Johns Hopkins University Press
  • Sino-Japanese Cultural Diplomacy in the 1950s: The Making and Reception of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl

In 1955, Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet staged the first ballet adaptation of the Chinese land reform drama The White-Haired Girl in Tokyo, laying the foundation for Chinese revolutionary ballet. This is the first study in English to explore the Matsuyama Ballet production in detail. Employing Chinese-language sources from the production’s 1958 tour to China, this article explores the historical making, performance, and reception of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl and situates it in the context of Sino-Japanese relations during the 1950s. The article argues that the production resulted from a longer history of interactions between Japan, China, and the Soviet Union and that its interpretation of The White-Haired Girl story served as a bridge between the 1950 Chinese feature film and the 1971 Chinese ballet film. It also argues that Chinese responses to the production demonstrate significant differences between Japanese and Chinese discourses about Sino-Japanese friendship in the 1950s.

Keywords

China, Japan, people’s diplomacy, revolutionary ballet, socialist internationalism

Introduction

During the early decades of the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and those who wanted to engage with it around the world found themselves in a difficult predicament. While the United States placed intense pressure on foreign governments not to grant diplomatic recognition to the PRC for political reasons, there were nevertheless often significant contingents within countries aligned with the United States who desired contact despite their government’s official stance. In this context, PRC leaders and their interlocutors abroad devised creative methods to circumvent US-imposed isolation and interact with one another across Cold War divides. Cultural diplomacy—or the state-supported use of arts, culture, and educational activities to build ties internationally—became one mechanism within a broader PRC strategy of ostensibly “unofficial” relations known as “people’s diplomacy” (人民外交 renmin waijiao), what one early study described as “going to ‘the people’ [End Page 130] over the heads of their governments.”1 United States Information Service (USIS) reports from Hong Kong to Washington in the mid-1950s recounted with alarm the rapid growth and apparent success of these cultural ventures, through which China “developed contacts with 63 countries in 1955 and 75 countries in 1956. Among these, 63 are non-communist countries.”2 In addition to fostering relations with foreign countries, such campaigns also introduced new opportunities for cultural exchange beyond traditional allies. These opportunities were an important factor shaping Chinese domestic culture during the Cold War.

In this study, I explore China’s Cold War cultural diplomacy beyond the socialist bloc by focusing on interactions between China and Japan in the 1950s. Although postwar Japan did not normalize relations with the PRC until 1972, extensive communication took place between the two countries. In 1963, Herbert Passin asserted that, during the 1950s, with the exception of “resident Russian technicians,” “more visitors [came to China] from Japan than from any other single country, including the Soviet Union.”3 Regarding “people’s diplomacy,” Passin further argued that “in Japan, this programme has been spectacularly successful.”4 The complex history of Sino-Japanese relations in the 1950s has been the subject of extensive scholarship over the past several decades. This work has uncovered the critical contributions of key individuals and organizations, as well as the driving role of social issues in postwar Japan—such as war memory, repatriation, trade, and antiwar activism—in motivating diverse Japanese engagements with the PRC.5 The current study seeks to expand upon this existing work, which has focused largely on high-level communiqués, trade agreements, Red Cross delegations, friendship associations, academic exchanges, and memorials of war atrocities, to turn to artistic collaboration as another space in which Sino-Japanese relations were negotiated and articulated. I build on recent work in modern Chinese cultural studies that highlights the central role of the performing arts in PRC cultural diplomacy in Asia in the 1950s in order to bring a new perspective to Sino-Japanese engagements in this same period.6 [End Page 131]

The central case examined in this study is the most well-known Sino-Japanese performing arts collaboration of the Cold War era—the Matsuyama Ballet’s adaptation of the Chinese revolutionary land reform opera The White-Haired Girl. This production, which was the first ballet adaptation of this canonical story, premiered as a two-act ballet at the Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo on February 12, 1955. It starred Japanese ballerina Matsuyama Mikiko (松山樹子 1923–2021), who also served as head choreographer, and it was directed by Hijikata Yoshi (土方与志 1898–1959), a leading Japanese left-wing theater director.7 Three years later, in March and April of 1958, the Matsuyama Ballet toured an expanded three-act version of the ballet in China, performing in Beijing, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Shanghai, with great fanfare and extensive documentation in the Chinese media.8 I examine a range of Chinese-language primary source documents from the period leading up to and during this tour—including an original 1958 performance program and media accounts that include reviews, photographs, and sketches published in China during the 1950s—as well as some retrospective accounts and secondary sources. Through these materials, I reconstruct the ballet’s production history, its reinterpretation of the original work through ballet movement, and its reception in China, each of which I further situate within Sino-Japanese relations during the 1950s.

Through my research and analysis, I arrive at several conclusions. First, we should reverse the way we think about the relationship between cultural diplomacy and other forms of diplomacy in this period. Second, the transnational connections that manifested in the 1950s were embedded in longer histories of circulation. Third, the Matsuyama Ballet’s reinterpretation of The White-Haired Girl contributed to the development of Chinese ballet. Fourth, Chinese responses to The White-Haired Girl show that Chinese and Japanese discourses about the two countries’ relationship differed from one another, specifically on the issue of war memory. As a whole, the 1958 tour of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl gave artistic embodiment to the conceit at the heart of PRC “people’s diplomacy”—that the Japanese “people,” unlike their government, wanted closer relations with China and would achieve them one day.

The Making of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl

Cultural diplomacy is often thought of as a process that facilitates other modes of diplomatic activity.9 In his discussion of Sino-Japanese relations in the 1960s–1970s, [End Page 132] for example, Casper Wits argued that cultural delegations of go players and orchid experts served as “a convenient cover” to allow individuals from China to travel to Japan to negotiate other issues “somewhat under the radar.”10 Wits cited the 1972 Shanghai Ballet Troupe visit to Japan as “probably the most important case,” in which Chinese members were strategically added to the delegation “in order to discuss a possible Sino-Japanese diplomatic normalization.”11

In contrast to this model, in which cultural diplomacy facilitates other modes of political and economic engagement, the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl was a product of prior political and economic contact. As recounted in Chinese media reports published in 1952–1953, it was by way of meetings of a Sino-Japanese trade negotiation, held in Beijing in 1952, that the 1950 Chinese feature film The White-Haired Girl, which inspired the Matsuyama Ballet production, first made its way to Japan. Kurt Radtke described the meetings as “the first non-official trade agreement between a PRC and a Japanese delegation” and “one of the earliest attempts by the PRC to widen its relations with Japan.”12 It was there that Japanese politician Hoashi Kei (帆足計 1905–1989) acquired a copy of the film and, with great difficulty and at great expense, brought it back to Japan.13 Although the film was not released publicly in Japan due to government suppression, by December of 1952 it reportedly had been shown informally 277 times and had been seen by 128,993 people across Japan.14 According to a published 1995 interview with Shimizu Masao (清水將夫/清水正夫 1908–1975; also known as 松籟 Song Lai/Shōrai), who was Matsuyama’s husband and the troupe’s director, Shimizu and Matsuyama gained the inspiration for their ballet when they attended one of these “secret” showings on New Year’s Day in 1953.15

Just as access to the film would not have been possible without the 1952 trade meeting, the artistic networks that made the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl likewise depended upon a longer history of exchange. In other words, the making of this ballet, while reflective of Sino-Japanese cultural diplomacy in the 1950s, was also an outgrowth of transnational collaborations that existed both before and beyond this project. This is evident in the artistic biographies of key members of the creative team.

