#rokumeikan

[In case anyone at all is following this tumblr, I’m back to writing about Takako Shimura’s manga Sweet Blue Flowers, continuing my discussion of the Fujigaya Women’s Academy production of Yukio Mishima’s 1956 play Rokumeikan.]

Asako Kageyama is the tragic heroine of Rokumeikan. Asako was a geisha when she met her former lover Einiosuke Kiyohara, and then was elevated to the aristocracy by her marriage to Count Kageyama. Such marriages were apparently not uncommon in the Meiji Era, as leading politicians looking to host social gatherings sought out geisha used to dealing with men in a social context, making them their mistresses or (as in the case of Prime Minister Hirobumi Itō) their wives.

If this was Count Kageyama’s intention in marrying Asako, it was thwarted: Asako proved to be a retiring sort, apparently never venturing outside the Kageyama estate, and certainly not to the Rokumeikan: “I’m such an old-fashioned woman, I can’t possibly go to such a fashionable place.”

But she does go to the Rokumeikan, in an effort to save the life of her son Hisao, previously bent on the assassination of Einosuke Kiyohara, his father and Asako’s former lover. Her effort comes to naught: Hisao dies, shot by his father. It is strongly implied that Kiyohara dies as well, killed by Count Kageyama’s henchman Tobita. Asako herself is left to live out her life with Count Kageyama, in a marriage from which all illusions of love and tenderness have been stripped, with only raw power and resentment remaining.

Asako, more than Kiyohara, Hisao, or Akiko, is thus the great tragic figure of Rokumeikan. Akiko is young and still has the possibility of findling happiness. Hisao and Kiyohara are beyond all feeling. But Asako has only a life without hope stretching ahead of her.

Sweet Blue Flowers is a comedy, not a tragedy, but if anyone in the manga can be said to be a tragic figure it is Kyoko Ikumi. It is therefore fitting that Shimura selected her to play Asako. She does not look the part—her short brown hair totally unlike Asako’s long black hair—but otherwise she fits the role to a T, with her reticence, old-fashioned air, unhappy past, troubled present, and uncertain future. As I previously wrote of Kyoko, “If this were a traditional [class S] story presumably the only suspense would be whether her remaining life would be short and unhappy, or long and unhappy.”

In her dissertation on Rokumeikan Mami Harano rhetorically asks why Japanese audiences would continue to flock to a play in which power wins and the heroine loses. Harano’s answer is that audiences see in Asako someone who breaks the bonds of convention and dares to love: to engage in romantic love with her illicit lover Kiyohara, and show maternal love toward her illegitimate son Hisao.

People often speak of “the power of love”. In Rokumeikan love has no power, at least in terms of the outworking of the plot. But it still has the power to move us. As Harano writes, “Observing all of the contradictions in her life and seeing all the unfairness and inequality in the world, audiences feel empathy with Asako ...” I think the same can be said of Kyoko in Sweet Blue Flowers. Her life is messed up, her mother ill and dependent, her hoped-for relationship with Yasuko thwarted, and her ongoing relationship with Ko in trouble, but she at least has her friendship with Akira, and our sympathy as readers.

Although Akira is one of the most important characters in Sweet Blue Flowers, the character Akiko that she plays in Rokumeikan is one of lesser importance---not exactly a bit part, but not a major role by any means. With Ryoko Ueda we have the reverse: the character she plays, Einosuke Kiyohara, is arguably the second or third most important in Rokumeikan (after Asako and comparable to Count Kageyama), but Ueda herself is one of the lesser characters in Sweet Blue Flowers.

