A Kabuki Pose in Sculptures of Auguste Rodin

Abstract

Hanako (Ōta Hisa, 1868–1945) was an insignificant member of a small Japanese theatrical troupe when she was discovered by the well-known dancer, Loïe Fuller, who after seeing Hanako’s death scene, decided to become her impresario. Thereafter, Fuller organised each of Hanako’s European tours and wrote for her many Japanese-style dramas that always ended with the cruel but utterly expressive death of the protagonist. Hanako met Auguste Rodin, the famous sculpture, at the Marseille Colonial Exhibition in 1906. The master was fascinated by Hanako’s performance and tried to sculpt the ‘death face’ that she expressed during her death scenes. This face, with a weird expression, was most probably a nirami, which is a type of mie pose in kabuki theatre. Rodin created numerous busts and faces from different materials trying to capture the emblematic moment when Hanako saw death. The present paper examines the short but interesting period of Hanako’s Western career, focusing on her meeting with Rodin. I use their story as a unique and symbolic illustration of Japanese artists’ efforts to transform themselves and their art to ‘match’ the Western eye and of the ways in which the West was looking for verification of its preconceptions of the ‘strange’ and ‘exotic’ East in the early 1900s.