Matsuyama Mikiko, the lead dancer and choreographer, began her dance education in 1936 among the first group of students at the Nippon gekijō (日本劇場 Japan Theater) ballet group, where she studied under two Soviet émigré dancers, Eliana Pavlova (1899 or 1897–1941; also known as Kirishima Eriko) and Olga Sapphire (1907–1981; also known as Shimizu Midori).16 In 1940, after Matsuyama left Nippon gekijō, she graduated [End Page 133] from the Eastern Conservatory of Music with an undergraduate degree in piano. Shortly thereafter, she was recruited back to ballet by Azuma Yūsaku (東勇作 1910–1971), a Japanese student of Eliana Pavlova and dance partner of Olga Sapphire who founded his own ballet company in 1941.17 During this time, Matsuyama starred in many classical ballet works and appeared at leading dance venues such as the Imperial Theater.18 After the war, in 1946, Matsuyama entered the Tokyo Ballet Ensemble. In 1948, after this ensemble disbanded, she established the Matsuyama Ballet.19

The founding of the Matsuyama Ballet occurred during a brief window of postwar political openness in Japan before what Ruriko Kumano documented as the Occupation-era “Red Purge” was launched in 1949.20 Despite suppression, Matsuyama pursued a leftist path, touring factory schools, adapting contemporary plays, and employing the Stanislavsky acting method. The company performed all across Japan, teaching workshops and giving performances with low ticket prices in remote locations.21 In addition to performing classical ballets, Matsuyama also created new ballets on Asian themes: in 1953, White Fox Springs, adapted from a play by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō; in 1954, Dream Palace, set in the Asuka period (538–710) in historical Japan; and, in 1955, The White-Haired Girl.22 According to Inata Naomi, the company pioneered “ethnic ballet” in Japan, following Stalin’s approach of “nationalist form, socialist content” and reflecting exchange between Japanese and Soviet ballet in the 1950s.23

In the summer of 1955, on her way back from the Helsinki World Peace Congress, Matsuyama visited the Soviet Union and China. In the Soviet Union, she took classes with the world-famous Soviet ballerina Galina Ulanova and observed Soviet ballet productions. 24 Next, Matsuyama visited China, where she attended the 1955 National Day celebrations, met with Chinese leaders and theater artists, and studied works of Chinese dance. Before Matsuyama’s arrival in July, Chinese media had already reported on the February premiere of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl in Tokyo earlier that year (Figure 1). A 1955 article in Theater Gazette recounted, “During the work of preparing this dance drama, the China Theater Artists Association gifted [the Matsuyama Ballet] The White-Haired Girl opera materials.25 Ouyang Yuqian, vice chair of the association and [End Page 134] president of the Central Theater Academy, also sent a telegram congratulating them. . . . The association’s concern and assistance gave them enormous encouragement.”26 According to Matsuyama, her 1955 visit to China took place at the invitation of Guo Moruo, whom she met in Helsinki.27 Matsuyama attended at least two large banquets hosted by Premier Zhou Enlai. In the first, held on July 25, 1955, Zhou was photographed with Matsuyama and two Chinese actresses, Wang Kun (王昆 1943–2014) and Tian Hua (田华 b. 1928), who had starred in earlier versions of The White-Haired Girl.28 After returning to Tokyo, Matsuyama performed The White-Haired Girl more than 40 times throughout Japan, under the direction of education bureaus, newspaper houses, art societies, and workers’ music societies.29 The show faced restrictions because of its association with the PRC.30 The next year, Matsuyama participated in welcome events for the PRC’s Beijing opera delegation to Japan.31

In late 1956, Matsuyama sent two of her protégés—Ishida Taneo (石田種生) and Kodaira Tsuyako (小平艶子), to visit China and the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, Ishida and Kodaira spent time at the Moscow Grand Theater and the Leningrad Theater, where they studied ballet training and choreography. Upon returning to Japan in 1957, Ishida published Borushoi gekijo (ボルショイ劇場), a Japanese translation of Yuri Slonimsky’s The Bolshoi Ballet. In 1956 or 1957, the Moscow Grand Theater ballet ensemble performed in Japan. With this ensemble’s assistance and building on the knowledge gathered during their visits to the Soviet Union, the Matsuyama Ballet staged Japan’s first complete production of Fountain of Bakhchisarai, an important work of Soviet drambalet, in 1957.32 Many of the dancers who performed in The White-Haired Girl also performed in this production.33

Like Matsuyama and her dancers, Hijikata Yoshi (土方与志 1898–1959), who directed both The White-Haired Girl and the Fountain of Bakhchisarai, also had a long history of connections with the Soviet Union and the Japanese left. Hijikata was a Japanese Communist Party member and long-time leader in Japan’s shingeki (新劇 new drama) [End Page 135] movement.34 He financed the building of Tsukiji shōgekijō (築地小劇場 Tsukiji Little Theater), which after its founding in 1924 became what Brian Powell called “a centre of activity for those working in left-wing arts organisations.”35 In 1933, during violent suppression of proletarian drama by Japan’s police, Hijikata moved to the Soviet Union to escape arrest, and he remained there until 1937.36 After he returned to Japan in 1941, Hijikata was imprisoned along with other Japanese leftist artists and intellectuals; he was released only at the end of the war in 1945. In the postwar period, Hijikata introduced plays of the Moscow Art Theater to the Japanese stage and was a critic of support from leaders of the US-led Occupation for traditional kabuki.37

Figure 1. Stage photographs from the 1955 production of The White-Haired Girl in Tokyo starring Matsuyama Mikiko, published in Xiju bao [Theater gazette] 1955, no. 5, 55.
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Figure 1.

Stage photographs from the 1955 production of The White-Haired Girl in Tokyo starring Matsuyama Mikiko, published in Xiju bao [Theater gazette] 1955, no. 5, 55.

Matsuyama’s husband Shimizu Masao, who served as the Matsuyama Ballet’s troupe director and its design and production manager, was also part of the Japanese left. Robert Greskovic described Shimizu as an “ardent Communist.”38 Although a civil engineer by training, Shimizu supported Matsuyama’s career. Chinese dramatist Tian Han wrote that “through Ms. Mikiko’s dance art, [Shimizu] can have a more direct impact on Japan’s [End Page 136] progressive movement and world peace.”39 As recounted in the 1958 performance program, Shimizu was acting committee chair in the early construction of a provincial labor union. Shimizu was also a member of both the Japan-China Friendship Association and the Japan-Soviet Goodwill Association, organizations central in promoting Sino-Japanese relations.40

Stage designer Matsushita Akira (松下朗 b. 1926) was also active in Japan’s left-wing arts scene. Matsushita was a member of the directing department in the New Cooperative Theater (新協劇団 Shinkyō gekidan), which he joined in 1946.41 This group staged progressive theater productions throughout the 1920s and 1930s despite government suppression, including a play to commemorate Maxim Gorky’s death in 1936.42 In 1951, Matsushita also participated in the founding of the Central Art Theater (中央芸術 劇場 Chūō geijutsu gekijō), which was established by Susukida Kenji during a split in the Japanese Communist Party and later merged into Tokyo Art Theater.43 By the time of the 1958 tour, Matsushita had done stage designs for several modern Chinese plays staged in Japan, as well as for children’s drama and ballets. Matsushita also worked on Gorky’s Enemies, on Earth by Takashi Nagatsuka (長冢節 1879–1915), and on Silent Mountain Range by the Japanese proletarian writer Sunao Tokunaga (德永直 1899–1958).44 Composer Hayashi Hikaru (林光 b. 1931 in Tokyo) and stage manager Iida Kazuhiro (飯田和弘 b. 1927) were similarly involved in leftist projects.45

The 1958 performance program included congratulatory remarks from several key individuals in Japanese leftist political and intellectual circles active in promoting Sino-Japanese relations, further cementing these close connections (Figure 2). One came from Katayama Tetsu (片山哲 1887–1978), the first socialist to serve as prime minister of Japan, who was also the chairperson of the China-Japan Cultural Exchange Association from 1956 to 1960.46 Another came from Nakajima Kenzō (中岛健藏 1903–1979), a literary critic and the director-general of the China-Japan Cultural Exchange Association from 1956 to 1972.47 Nakajima was one of 14 progressive activists who in 1957, one year before the tour, cofounded the National Congress for the Restoration of Japan-China Diplomatic Relations, which directly opposed the Kishi government’s pro-US policies.48

The Matsuyama Ballet’s tour to China in March and April of 1958 was a major event in Sino-Japanese cultural exchange and a high point of diplomatic activity before the Nagasaki Flag incident ruptured Sino-Japanese relations later that May.49 According [End Page 137]

Figure 2. Cover of the performance program for the 1958 Matsuyama Ballet The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu [Visiting performance in China of Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet Ensemble], performance program, n.d. [1958], Chi. Dance Prog. 5, Chinese Dance Collection, University of Michigan Asia Library, Ann Arbor, MI.
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Figure 2.