First, a bit about Kiyohara: In the play he is described as “the leader of the opposition group”, a group described as “the remnants of the Liberal Party”. One of the first political parties in Japan, the Liberal Party (自由党 Jiyūtō) was formed in 1881 as an outgrowth of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement (自由民権運動 Jiyū Minken Undō), one of Japan’s first mass political and social movements. Both the movement and the party advocated for democratically-elected legislatures, though with the electorate restricted to the former samurai and nobility. The Liberal Party was disbanded in 1884 (hence “the remnants of ...”),

Kiyohara’s son Hisao decribes him as “An impeccable idealist. A figure like a leader of the French Revolution. A genuine liberal. ... A believer in Rousseau, a Japanese Jacobin, a man who doesn’t give a damn about his life for liberty and equality ....” Kiyohara was possibly modeled on Taisuke Itagaki, one of the founders of the real-life Liberal Party, who with his colleagues wrote a manifesto modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence (“We, the thirty millions of people in Japan are all equally endowed with certain definite rights ....”). Like Kiyohara, Itagaki was the victim of an assassination attempt, in his case unsuccessful, after which he allegedly cried “Itagaki may die, but liberty never!”

In the play Kiyohara is less successful in his personal life: he neglects Hisao in favor of his legitimate children, and does not speak to Asako in the twenty years after their affair. Though the meeting with Asako rekindles her love for him, Hisao’s resentment continues and drives him first to plan to kill his father, and then in the end to die by his father’s hand in a perverse act of revenge upon him.

Unlike the case of Akiko and Akira, there are no real parallels between Ueda and Kiyohara. To the extent Ueda is characterized at all (which is not much compared to even secondary characters like Kyoko or Haruka), it is by explicit and implicit comparisons to Yasuko Sugimoto.

Like Yasuko, Ueda is tall and handsome, and like Yasuko eminently suitable for playing the part of a leading man. Also like Yasuko (whom Mr. Kagami nicknamed the “library maiden”) Ueda spends her time reading in Fujigaya’s library, and in fact was discovered there by Haruka acting out the parts of Kiyohara and Asako from Rokumeikan (in omnibus volume 2). Unlike Yasuko Ueda has long hair, but then Yasuko had longer hair too (though not as long as Ueda’s) before she cut it off in an attempt to emulate her sister Kazusa’s “tough personality”.

My conclusion is that Takako Shimura introduced the character of Ueda primarily to fill the slot left open by the departure of Yasuko as the “prince” of Fujigaya. She acts opposite Asako as Yasuko did opposite Kawasaki in omnibus volume 1, and like Yasuko inspires admiration and crushes in the younger girls. She is this year’s star, as Yasuko was “last year’s star”. However unlike Yasuko Ueda doesn’t appear to have any major hang-ups, other than a bit of shyness. That makes her a better friend for Akira, Kyoko, and Fumi, but it does tend to make her somewhat bland and underdeveloped as a character. Whether that will change in the last omnibus volume remains to be seen.

A final note about Ryoko Ueda’s name, since I may not have occasion to discuss her again: Ueda’s character description on page 183 of omnibus volume 2 of Sweet Blue Flowers (the beginning of volume 4 of the Japanese edition) says that “Her name reminds me of a place name. ... or I am just imagining that?” and advises the reader “Try googling my name!” The end notes in omnibus volume 2 claim that “There is a bus stop in Gifu Prefecture that uses the same kanji as Ryoko Ueda [上田 良子] but is pronounced differently.”

Having discussed the plot and setting of Rokumeikan, now we come to the actual performance depicted in Sweet Blue Flowers. In that performance Akira Okudaira plays Akiko Daitokuji, the young daughter of Marchioness Sueto Daitokuji, and the lover of Hisao Kiyohara.

Like almost all the characters in Rokumeikan, Akiko is a member of the Japanese aristocracy. As a marchioness her mother is the wife of a marquess, the second highest rank in the hierarchy of Japanese noble families (kazoku) established in the early Meiji era to replace the traditional imperial court nobles (kuge) and feudal lords (daimyō).

Akiko’s social status may thus seem far above that of Akira, but it’s worth noting that at least some of Akira’s ancestors may have been equally high-born: the family name Okudaira is shared by Nobumasa Okudaira, a feudal lord who fought with Ieyasu Tokugawa and Nobunaga Oda in the wars that established the Tokugawa shogunate. Tokugawa gave his eldest daughter in marriage to Okudaira, so it’s possible that Akira herself is descended from one of the most important figures in Japanese history.

