“The objective of mature onnagata…is to attain the highest expression of their art, but this militates against any attempt to assume a different gender on stage. We should not think of onnagata as being female impersonators in the sense that they are trying to become women on the stage. A more accurate image would be of highly trained and skilled actors who historically have done their utmost to act their female parts in a way that has satisfied the expectations of their mixed-sex audiences, but who are not necessarily transvestite or indeed uniform in their sexual preferences.” (Powell 2005)
It is evidently clear that in Western society when gender roles are subverted in theatre, the director has made a conscious decision to alter the expected sex of one their characters. Common examples of this are Japanese directors who have staged shows in Western culture but consciously subverted the roles. Ninagawa Yukio cast a male in the part of Medea in a Japanese production of the play in Edinburgh and Athens. Suzuki Tadashi has directed an all-male King Lear and has also cast a woman as the Danish prince in a production of Hamlet (Edmonds 1992). In such productions it is usually clear that these changes have been made due to theories of sexual politics and are seen to be “subverting received perceptions of the role concerned, subverting theatrical norms in cultures where cross-dressing is the exception, subverting accepted gender relationships based on male/female dichotomy” (Shaw and Ardener 2005). Yet in forms of Japanese theatre such as kabuki there is a distinct difference to those that intentionally chose to cross-dress and become ‘unconventional’, wherein kabuki is completely conventional in a theatre culture where traditionally conventions are quite powerful. How though does this affect and reflect societal view?
In modern day Japan social cross-dressing has been deemed immoral and has been viewed with great suspicion, and in 1873 it was, by regulation, forbid in Tokyo (Pflugfelder 1999: 152). It most definitely has been associated with homosexuality, to which attitudes, over time, have changed dramatically due to Western influence. At times, for the previous two centuries, male-male sexual activity was discussed in the same terms as male-female sexual activity but it then became an ‘evil custom of the past’ and was to be banished from modern Japan. Homosexuals became subject to criminalisation and discrimination in much the same way as in Christian, Western societies in the first half of the twentieth century (McLelland 2000: 245). In Japan, the media constantly portray an image of homosexuality as essentially involving aspects of transgenderism, mostly that of wanting to appear as the opposite of one’s biological sex (McLelland 2000: 9), subverting their gender ‘role’ and shedding their masculinity through what is seen to be a lack of self-respect:
“People in Japan deny all the way about the normalization of gay cultures. It is always strange and weird in everyone’s mind when thinking about gay’s in general. I am forced not to discuss any matters that relate to gay people at work because talking about it makes people uncomfortable.” (cited in McLelland 2003: 70)
But one cannot simply pinpoint this sudden crisis for male masculinity in Japan to the theatre or its conventions. As Yu (2001: 131) notes, this predicament and jarred perception of not only Japanese men, but Asian men in general, stems from a variety of different reasons:
“Although often portrayed as sexual threats to white women, Asian men were also emasculated by stereotypes of passivity and weakness. The image of the Chinese laundryman and domestic worker or Japanese flower gardener, willing to do ‘women’s work’ that no self-respecting white man would perform, served to feminize the portrayal of Oriental men.”
It seems though that theatre is distinctly separate from this idea of ‘taboo’ relations and cross-dressing. Historically it was exempt from the anti-cross-dressing regulation of 1870s and the notion had rarely been assumed through common dissertation that the onnagata’s occupation had any reflection or influence on his sexuality. However this did change slightly during the early part of the twentieth century due to a delicate shift in official attitudes towards homosexuality but all in all performance still seems to be considered separate and viewed as a comparatively contained area of activity (Shaw and Ardener 2005). McLelland (44), a contemporary observer of Japan, states that “when cross-dressing takes place in specific social spaces such as the television, the entertainment world, and entertainment areas…Japanese people are reluctant to read this as an expression of sexual identity, preferring to see it as an individual’s act or performance.” It can easily be said that the obtaining of conventions in all genres of modern Japanese theatre, especially in kabuki and more ritualistically and spiritually in nō, are abundant and highly binding to certify that most who see it view performance as performance.
“[Japanese Buddhist priests] are drawn to sins against nature and don’t deny it, they acknowledge it openly. This evil, moreover, is so public, so clear to all, men and women, young and old, and they are so used to seeing it, that they are neither depressed nor horrified.” (Francis Xavier 1549) It is can be seen, through much historical evidence, that homosexuality and the feminization of Japanese men was occurring long before, during, and after the height of theatre styles such as kabuki. Whether or not this was a blatant crisis for male masculinity is hard to say. Homosexuality, or a better term for it, male love, was a common tradition. The love of chigo (a boy aged 10 to 17) by Buddhist priests was customary and widely accepted as was the love of wakashu (a youth aged 13 to 20) by samurai warriors It wasn’t until heavy Western influence did the Japanese people begin to see male-male sexual activity as ‘wrong’ and an ‘evil doing’. So then could it be said that in fact there was no inherent problem with homosexuality in Japan nor were the walls of masculinity destructively crumbling down? It could though perhaps be acknowledged that theatre was not a direct cause of this view and crisis but instead a humble and widely enjoyed reflection of it and the world it encumbered.
References
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Dunn, C.J and Bunzo Torigoe. 1969. The Actor’s Analects. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Edmonds, J. 1992. ‘Princess Hamlet’. In The New Woman and her Sisters, Feminism and Theatre 1850-1914. Gardner, V. and S. Ruthford (eds). Hemel Hempstead: Harvest Wheatsheaf.
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McLelland, M.J. 2000. Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan, Cultural Myths and Social Realities. Richmond: Curzon.
----. 2003. ‘Gay Men, Masculinity and the Media in Japan’. In Asian Masculinities: the meaning and practice of manhood in China and Japan. Louie, K. and M. Low (eds). London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
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Pflugfelder, G.M. 1999. Cartographies of Desire, Male-male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Powell, B. 2005. ‘Cross-dressing on the Japanese Stage’. In Changing Sex and Bending Gender, Shaw, A. and S. Ardener. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Shaw, A. and S. Ardener. 2005. Changing Sex and Bending Gender. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Yu, H. 2001. Thinking Orientals: Migration, contact and exoticism in Modern America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