Cover of the performance program for the 1958 Matsuyama Ballet The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu [Visiting performance in China of Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet Ensemble], performance program, n.d. [1958], Chi. Dance Prog. 5, Chinese Dance Collection, University of Michigan Asia Library, Ann Arbor, MI.

to the 1958 performance program and other contemporary accounts, the Matsuyama Ballet tour took place at the invitation of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (中国人民对外文化协会 Zhongguo renmin duiwai wenhua xiehui), the official CCP organ established in 1954 to plan cultural exchange related to “people’s diplomacy.”50 The Matsuyama Ballet tour was just one of a series of arts and cultural exchanges between the PRC and Japan during the 1950s, which included traveling museum exhibitions, tours of kabuki and jingju (京剧 Beijing opera) troupes, tours of other song and dance groups, and Japanese adaptations of Chinese works and vice versa.51 Thus, while the Matsuyama Ballet tour stood out in terms of scale and attention, it [End Page 138] was by no means an isolated event. It was a culmination of relations established through years of effort across many communities.

The Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl Reconstructed

As the first ever ballet adaptation of The White-Haired Girl, the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1955 two-act production has long been recognized as an important precursor of the Chinese revolutionary ballets.52 Of these, one of the most famous is the Shanghai Dance School’s adaptation of The White-Haired Girl, which premiered as a full-length work in 1965 and was made into a ballet film in 1971. I have previously argued that the Matsuyama Ballet’s China tour of 1958, along with the National Ballet of Cuba’s China tour of 1961, may have been pivotal in the PRC’s shift from Chinese classical and folk dance to ballet as the preferred medium of dance diplomacy beginning in 1966. I also hypothesized that the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl and the 1927 Soviet ballet The Red Poppy inspired new Chinese ballets because they “presented a challenge for Chinese choreographers to assert their cultural agency in the international ballet sphere.”53 This analysis is corroborated by Chinese accounts, which state that the Matsuyama Ballet visit in 1958 led Zhou Enlai to “sigh with emotion and ask ‘Why can foreigners adapt our opera into a ballet, and we can’t create our own national ballet?’”54

Sadly, there is no known full-length extant film documentation of the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1955 or 1958 The White-Haired Girl.55 While recordings of later versions exist, these were created after the widespread circulation of the Shanghai Dance School’s productions and thus are not reliable sources for the pre-1965 period. In this section, I focus on reconstructing the three-act Matsuyama Ballet version that toured China in 1958 and comparing it to both the 1950 feature film that inspired it and the 1971 ballet film that is now canonical. It is important to note that the Shanghai Dance School had many versions of The White-Haired Girl and that some earlier versions strongly diverged from the 1971 film and the Matsuyama Ballet version.56 Additionally, 10 different productions of The White-Haired Girl were staged in various media and various countries before the [End Page 139] earliest one-act Shanghai Dance School version appeared in 1964.57 Thus, further research is needed to understand the impact of the Matsuyama Ballet production.

As mentioned above, the version of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl that toured China in 1958 was revised and expanded from the one originally premiered in Tokyo in 1955.58 The new 1958 version totaled about 90 minutes and was quite large in scale: act 1 featured one scene with 38 dancers; act 2 had one scene with 6 dancers; and act 3 included three scenes—a solo, a scene with 11 dancers, and a finale with 46 dancers. 59 Extant photographs show elaborate stage settings consisting of realistically painted backdrops portraying a bridge and mountains, platforms for different stage heights, and at least two architectural sets, one the interior of the landlord’s home and the other the local temple (Figure 3).60 The design of the temple doors resembles that in the 1950 film (Figure 4). Xi’er’s long bedraggled white hair and dirty gray rags also recall those in the 1950 film (Figure 5).

The 1958 Matsuyama Ballet production and the 1971 Chinese ballet film similarly condense the first third of the 1950 film to eliminate extraneous plot points and move more swiftly to the main conflict. Both ballets eliminate the story line in which Xi’er and Dachun work together to earn extra money for Yang’s debt, Yang’s visit to the market in preparation for Xi’er and Dachun’s marriage, and the New Year’s meal. In both the Matsuyama Ballet version and the 1971 film, the ballet opens with a scene of group dancing that establishes the rural setting, introduces Xi’er as a lead character, and highlights the confrontational relationship between the peasants and landlords. Describing this scene, the 1958 Matsuyama Ballet program notes read: “Dusk in late fall. Villagers return from the fields and circle around Xi’er and Dachun dancing yangge.”61 In the 1971 ballet film, there are few traces of yangge in the choreography here (though it does appear later, at the end of the ballet), and the group dance is not in a circular formation. However, the peasants are shown laboring and dancing while holding baskets of grain, and Xi’er is at the center, though now with her father Yang Bailao in place of her fiancé Dachun. Next, the 1958 program notes read as follows: [End Page 140]

Figure 3. Xi’er and Dachun reunite. Stage photograph from the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl tour in China, published in Renmin huabao [China Pictorial] 1958, no. 6, 13.
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Figure 3.

Xi’er and Dachun reunite. Stage photograph from the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl tour in China, published in Renmin huabao [China Pictorial] 1958, no. 6, 13.

Reprinted with permission from China Foto Bank.

Figure 4. Villagers gather outside Goddess Temple. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl, directed by Wang Bin and Shui Hua, Changchun Film Studio.
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Figure 4.

Villagers gather outside Goddess Temple. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl, directed by Wang Bin and Shui Hua, Changchun Film Studio.

[End Page 141]

Figure 5. Xi’er lives in the mountains. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl.
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Figure 5.

Xi’er lives in the mountains. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl.

Unexpectedly, the landlord Huang Shiren sent on an errand his henchman Mu Renzhi along with three thugs to collect rent. In an instant, the cloudless sky was wrapped in a layer of black clouds. The thugs from the Huang family pulled Xi’er’s father Yang Bailao out from amid the group of people and told Yang to hand over Xi’er in place of rent. Even though Yang knelt on the ground and begged for mercy, he was still mercilessly dragged before the landlord. Although the villagers were furious, they were helpless. All they could do was console Xi’er and Dachun and then one by one return home.62

An extant photo from the 1958 program depicts in body language the relationships of class conflict, oppression, and potential resistance (Figure 6). The landlord’s henchman stands tall and kicks his foot out as the villagers hunch forward. Most cover their heads in fear, but one turns back with his fist clenched. A similar dynamic can be seen in the 1971 ballet, when the villagers stoop under the weight of heavy sacks and the landlord’s representatives stand tall, whipping and ordering them, and some villagers stand with clenched fists and looks of defiance (Figure 7).

Shortly after this, both the 1958 and 1971 versions present a duet between Xi’er and Dachun, which the Matsuyama Ballet program refers to as the “North Wind Dance” (北风舞 “Beifeng wu”). This is followed in both by Yang Bailao’s death—by suicide drinking brine in the 1950 film and the 1958 ballet but by beating in the 1971 ballet film. In the 1958 ballet, Dachun gives Xi’er a flower for her hair, something that also happens in the 1950 film. In the 1950 film, this is a purely happy moment because it happens when Xi’er and Dachun believe Yang is away paying off his debt with the money they earned, [End Page 142]

Figure 6. The landlord’s men bully the village people. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.
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Figure 6.

The landlord’s men bully the village people. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.

Figure 7. Villagers glare at the landlord’s men. Screen shot from the 1971 ballet film The White-Haired Girl, directed by Sang Hu, Shanghai Film Studio.
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Figure 7.

Villagers glare at the landlord’s men. Screen shot from the 1971 ballet film The White-Haired Girl, directed by Sang Hu, Shanghai Film Studio.

[End Page 143]

and Xi’er is wistfully decorating her home with wedding-themed papercuts. In the 1958 ballet, however, Yang has been forcibly dragged away, so the scene is more melancholy, and the flower is described in the program notes as consolation. The papercuts are retained in the 1971 ballet film but are not present in the 1958 ballet notes or extant photographs. In the 1971 version, Dachun gives Xi’er a sack of grain instead of a flower, and Xi’er presents him with a farming implement, while Yang gives Xi’er a red string for her hair. In the 1958 and 1971 works, the duet between Xi’er and Dachun here is similar in that it presents a bright and joyful break amid the larger tension.

