Kabuki's Forgotten War: 1931-1945

4.The Darkening Storm: 1939

c h a P t e r f ou r The Darkening Storm |  “Northern Advance” and “Southern Advance.” —Two slogans, 1939 Plays and films must “extol patriotic ideals.” —Conference statement, 1939 D uring 1939 the government exhibited a paralyzing ambivalence in national policy. Stalemated in China with no good end in sight, the army was obsessed with a Northern Advance (hokushin) policy aimed at Soviet Russia, its most hated enemy. The navy argued for a Southern Advance (nanshin) to gain access to Southeast Asia’s oil, rubber, and tin, raw materials essential to a modern war. Diplomacy was unmoored as well. Should Japan maintain its traditional friendship with Britain and the United States? Or should Japan’s tentative negotiations with Germany be pushed through to achieve a formal alliance with Europe’s strongest military power? Prime Minister Konoe and his cabinet resigned in January, having failed to resolve the China war. The next three Japanese cabinets would face problems that ranged far beyond Japan’s family quarrel with its Chinese neighbor. Japanese diplomats lobbied hard to sell the new Manchurian nation to Europe and America, without success (Fig. 4.1). In July, the United States declined to renew its existing commercial treaty with Japan, making American trade restrictions possible. In August, Germany signed a stunning nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus rendering meaningless Japan’s Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany. Within a week, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, and Germany was at war with Britain and France. A week later, on September 8, 1939, President Roosevelt declared a state of limited emergency in the United States. Because of indecisive leadership and an inability to control outside events, none of Japan’s grave military and domestic issues were decided in 1939. American public opinion had turned increasingly hostile to Japan through the 1930s. The majority view of the Western democracies was that Japan had instigated the China Incident at the Marco Polo Bridge, and Japanese armies The Darkening Storm | 95 were pursuing unlimited aggression on the continent. The New York World’s Fair in 1939 presented a precious opportunity for Japan to show its gentle side to the international community and thereby shore up its damaged reputation. American fair planners requested a bunraku puppet theater company, while in Tokyo, the World’s Fair Japan Day Committee considered a group of sumo wrestlers as cultural envoys. In the end the Tokyo committee decided that a Takarazuka Young Women’s Musical Troupe of one hundred dancers and singers would be “the most suitable.” A Takarazuka troupe coming directly from Japan would perform at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco before going on to New York to join a second Takarazuka troupe that was in the midst of an extended tour of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (twenty-six cities in ninety days). The joint troupe would give lavish performances at the New York World’s Fair in April, “the aim of which, particularly in this time of war, will be to introduce Japan’s majestic art.”1 Apparently the committee did not consider kabuki for the role of cultural ambassador. Perhaps the gentler quality of female performance suited the propaganda aims of the Office of Information and the Foreign Ministry better than all-male kabuki.2 The Japan Day committee carefully selected a program they believed would appeal to a foreign audience: four delicate female dances and a musical play, Outsider Okichi, about the young housemaid (and mistress?) who was forced to minister to the needs of Townsend Harris, the first American envoy to Japan. The Foreign Ministry immediately objected to Outsider Okichi, saying Fig. 4.1. The Manchurian Pavilion of Industry in Tokyo was constructed in contemporary international style, illustrating the government’s contention that Manchuria had become modern and prosperous under Japanese tutelage. (Author’s collection) 96 | kabuki’s foreign adventure that American audiences would certainly not like this play “whose truthfulness cannot be determined.” Since this was the last thing government sponsors wished for, the play was withdrawn (Fig. 4.2).3 Kabuki Unsettled For kabuki, 1939 was a year of uncertainty and flux. The previous year Shōchiku and Tōhō had concluded hard negotiations to respect each other’s theatrical troupes and contract actors. Although the companies were ferocious competitors , they made this difficult arrangement “to serve the cause of patriotic entertainment in this time of national emergency.”4 Within a year, that hardfought...