Akiko is also the youngest character in Rokumeikan. Her age is not given in the play, but my guess is that she is around 16 or 17 years old, or in other words about the same age as Akira. Since the play takes place in 1886 Akiko would thus be a “Meiji girl” in the same sense that Akira is a “Heisei girl”: born in the new era and knowing nothing of life before it, in contrast to all the other characters in the play.

It’s therefore no coincidence that Akiko is the character most in tune with the new spirit of Meiji Japan, and the one who looks most to the West rather than to traditional Japan. As her mother says, “she loves radical things”. Hisao is one of those “radical things”, “[not] a man of the lower class, but … on the side of that class.” Akiko first meets him not at an arranged meeting but rather by chance at a performance of “Charine’s circus horses” (“Their names were Fugal and Beaumiteau”, she recalls), where Hisao picks up the European imported handbag her mother had accidentally dropped.

That evening at the Rokumeikan Akiko’s plan is to leave Japan in the morning with Hisao on a trip to Europe arranged by her mother, to return only when (or if?) her father gives her permission to marry. It’s not clear if Akiko’s mother intends to accompany the couple; if not this would be a decided breach of social norms on Akiko’s part: not only to refuse an arranged marriage and marry for love, but to travel alone with a man not her husband or father. Similarly Akira is considering her own breach of contemporary Japanese social norms in considering a relationship with Fumi.

In her disregard for social norms Akiko is not condemned by her mother and her friends, but rather receives their support. They too seem to welcome “this new wonderful age”, as Akiko’s mother’s friends call it, “this age where women are able to bask in the sun for the first time in hundreds of years”. It is to help Akiko that her mother requests Asako meet with Hisao, the event that kicks off the action of the play. As her mother says, in a key line quoted in Sweet Blue Flowers, “I want my daughter to experience a full life in the new era, and have the life that I never had.” So too will Akira’s friends support her in her own “new era”, though she initially fears they will not.

As discussed above, Takako Shimura plays up the parallels between Akira and the character she plays. Even their names are similar, though with an interesting twist: Akiko’s name has the conventional -ko (子) ending used for girls’ given names in Japan, while Akira’s name is (if Wikipedia is any guide) more traditionally used for boys and men (e.g,, the film director Akira Kurosawa). It’s possible that Shimura chose this name specifically to echo that of Akiko, and to emphasize how Akira might go beyond Akiko in violating the strictures Japanese society has historically placed on women.

Takako Shimura’s use of Yukio Mishima’s 1956 play Rokumeikan in omnibus volume 3 of Sweet Blue Flowers is probably the best example of her fondness for using theatrical plays as elements in her manga. The interplay between the events and characters of the play and the events and characters of the manga contributes to that volume being overall the most excellent of the series.

The bits of the play presented in Sweet Blue Flowers are somewhat fragmentary. Shimura assumes a readership familiar with at least the basic outline of the play and its main characters. The play itself is available in an English translation by Hiroaki Sato (as part of the collection My Friend Hitler and Other Plays of Yukio Mishima), and for anyone interested I highly recommend seeking it out.

For those not willing or able to take the time to read the play, or daunted by the cost of the book, here’s a summary of the plot:

Act 1. On the Emperor’s birthday, November 3, 1886, a group of aristocratic women gather at a teahouse on the estate of Count Kageyama, a high-ranking government minister, and watch the military review being held in the Emperor’s honor. (This first scene is also the first depicted in the manga, on pages 233-235 of omnibus volume 2.) They are joined by Kageyama’s wife Asako (played by Kyoko Ikumi in the performance depicted in Sweet Blue Flowers), an ex-geisha elevated to the aristocracy by her marriage who is uncomfortable with her new status and never appears in public.

One of the women appeals to Asako on behalf of her daughter Akiko (played by Akira Okudaira) and her lover Hisao, a supporter of the opposition party whom Akiko fears will disrupt that night’s ball at the Rokumeikan and attempt to assassinate Kageyama. Perturbed at hearing Hisao’s name, Asako agrees to help, and after the ladies depart she sends to him to meet with her.

