Читать книгу Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe - Frederik L. Schodt - Страница 8

“The trade of the United States with Japan must pass through the Golden Gate, and San Francisco will be the American depot of all importations from the Japanese empire.”

—The Sacramento Daily, January 27, 1867

The rainy season was about to begin in San Francisco, but the weather was still mild and the skies clear. On November 19, 1866, for readers hungry for news from the far-away East Coast and the larger world, the local Daily Alta California highlighted articles about President Andrew Johnson’s troubles, Negro suffrage, and soon-to-be deposed Emperor Maximilian I in Mexico. Entertainment was always a big topic in the city, so for front page local news there was an article about the awful fall the previous day of a popular tightrope walker. And in the “Amusements” column, there was a cryptic announcement:

A Japanese Troupe.—A private letter from Yokohama, Japan, October 18th, states that Prof. Risley had effected an engagement with a full troupe of Japanese athletes and actors and with the permission of the Government would leave for this city in a short time, intending to give exhibitions in the United States and Europe.1

Three days later a full advertisement appeared, providing more detail. “the greatest novelty yet,” it dramatically announced, would arrive imminently and consist of “The First Japanese Artistes Who Have Left Their Native Land.” They would be both male and female performers, “acrobats, balancers, top-spinners, etc., etc., etc.” and they would perform tricks only found in the Japanese Empire. It was all possible, according to the ad, because Professor Risley had gone to “infinite trouble” and “prodigious expense” to get the Japanese government to allow them to leave Japan “after a prohibition of three hundred years.” It stressed that they had already appeared before numerous of the elite of Japan and various foreign dignitaries in the foreign settlement of Yokohama. Scheduled to leave Japan “on or about” November 1 on the Archibald, they would appear before the citizens of San Francisco in their native costume, “in their own manner,” accompanied by “competent interpreters,” just in time for the holidays.2

View of San Francisco and its waterfront, from Vallejo and Battery, circa 1867. san francisco history center, san francisco public library.

This was a remarkable advertisement in 1866, even for a city as cosmopolitan as San Francisco. Mentions of Professor Risley also elicited extra interest because he was world-famous in his own right and well-known in the city, as both an acrobat and a showman. The same ad appeared not only in the Alta, but in several of the young city’s already-numerous papers, and would continue to do so throughout most of December.

On December 1, the Alta announced that Risley and his troupe had arrived in San Francisco on a British bark from Yokohama, the Alert. In reality, however, that ship carried an entirely different troupe of Japanese performers, and four days later the Alta was forced to print a retraction. It said that yet another letter had subsequently been received from Risley, still in Yokohama, dated October 28. He had reportedly chartered a ship—not the Alert, but the British Archibald—expressly to convey his troupe to America, and he would sail the following week. The last sentence hinted at Risley’s painful awareness of his situation and his competition, for it specifically stated that he “desired it to be understood by the public that the company under his management is the only legitimate one, having the endorsement of British and American Ministers, and of the foreign officers in Yokohama, and permits of their government to undertake the journey.”3

Where Is Risley?

In an era before any trans-Pacific telegraph, radios, telephones, and instant messaging, it could take weeks, if not months, to receive news from overseas, and people were used to a certain fuzziness in their information. But if the citizens of San Francisco were extra confused this time, they had every right to be. On December 6 an advertisement appeared in local newspapers for the Japanese entertainers who had arrived on the Alert. Placed there by Tom Maguire—known locally as the “Napoleon of the Stage” for his ability as a theatrical manager and impresario—it trumpeted in typically showman fashion that on December 10 twelve Japanese jugglers, brought from Japan “at enormous expense,” would perform “the most marvelous feats of legerdemain ever witnessed in the civilized world, together with the most startling and exciting acrobatic performances.” Just like Risley’s group, these Japanese were the only troupe “ever allowed to leave their native country,” and they would be appearing for “a few nights only.”4 Also like Risley’s group, they were on their way to an international exhibition in Paris, and San Francisco was merely one stop along the way.

As if symbolizing the interest suddenly building in Japanese acrobats, a parody show opened elsewhere in the city two days later titled “Catching a Japanese,” with local white actors imitating Japanese. In what was clearly a subtle dig at the still-yet-to-arrive Professor Risley and troupe, the show featured a “Professor Ichaboo,” who performed his wonderful “Japanese Tricks, accompanied by the TOM-TOM and JAPANESE FIDDLE (‘Cremona Japanica’).”5

On the tenth, after a brief press preview two nights earlier, real, live Japanese acrobats and jugglers from the Alert opened to acclaim at Maguire’s own Opera House in San Francisco. They followed, on the same program, a burletta by Lady Don of “The Water Witches.” They faced considerable competition elsewhere in the city; that same night a young Mark Twain was nearby giving a popular lecture on the Sandwich Islands, as Hawaii was then known, after his recent trip there. Nonetheless, the Opera House was jammed with excited locals assembled to watch the Japanese perform a variety of feats and tricks, and the event was covered by local reporters who wrote about it in glowing terms. As the Daily Evening Bulletin described it:

The mere appearance of the Japanese, in their robes and flowing sleeves; their shaven crowns, almond eyes and copper color; their strange speech; their oriental prostrations; their barbarous music; were alone an entertainment, even in a community which is so familiar as San Francisco with their congeners the Chinese.6

The acrobatic feats, the reporter continued, were “among the most wonderful we have ever seen.” They consisted, among other things, of a man lying on his back, balancing a twenty-foot-long bamboo pole on his feet, while a small boy climbed to the top and performed various maneuvers; a similar act that involved balancing a large tub with the feet and having the boy perform in it; and two men tossing a large keg back and forth, also with their feet. Some of the acts required more space, so it was announced that the following night the show would reopen in the nearby Academy of Music, which had a proscenium that was twenty feet higher and would allow for even more spectacular feats. Like the Opera House, it was owned by Tom Maguire, the highly successful owner-manager of the city’s best entertainment venues.

San Francisco that year was buffeted by unusually harsh winter storms, dense fogs, and—on December 19—even a mild earthquake. Yet save for a few shows that were rained out, the citizens kept going to see the Japanese acrobats and jugglers from the Alert. Advertisements for them continued to appear regularly in the newspapers, along with those of the still-absent Risley group, and from them one could learn that the company on the Alert had been brought from Yokohama by Americans named Thomas T. Smith and G. W. Burgess, and also learn the names of each of the twelve performers, awkwardly spelled “FOO-KEE-MATS,” “KEE-SA-BORO,” and so on. These names sounded completely alien to the audience, and probably to the Japanese as well, because in 1866 there was still no standard system of rendering Japanese in the Roman alphabet, and the results tended to be haphazard.7

Local newspapers vied to run daily reports on the performances. Among the routines performed by the jugglers and acrobats, one of the most popular was a ladder and slackrope trick performed by a young boy named Rinkichi. On December 16, the Daily Morning Call noted that “‘Sing-Kee-Chee,’ whom the ‘outside barbarians’ have christened ‘Little Tommy’ has grown into quite a favorite. He is a bright, intelligent, eight years old, and makes a central point of interest in the group.” The Call reporter further marveled over the tricks performed by magicians, which included “seeming impossibilities with ribbons, mock butterflies, fire, fans, and compartmented cabinets.” Contrary to the “hitherto received opinions of the effeminacy and weakness of the race,” he was also impressed by the strength of the men who held the ladders and supported the lighter acrobats such as Tommy:

The contractor who makes his living by house-raising, would do well to import a few of these iron-legged Asiatics, and dispense with his hydraulic pumps. One thing is certain . . . the lucky hombre who first conceived of the idea of bringing them to America and Europe, and who now has them in charge, will make his fortune, unless the cholera strikes them in New York.8

Tom Maguire was so impressed with his receipts that he purchased a controlling interest in the company for ten-thousand dollars (buying out Burgess’s share) and extended its stay in San Francisco. But while the show remained popular throughout the month and the all-important Christmas holidays, toward the end of December voices of discontent began to be heard. On December 22, the Daily Dramatic Chronicle reported that, at the Academy of Music, “The Japanese jugglers have experienced a sad falling off in the attendance. The public went at first out of curiosity, but the novelty is now paling. The jugglers do some very good gymnastic feats, but their juggling tricks are abominable.”9

Even if Professor Risley could not yet be in San Francisco, he had his local allies who could guarantee him favorable advance publicity and support. On December 30, the Morning Call ran an article on the Japanese troupe still in town, noting that it was going to move to Sacramento before heading to New York, adding, “What, by the way, has become of Risley’s troupe? Compared with which the lot at the Academy are, according to report, ‘mere rubbish.’ It is time the Archibald was here with these daimos. Hurry up, Risley; there is a good feeling in favor of your protégés. It won’t do to allow a Japan lack here.”10

For the first Japanese entertainers, San Francisco would be only one stop along a long journey. They would receive an enthusiastic local welcome there, but it would be unlike what they would experience elsewhere, for the citizens of San Francisco were already far more connected to Asia, and Japan, than their counterparts on the East Coast or in Europe. And in that sense, San Francisco also becomes a good vantage point from which to introduce the complicated and global story of Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe.

The Context

San Francisco is perched on top of a narrow peninsula. It faces the Marin headlands across the Golden Gate, through which the waters of the Pacific surge into one of the world’s best natural harbors. Settled by Spain in 1776, taken over by Mexico in 1821, and then by the United States in 1846, until the Gold Rush of 1848-49 San Francisco was a sleepy town of only a few hundred people. By 1866, however, the population had exploded to over 120,000 and the city had become the commercial and intellectual hub of the entire, brand-new state of California. On the western edge of a now vastly expanded United States, fueled by the notion and vast ambition of “Manifest Destiny,” San Franciscans tended to look even further west, directly across the Pacific Ocean to Asia and Japan.