During the 1958 Matsuyama Ballet tour, Xi’er and Dachun’s duet was one of the most frequently represented in published photographs and drawings in the Chinese press. To judge from these photographs, the costuming and hairstyle were similar to those in the 1971 version, though the colors were different. The 1958 choreography appears to have contained more jumps and side-by-side movements in unison (Figure 8). In contrast, the 1971 version contained more complementary lines and poses (Figure 9).

After Yang commits suicide in the 1958 ballet, the bill of sale transferring Xi’er to the landlord is revealed, and the landlord comes to claim Xi’er. In the 1950 film, Xi’er’s departure is tragic, but the villagers do not resist, and there is no fighting. The program notes for the 1958 version, however, read: “Straightening his back to impede, Dachun, and the villagers, suffered a harsh beating.”63 This foreshadows the 1971 ballet film, which features physical combat between Dachun and the landlord’s men in this scene. The resolution of this scene is also similar between the 1958 and 1971 versions, since both end with Dachun’s decision to join the Red Army, something that happens later in the 1950 film.

Act 2 of the 1958 ballet recounts Xi’er’s life of abuse inside the landlord’s home, her rape by the landlord, and her eventual escape to the mountains. The scene design in the Matsuyama Ballet version features a dimly lit formal room with a large painting of a tiger, its open jaws baring teeth menacingly over Xi’er’s head (Figure 10). This tiger painting does not appear in the 1950 film or the 1971 ballet film, but it is in a photograph from a Chinese theater production published in 1950, suggesting that the designers may have taken inspiration from this earlier work.64 The 1958 program notes for this section read, “Xi’er stands in front of the painting, extremely grieved. She recalls the past times when she was together with Dachun. At this moment, Huang Shiren enters the room carrying a lamp and rapes Xi’er. After Huang leaves, Xi’er waves both her hands at the ferocious tiger, angry to the point of no retreat. For revenge, for her beloved Dachun, Xi’er decides to run away and insist on living.”65 Xi’er then performs “Dance of Tiger Hall” (虎堂之舞 “Hu tang zhi wu”). Little information is available about the choreography in this solo. From an extant photograph, Xi’er’s posture appears heavy and dejected, similar to her appearance in the 1950 film (Figure 11). This contrasts with the 1971 version, in which Xi’er is not raped but instead suffers an intense whipping off stage, after which she boldly confronts her attackers and has to be restrained (Figure 12). In all three versions, landlord Huang soon learns of Xi’er’s escape and sends a search team to track and capture her. They are unable to find her, recovering only her shoe from the riverbank. [End Page 144]

Figure 8. Xi’er and Dachun in the “North Wind Dance” duet. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.
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Figure 8.

Xi’er and Dachun in the “North Wind Dance” duet. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.

Figure 9. Xi’er and Dachun duet. Screen shot from the 1971 ballet film The White-Haired Girl.
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Figure 9.

Xi’er and Dachun duet. Screen shot from the 1971 ballet film The White-Haired Girl.

[End Page 145]

Figure 10. Xi’er performs “Dance of Tiger Hall.” Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.
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Figure 10.

Xi’er performs “Dance of Tiger Hall.” Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.

Figure 11. Xi’er distraught after the rape. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl.
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Figure 11.

Xi’er distraught after the rape. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl.

[End Page 146]

Figure 12. Xi’er confronts the landlord family after the beating. Screen shot from the 1971 ballet film The White-Haired Girl.
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Figure 12.

Xi’er confronts the landlord family after the beating. Screen shot from the 1971 ballet film The White-Haired Girl.

Act 3 of the 1958 ballet is set three years from when Xi’er fled landlord Huang’s abuse. The program notes read: “She lives in a deep cave in the high mountains, weather-beaten and having had her fill of hardships. Even her hair all turned to white.”66 Scene 2 of act 3 follows Xi’er to the nearby Goddess Temple (娘庙廟 Niangniang miao), where she relies on food left as sacrifices for her daily meals. Rumors circulate in the village that a “white-haired female immortal” (白毛仙姑 baimao xiangu) is haunting the temple, and the villagers have been making more sacrifices in attempts to appease the spirit. Today, some old villagers go to burn incense at the temple, but they return panic-stricken. Just when a loud clap of thunder bursts in the sky, Xi’er runs down the mountain amid wind and lightning. Although she is coming to gather food, her sudden and otherworldly appearance frightens the villagers. The program notes read, “Standing in the torrential rain, Xi’er looks back upon these miserable years.”67 She then performs her second named solo, “White-Haired Girl Dance” (白毛女之舞 “Baimao nü zhi wu”).

Images from this solo are common in program covers, advertisements, and photo spreads published in China to promote the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl during its 1958 tour (see Figure 2). One commonly circulated image shows Xi’er in arabesque en pointe—a technically difficult ballet position in which the dancer balances on the tip of one pointe shoe while lifting her other leg straight behind her body at a 90-degree angle. In the images, Xi’er typically has an upturned head and one or both hands positioned [End Page 147] upward, reaching toward the sky (Figure 13).68 Another common pose in photographs and drawings of this scene shows Xi’er up on two pointes, reaching both arms above her head with her hair flying (Figure 14).69 The sense of power achieved through these postures of height, strength, and independence continues in the remainder of the Matsuyama Ballet production. We see this clearly in two extant photographs from the next scene, when Xi’er jumps out to attack landlord Huang and Mu in the temple and then chases after them as they cower and flee in fear (Figures 15 and 16). It is notable that the Matsuyama Ballet production makes no mention of Xi’er’s pregnancy or childbirth, foreshadowing what Meng Yue calls “a gradual erasure of Xier’s body and her sexual situation” that is fully realized in the 1971 Chinese ballet film.70

Figure 13. Advertisement for the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl, published in Jiefang ribao [Liberation daily], April 19, 1958.
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Figure 13.

Advertisement for the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl, published in Jiefang ribao [Liberation daily], April 19, 1958.

Comparing Xi’er’s physicality in the later scenes of the 1958 production to those in the 1950 film, we can see that the Matsuyama Ballet’s interpretation maximized the potential of ballet technique—such as the height provided by female dancers’ pointe [End Page 148]

Figure 14. Sketch of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl, published in Beijing Zhongguo qingnian bao [Beijing China youth journal], March 18, 1958.
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Figure 14.

Sketch of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl, published in Beijing Zhongguo qingnian bao [Beijing China youth journal], March 18, 1958.

Figure 15. Xi’er frightens Huang and Mu in the temple. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.
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Figure 15.

Xi’er frightens Huang and Mu in the temple. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.

[End Page 149]

shoes, the use of extended lines of the arms and legs, and the sense of physical strength provided by female solo dance—to offer a vivid new physical image of the White-Haired Girl character. In the 1950 film, Xi’er’s body is largely static in these scenes, and it is instead her high-pitched singing voice and song lyrics that convey her strength and desire for revenge born of deep suffering and class hatred (Figure 17). In the 1958 Matsuyama Ballet production, this characterization is given new form through ballet choreography, demonstrating the potential of ballet as a medium to communicate Chinese revolutionary messages.

Figure 16. Xi’er chases Huang and Mu out of the temple. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.
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Figure 16.

Xi’er chases Huang and Mu out of the temple. Stage photograph from the performance program for the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1958 tour of The White-Haired Girl. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu.

The final scene of the ballet largely follows previous conventions. It is spring, the skies have cleared, and the villagers have gathered at the Goddess Temple for a festival. Landlord Huang devises a scheme to use superstition about the “white-haired immortal” to extract further rent from the villagers. Eventually, Dachun returns and discovers Xi’er’s true identity. A final duet, titled “Reunion Dance” (重逢舞 “Chongfeng wu”), features ecstatic lifts, embraces, and partnering between Dachun and Xi’er (see Figure 3). Finally, the ballet ends with the public denunciation of landlord Huang and his expulsion from the village, followed by a celebration (Figure 18).