Asako reveals to Hisao that she is his mother by her former lover Kiyohara, leader of the opposition party, who took Hisao in after his birth. Hisao expresses his resentment of his father’s neglect of him and of his treatment compared to Kiyohara’s legitimate children, and reveals that he plans to kill not Kageyama but Kiyohara.

Act 2. After Hisao leaves Asako reaches out to Kiyohara (played by Ryoku Ueda) and he meets with her at the teahouse. She tells him she knows about the plan to disrupt the ball, and urges him to abandon it. Kiyohara resists, until she tells him that she plans to leave her private sphere and attend the ball herself.

Kiyohara leaves as Kageyama and his retainer Tobita enter the scene. Overheard by Asako, their conversation reveals that Kageyama knows about  the plot to disrupt the ball and, with Tobita as his intermediary, is the mastermind behind Hisao’s plan to kill Kiyohara. (The bloodthirsty Tobita protests that he himself was not given the task of assassination.)

Asako reveals herself and tells Kageyama that in fact there will be no disturbance at the ball, and after Tobita leaves tells Kageyama of her own plans to attend. She then urges Kageyama to persuade Hisao to abandon his plan to kill his father, explaining her interest as simply that of helping a friend’s daughter.

Kageyama agrees, on condition that the ball not be disrupted. Immediately upon Asako leaving he grabs her maid Kusano and forces himself upon her.

Act 3. At the Rokumeikan before the ball, Akiko and Hisao talk of Asako’s role in bringing Hisao to the ball and then kiss, after which Asako enters and busies herself with directing the workmen decorating the rooms.  Meanwhile Kageyama, having seduced Kusano with the promise of his favor, extracts from her the information that Asako is Hisao’s mother and Kiyohara’s former lover.

After conversing briefly with Asako, Kageyama seeks out Tobita and tells him that plans have changed: since the original plot to disrupt the ball was called off by Kiyohara, Tobita should now arrange a disruption himself. Kageyama then tells Kusano to summon Kiyohara to the Rokumeikan that evening in Asako’s name.

Akiko and Hisao talk of their plans to elope together and leave for a foreign tour. Kageyama interrupts them and upbraids Hisao for his giving in to romance and abandoning his plans, explaining that (contrary to what Asako told Hisao) a break-in will in fact occur and the (unnamed) target of Hisao’s assassination plot will be present on the grounds outside the Rokumeikan. Kageyama hands Hisao a pistol, which he accepts.

Kageyama rejoins Asako and her friends, and they drink a toast to the Emperor’s health (marred by the ill omen of Asako accidentally dropping her glass).

Act 4. As Asako, Kageyama, and their fellow aristocrats talk among themselves, the invited dignitaries begin to arrive at the ball, including the Prime Minister and various foreign guests. (Incidentally, Hirobumi Itō was the real-life Prime Minister in 1886 and is explicitly referred to as such in the play. It’s inexplicable to me why Mami Harono repeatedly refers to Kageyama as the Prime Minister in the paper “Anatomy of Mishima’s Most Successful Play Rokumeikan”.)

After the guests enter the ballroom, a report comes up from downstairs of men brandishing swords and destroying decorations. Asako goes to the head of the stairs and faces them down, after which Kageyama quietly directs Tobita to have the men withdraw. Meanwhile, thinking that his father has betrayed both him and Asako in ordering the plot to proceed, Hisao flies into a rage and leaves the building.

Soon thereafter shots are heard, and a distraught Kiyohara enters, explaining that Hisao is dead: Kiyohara was fired upon by an assailant hiding in the dark and fired back in self-defense, subsequently discovering that he had killed his son. Perceiving that Hisao had deliberately misdirected his shot, Kiyohara concludes that he wanted to be killed by his own father as a revenge upon him.

Kiyohara declares himself done with politics and sardonically congratulates Kageyama on achieving his goal of eliminating a political enemy. He also tells Asako that the men who broke into the Rokumeikan were not his own, declares that he kept his own promise (implying that Asako had not kept hers in calling him to the scene), declares he will never see her again, and exits.