Outwardly, the city affected a cosmopolitan pose, with tall buildings on its dusty main street and multiple places of entertainment, but it could not yet hide its rough edges and origins as a frontier outpost. One contemporary writer called San Francisco “a monument to California’s march from barbarity to vulgarism.”11 In 1866, aspiring novelist Bret Harte—consoling nervous residents after cholera scares, heavy rains, and another recent earthquake—stated “we have passed through ordeals more serious. . . . Ruffianism, brigandage, chivalry, gambling, scandalous legislation, lynch law and extravagant speculation have in turn retarded our progress. The pistol and the knife, drunkenness and debauchery, have claimed more victims than ever pestilence, flood or volcanic throe.”12 Part of San Francisco’s rawness came from the fact that it was a young city, with young inhabitants, and although an influx of women had improved the gender odds in recent years, the majority was still male, and ravenous in the pursuit of wealth and entertainment.

Gold had also made San Francisco one of the most culturally and racially diverse cities in North America, because it drew hordes of fortune-seekers from all parts of the globe. European Americans of every stripe, Latin Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Chinese; Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and ancestor-worshippers; all coexisted, but not in harmony. The bloody American Civil War had ended only a year earlier, but the city had its faction of “Copperheads” who had sympathized with the Confederacy, and in the 1866 Fourth of July celebrations, the Irish refused to march with the free Negros. There were also thousands of Chinese already living in San Francisco, highly valued as inexpensive good workers but increasingly resented and persecuted by working-class whites, who felt threatened. Still, in 1866 opposition to Asians in general had not yet fully coalesced. A year earlier, a troupe of Chinese jugglers had delighted a San Francisco audience. In December, after the arrival of the first group of Japanese, the Alta even editorialized on the need to instruct young San Franciscans in both Chinese and Japanese in public schools, because the day would surely come when “a knowledge of these Asiatic languages will soon be required, especially by merchants in San Francisco.”13

In 1866, San Francisco was in some ways closer to Asia than New York. With the transcontinental railroad still under construction, rather than risk starvation, attacks by Indians, and being stranded in the wilderness, most people traveling to the East Coast took steamers down to the Isthmus of Panama, crossed overland (there being no canal yet), and then caught other steamers on the other side to travel up the Atlantic seaboard. It could take over a month, and the inconvenience encouraged one writer in 1870, in describing the older residents of San Francisco, to say that they had lived until recently “in a condition of isolation, with respect to the rest of the world, which was almost Japanese in its exclusion.”14

He was referring to the fact that Japan was still famous for its isolation. At the beginning of the 1600s, in reaction to encroachment by the Spanish and Portuguese, the shogun (whom Westerners also called the “Tycoon”) had expelled almost all foreigners, banned Christianity, exterminated recalcitrant believers, and prohibited almost all trade and communication with the outside world. It was a draconian social experiment that lasted nearly 250 years. At its most extreme, it meant that foreigners landing in Japan could potentially be executed, and that Japanese were prohibited from leaving (or if they left, of ever returning, on penalty of death). It also meant that, up until the middle of the nineteenth century, to most Europeans and Americans, Japan remained one of the last great unknown places in the world—a distant, isolated, mysterious island nation, once exoticized by Marco Polo for its presumed riches and sought after by Christopher Columbus.

Yet even in the early nineteenth century, San Francisco had a special connection to Japan. Information on Japan flowed into San Francisco via Hawaii, and from sailing ships returning from Japan’s coast. In the 1840s, after the American whaling fleet began fishing in the Sea of Japan, more and more stories of Japan began to trickle back home, from shipwrecked sailors and from failed official or unofficial attempts made to communicate with the Japanese. In addition, since the Japanese government had banned construction of ocean-going ships, more and more hapless Japanese vessels were being blown off course and disabled. Sometimes they were intercepted and helped by American ships. And sometimes Japanese crews—in ships dismasted and made rudderless by violent storms—drifted helplessly, borne by the winds and tides of the Pacific, all the way to the shores of Hawaii, North America, and Mexico.

In 1850, in the midst of the Gold Rush, the city was visited by the most famous Japanese castaway of all—Nakahama Manjirō. Marooned in 1839 as a fifteen-year-old fisherman on a Pacific island, Manjirō had been rescued by an American ship, taken by the captain to Massachusetts, and given a modern education. An adult by 1850 and fluent in English, he had joined in the California Gold Rush. Only one of tens of thousands of people from over the globe who then swarmed through San Francisco, he attracted little local notice, possibly because he went by the name of John Mung and most people assumed he was Chinese. He later made it back to Japan and contributed to Japan’s eventual modernization.

On March 4, 1851, seventeen Japanese castaways arrived directly in San Francisco. Their ship, the Eiriki-maru, had foundered at sea, and the lucky men had been rescued by an American ship. The men, regarded as visitors from one of the world’s most exotic and mysterious civilizations, were wined and dined at a fancy ball at the California Exchange, which was then controlled by a local impresario named Edward Cole (and showcased a “celebrated fire eater, necromancer, and optic magician” named “Professor Courtier”). They stimulated a flurry of articles in the local press on Japan and stayed in San Francisco over a year. Locals were particularly taken with a young man of around thirteen named Hamada Hikozō who, like Manjirō, was eventually educated in the United States. He later became the first naturalized Japanese American, took the name of Joseph Heco, met Abraham Lincoln, and eventually returned to live in Yokohama where he certainly knew Professor Risley. In San Francisco, where he sojourned twice in 1850 and 1858, he was a well-known figure.

