The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado

1. My Objects All Sublime: Racial Performance and Commodity Culture

· 3 ·· Chapter 1 · My Objects All Sublime: Racial Performance and Commodity Culture Columbus discovered a new world. Mr. W. S. Gilbert has created one. He has evolved from his inner consciousness, as the German did the camel, a Japan of his own, and has placed a territorial fragment thereof upon the stage of the Savoy Theatre, labeling it The Mikado; or, the Town of Titipu. “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 cheeks. Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthème In 1885, when The Mikado first appeared on the stage, it gave new life to an already existing European and American interest in things Japanese. Even during Japan’s period of isolation, large quantities of Japanese ceramics were shipped to Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and enjoyed great popularity among aristocrats.1 But a full-fledged Japan craze, prompting a considerable market for Japanese arts and crafts such as prints, pottery, bronzes, china, fans, silks, swords, and kimonos, was set into full motion by Japan’s opening to the West in 1853 and subsequent exhibitions of Japanese arts in Paris, London, and Philadelphia. By the time of The Mikado, this phenomenon was no longer the province of artists, connoisseurs, and wealthy patrons. The Mikado fueled the japonaiserie that infected both Europe and the United States. Those involved in the first production of March 14, 1885, whether as producers or consumers, recognized and acknowledged the extent to 4 MY OBJECTS ALL SUBLIME which The Mikado was fixated on the spectacular display of objects. Savoy music director François Cellier commented that the inspiration for the opera did not come from direct observation of Japanese people. Cellier writes: It must not be supposed that Gilbert discovered the originals of any of his dramatis personae in the chronicles of the times of Jimmu Tenno, first Emperor of Japan, or his descendants. “Pooh Bah”—that worthy who comprehended within his own person a complete cabinet of ministers, together with other important offices—Pooh Bah, it will be remembered, traced his ancestry back to a “protoplasmal primordial atomic globule”; consequently, no Japanese gentleman of rank, however sensitive, could imagine himself or his progenitors to have been made the subject of the English author’s satire. Likewise neither Koko, the Lord High Executioner, nor Nanki-Poo disguised as a second trombone, could possibly be identified with persons associated with Old Japan. Figuratively, all these notabilities may have been portrayed on lacquer-trays, screens, plates, or vases, but none of them had ever lived in the flesh before they came to life at the Savoy Theatre.2 The likeness of Mikado characters to images found on Japanese imports resonates with Gilbert’s own accounts of being inspired by a Japanese sword: In May 1884, it became necessary to decide upon a subject for the next Savoy opera. A Japanese executioner’s sword hanging on the wall of my library—the very sword carried by Mr. Grossmith [Ko-Ko] at his entrance in the first act—suggested the broad idea upon which the libretto is based. A Japanese piece would afford opportunities for picturesque scenery and costumes, and moreover, nothing of the kind had ever been attempted in England.3 Gilbert is inspired more generally by the opportunities for depicting a spectacular fantasy world through “picturesque scenery and costumes” but suggests a particular fixation with the sword. In another account of the genesis of the opera, it is again the sword (which he presumably hefts at the interview) that becomes the focus of his inspiration: MY OBJECTS ALL SUBLIME 5 It is very difficult to tell how you begin. I cannot give you a good reason for our forthcoming piece being laid in Japan. It has seemed to us that to lay the scene in Japan afforded scope for picturesque treatment, scenery, and costume, and I think that the idea of a chief magistrate, who is king, judge and actual executioner in one, and yet would not hurt a worm, may perhaps please the public. This is the sword of a Japanese executioner! You will observe that it is a double-handed...