The Chinese Reception of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl

An audience of 1,500 greeted the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl on its opening night at Beijing Tianqiao Theater on March 13, 1958. The People’s Daily reported a long and enthusiastic ovation with multiple curtain calls, and audiences [End Page 150]

Figure 17. Xi’er laments her situation. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl.
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Figure 17.

Xi’er laments her situation. Screen shot from the 1950 film The White-Haired Girl.

Figure 18. The landlord is punished. Stage photograph from the 1958 The White-Haired Girl tour in China starring Matsuyama Mikiko, published in Xin guancha [New observer], April 1, 1958.
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Figure 18.

The landlord is punished. Stage photograph from the 1958 The White-Haired Girl tour in China starring Matsuyama Mikiko, published in Xin guancha [New observer], April 1, 1958.

[End Page 151]

Figure 19. Matsuyama Mikiko (left) and Wang Kun (right) embrace. News photograph from the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl tour in China, published in Renmin huabao [China Pictorial] 1958, no. 6, 13.
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Figure 19.

Matsuyama Mikiko (left) and Wang Kun (right) embrace. News photograph from the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl tour in China, published in Renmin huabao [China Pictorial] 1958, no. 6, 13.

Reprinted with permission from China Foto Bank.

gave it “unanimous praise.”71 At the end of the show, Wang Kun, the actress who had played Xi’er in the original 1945 folk opera, went onstage to present flowers to Matsuyama, and the two warmly embraced (Figure 19). Vice Premier Chen Yi and Guo Moruo, chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, also went onstage to congratulate the Japanese company.

Several themes stand out in Chinese reviews published during the 1958 tour. First, Chinese critics universally praised the high level of artistry in the ballet, as well as what [End Page 152] they saw as the Japanese dancers’ commitment to reflecting Chinese aesthetic elements and accurately portraying Chinese characters and settings. A critic for Guangming Daily described the ballet as a “very complete work of art,” elaborating that “the Matsuyama Ballet artists have an extremely proficient mastery of technique, and they expressed with great power the inner worlds of the characters.”72 The author continued, “The choreographer really grasps the main line of the story and its key contradictions. . . . The plot is focused and tight.”73 Regarding the portrayal of Chinese characters, the critic wrote, “The peasant Dachun and People’s Liberation Army Dachun give audiences the impression that this really is a Chinese peasant and People’s Liberation Army soldier. . . . The audience had trouble telling that the performer acting this role was a Japanese person.”74 On the use of Chinese elements, the author explained, “The ballet The White-Haired Girl is full of Chinese sentiments and flavor, whether it’s the character images (including make-up and costume), installation design, or exterior scenes. In addition to fulfilling the intention of being ‘Chinese,’ the style is also complete.”75 Regarding the specific use of Chinese folk dance, the author wrote, “Using a ballet foundation to twist Chinese yangge, this is a pioneering undertaking.”76 A critic for People’s Music also noted the high artistry and praised the company’s use of yangge dance.77

The dance technique exhibited by the Matsuyama Ballet cast received special praise from Chinese ballet experts. Dai Ailian (戴爱莲 1916–2006)—then principal of the Beijing Dance School and a ballerina herself, trained in London—praised the exceptional quality and the emotional impact of Matsuyama’s performance: “Xi’er is portrayed by an artist with deep dance artistry, Matsuyama Mikiko. . . . When watching Matsuyama Mikiko’s dance, you feel drawn in by her emotion. Her dance technique is perfect, and the lines are very harmonious. She dances with her entire body and heart, creating a statuesque beauty.”78 Dai also praised Ishida Taneo, who played Dachun, writing, “His dance technique is also adept and full of feeling.”79 Like other reviewers, Dai commended the Matsuyama Ballet for their convincing portrayals of the Chinese story: “We already took this dance drama as our own and did not feel that the performers were foreigners. Their expressions and movement looked just like the real characters in the White-Haired Girl story. . . . Anyone only needs to look and will immediately recognize Xi’er, Dachun, Yang Bailao, Zhao Dashu, the landlord Huang Shiren, and the landlord’s henchman Mu Renzhi, etc.”80

The unexpected sense of familiarity upon experiencing the Matsuyama Ballet production was a consistent theme throughout the reviews. An especially poignant response [End Page 153] came from He Jingzhi (贺敬之 b. 1924), who coauthored the original 1945 opera The White-Haired Girl. He wrote: “In 1955 we received a letter from Ms. Matsuyama Mikiko saying her dance group would be adapting The White-Haired Girl into a ballet dance drama to perform. At the time, we were very excited! We strongly hoped to one day see their performance in China. Our wish came true. In front of us, that familiar melody ‘North Wind Blows’ rose from the orchestra. . . . What? She is Matsuyama Mikiko? They are really from a different country, friends we have never met before?”81 Like other Chinese commentators, He Jingzhi commended what he saw as the fidelity with which the Japanese artists portrayed Chinese characters and experiences: “Of course, the dance art of Matsuyama Mikiko, this outstanding ballerina, is consummate. However, what I want to say is that even more importantly she is a true Xi’er. . . . Yes, it can be said, they really look like Chinese people.”82 In He’s view, their success in adapting this work to the ballet medium further expressed a mutual understanding: “Although our countries are far apart and separated by oceans and seas, . . . Japan’s Xi’er—Matsuyama Mikiko—and her collaborators really are our kindred spirits.”83

Ajia (阿甲 1907–1994), who had recently directed a Beijing opera production of The White-Haired Girl, was also impressed by the Matsuyama Ballet’s adaptation. According to Ajia, Beijing opera and ballet faced similar challenges, because both have conventionalized movement techniques. In the case of ballet, Ajia reflected, the task was even more difficult because there is no dialogue or singing, so the narrative must be conveyed entirely through movement. Thus, “this dance drama, without injuring the original work’s thematic ideals and major plot, took the opera The White-Haired Girl, a major work of five acts and 16 scenes, and shortened it to three acts. . . . It is not a simple process of copying the opera, but has its own unique creation, which is also very successful.”84 Ajia also appreciated the inclusion of Chinese dance: “Between the changes of formation, [they] cleverly stuck in some yangge, showing the special character of Chinese folk customs. Western things and local things appear together, and it’s not awkward. It looks very familiar, fresh, and full of flavor.”85 Ajia approved of the way the ballet creators condensed some scenes and expanded others to fit the ballet form. The duet in act 1 between Xi’er and Dachun “previously did not have narrative content,” but through emphasis in the choreography, the scene became “very passionate and lyrical, like a poem filled with rhyme and imagery.”86 Ajia also appreciated the portrayals of the villainous characters. In sum, Ajia concluded, “Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl, whether in terms of direction or performance, is worthy of our serious study.”87

Chinese dramatist Tian Han (田汉 1898–1968), an often exacting critic, also took an extremely positive view of the Matsuyama Ballet’s production. Tian described the [End Page 154] ballet as “well choreographed,” “unexpectedly good,” and a work that “showed the Japanese art world’s spirit of initiative.”88 For Tian, it was an enormous feat to turn The White-Haired Girl into a ballet, because ballet is an imported art form. However, Tian also noted some points at which he felt the ballet could have been improved. In act 1, he said, Xi’er was too happy in her duet with Dachun, when she should have been worried about her father. Tian also felt that the villagers should have shown more strength when faced with the landlord’s men in act 1. Tian noted a delay between when Xi’er flees the landlord’s home and when Huang sends the search party after her, and, according to him, this diminished the tension. Tian further pointed out that some of the offerings left at the temple should have disappeared between scenes in act 3, both because Xi’er was eating them and because in the original story this detail is what makes the villagers think that the temple is haunted. Finally, Tian suggested revising the green tights and white boots used for the bottom portion of Dachun’s Red Army costume and replacing them with “formal military pants, if it doesn’t negatively impact the performance.”89 Tian noted that all these points were very minor. Tian also identified several plot details that he felt were handled especially well. He liked their choice to end act 2 with the discovery of Xi’er’s shoe by the riverbank. He also praised the choreography after Xi’er and Dachun are reunited, when Xi’er kneels down in tears and covers her face, recalling her violation at the hands of the landlord: “This is an extremely moving portion. When audiences saw this part, many cried.”