On March 25, 1851, the impresario Cole wrote to the Alta, offering to arrange a ship and captain to take the Japanese back to Japan, providing the local merchants could donate enough money. “Everyone is satisfied of the immense advantage,” he concluded, “that must accrue to the government who shall first open a trade with Japan.” Unfortunately, the next day the Alta paper slapped down his San Francisco–centered proposal with its own editorial, suggesting that it would be better to have the national government take the lead, using military force. China, the Alta pointed out, had recently been intimidated into opening her ports, and so would Japan.15

Around this same time, American interest in Japan began to reach a fever pitch. Newspapers ran more and more articles on the isolated nation, vociferously advocating its opening, if not by diplomacy, then by force. And the result was exactly as the Alta had advocated. In 1853 and 1854 Commodore Matthew Perry and a group of United States warships sailed to Japan and—without firing a shot—managed to force Japan to finally end its isolation policy and to sign a treaty of friendship; this paved the way in 1858 for a treaty allowing rudimentary trade and the openings of ports such as Yokohama. California had been granted statehood in 1849, making United States a Pacific nation. Perry’s visit to Japan in 1853–54 marked his country as a new power to be dealt with, in a region until then dominated by the colonial empires of Europe. It was a source of enormous pride to Americans at the time, and especially to San Franciscans.

As a result of Perry’s mission, in 1860 San Francisco had already been graced by a visit from the first official Japanese embassy to the United States, en route to Washington, D.C. After a nearly disastrous voyage, the group of elite samurai officials arrived in the Kanrin-maru, the first Japanese-owned ship to cross the Pacific. Accompanied by former castaway Manjirō, who helped them with navigation and interpretation, they wore two swords and top-knots, and stayed for an entire month. They were of course feted far more than the shipwrecked sailors had been in San Francisco, and by the time they arrived on the East Coast of America they were a national sensation—celebrated with parades down Broadway and a poem by Walt Whitman, swooned over by women, and treated like royalty at the highest levels of government, including at the White House. Compared to the rest of the nation, San Franciscans were thus already a bit jaded. As Bret Harte wrote of the city on November 3, 1866, only two months before Risley’s Imperial Japanese would arrive:

Men and women pass for what they are worth from a California standard, which I need not say is remarkably elevated. Our conceit consequently is more apt to make us patronizing than obsequious. Recall the difference between the reception of the Japanese quasi-mercantile ambassadors in New York and San Francisco. Here, these two-sworded, brocade-legged, amber tinted diplomats . . . passed and repassed through the streets hardly eliciting more remark than well dressed Chinamen. We have had lords and bishops, Indian Chiefs and foreign dignitaries among us.16

The Imperials at Last

On New Year’s Eve, 1866, Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe finally arrived in San Francisco harbor on the British sailing bark Archibald. A nearby Sacramento newspaper reported that it was a record crossing of the Pacific, lasting only nineteen days, and that the captain got so drunk in a disreputable bar after his victory that he was imprisoned and then ejected in the morning, “minus his money, watch, jewelry, and everything but his undershirt and drawers.” Some less generous San Francisco newspapers put the crossing at twenty-five days.17

Today we know with considerable precision how long the Archibald actually took, and that the first reports were indeed a bit of an exaggeration. Fairly good information comes from a member of Risley’s Imperial Troupe named Takano Hirohachi. Although he could play the banjo-like Japanese samisen, Hirohachi was not a performer. Probably a man with a gambling instinct, who lived on the fringes of respectable society, for the Imperials Hirohachi served as a type of overseer, or supervisor, of the troupe’s jugglers and acrobats. He kept a simple diary, or daily record, a copy of which survives in Japan today. Written in a highly informal and cryptic style, it is sprinkled with the unique dialect of the semi-literate author and his now-archaic language. Rough, often disappointingly skeletal, with dates that are sometimes off, in this case the diary shows a voyage of around twenty-seven days. Allowing for the international dateline, and different ways of recording departure and arrival times, it appears quite accurate, for “Shipping Intelligence” columns in newspapers in both Japan and San Francisco show that the 393-ton Archibald left Yokohama on December 5, 1866, and arrived in San Francisco on December 31.

The Archibald docked on the evening of what had been a fine sunny day, but the voyage had hardly been pleasant. For the Japanese, who had not been allowed beyond their immediate coastal waters for over two centuries (and who had been raised to believe that they might be executed if caught leaving the homeland), it was terrifying. They of course immediately experienced the then-usual bouts of violent seasickness in heavy swells. On December 13, a dog on the trip began biting people, so the American interpreter on board, Edward Banks, shot and threw it overboard. There is no mention of what Risley thought of this, but he must have been heartbroken, because he loved animals. In the first part of the journey, the ship sailed through huge westerly gales and sleet and rocked violently, the passengers sometimes unable to stand. The sails were torn, and one of the masts, another troupe member would later recall, was also struck by lightning and had to be repaired. The Japanese feared they were doomed, but they were reassured by seeing that the captain was unfazed, and that the ship was well made.18