Tobita exits as well (“with a conspiratorial air”, per the stage directions), as do Akiko and her mother after Asako attempts to comfort them, leaving Asako and Kageyama to face each other. Kageyama taunts Asako for believing in “fairy tales” of trust and cooperation between people, in ignorance of the real world of politics, while Asako accuses him of knowing and wanting nothing but power.

Before I get to the play Rokumeikan I think it’s useful to understand at least a bit of the historical context around it. The play is set in 1886 in the middle of the Meiji era (1868-1912), one of the most tumultuous and consequential periods in the history of Japan. The historical setting of Rokumeikan would be as familiar to modern Japanese schoolgirls like those at Fujigaya and Matsuoka as the Civil War period is to us in the U.S. (The first episode of the currently-airing anime Meiji Tokyo Renka, about a girl who time-travels back to the Meiji era, has a scene set at the Rokumeikan.)

Since this post is ultimately in the service of my commentary on Sweet Blue Flowers, I thought it appropriate to discuss the history of Meiji-era Japan and the Rokumeikan from the point of view of Sutematsu Yamakawa, Shige Nagai, and Ume Tsuda, the three ordinary girls whose extraordinary lives are documented in Janice Nimura’s book The Daughters of the Samurai. Sutematsu, the oldest of them, was born in 1860, only a few years after Commodore Matthew Perry and his “black ships” showed up in Tokyo harbor in 1853 demanding that Japan open its ports to the U.S.

With no navy and no national military the Tokugawa shogunate struggled to resist pressures from the U.S. and other countries, and in 1858 signed a series of “unequal treaties” that favored the various Western powers and impinged on Japanese sovereignty. Resentment of Western influence and long-standing grievances with the Tokugawas then led to a prolonged period of civil strife, ending in 1867-1868 with a civil war in which forces fighting in the name of the Emperor decisively defeated pro-government forces. Sutematsu, daughter of a mid-rank samurai on the losing side, was wounded by shrapnel in one of the final battles.

14-year-old Prince Mutsuhito became Emperor in 1867, with the new “Meiji” (”enlightened rule”) era proclaimed in 1868 with the fall of Edo (now Tokyo) and the formation of a new government populated by many energetic and relatively young mid-rank samurai. They embarked upon a crash course of importing Western knowledge, technology, and experts, with an eye towards making Japan a modern power as fast as possible.

One of those men, Kiyotaka Kuroda, had been impressed with American women while on a visit to the U.S., and conceived the fantastical idea of sending a group of Japanese girls to the U.S. for a ten-year stay in order to learn American ways and come back to educate a new generation of Japanese girls. After an initial recruitment effort failed, the government succeeded in finding five low-to-mid rank samurai families who had been on the losing side, were living in relative poverty, and were therefore willing to let their girls leave home so as not to have to support them.

The five girls left Japan in 1871 as part of the famous Iwakura mission along with a group of high-ranking government officials, scholars, and male students charged to visit foreign nations and bring back information of use to Japan. The oldest two of the girls returned to Japan due to ill health and homesickness, but Sutematsu Yamakawa (11 years old), Shige Nogai (10), and Ume Tsuda (6) found places with American families. They soon learned English, made close American friends, and became socialized in a manner typical of upper middle class American teenagers of the period.

While the girls were away Japan saw a blooming of intellectual discourse, the formation of grass-roots political movements, and the creation of nascent political parties, as elements within society and government contended over what political and cultural ideas and institutions were most appropriate for Japan.

The three girls returned in the early 1880s, Sutematsu Yamakawa having graduated from Vassar College (the first Japanese woman to receive an American college degree) and Shige Nogai having earned a certificate in music from Vassar. All three girls experienced severe culture shock, with Ume Tsuda having completely forgotten how to speak Japanese. They also found that foreign ideas were not quite as popular as when they left for America, as a conservative backlash was building.