What Tian found most impressive about the ballet was its handling of the revolutionary message. In China, the 1945 The White-Haired Girl folk opera had achieved actual political effects in rural society, especially during the Chinese Civil War and land reform.90 During this period, arts workers organized under the Chinese Communist Party traveled across China performing The White-Haired Girl and other dramas, with the goal of convincing landless peasants to band together, join the revolutionary movement, and overturn their landlords. Tian felt that the Matsuyama Ballet had preserved this political potency. According to Tian, the Matsuyama Ballet used what he called “the view of struggle” to design their ballet: “This means that their ballet is not selling technique but has an infectiousness and militancy that others have difficulty achieving.”91 Tian noted in particular Matsuyama’s portrayal of Xi’er’s transformation after she runs away to the mountains: “Ms. Matsuyama Mikiko’s art is widely known for its elegance and sweet beauty. But, once the flames of hatred toward the old society are lit, she becomes like a celestial horse that cannot be restrained. She is like Furies, the goddess of revenge, ugliness, and fierce violence, which cannot be looked at up close and cannot be blocked!”92 Thus, Tian concluded, “Chinese audiences enthusiastically praise The White-Haired Girl, but clearly not just because of the dance technique of top-level ballet performer Matsuyama Mikiko. It’s mainly because through their dance technique they communicate the strong feeling of opposition to exploiters and oppressors of the two countries, China and Japan.”93 [End Page 155]

Relative to positioning the 1958 tour in the context of Sino-Japanese relations, it is significant that none of the published Chinese reviews made any mention of the Second Sino-Japanese War or Japanese imperialism. This contrasted sharply with the discourse of Sino-Japanese friendship in Japan during this same period, in which war history and the need for Japan to acknowledge past violence against Chinese people played a prominent role.94 As reflected in Chinese responses to the 1958 tour, the Chinese discourses of Sino-Japanese friendship instead highlighted what were deemed to be shared experiences between contemporary Chinese and Japanese people, specifically a shared desire for class struggle.

This Chinese framing of the Matsuyama Ballet’s production as evidence of contemporary Japanese and Chinese people’s shared experiences and the Japanese people’s purported desire for class revolution can be traced back to Chinese reporting on the unofficial showings of the 1950 film version of The White-Haired Girl in Japan in 1952. According to an account in Popular Film, a Japanese worker who saw the 1950 film responded, “Although in form they are a bit different, the majority of Japanese people are now suffering those sorrowful conditions described in the film.”95 According to the same article, a Japanese female student also reflected, “I feel this film is very familiar, because it expresses the struggle spirit of the people of Asia, and also in life feeling there are many elements similar to those of the Japanese nation. I strongly desire the free, equal, and peaceful life shown at the end of the film.”96 An article in Protect Peace described moving scenes of post-film discussions among workers and soldiers in Nagano Prefecture: “After seeing The White-Haired Girl, they organized a discussion symposium led by the village head. Youth, women, and even older people in their 50s and 60s participated and expressed their views, staying until 4:30 the next morning, and still not a single person wanted to go home and go to sleep. They were extremely agitated and speaking in unison, saying, ‘The paths of China’s peasants and Japan’s peasants are not different from one another.’”97 Audiences in a village in Akita also reportedly responded, “This film’s revolution is a true people’s mass revolution! . . . It appears Dachun’s way of doing things is very good, we should study it.”98 Japanese coal miners, women workers, the elderly, and film critics were all said to have given the film an extremely positive response, reflecting their identification with the characters and desire for more such stories.

Statements from members of the Matsuyama Ballet team that were reported in the Chinese media similarly emphasized an affinity of the Japanese people for the story depicted in The White-Haired Girl. A 1955 Guangming Daily account of the ballet’s premiere in Japan reported that director Hijikata Yoshi stated, “Today we know that the art of new China deeply moves the masses of Japan.”99 An article about the premiere that same year in Theatre News likewise reported, “They saw that the situation of China’s pre-Liberation countryside was quite similar to the current situation in Japan’s countryside. Because of this, they felt that making The White-Haired Girl into a ballet in Japan had [End Page 156] contemporary meaning.”100 In her speech reported in the 1958 performance program, Matsuyama stated, “The White-Haired Girl and Japan’s peasants have an essential connection. I believe that her hatred for the old society in The White-Haired Girl is not only that of the Chinese people but also of the Japanese people and the whole world.”101 This statement was repeated both in the Guangming Daily review of the ballet and in Tian Han’s review in Theatre News, a further reflection of its perceived importance.102 Matsuyama, Shimizu, and Hijikata were all cited as claiming that their visit to perform in China was “like returning to one’s maternal home [回娘家].”103

Conclusion

In their responses to the ballet, several of China’s critics went so far as to interpret the work as a sign that Japan, like China, might follow a revolutionary path in the future. This message supported the political logic of China’s “people’s diplomacy” efforts at the time, which employed a strategy of pitting Japanese people against their own government, claiming that although the Kishi government supported US policies, this did not reflect the will of the Japanese people. In the review cited above, He Jingzhi interpreted The White-Haired Girl as a sign that the Japanese people shared with the Chinese people a “hatred for all evil and darkness and a desire and belief in brightness.” He then went on to offer a prediction of what the story might portend for Japan’s future: “In this time of ours, no matter how our individual storylines are, the force of justice will always be the guiding factor that leads the plot to climax. Matsuyama Mikiko’s dance postures gave me this confidence. The upright and good people of Matsuyama Mikiko’s country gave me this kind of confidence. This is the source of friendship between our people.”104

Tian Han expressed a similar confidence in the revolutionary sentiments of the Japanese people. Responding to a statement by Hijikata that the Matsuyama Ballet’s presentation of The White-Haired Girl in China was “like Westerners taking Madame Butterfly to be performed in Japan,” Tian took this opportunity to contrast the messages of the two works and to affirm what he saw as the progressive ideology of the Japanese people: “The Japanese people today have a more progressive view of Madame Butterfly. They call for anti-imperialism and the complete overturning of feudalism and capitalism. They have greater sympathy for the resistance of The White-Haired Girl.”105 Tian then concluded, “This is probably why The White-Haired Girl has been prohibited from being performed in some parts of Japan. How could Japan’s Huang Shirens and Mu Renzhis dare to watch The White-Haired Girl, which paints their repulsive images and shameless future!”106 [End Page 157]

These messages in the Chinese press’s reporting on the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl illuminate Chinese discourses about Sino-Japanese friendship at a decisive moment in the relationship of the two nations. During the Matsuyama Ballet tour, the PRC government was exerting increased pressure on the Japanese government to offer forms of official recognition (such as flying of the PRC flag) in exchange for trade opportunities.107 In this context, the PRC’s conceit that “the people” of Japan supported and desired to follow China’s revolutionary path, even when the government did not, was an important strategic component of new PRC approaches to Sino-Japanese engagement. The Matsuyama Ballet’s success in using a new expressive form to achieve a rendition of The White-Haired Girl that Chinese audiences found genuinely sincere and politically moving was a significant achievement, both of artistic accomplishment and of cultural diplomacy. In addition to inspiring new directions for China’s own ballet development, it provided new avenues by which Chinese audiences could project internationalist aspirations abroad and give physical embodiment and imagination to the “people” of “people’s diplomacy.” In the context of Sino-Japanese relations, it was in this way that the ballet achieved its greatest success.

Emily Wilcox

Emily Wilcox is an associate professor and director of Chinese Studies at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She is the author of Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy (winner of the 2019 Dance Studies Association de la Torre Bueno Prize), coeditor of Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia, and cocreator of the University of Michigan Chinese Dance Collection. She is currently writing a book about international dance exchange with China from 1949 to 1976.