On arrival in San Francisco, Hirohachi mentions that three “foreigners” went ashore and the troupe stayed on board. Throughout his diary, he never mentions Risley by name, instead occasionally alluding to him with the now archaic word, ijin, or “foreigner.”19 Most of his interactions were probably with the interpreter Banks, who was a former U.S. Marshal in Yokohama and himself an investor in the troupe. Banks is an intriguing character about whom little is known, but in those days there were almost no Europeans capable of speaking Japanese, let alone interpreting, so he possessed a rare talent. In Hirohachi’s diary Banks is referred to as henkutsu, and it was only after many years that Japanese researchers established his identity. The third person in the group to which Hirohachi refers was William F. Schiedt, who is listed under “Passengers” in the January 1 edition of the Alta, along with Risley, Banks, and “eighteen Japanese jugglers.” Like Banks, he was an investor in the group, and in charge of managing the finances, and he too may have known some Japanese and acted as an interpreter. We know from his 1867 U.S. passport application that he was remarkably young, only twenty-eight, and that he was 5’8” tall, with a high forehead, blue eyes, prominent nose, round chin, light brown hair, fair complexion, long oval face, and tattoos on both arms and chest, including one of the “American Shield.” There may also have been a fourth “foreigner” with the group, for a quarter of a century later one troupe member would recall that a Chinese lad named “Lee” served as Risley’s personal interpreter and helper. He reportedly spoke wretched Japanese, and his name never appears in Hirohachi’s diaries or any surviving reports of the time.20

Risley had some serious negotiations to do in San Francisco before his Imperial Troupe and all their accompanying stage paraphernalia could be properly landed. They had arrived nearly a month later than planned, and while at sea there had been no way to communicate with San Francisco. There was first and foremost the basic logistical problem of where to lodge the troupe, and where and how to put on the long-delayed show that had already been advertised in the local papers since November. And it was surely a crushing blow to learn that a competing troupe had already stolen much of their planned thunder. Making matters more complicated for Risley was the fact that he had been out of the country for nearly ten years.

From recent research, we now know that the first troupe of Japanese that arrived in the United States was comprised of the Tetsuwari family of performers. Risley’s “Imperials,” on the other hand, was an amalgam of eighteen members from primarily three performing families—the Hamaikari, Sumidagawa, and Matsui families of jugglers and acrobats—presumably selected by Hirohachi and Banks for Risley. For reasons impossible to say today, the Imperials were often advertised and described as having twenty members, instead of eighteen. Although only Risley’s group would make it, both companies were headed for the Exposition Universelle, which was held by Emperor Napoleon III in Paris in 1867. One of the first true world fairs, this exposition attracted great attention from entertainers around the globe, and entrepreneurial foreigners in Yokohama saw it as the perfect opportunity to exploit curiosity in Japan, showcase the unique talents of Japanese performing artists, and make a galomping fortune. At least five Japanese troupes left Japan around this time, some traveling west and some—like the Imperials and the Tetsuwari faction—traveling east. Some made it to Europe but not the Exposition, and some stayed in the United States, but it meant that nearly everywhere the Imperials went, they faced competition from fellow countrymen.

The departure of Risley’s Imperials from Yokohama had been delayed for many reasons. First, the members were all lucky to leave with their lives, because Yokohama had erupted in flames on November 26 and most of the settlement, including the American consulate, had been destroyed. Second, their departure was also delayed because Risley went to the trouble of applying for passports from the Japanese government while the other groups apparently did not bother. The Japanese government was still a feudal one—soon to collapse in a semirevolution and be replaced by a modern system—so in 1866 considerable bureaucratic confusion was the norm. One result of Risley’s efforts, however, was that Sumidagawa Namigorō, a prominent troupe member in the Imperials, received the first passport ever issued by the Japanese government to an ordinary citizen.21

Risley wasted no time on arrival in generating publicity and in setting up performances. On January 1 and 2, he arranged mentions in the Alta proclaiming the superiority of his troupe “over all other of their profession, either in or outside the Empire of the Tycoon.”22 And in multiple local papers he also arranged for detailed, official announcements of upcoming performances, which hinted at some of the reasons for his delay:

Months after the contract was made with these artists to proceed to foreign countries on a professional trip, the Japanese Government finally issued the passports and necessary permits for them to depart from their native country, when it was made known to the Government that Mr. Edward Banks, late U.S. Marshal at Kanagawa, Japan, after his resignation of office, after his sojourn of seven years in the country, was to accompany the artists on their professional trip, to secure their safe return to their native country, the difficulties and obstacles were all the greater, as the applications demanded passports for female artists to depart from Japan, which was entirely new to the Japanese government.23

The local correspondent for the New York Times later elaborated on Risley’s situation. After describing how the newspapers had all advertised Risley’s coming and how a ship with different Japanese performers had actually arrived in San Francisco earlier in December, he wrote:

But behold! Another vessel came in a few days since, bringing the original Jacobs, and we discovered that we had been sold. Some smart Yankee, taking advantage of the idea originated by RISLEY, had gathered a company together, slipped off in advance, and had had a “run” and the advantage of all RISLEY’S prestige and advertising. Discovering this, RISLEY determined to open for three nights only . . .24