Shige Nogai soon entered into a love match with a fellow Japanese student who had attended the U.S. Naval Academy, and went to work as a music teacher, continuing her career while bearing and raising her six children. (Some scholars contend that she’s depicted in the woodblock print above showing a dance at the Rokumeikan, the rightmost pianist to whom the other pianist seems to be looking for help in setting the tempo.) Her husband eventually became a Baron and Admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and she a Baroness.

Sutematsu Yamakawa struggled to find work suitable to her upbringing and education, and ended up accepting an offer of marriage from Iwao Ōyama, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, twenty years her senior, who was looking for a wife who was familiar with Western ways and could assist him in his political and diplomatic activities. Her husband later became Minister of War and she became a pillar of the Japanese aristocracy, advising the Empress herself on Western culture and fashion.

As Countess (later Princess) Ōyama she became known as the “Lady of the Rokumeikan” for her role in hosting events there after its construction in 1883. She also introduced American-style  philanthropy to Japan, including a charity bazaar held at the Rokumeikan. (This event was memorialized in a woodblock print by Toyohara Chikanobu, also the artist of the print shown above. Sutematsu and her daughter Hisako are apparently depicted in the center of the print.)

One of the major beneficiaries of Sutematsu’s philanthropy was Ume Tsuda, who had the worst time adjusting to life in Japan. She first obtained employment as a private tutor to the children of Hirobumi Itō, soon to become Japan’s first Prime Minister. She then taught at the Peeresses’ School, which Itō set up (with assistance from Countess Ōyama) to educate the daughters of the Imperial family and Japanese nobility. (Prestigious girls schools like Fujigaya Womens Academy would later offer an equivalent experience for the daughters of Japan’s upper and upper middle classes.)

Tsuda became frustrated by the conservatism of the Peeresses’ School and the expectations of her family and others that she marry. Due to her youth she had not been able to attend college while in America, and hence she applied for and was granted permission and funding to go back to the U.S. to complete her education. She enrolled at the recently-opened Bryn Mawr College for women and graduated with a bachelors degree. She then returned to Japan, having also found time to (anonymously) assist a friend in writing a book, Japanese Girls and Women, critical of Japanese laws and educational policies relating to girls and women.

After returning to Japan, after some time and with assistance from Countess Ōyama, Ume Tsuda was able to realize her dream of opening her own school, the Women's Institute for English Studies (女子英学塾 Joshi Eigaku Juku), with the goal of training teachers for Japan’s newly-mandated middle schools for girls. She was soon joined by Anna Cope Hartshorne, her close friend from Bryn Mawr who became her companion in both work and life. (Like Nobuko Yoshiya and her partner, Tsuda and Hartshorne bought a cottage together in Kamakura.)

Tsuda spent the last years of her life in ill health, living in Kamakura with Anna Hartshorne. After her death in 1929 her school was renamed in her honor, eventually becoming Tsuda College and then (more recently) Tsuda University. Hartshorne herself left Japan in 1940 on the brink of war, never to return. She died in 1957, a year after the first production of Rokumeikan and almost a century after the start of the Meiji era.

The Rokumeikan itself was long gone by then. Its use had declined with the rise of conservative sentiment and anti-Western feeling, and it was sold in 1890 to become a private club for the aristocracy. The building fell into disuse and was eventually demolished in 1941, as Japan went to war with the Western powers whose diplomats it had once invited to dance at the Rokumeikan.

A final thought: There’s an intriguing parallel between the three main 21st-century girls of Sweet Blue Flowers and the three 19th-century girls of Daughters of the Samurai. Kyoko resembles Sutematsu Yamakawa, thwarted in her original desire and falling back on a marriage with an older man of higher social status. We can only hope that Kyoko will find happiness in such a marriage, as Sutematsu apparently did in hers.

Fumi resembles Ume Tsuda, even to having a somewhat similar sounding given name. It’s clear that she will remain unmarried, as Ume did (unless marriage equality comes to Japan). Our hope for Fumi is that like Ume she will also find someone, whether Akira or another, who will be her lifelong companion.