Correspondence to: Emily Wilcox. Email: eewilcox@wm.edu.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks colleagues who offered feedback on presentations of this work in progress at the University of Michigan Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies Noon Lecture Series, the Columbia University Modern China Seminar, the Dartmouth College Inter-Asian Literature and Arts Workshop, the Association for Asian Performance Annual Conference, the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China Biennial Conference, and the American Historical Association Annual Conference. The author is grateful for individual feedback from Bruce Baird, Melissa Blanco Borelli, Rosemary Candelario, Namiko Kunimoto, William Marotti, Anne McKnight, Rebecca Rossen, and two anonymous reviewers. The author thanks Shellen Wu, journal editor Margherita Zanasi, and associate editor Jan Kiely for their support in bringing this article to publication. Financial support for this research was provided by the University of Michigan, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Footnotes

1. Herbert Passin, China’s Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Praeger, 1963), 16.

2. “Communist China’s Cultural Exchange in 1957,” Foreign Service dispatch from USIS, Hong Kong, to United States Information Agency, Washington DC, May 12, 1958, p. 1, Hong Kong Baptist University Library Special Collections.

3. Passin, China’s Cultural Diplomacy, 2, 41.

4. Passin, China’s Cultural Diplomacy, 16.

5. See, for example, Takeo Arai, “Post-war Relations Between Japan and China,” Developing Economies 5, no. 1 (1967): 105–21; Kurt Radtke, China’s Relations with Japan, 1945–83: The Role of Liao Chengzhi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990); Franziska Seraphim, “People’s Diplomacy: The Japan-China Friendship Association and Critical War Memory in the 1950s,” Asia-Pacific Journal 5, no. 5 (August 2007): 1–19; Casper Wits, “Sino-Japanese Relations in the Year 1958: Steps toward Reconciliation,” Journal of Global Studies 5 (2014): 119–31; Casper Wits, “Cultural Relations within Sino-Japanese ‘People’s Diplomacy’: Nakajima Kenzō and the Japan-China Cultural Exchange Association,” Sino-Japanese Studies 23 (2016): 1–30; Casper Wits, “The Transnational in China’s Foreign Policy: The Case of Sino-Japanese Relations,” E-International Relations, April 10, 2019.

6. See, for example, Siyuan Liu, “The Case of Princess Baihua: State Diplomatic Functions and Theatrical Creative Process in China in the 1950s,” Asian Theatre Journal 30, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 1–29; Krista van Fleit Hang, “‘The Law Has No Conscience’: The Cultural Construction of Justice and the Reception of Awara in China,” Asian Cinema 24, no. 2 (2013): 141–59; Lanjun Xu, “The Southern Film Corporation, Opera Films, and the PRC’s Cultural Diplomacy in Cold War Asia, 1950s and 1960s,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 29, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 239–82; Emily Wilcox, “Performing Bandung: China’s Dance Diplomacy with India, Indonesia, and Burma, 1953–1962,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 18, no. 4 (2017): 518–39; Jeremy Taylor, “Lychees and Mirrors: Local Opera, Cinema, and Diaspora in the Chinese Cultural Cold War,” Twentieth-Century China 43, no. 2 (May 2018): 163–80; Beiyu Zhang, Chinese Theatre Troupes in Southeast Asia: Touring Diaspora, 1900s–1970s (London: Routledge, 2021); Gal Gvili, Imagining India in Modern China: Literary Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895–1962 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022).

7. “Riben shangyan balei wuju ‘Baimao nü,’” [Japan stages ballet The White-Haired Girl], Guangming ribao [Guangming Daily], March 1, 1955.

8. “Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen woguo” [Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet visits our country], Renmin yinyue [People’s music] 1958, no. 4, 40. Some sources say they visited six cities.

9. For an overview of the concept of cultural diplomacy and its changes in recent decades, see Ien Ang, Yudhishthir Raj Isar, and Phillip Mar, “Cultural Diplomacy: Beyond the National Interest?,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 21, no. 4 (2015): 365–81.

10. Wits, “Transnational in China’s Foreign Policy,” 5.

11. Wits, “Transnational in China’s Foreign Policy,” 5.

12. Radtke, China’s Relations with Japan, 1945–83, 99.

13. Jiutianjingzi [Hisada Kyōko], “‘Baimao nü’ dao le Riben” [The White-Haired Girl has arrived in Japan], trans. Chen Duchen, Dazhong dianying [Popular film] 1952, no. 14, 26–27.

14. “Baimao nü yingpian zai Riben” [Film of The White-Haired Girl in Japan], Baowei heping [Protect peace] 1953, no. 23, 88–90.

15. “An Interview with Masao Shimizu,” Voice of Friendship 1995, no. 5, 14.

16. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu [Visiting performance in China by Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet Ensemble], performance program, n.d. [1958], p. 16, Chi. Dance Prog. 5, Chinese Dance Collection, University of Michigan Asia Library, Ann Arbor, MI. For more on Pavlova and Sapphire, see Masafumi Monden, “Layers of the Ethereal: A Cultural Investigation of Beauty, Girlhood, and Ballet in Japanese Shōjo Manga,” Fashion Theory 18, no. 3 (2014): 251–95.

17. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 16; Matsuyama Mikiko, “Wo yu balei” [Ballet and I], Yinyue wudao yanjiu [Music and dance research] 1983, no. 1, 93–96; Monden, “Layers of the Ethereal,” 258–59.

18. Dong Xiqiu, trans., “Matsuyama Mikiko,” Wudao [Dance] 1958, no. 2, 27.

19. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 4, 15, 19.

20. Ruriko Kumano, “Anticommunism and Academic Freedom: Walter C. Eells and the ‘Red Purge’ in Occupied Japan,” History of Education Quarterly 50, no. 4 (November 2010): 513–37.

21. Tian Han, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü’” [Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet and their The White-Haired Girl], Xiju bao [Theater gazette] 1958, no. 6, 10–14.

22. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15–18.

23. Inata Naomi, “Rethinking the ‘Indigeneity’ of Hijikata Tatsumi in the 1960s as a Photographic Negative Image of Japanese Dance History,” trans. Bruce Baird and Inata Naomi, in Bruce Baird and Rosemary Candelario, eds., The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (New York: Routledge, 2019), 56–70.

24. Dong, “Matsuyama Mikiko.”

25. This statement is repeated in the program for the 1958 production of The White-Haired Girl in China. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 2. All translations from Chinese in this article are mine.

26. “Balei wuju ‘Baimao nü’ zai Riben shangyan.” [Ballet The White-Haired Girl performed in Japan], Xiju bao [Theater gazette] 1955, no. 5, 55.

This challenges Laikwan Pang’s assertation, based on a retrospective account published in 1985, that the Matsuyama Ballet’s 1955 staging of The White-Haired Girl took place “with the Chinese government completely uninformed.” Laikwan Pang, The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (New York: Verso, 2017), 164.

27. Matsuyama, “Wo yu balei,” 95.

28. “Zhou Zongli jüxing jiuhui zhaodai geguo heping daibiao” [Premier Zhou hosts banquet welcoming peace delegates from various countries], Guangming ribao [Guangming Daily], July 26, 1955.

29. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15. For more on the reception in Japan, see Yamada Kōzō, Baimao nü zai Riben [The White-Haired Girl in Japan] (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2007).

30. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 4.

31. “Zhongguo fang Ri jingju daibiaotuan quanti renyuan daoda Dongjing” [The entire ensemble of Chinese Beijing opera performers visiting Japan lands in Tokyo], Guangming ribao [Guangming Daily], May 27, 1956.

32. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15–16, 18–19. For more on Fountain of Bakhchisarai, see Christina Ezrahi, Swans of the Kremlin: Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).

33. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 18–19.

34. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15–16. Mei Tao, “Shijie wenyi dongtai: Riben zhuming xijujia Hijikata Yoshi shishi” [World arts scene: Japan’s famed dramatist Hijikata Yoshi dies], Shijie wenxue [World literature] 1959, no. 7, 172.

35. Brian Powell, Japan’s Modern Theatre: A Century of Change and Continuity (London: Japan Library, 2002), 71.

36. Powell, Japan’s Modern Theatre, 82; J. Scott Miller, The A to Z of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 69.

37. Powell, Japan’s Modern Theatre, 138; Barbara Thornbury, “Restoring an Imagined Past: The National Theatre and the Question of Authenticity in ‘Kabuki,’” Asian Theatre Journal 19, no. 1 (2002): 161–83.

38. Robert Greskovic, Ballet 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving the Ballet (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 139.

39. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü,’” 10.

40. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15.

41. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15.