Up against a professional like Risley, the other troupe—the Tetsuwari family—never really had a chance, even if equally skilled. With his competitors out of town, in Sacramento, Risley quickly made arrangements with Maguire for his group to appear at the Academy of Music on January 7. As another paper put it, “’Tis whispered in the house, and muttered on the street, that they are wonderful fellows; that it is a good thing for the other company that Smith took them to Sacramento. Had they seen Risley’s performers in some of their feats, they certainly would have committed, out of pure envy, the hari karii, on the spot.”25

The Imperials left their ship on January 1, after Risley had procured lodging for them. And Risley knew how to show his troupe off, for according to Hirohachi they traveled through crowds of spectators to their hotel in five horse-drawn carriages decorated with gold and silver inlay, “a sight that even a daimyō in Japan would have a hard time matching.”26 Hirohachi’s simple words, referring to a Japanese feudal lord, hid the scale of his true sentiments as a commoner in Japan’s feudal system, for back home he could have had his head lopped off for the slightest offense by nearly any member of the samurai class.

For the Japanese performers, who had never set foot abroad or been surrounded by different races of people, San Francisco was a dizzying experience. They normally ate fish but never the meat of four-legged animals. They had rarely seen wheeled vehicles or even large mirrors or so many houses with glass windows. Nor had they any familiarity with the modern scientific advances of mid-nineteenth-century America or Europe. During their stay in San Francisco, when not resting, checking their equipment, or performing or rehearsing, they would see much of the city. They would ride in carriages through the sand dunes of western San Francisco to Cliff House and Seal Rock, and marvel at California sea lions. They would visit the United States Mint in San Francisco (where Bret Harte then worked) and see huge piles of gold coins being minted. They would visit the Olympic Club and observe American gymnasts at work. They were enchanted with photographs and would have theirs taken at the studio of the pioneering portraitists, Bradley & Rulofson, to use as promotional calling cards known as cartes de visite (those by Bradley & Rulofson are lost, but others, and from other cities, survive). They would marvel at cobblestone roads and buildings as tall as five and seven stories high and be astounded at the sight of a steam train. In their hotel, they were amazed by faucets and drains, and even more so by gas lights in the room. They were sternly warned to be careful with the latter, since gas-related explosions and conflagrations were then frighteningly common (as they would later discover). But there was humor, too. As the group’s magician/juggler, Sumidagawa Namigorō, recalled years later, when served rice on flat plates with knives and forks they did not know how to go about eating, so they put the rice in a chamber pot they found, only to be told that it was for urinating at night.

Opening at the Academy of Music

On the seventh, the Imperials finally opened at Maguire’s Academy of Music for what was billed as a limited, three-day run. It was a huge success and made the performances of the previous troupe, the Tetsuwari family, look tame. But the Imperials were aided by a spike in interest in Japan that occurred in the city; that same week the first regular steamship line between San Francisco and Japan had been inaugurated with much fanfare in the media. And the Imperials also had the professional production and choreography of Professor Risley. Indeed, they had more of everything. As the Alta noted right before they opened, “They are said to excel the first troupe in the variety of their feats—besides having more ladders, more tubs, more bamboo poles, more juvenile prodigies, and more female rope-walkers.” The females alone might have been enough to draw a crowd, but it was a jammed and suffocating house, so much so that, as Hirohachi marveled in his diary, the doors had to be shut to prevent any more people from entering.27

The curtain at the Academy rose to reveal all “twenty” members of the troupe, including two adult females, a little girl, and three boys, all salaaming deeply in Japanese style to the audience. The show unfolded with astonishing exhibitions of flexibility and balance, spinning of tops on the edge of a sword, and the female juggler doing a lantern trick. One other woman accompanied the performances by playing the Japanese samisen, with its percussive and, to Americans, grating sound. It gave reporters another reason to rank the Imperials over the Tetsuwari troupe. “This troupe, by the way,” wrote one, “give very little of their own style of music, and that little is quite sufficient for the untutored ears of San Franciscans.”28

1. From left to right in back: Sumidagawa Namigorō, unidentified Caucasian male, and Hamaikari Sadakichi. In front, probably Sumidagawa Matsugorō and Denkichi. There is some reason to believe that the Caucasian male may be Edward Banks, but the facial shape also bears a striking resemblance to hand-drawn portraits of the younger Risley. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		2. Matsui Kikujirō, the top-spinner. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
3. Hamaikari Umekichi, or “Little All Right,” photographed as a proud samurai with two swords. Taken at the J. Gurney Studio. New York.		4. Sumidagawa Namigorō, the butterfly artist and magician. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
5. The ever-handsome Denkichi. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		6. Hamaikari Sadakichi. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
7. Sumidagawa Namigorō. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		8. Probably Kanekichi. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
9. Probably Sumidagawa Matsugorō. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		10. Sumidagawa Koman, the wife of Namigorō. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.

credits. cdv 1, 5, 7, 8, 9: f ms thr 828, harvard theatre collection, houghton library, harvard university. cdv 2, 4, 6, 10: courtesy laurence senelick collection. cdv 3: tcs 20 harvard theatre collection, houghton library, harvard university.

