‘Purification’ and ‘Hybridization’: (Re)construction and Reception of Theatrical Nationality in Western Tours of the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui Troupes in 1930

Abstract

The Western tours of the Mei Lanfang and Tsutsui troupes in 1930 illustrated how to (re)construct the theatrical nationality of China and Japan through the manifestation and manipulation of the performance of Peking opera and kabuki. Through the ‘purification’ of Peking opera's stage presentation system, the Mei Lanfang troupe forged a ‘pure’ theatrical Chineseness that boosted the Americans’ fascination with the ‘(a)historicality’ of Chinese theatrical tradition. By presenting Westerners with a ‘hybridized’ kabuki, which embodied a ‘historically authentic’ theatrical Japaneseness, the Tsutsui troupe deconstructed Westerners’ psychological expectations of a culturally imagined ‘pure’ and ‘classical’ Japanese theatre. As two sides of the same coin, the two troupes’ (re)construction of theatrical Chineseness and Japaneseness together challenged the West's essentialist views of cultural ‘Others’, which forcibly endowed Eastern theatre with a pure and unchanged ‘otherness’.