Acting like a Woman in Modern Japan Theater, Gender and Nationalism [Hardcover]

Weaving together careful readings of plays and reviews, memoirs and interviews, biographies and critical essays, Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan traces the emergence of the first generation of modern actresses in Japan, a nation in which male actors had long dominated the public stage. What emerges is a colorful and complex picture of modern Japanese gender, theater, and nationhood. Using the lives and careers of two dominant actresses from the Meiji era, Kano reveals the fantasies, fears, and impact that women on stage created in Japan as it entered the twentieth century.PART I: SETTING THE STAGE Acting Like a Woman Modern Formations of Gender and Performance PART II: KAWAKAMI SADAYAKKO Wifeing the Woman Straightening the Theater Reproducing the Empire PART III: MATSUI SUMAKO A New Woman A New Theater Feminists and Femmes Fatales Epilogue: Revealing the Real Body

'A sophisticated analysis of the relationship between the 'new theater,' the 'new woman,' the new nation, and the new empire in turn of the twentieth-century Japan, engagingly told through the stories of the two actresses who pioneered women (rather than men) playing women's roles on the Japanese stage. A meaningful and mesmerizing book.' - Carol Gluck, Columbia University

AYAKO KANO is Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on Japanese theater, literature, and gender studies. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She is currently at work on a book about Japanese feminist debates.