11. Yonekichi and Sentarō. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		12. Probably Takano Hirohachi. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
13. Sumidagawa Koman and Tsune. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		14. Yonekichi and Sentarō. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
15. Denkichi, Chōkichi, and Matsugorō. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		16. Rinzō and son, Yonekichi. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
17. Chōkichi (top) and Denkichi (bottom). Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		18. Hamaikari Umekichi, or “Little All Right,” seated with fan. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.
19. Hamaikari Umekichi, or “Little All Right,” standing. Taken at the Numa Blanc Studio, Paris.		20. Unidentified Caucasian male, Umekichi (Little All Right), and Hamaikari Sadakichi. The unidentified Caucasian is certainly an American and probably either Professor Risley, Edward Banks, or William F. Schiedt.

credits. cdv 11, 20: courtesy, laurence senelick collection. cdv 12–19: f ms thr 828, harvard theatre collection, houghton library, harvard university.

Announcement for the Imperials at Maguire’s Academy of Music. san francisco daily evening bulletin, january 3, 1868.

Another huge hit of the show was a young boy acrobat named Umekichi. Usually described in Western press as the son of the troupe’s elder, Hamaikari Sadakichi, he was really the man’s nephew. But his panache and charisma would eventually win all of America’s hearts. Because he also finished his spectacular stunts with a fractured English “You bet!” and “All Right!” he would also become known as “Little All Right.” He was regarded as superior in every way to Tommy, of the rival Tetsuwari Company, except perhaps in his daring, but he more than made up for that with charm and skills. The local correspondent from the New York Times later wrote his audience back home what to expect:

The ladies will faint and the men go crazy over a juvenile performer whom we have called “All-right.” The people [here] have a custom of testifying their appreciation of a performer in a substantial manner—throwing money upon the stage. After the termination last night of little “All Right’s” perilous ladder feat, the audience nearly covered the stage with half dollars, five, ten and twenty-dollar gold pieces, at which the cunning little juvenile shouted, “All right—you bet!” and down came another shower of gold and silver! “You bet” is the most popular and fashionable vulgar ejaculation here I have ever heard. Everybody uses it, and all travelers have reported it.29

Maguire’s Academy of Music, Pine Street, between Montgomery and Sansome. san francisco history center, san francisco public library.

But not all went well. Perhaps the long sea voyage—and the stress of a foreign country, alien diet, new technology, languages, and the excitement of the moment—had been too much for some of the company’s members. Denkichi, a young man described as the older son and pupil of the troupe’s lead performer, Hamaikari (but also believed to be the adopted son of Hirohachi), lost his balance in a critical maneuver on a high ladder. It broke under his weight, causing him to plummet to the stage, striking his face and cutting open his lip. The shocked audience feared for his life. But after the curtain briefly came down the show went on and, as a reporter recalled later with relief, “the surgeons are not apprehensive of fatal result.”30 As sometimes happens with such accidents, the drama and excitement created seemed to endear the troupe to the citizens of San Francisco even more.

A Deal with Maguire

Thomas Maguire was quick to notice the extraordinary popularity of the new troupe and the potential to make even more money. He was turning hundreds away each night at the Academy and people were begging him to extend their booking. The Imperials were originally scheduled to leave San Francisco on January 10 for the east coast of America on a steamer named the Golden City (and they would appear on the passenger lists published in the papers as having actually left then), but Maguire was able to persuade them to stay longer. First it was announced that they would continue to perform until the steamer of January 19, at “the enormous nightly expense of $1,000.”31 Then the stay was extended until the steamer of the thirtieth.

As he had with the Smith and Burgess Tetsuwari group, Maguire decided to invest in Risley’s Imperials, too, and in this case to follow them to the East Coast and on to Paris. Maguire was called the “Napoleon of the theatre” for good reason. He was aggressive, ambitious, and already had a near monopoly on professional entertainment in northern California and even Nevada, and he regularly sent performers on touring circuits he created through the gold country, even to Australia and Asia. He also had dreams of transcontinental theatre management, with operations in New York, too.

On one level, Maguire and Risley were quite similar. Maguire was around forty-two years old, and younger than the nearly fifty-three year old Risley. Both men were flamboyant, charismatic, larger than life personalities, and good looking. Maguire, said to be one of the handsomest men in San Francisco, dressed like the typical California gambler that he was, with an enormous diamond in his scarf, jeweled rings on his fingers, and a heavy gold watch chain hanging from his waistcoat. But he was also moody, opportunistic, arrogant, and nearly illiterate. Like many impresarios in the mid-nineteenth century, he was also constantly involved in lawsuits and feuds, including one with the Daily Dramatic Chronicle, one of the few San Francisco newspapers that regularly dared to criticize him. Even that paper, however, conceded that Maguire might be able to make the $200,000 fortune that he bragged he would make by investing $100,000 in both acrobat companies. Under this scheme, he would leave Risley in charge of the Imperials, and the combined companies could be his “left and right wings.” With the additional performers, there would be backups in case more injuries occurred and sudden substitutes were needed. The Imperials, thenceforth, could be referred to as the “Risley-Maguire Imperial Japanese Troupe.”32

The ever-dapper Thomas Maguire. california historical society quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1 (march 1942).

