Female Entertainers
Japan
In the 7th century, some of the girls whose families who had been displaced by war earned money for sexual services, but with enough education or dancing skills they could entertain and maintain their virginity. By the late 8th century, when the Imperial Court moved Japan’s capital to Kyoto, skilled female performers created the traditions of female dance and performance that lasted through the early 17th century.
In 1603, at age twenty-five, Izumo no Okuni became the mother of kabuki due to her beauty and talented dancing. Previously, she was for several years a shrine maiden (miko) who performed sacred dances and songs for ladies of the Imperial Court. Large crowds supported her all-female recruits, who portrayed characters of both sexes. Izumo had mentored these women, some of whom were prostitutes, from the lower classes. In 1629, however, women were banned due to the prevalence of prostitution among the actresses and violent quarrels among the patrons who competed for their favors. Regardless, prostitution and quarreling continued, though solely over the male actors—especially those who could convincingly appear as women. By 1642, men were forbidden to portray women, but were allowed to play homosexual men.
During the periods when women couldn’t legally perform, many simply ignored the rules. Others submitted to mizuage—the actuality or pretense of having their virginity bid upon through their sponsor, who took the entire payment. This practice often qualified the former virgin, or alleged virgin, to become a geisha. Mizuage was not outlawed until 1956.
Kabuki, today’s traditional Japanese theater, was codified in the 14th century and remains a male-only venue. One lame excuse for the ban against women is that they wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand the many heavy robes and weighty masks required. Even in Japan’s 19th and early 20th-century movies, only men performed female roles. Not until 1911 did a Japanese woman play a female screen character, and that was in an American-based theatre.
Tokuko Takagi was born in 1891. At age fifteen she married a fellow Japanese. They moved to America, and in 1910 Tokuko sang at the Manhattan Opera House. From 1911 through 1912 she acted in four silent films, but complained, “They want me to play just like a Japanese girl Americans imagine.” In 1914 she returned to Japan due to the outbreak of World War I. In 1915 she danced at Japan’s Imperial Theatre as Japan’s first dancer in toe shoes. While on tour in Japan in 1919, she died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at age twenty-eight.
Tsuru Aoki was another Japanese actress influenced by America. Having arrived in San Francisco with her uncle and his geisha wife in 1899, Tsuru lived in America from age seven through thirty-one. All three performed with her uncle’s troupe of actors. People were smitten by Tsuru’s “daintiness.” She later studied ballet in New York. Back in California, she performed in Los Angeles’s Japanese Theatre. In 1913, a film producer signed her to a contract for her first film; a second followed in 1914—the same year Tsuru married heartthrob movie star Sessue Hayakawa. The glamorous couple appeared together in more than twenty of Tsuru’s forty-six films. In 1924 she completed her last silent film and then retired to raise their three children.
In 1960, at age sixty-eight, both Tsuru and her husband appeared in her one and only “talkie,” Hell to Eternity. In 1961 she died of acute peritonitis. Tsuru is reputed to be the first Asian actress to garner top billing in American motion pictures.
Not until 1949 could Japan boast of a notable female screen performer who was Japanese born and bred and represented Japanese filmmakers. To top that, Takiko Mizunoe became a movie producer and radio and TV presenter in addition to a star entertainer of screen and stage—including opera. Born in 1915, she was number seven of eight siblings. At age thirteen she enrolled in the training program for the Shochiku Opera Company with all-female entertainers, but owned and managed by men. Takiko then made two stark changes: 1) She cast off her birth name of Umeko Miura for Takiko Mizunoe; 2) She cut off her long tresses, which made it easier to do her many male impersonations.
In 1933, by then a star at age eighteen, Takiko led the successful “Pink Strike,” a protest against wage cuts imposed on performers of the Shochiko Opera Company. The strike lasted a month, and Takiko and nearly fifty others were arrested. Nonetheless, management increased the wages and improved labor conditions, but fired Takiko. She outwitted them by performing a popular one-woman show and was described as a “symbol of Girls’ Opera.” She won international applause as a cross-dresser in her silk hat and tuxedo until September 1940 when Japan officially allied with Germany and Italy in World War II. No longer welcome in China, the U.S., and much of Europe, Takiko returned to Japan. Shortly thereafter, Japan banned men’s clothing for women, and Takiko then took on only female roles.
In 1949 Takiko performed in her first film, and by 1954 had become one of Japan’s first female producers. During her sixteen-year career as a producer, she discovered and promoted other actors who became famous. In 1970, when Takiko retired from producing, she made TV appearances until 1987. Then, at age seventy-two, she retreated from public life, and died of natural causes at age ninety-four.
The beautiful Takiko never married; neither was she a victim of public gossip about any romantic entanglements. Did she have surreptitious affairs (male or female), was she uninterested in a liaison, or were Japanese men intimidated by her abilities and strong will?