In “Act I” Japan appears as a “performer” and the Monarchy as a mere “observer”. The earliest and most frequent encounters between inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and “flesh-and-blood” Japanese came about through the medium of theatre. In 1866, Japan repealed the ban on its citizens leaving the country, in force since 1639, and issued its first international passports. The decision was aimed mainly at boosting trade and at obtaining information from abroad, but it also led to the first overseas tours by Japanese performing troupes, as new and profitable markets opened up before them. The earlier performing troupe, the so-called “Dragon Company”, which included artistes, jongleurs and acrobatic entertainers of all kinds, reached Budapest as early as 1868, even before the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Monarchy. To the best of our present knowledge, not less than twenty Japanese groups performed in the central-European region. The main aim of circus productions was to make people gasp, laugh and cringe with fear, provoking all the instinctive human reactions, and entertaining without any particular message. Unlike Western performing artistes with similar repertoires, the appeal of the Japanese troupes was the very fact that they were Japanese, with their uncustomary behaviour and their exotic features and costumes turning their productions into “something different”.

 

While the circus-type performances that were seen only a few times in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy undoubtedly had an influence, a far greater impact on local audiences was exerted by Japanese companies who toured Europe with shows featuring traditional elements of Japanese theatre (mostly kabuki), adapted to suit Western tastes. The first one was officially known in the West as the Imperial Japanese Theatrical Company, but everybody remembered the name of their leading female actress, the ex-geisha and wife of the troupe’s head, Kawakami Sadayakko (also spelt Sada Yacco). After the success gained at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900 under the management of the famous dancer Loïe Fuller, Kawakami’s troupe set for a tour across Europe, which also crossed the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In the course of a month they performed in Vienna, Prague, Graz, Zagreb, Budapest, Temesvár, Lwów and Kraków. Loïe Fuller, having launched Kawakami’s company on its stellar career, immediately began to look around for a new protégée, and she soon found her in Copenhagen: a former geisha who was no longer in full youth or beauty, but who could “die” extremely convincingly. Ōta Hisa found fame under the stage name of Hanako (“flower child”), and between 1901 and 1916 she toured the stages of Europe and America, appearing several times in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Between 1908 and 1914, she performed at more than twenty venues, sometimes even in a less central location such as Nyíregyháza, Nagykároly [Carei, Romania], or Stanisławów [Stanislau, now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine]. The tense and almost unfailingly tragic stories performed by the two theatrical companies lead by two female figures, while maintaining an element of spectacle similarly to the previously introduced circus performances, through the fusion of traditional Japanese theatre, modern stage elements and some melodrama, touched the psyche more deeply. Contemporary audiences were thus presented with a dichotomous, entertaining and dramatic image of Japan.

 

In Act II Japan appears as “subject” and the Monarchy stays in its passive, contemplative role. Besides the touring productions of Japanese companies, works on Japanese themes were also created by many a Western author, in which they effectively, albeit stereotypically, disseminated awareness of what Japan and its people were like, featuring samurais and geishas, tea houses, Shinto gates, lanterns and cherry blossom. To the best of our knowledge, the earliest Western piece on a Japanese theme to be presented in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was the French opéra comique Kosiki (1876) by Alexandre Charles Lecocq, William Busnach and Armand Liorat, which premiered as “Koziki” at the People’s Theatre (Népszínház) in Budapest on 27 April 1877, starring, among others, Lujza Blaha. Japanese-themed musical stage shows from abroad, such as the The Mikado (1885), The Geisha, or a Story of a Teahouse (1896), or even the opera Madama Butterfly (1904) conquered the hearts of operetta fans, and were perhaps even more influential than the touring Japanese companies when it came to shaping people’s perceptions of Japan and their knowledge (however partial or erroneous) about the Japanese. The late, wide-reaching offshoots of nineteenth-century Romanticism and European orientalism, which satisfied a longing for escape and a hunger for the exotic, were actually the (not completely unfounded) figments of Western imagination. Popular pieces on Japanese themes formed part of the standard repertoire both for travelling companies and for those based at particular theatres. Thanks to the fashion for Japonisme, Vienna, Budapest and the other major cities in the Monarchy could keep step with current trends in theatre, an important matter of cultural prestige at the time.

 

In Act III the Monarchy finally emerges in the role of “creator”: the maker of Japan-themed theatrical performances. The physical and cultural accessibility of Japan and the success of Western performances based on Japanese themes prompted impresarios, dramatists and composers throughout the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to craft similar pieces of their own. In this part of the paper I am introducing internationally lesser known dance musicals, operas and dramas, such as The Magic Vase [A csodaváza], a ballet which found its way to the stage of Teatro alla Scala, Typhoon [Taifun] a drama of Japanese modernisation and Urashima [Urasima], a one-act play born in 1918, in the prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia at the twilight of the Monarchy. Such a colourful collection of the creative output of the Monarchy about Japan will help us understand the important role this country and its culture occupied in everyday life of Central-European people a century ago.

 

During the fifty-year period when the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy existed, Japan was a constant presence on the country’s stages, thanks to travelling companies, successful plays imported from abroad, and home-grown works. An intensely visual, albeit stereotypical image of Japan found its way into every corner of the Monarchy, including its smaller cities, mostly due to touring companies, who put on exotic pieces that were sure to draw a crowd. Japanese themes appeared in almost every genre of theatre, and this wide-ranging variety offered something for everyone, from circus spectacles, cabarets and parodies, through popular operettas and song-and-dance shows, to high drama and opera. Nineteenth-century works of theatrical Japonisme tended to focus on myths and clichés, but after the turn of the century, efforts were made to provide a more nuanced and realistic picture of Japan, which was not afraid even to deal with current political events. The interest in Japan that reached such heights in the world of Austro-Hungarian theatre was directed less towards Japanese performing arts than it was towards the country itself, its people and its culture. Although the examination of theatrical Japonisme in the Monarchy concludes in 1918 with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the phenomenon itself carried on in the history of theatre, and research can now continue into the presence of Japanese themes in the interwar period in the individual successor nations.