Risley was well aware of potential problems in a union with Maguire. He had already known Maguire for over a decade, and he knew the turbulent mid-nineteenth-century entertainment world—with its shifting fortunes, jealousies, alliances, struggles, and potential riches—better than anyone. But the added capital investment could not hurt, for the Imperials were paid the then-huge sum of twenty dollars per person per day (at a time when skilled carpenters earned less than five dollars for ten hours of work), and had to be housed and fed. Maguire’s connections would help too, for—unlike Risley—he was still well connected to the East Coast and even Europe. Risley also had several reasons to want to postpone his departure for the East Coast. Denkichi, the star acrobat injured in the first San Francisco show, needed time to heal (and in fact would not appear on stage again until January 28, just before the Imperials finally departed). As it happened, Risley himself was involved in one of his many lawsuits, this time with a woman named Louisa Gordon and her daughter, who claimed that Risley owed them $5,200 plus interest for services performed a decade earlier when they had been in his employ (it would eventually be settled in her favor). Furthermore, Risley, along with Maguire and three members of the Imperials, had been arrested and was on trial for having violated the “Anti-Sunday Amusement Law,” which prohibited most amusements on Sunday (they would be given the minimum fine). And finally, Risley, the well-known lover of animals, had lost his favorite dog, which had run away, and he wanted him back. For the remainder of January, advertisements ran in the San Francisco papers, offering a thirty dollar reward for the return of a black spaniel, with a gray nose, that answered to the name of Prince and had been stolen or strayed from the Archibald. Prince was never found.33

In the midst of all this, the performances went on, almost daily. The weather was terrible, with heavy rain and buffeting winds. Nonetheless, both Hirohachi’s diary and the local newspapers confirm that at nearly every performance audiences clamored for more, and people had to be turned away at the doors of the Academy of Music. Given that the Imperials followed in the wake of the Tetsuwari Company’s long December run in San Francisco, and that they themselves appeared for a total of three weeks, this was quite an accomplishment. It required not only an extraordinarily high level of skill from the Imperial troupe members, but an ability to vary their performances every night to sustain interest, for San Franciscans were hardly an uncritical audience. Six months later, after the arrival of yet another Japanese acrobatic troupe headed for Paris, one newspaper would grumble about having been completely “Japanned” and state: “Being the probably extreme rear of the Jap army that the Tycoon has kindly permitted us the honor of passing in review, we thank the Tycoon, and don’t care a raccoon whether we look upon their like again or not.”34

But this was not the case with the Imperials. The troupe stood out not only for the skill of its performers, but for the quality of the overall production, and for the way it was packaged and promoted for American audiences, who loved it. Ultimately, the troupe’s success was a testimony to the skills of Professor Risley. As a January 20 article in the Daily Morning Call put it,

. . . Risley’s previous triumphs, brilliant as they were, have culminated in his recent splendid Japanese coup. If he don’t make a fortune out of those sad-looking, but iron-muscled Asiatics, it will be because the spirit of curiosity has died out, and the appreciation of the wonderful has been lost.35

At eleven o’clock on the morning of January 30, after a suffocatingly crowded final performance the night before, the Imperials finally left San Francisco, headed for the East Coast on a steamer named the Constitution. They were accompanied by Risley and Edward Banks, Thomas Maguire and wife, and Smith and his company of performers. A brass band played at their farewell, and the papers predicted their resounding success in New York and eventually Paris. The passenger list included the names of prominent citizens who traveled in better-class cabins, and “175 whites and 30 Japanese in the steerage.”36

Meanwhile, San Franciscans, knowing Maguire’s personality and ambition, soon began speculating on his ultimate intentions vis-à-vis Risley and the Imperials. Maguire had decided to later send a Japanese man from the Tetsuwari faction, nicknamed Yo Shid, back to Japan to look for even more Japanese jugglers and acrobats and especially child stars like “Little All Right.” According to the Call, it was to make the Tetsu­wari Company better than Risley’s Imperials, at which point Maguire would “probably cut his connection with that gentleman.” And Ma­guire’s nemesis, the Daily Dramatic Chronicle, ran an even more provocative but suggestive article. It described a scene witnessed on the quarter deck of the Constitution just before the ship’s departure. A constable from San Francisco Judge Barstow’s court (possibly where Louisa Gordon had sued Risley) approached Risley with some business, whereupon Risley turned to Maguire, said something unintelligible, and Maguire reached into his pockets and withdrew some money, which Risley then handed to the constable. “This was indeed a noble act,” the paper editorialized, sarcastically, “for if the Professor had been left in the clutches of the law, we suspect that the great Napoleon would scarcely have regretted to find the entire management thrown upon his shoulders.”37

THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE TROUPE MEMBERS, LISTED BY STAGE FAMILY AFFILIATION, IN ORDER OF AGE

Sources: Iinomachi, Iino choshi, vol. 3 (2) (Iinomachi, Fukushima Prefecture: Iinomachi, 2005), pp. 18-19; “Autographs of the Members of the Imperial Japanese Troupe” (listed on poster in possession of National Museum of Japanese History)