 1997. Her title since 2006 has been artistic director, with oversight responsibility for both the performing arts and film programs. For Shioya, grappling with the ambivalent nature of “performing arts from Japan” is central to her project as director. In his analysis of museums, Ivan Karp has shown that exhibitions—a category that can arguably include performing arts presentations at Japan Society, where they function as a kind of ethnographic display—“are privileged arenas for presenting images of self and ‘other.’”5 Shioya is both self and other within the context of an entity that, since the 1950s when a performing arts department was inaugurated, has sought to negotiate the terrain of “us” and “them” through theater, music, and dance. Shioya is the seventh director of the performing arts in an institution with a long history of structuring and conveying knowledge about Japan. In March 1952 newly elected president John D. Rockefeller III and chairman of the board John Foster Dulles took on the task of reconfiguring the image of Japan in the American popular imagination. Rockefeller, who made the performing arts one of Japan Society’s core enterprises, set forth his agenda: “The society’s long-range objective is to help bring the people of the United States and of Japan closer together in their appreciation and understanding of each other and each other’s way of life. It is our hope that a vigorous Japan Society can be of real benefit by functioning as a private, non-political organization interested in serving as a medium through which both our peoples can learn from the experiences and the accomplishments of the other.”6 As an influential adviser to cold-war-era American policy makers, Rockefeller did much to ensure that the development of cultural relations with Japan would be a national priority. With Japan Society becoming “the outstanding example of a successful bilateral organization in the United States,”7 no single cultural entity has occupied a more powerful position in American reception of theater, dance, and music from Japan. Its highly developed network of government, corporate, and private financial sponsors in the United States and Japan allowed it to emerge quickly as a prominent presenter within the New York performing arts scene and a producer of events at touring locations around the country. Identifying itself as “a world-class, multidisciplinary hub for global leaders, artists, scholars, educators, and English and Japanese-speaking audiences,”8 the society also hosts a steady stream of lectures, workshops...

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