Ambivalent mimicry in Enomoto Kenichi's wartime comedy: His revue and Blackface

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article discusses blackface performance used by Japanese comedian Enomoto Kenichi, also known as Enoken, in late 1920s and mid-1930s theatre and film. I examine his blackface performances, giving two examples — Negro Comic Dance, one of the varieties danced to the newly imported American jazz in his first troupe Casino Folies; and his musical comedy film, A Millionaire-Continued (1936). I ask why Enoken adopted blackface, a form of racist caricature by white people emphasizing stereotypes of black people, in his wartime comedy. I question whether Enoken's mimicry of Euro-American-born blackface, though using himself as the laughing stock, is inculpable due to his ignorance of slave history, the absence of American social memory in his mind, or a more productive, cross-cultural representation of the black diaspora celebrating blackness. The article also pinpoints Japan's racial mimicry and Japanese orientalism, associated with its imperialist goals in war propaganda theatre and still active in the contemporary Japanese show business industry.