42. Wang Chu, Shijie wenhua shi jiaocheng [Textbook on world cultural history] (Chengdu: Xinan jiaotong daxue chubanshe, 2016).

43. Guohe Zheng, “Maturing Shingeki Theatre,” in Jonah Salz, ed., A History of Japanese Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

44. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15.

45. For biographies, see Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 15. For more on Hayashi, see Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 113, 202.

46. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 11.

47. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 13.

48. Wits, “Cultural Relations within Sino-Japanese ‘People’s Diplomacy,’” 14–15.

49. Radtke, China’s Relations with Japan, 1945–83, 121–24; Arai, “Post-war Relations between Japan and China,” 113–17.

50. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 5; Hong Ming, “Riben ‘Songshan balei wutuan’ dao Beijing” [Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet Ensemble arrives in Beijing], News Briefing, Zhongguo xinwen [China news], March 11, 1958.

51. See relevant articles in the People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, and so forth, for example: “Zhongri wenhua jiaoliu xin kaiduan” [A new beginning from Sino-Japanese cultural exchange], Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], October 1, 1955; “Zhongguo fang Ri jingju daibiaotuan quanti renyuan daoda Dongjing” [All members of visiting Beijing opera troupe from China arrive in Tokyo], Guangming ribao [Guangming Daily], May 27, 1956; “Riben Hualiudebingwei wudaotuan dao Beijing” [Japan’s Hanayanagi Tokubee Dance Ensemble arrives in Beijing], Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], June 23, 1958.

52. Norman J. Wilkinson, “Asian Theatre Traditions: The White-Haired Girl: From ‘Yangko’ to Revolutionary Modern Ballet,” Educational Theatre Journal 26, no. 2 (May 1974): 172; Paul Clark, The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 161–62; Pang, Art of Cloning, 165.

53. Emily Wilcox, Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 140.

54. Yang Jie, Balei wuju “Baimao nü” chuangzuo shihua [Historical discussion of the making of ballet The White-Haired Girl] (Shanghai: Shanghai yinyue chubanshe, 2010), 9.

55. Film fragments occasionally surface but are extremely short and of unknown provenance. See, for example: “Balei wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de zuizao banben danshengyu 1955 nian de Riben Songshan balei wutuan, Xi’er de di yi banyanzhe shi wudaojia Songshanshuzi” [The earliest version of ballet White-Haired Girl was born out of the 1955 Matsuyama Ballet, the first performer of Xi’er was dancer Matsuyama Mikiko], a Youtube video uploaded by “bian lao,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylT8Tw492l4, 7:40–7:50.

56. Yang Jie, Balei wuju “Baimao nü” chuangzuo shihua, 20–29.

57. Yang Jie, Balei wuju “Baimao nü” chuangzuo shihua, 8.

58. For a plot summary of the 1955 version, see Dong Xijiu, trans., “‘Baimao nü’ (wuju gushi)” [The White-Haired Girl (dance drama story)], Wudao [Dance] 1958, no. 2, 26–27.

59. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 6–8. Unless otherwise specified, the plot and scene summaries below are based on program notes in this program, which match published reviews from the period.

60. For published photographs, see You Zhenguo and Wu Guaxue, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu ‘Baimao nü’” [Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet Ensemble visits China to perform The White-Haired Girl], Zhongguo xiju [Chinese drama] 1958, no. 7, 30; “Riben ‘Baimao nü’ yanchu chenggong” [Japan’s The White-Haired Girl performed successfully], Wenhui bao (Shanghai), April 22, 1958; Wu Huaxue, “Riben ‘Baimao nü’ zai Beijing” [Japan’s The White-Haired Girl in Beijing], Guangming ribao [Guangming Daily], March 15, 1958; Wu Yinbo, “Riben ‘Baimao nü’ zai Zhongguo” [Japan’s The White-Haired Girl in China], Renmin huabao [China Pictorial] 1958, no. 6, 13–15.

61. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 6. Yangge is a type of Chinese folk music and dance promoted by the Chinese Communist Party that was also used in the original opera version of The White-Haired Girl. See David Holm, “Folk Art as Propaganda: The Yangge Movement in Yan’an,” in Bonnie McDougall, ed., Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 3–35.

62. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 6.

63. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 6.

64. Central Academy of Drama, “Baimao nü” [The White-Haired Girl], Renmin huabao [China Pictorial] 1950, no. 8, 34–35.

65. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 7.

66. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 7.

67. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 8.

68. See, for example, Wu Yinbo, “Riben ‘Baomao nü’ zai Zhongguo”; Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, cover.

69. See, for example, Ouyang Yuqian, “Huanying Songshanshuzi balei wutuan lai woguo fangwen yanchu” [Welcome the Matsuyama Mikiko Ballet to our country for visiting performances], Wudao [Dance] 1958, no. 2, 24–25.

70. Meng Yue, “Female Images and National Myth,” in Tani E. Barlow, ed., Gender Politics in Modern China (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 121.

71. “Riben Songshan balei wutuan shouci zai Beijing yanchu ‘Baimao nü’” [Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet gives first performance of The White-Haired Girl in Beijing], Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], March 14, 1958. See also “Riben Songshan balei wutuan shouci zai Beijing yanchu ‘Baimao nü’” [Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet ensemble gives first performance of The White-Haired Girl in Beijing], Guangming ribao [Guangming Daily], March 14, 1958.

72. Fengzi, “Zhu wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu” (Celebrate performance of The White-Haired Girl), Guangming ribao [Guangming Daily], March 19, 1958.

73. Fengzi, “Zhu wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu.”

74. Fengzi, “Zhu wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu.”

75. Fengzi, “Zhu wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu.”

76. Fengzi, “Zhu wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu.”

77. “Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen woguo” [Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet visits China], Renmin yinyue [People’s music] 1958, no. 4, 40.

78. Dai Ailian, “Zhuhe Songshan balei wutuan yanchu ‘Baimao nü’ chenggong” (Congratulate the Matsuyama Ballet’s successful performance of The White-Haired Girl), Dagong bao (Beijing) March 17, 1958.

79. Dai, “Zhuhe Songshan balei wutuan yanchu ‘Baimao nü’ chenggong.”

80. Dai, “Zhuhe Songshan balei wutuan yanchu ‘Baimao nü’ chenggong.”

81. He Jingzhi, “Huanying Riben de ‘Baimao nü’” [Welcome Japan’s The White-haired Girl], Xiju bao [Theater gazette] 1958, no. 6, 14.

82. He Jingzhi, “Huanying Riben de ‘Baimao nü.’”

83. He Jingzhi, “Huanying Riben de ‘Baimao nü.’”

84. Ajia, “Kan Riben balei wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu” [Watching the performance of Japan’s ballet The White-Haired Girl], Wenyi bao [Literary gazette] 1958, no. 7, 30.

85. Ajia, “Kan Riben balei wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu,” 30.

86. Ajia, “Kan Riben balei wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu,” 31.

87. Ajia, “Kan Riben balei wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu,” 31.

88. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü.’”

89. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü,’” 13.

90. Brian DeMare, Mao’s Cultural Army: Drama Troupes in China’s Rural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

91. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü,’” 12.

92. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü,’” 13.

93. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü,’” 13.

94. Seraphim, “People’s Diplomacy.”

95. Jiutianjingzi and Chen, “‘Baimao nü’ dao le Riben,” 27.

96. Jiutianjingzi and Chen, “‘Baimao nü’ dao le Riben,” 27.

97. “Baimao nü yingpian zai Riben,” 88.

98. “Baimao nü yingpian zai Riben,” 88.

99. “Riben shangyan balei wuju ‘Baimao nü.’”

100. “Balei wuju ‘Baimao nü’ zai Riben shangyan.”

101. Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen Zhongguo yanchu, 12.

102. Fengzi, “Zhu wuju ‘Baimao nü’ de yanchu”; Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü.’”

103. “Riben Songshan balei wutuan fangwen woguo.”

104. He, “Huanying Riben de ‘Baimao nü.’”

105. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü,’” 13.

106. Tian, “Riben Songshan balei wutuan he tamen de ‘Baimao nü,’” 13.

107. Radtke, China’s Relations with Japan, 1945–83, 121–24.

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