Henry Black

On Stage in Meiji Japan

Ian McArthur

• Publisher: Monash University Publishing
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781921867514
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Unique among foreigners in nineteenthcentury Japan, Australianborn professional storyteller (rakugoka) Henry Black (1858–1923) enthralled audiences with his adaptations of novels by Charles Dickens, Mary Braddon and Fortuné de Boisgobey. These tales, later produced as books, brought notions of European modernity to many ordinary Japanese. Black also acted kabuki roles, managed an orchestra, performed magic and hypnotism, lived with his Japanese male lover, drank heavily, and practised tea ceremony. His voice was recorded for the London Gramophone Company on the first discshaped recordings made in Japan. In the 1870s Black joined the prodemocracy movement, promoting equal rights and an elected assembly. His later affiliation with the San'yu guild of storytellers, under the professional name of Kairakutei Burakku, enabled him to promote the movement's aims through his stories. He became a naturalised Japanese, and was shunned by his own family. This is the first fulllength Englishlanguage account of Henry Black. Translating Black's narrated adaptations and drawing on newspapers and diary entries, Ian McArthur demonstrates Black's individual contribution to the modernisation of Meijiera (1868–1912) Japan.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Acknowledgements
• Title page
• Imprint page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Author’s note
• Introduction: ‘The first foreigner on the Japanese boards’
• Ch 1 In the beginning
• Ch 2 Old Japan – New Japan
• Ch 3 The move to Tokyo
• Ch 4 A novice on the stage
• Ch 5 The activist years, 1878–1886
• Ch 6 From English teacher to 'rakugoka'
• Ch 7 In the golden age of the narrators
• Ch 8 Adapting European sensation fiction
• Ch 9 Sensation fiction as modernity
• Ch 10 Adapting Dickens: dystopia and modern life
• Ch 11 Face creams and tooth powder
• Ch 12 Narrating the Meiji woman
• Ch 13 Learning from the great Danjūrō
• Ch 14 A question of identity: the ‘imported Japanese’
• Ch 15 The uncertain years, 1895–1900
• Ch 16 Saved by new technology
• Ch 17 The end of an era, 1908
• Ch 18 No different from a Japanese
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover