蛍の光、窓の雪、書読む月日、重ねつゝ。何時しか年も、すぎの戸を、開けてぞ今朝は、別れ行く。By the light of the fireflies and the moon reflected by the snow under our window, we spent our days and months reading. Before we knew it, years had passed, and the time had come to open the door, step through, and part ways.[1]

In late January 1914, 16-year-old Sussie Wata (Susan Fukushima Watanabe, 1898–?) took her first steps as an actress, appearing in London in a non-speaking role in a revival of the Japanese-themed play ‘Darling of the Gods’.[2] At that same moment, another actress of Japanese heritage, Taku Takagi (高木徳子, Takagi Tokuko, 1891–1919),[3] was on her way to London, hoping to repeat there the success she had achieved on stage and in film in America.

Though Wata and Takagi had much in common, they were in many ways a study in contrasts. Although new to acting, the stage was in Wata’s blood; she was born in France into the Fukushima troupe of acrobats (renamed the Lukushima troupe in 1901) and spent her childhood performing alongside other members of her family (natural and adopted) as the troupe toured the length and breadth of Great Britain. It was a hard, hand-to-mouth existence. Acting was Wata’s way to escape, and would lead to (brief) movie stardom.

Taku Takagi’s road to England was a long one. She was born Tokuko Nagai (永井徳子, Nagai Tokuko) in Tokyo in 1891. Her early years were relatively comfortable, thanks to her engineer father. Her hardships began when her stepmother pushed her into marrying a feckless dreamer named Chinpei Takagi (高木陳平, Takagi Chinpei) when she was just 15 (he was 24). Takagi took his new bride to America (which may have been the attraction of the match to Taku’s stepmother) with a nebulous idea of seeking their fortunes there. On their arrival, they found work first as house servants and then hotel employees; this was followed by a failed attempt by Chinpei Takagi to run a store, before, finally, the young couple struck upon the idea of becoming entertainers, emulating successful touring Japanese entertainers like the Tenichi magic troupe[4] (they even stole Tenichi’s tag line of the ‘Japanese Necromancer’ for their first stage act). They did this despite their complete ignorance of the performing arts; their saving grace was Taku’s innate talent, which was recognised by a wealthy Japanese couple, Shuuichi and Sumiko Takaori (高折修一 and 高折寿美子), who had come to America to study grand opera. (On the couple’s return to Japan, Sumiko would become the first Japanese prima donna to tackle the role of Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s ‘Madame Butterfly’, conducted by her husband, although, alas, this received little attention outside Japan—see below for the full story.)[5]

The Takaoris paid for Taku Takagi to take singing and dancing lessons, including ballet. In 1910, the training that Taku received thanks to the Takaoris’ generosity propelled her from the vaudeville to the ‘legitimate’ stage (the Metropolitan Opera House) and led to her being offered a contract by the Thanhauser Company, a New York-based movie studio, for whom she made four films between 1911 and 1914, becoming the first Japanese actress to star in American motion pictures.[6]

Takagi’s experience of acting for Western companies would chime with Sussie Wata and many other Japanese actors and actresses of the period: Takagi’s employers wanted the Western fantasy of what it was to be Japanese, not the reality.

When I am trying to act naturally, then somebody says. 'Cut it out, you don't look like a Japanese.' But I don't know how the Americans want a Japanese girl to act. I am a Japanese and am trying to act naturally, as I did in Japan. But they don't want that.[7]

In her US publicity, she was described as the daughter of a ‘wealthy banker of Tokio’ who had come to America to learn singing but was pursuing a career on the stage without her parents’ knowledge.[8] As we will later see, this was the first but not the last fictionalised version of her life that would be put before her public.

By the time the Thanhauser contract was signed, Chinpei Takagi had given up performing to become Taku’s manager. He spent the money Taku was paid under the contract on buying a hotel, which he expected Taku to work at, giving her little time to perform. This led to violent arguments, fueled by Chinpei’s drinking and Taku’s nascent mental instability (exacerbated, if not outright brought on, by her realisation of the inadequacies of the man she had been made to marry). Chinpei Takagi, by his own later account,[9] recognised that a change needed to be made, so he decided to follow the tried and tested path of trying to replicate their American success in Europe. He sold the hotel and gave some of the proceeds to a theatrical agent called Kenyon, who set off for England to arrange bookings for Taku. Chinpei and Taku followed soon afterwards, setting sail in mid-January 1914.

Markino is perfectly full of such stories now laughable, then serious, all the same highly pleasing; oh, to spend half a day or one whole day if possible with him, and listen to his endless stories![10]

By 1914, the small Japanese artists’ colony in London revolved around the studio of Yoshio Markino (牧野義雄, Makino Yoshio, 1869–1956).[11] In some ways, every bit as feckless as Chinpei Takagi, Markino’s saving grace was that he was both charming and talented. Resident in London, with only a few years’ interruption, from 1897 until 1942, he was in 1914 at the height of his fame as an artist. As both an authority on the Japanese aesthetic and a well-known admirer of Western stagecraft (and actresses (and actors)), he had also developed a lucrative sideline in advising on the staging and costume design for Japanese-themed entertainments. This was how he became involved in the 1914 London revival of ‘The Darling of the Gods’, the play in which the teenage Sussie Wata was to make her acting debut.

‘The Darling of the Gods’ was the creation of two Americans, writer–actor–producer David Belasco and author John Luther Long. Long was the author of the original short story that became the Puccini opera ‘Madama Butterfly’. Six years before the opera debuted, Belasco and Long had collaborated on a very successful ‘straight play’ adaptation of ‘Madame Butterfly’—the production that inspired Puccini to turn the story into an opera. ‘The Darling of the Gods’, another play with a Japanese theme, was created by Belasco and Long to cash in on the success of their ‘Madame Butterfly’, and premiered in New York in 1903 before its London transfer. It was, as one later London critic put it, ‘gorgeous claptrap’, a po-faced pantomime that owed much more to Tales of the Arabian Nights than it did to anything authentically Japanese.[12]

It is fair to say that the enduring popularity of the Puccini operatic version of ‘Madame Butterfly’, which debuted in London two years after the original production of ‘The Darling of the Gods’, was in large part responsible for the latter’s London producer, actor–manager Sir Herbert Tree, reviving it in 1914. Coincidentally, Puccini was in London when ‘The Darling of the Gods’ revival went into production and attended one of the dress rehearsals, although not, he was at pains to point out, because he was considering adapting the play into an opera.[13]

The role that the success of Puccini’s interpretation of the ‘Madame Butterfly’ story, billed as it was as a serious drama, was to have in shaping Western perceptions of Japanese women in the first half of the Twentieth Century was, as we will see, profound and complex. This is to be contrasted with earlier works like Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘The Mikado’ (1885) and Sydney Jones and Owen Hall’s ‘The Geisha’ (1896), which, though hugely popular, were viewed as comic fantasies, with no more realistic portrayal of their Japanese setting than the Arabia of the ‘Arabian Nights’. As one Japanese observer wrote, ‘Gilbert and Sullivan had no other idea than to furnish amusement and a somewhat exotic demonstration in music and song; the fact that their plays were billed under the general title "comic opera" should excuse any extravagance’.[14]

Markino may well have met Signor Puccini when he visited the theatre, as Tree asked Markino to teach the cast of his ‘The Darling of the Gods’ revival Japanese customs and manners—something that may well have amused Markino’s great friend Yone Noguchi (野口 米次郎, Noguchi Yonejirō, 1875–1947). The two men had met when both were studying in the US before Markino’s move to London. Noguchi was visiting England when ‘The Darling of the Gods’ revival went into production, lecturing at Oxford and, with Markino’s help, arranging for two of his collections of poetry and essays to be published in English.

Seven years earlier, Noguchi had taken aim in print at Western writers of so-called ‘Japanese’ dramas, ridiculing their demonstrable lack of knowledge of the real Japan. He mentioned the work of John Luther Long, the author of both ‘Madame Butterfly’ and ‘The Darling of the Gods’, in passing (his main target was a US-based Anglo-Chinese author who, at the time, was passing herself off as Anglo-Japanese, ‘Kitishima Tasha Hasche’, pen name ‘Onoto Watanna’, real name Winifred Eaton; Noguchi and Eaton had been friends before Noguchi discovered the deception).[15] It would have appealed to Noguchi’s sense of the absurd to see his friend being paid to ensure that a play entirely inauthentically Japanese in its characters and drama at least featured characters bowing at the right time and praying to the right gods. He would also have appreciated the metaphorical resonance of the one authentically Japanese actress in the production being cast in a non-speaking role.

The actors, too, contrive to be very Japanese; and, in view of this, it may be noted that there is but one real Japanese in the long cast—Miss Sussie Wata, who plays Rosy Sky’s maid.[16]

Sussie Wata’s casting as the maidservant ‘Niji-onna’ (‘Rainbow Woman’—a play on ‘Rosy Sky’, the name of Niji-onna’s mistress in the play) was made a feature of the promotion of ‘The Darling of the Gods’ revival. This was most obvious in the lavish pictorial published in Sketch magazine in mid-January 1914, which featured a full-page photograph of Sussie Wata in costume as Niji-onna alongside English actress Lucy Wilson in costume (and yellowface make-up) as Rosy Sky, Niji-onna’s mistress. In the words of the caption that accompanied the photograph, here were a ‘real Japanese’ actress and a ‘stage Japanese’ actress side-by-side.

As we can guess from the quote from Taku Takagi above, it was likely the latter that the London theatregoers who flocked to see the revival wanted to see: their romantic idea of what it was to be a woman in ‘old Japan’, not the reality (the play was set in the 1860s—contemporary with the setting of Madame Butterfly, although, by design, unlike the latter, ‘The Darling of the Gods’ featured no Western characters). Pointedly, Rosy Sky, although not the lead female character of ‘Darling of the Gods’, was, like Cio-Cio San of ‘Madame Butterfly’, a geisha. Meanwhile, Yo-san, the lead female role of ‘Darling of the Gods’, was a princess. However, in the play’s opening act, on meeting Rosy Sky, she becomes so taken with her romantic idea of what a geisha is that she swaps clothing with her to attend a feast that her father is giving in honour of the Minister of War (the play’s villain) at which Rosy Sky has been invited to perform.[17]

It was claptrap like this that fixed in the Western imagination the idea that all female Japanese entertainers were geisha, and, by extension, courtesans. Explaining the different (albeit, historically, overlapping) roles in Japan of geisha and what we in the West would understand by the description ‘courtesan’ falls outside the scope of this work.[18]  It is enough to know for our purpose that the two were treated as synonymous by Western writers like John Luther Long, and this is the image that became fixed in the Western imagination. As we will see, this was a misconception that Japanese theatrical managers and promoters proved again and again happy to perpetuate, Chinpei Takagi among them.

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE. SIR HERBERT TREE begs to announce that on SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, and Every Evening Will be Given THE DARLING OF THE GODS, which was produced with distinguished success in 1903, will be presented with entirely new scenery, dresses and appointments.[19]

Chinpei and Taku Takagi stepped ashore at Dover on 29 January 1914.[20] All the evidence suggests that they did so without any plan for how they were going to repeat their American success. Kenyon, the man Chinpei Takagi would later claim had been sent ahead to arrange bookings for Taku, if he existed, had done a very poor job, as there was no work waiting for them on their arrival.[21]

They made their way to London and set about trying to find work for Taku. It seems certain that, once in London, they would have very quickly become aware that there was playing in the West End at that moment a play with a Japanese theme by the author of Madame Butterfly. Whether they also became aware that the cast included a Japanese actress in a minor role is much less certain. We also cannot know if they sought out Yoshio Markino, although it would not have been strange if they did, as his studio was the centre of artistic life for the small Japanese community in London. However, there is an alluring albeit speculative case to be made that not only did the Takagis seek out Yoshio Markino but also, through him, they met Sussie Wata.

Sussie-Watta, la célèbre star chinoise de D.W. Griffith doit arriver à Paris demain lundi pour se mettre a la disposition de le metteur en scène français, M. E.-E. Violet, qui charge de réaliser a l’écran Le Voile de Bonheur de Georges Clemenceau. Sussie-Watta incarnera dans le film le rôle de la délicieuse Si-Tchun.[22]

One of the central mysteries of the Sussie Wata story is why, when she made her French film debut in 1923 (in ‘Le Voile de Bonheur’, directed by Édouard-Émile Violet), the accompanying promotional material stated erroneously that she had starred in a film by D.W. Griffith. (That the same publicity equally erroneously claimed she was Chinese can simply be ascribed to an attempt to promote her as the ideal casting for  the role she played in the film, that of a Chinese woman.)

I have written elsewhere on this subject, including the possibility—although it is just a possibility—that Sussie Wata did have a walk-on role in a Griffith movie.[23] If that much of the story is true, the question becomes, what prompted her to leave behind a stage career in the UK to go to the US to appear in films? If, instead, the whole story was entirely made up, the question becomes, what was the inspiration behind it?

There is a tantalising possibility that the answer to both these questions is Taku Takagi.

Although I know of no evidence to support this theory, and thus, it must remain pure speculation, there is a viable chain of events consistent with what we know of Yoshio Markino’s role in the artistic life of the Japanese community in London, his association with Sussie Wata via the revival of ‘The Darling of the Gods’, and the efforts that the Takagis must have made to secure work that leads to the Takagis seeking out Yoshio Markino in London in early February 1914, Markino introducing them to Sussie Wata, and Wata thereby hearing from Taku Takagi the story of her career in America on stage and in film.

It is easy to imagine the impression the story of Taku Takagi’s career before her arrival in London might have made on the 16-year-old Wata. Wata’s lifelong involvement in the world of theatrical entertainment via the Fukushima/Lukushima troupe would have included many encounters with the other Japanese performers, male and female, touring the English halls in this period (although the Fukushima/Lukushima troupe was largely inactive by 1914, that year, at least fifteen other Japanese acrobatic or stage magic troupes were touring England[24]). However, it is unlikely that she would have encountered a fellow Japanese actress before. This is not to say, of course, that Wata and Takagi were the first actresses of Japanese heritage to appear on the English stage. That honour belongs to two actresses who began their performing career as geisha, one of whom would go on to have connections to both Puccini’s ‘Madama Butterfly’ and, indirectly, the story of actresses of Japanese heritage in early American cinema.

SADA YACCO AND THE JAPANESE PLAY—Actors at the Criterion Theatre. The scene Illustrated here occurs in “The Geisha and the Knight”, which was written by Mr. Kawakami. Madame Sada Yacco plays the part of a geisha, Katasuragi, who is loved by two knights, Nagoya (played by Mr. Kawakami) and Banza. The latter forces Nagoya to fight a duel, and the geisha intervenes. She ultimately dies.[25]

Sadayakko Kawakami (川上貞奴, Kawakami Sadayakko, 1871–1946), called Sada Yacco in the West, became a sensation in the US, Britain, and France when she first toured those countries in 1899–1900 as a member of the theatrical troupe run by her husband, Otojirō Kawakami (川上音二郎, Kawakami Otojirō, 1864–1911). As I have written elsewhere,[26] it was on a subsequent Europe-wide tour that Puccini sought out the Kawakami troupe again and again to study authentically Japanese musical forms as realised by Sada Yacco every night on stage for incorporation into the score of ‘Madama Butterfly’.

Of equal interest to us here, Sada Yacco’s biography as presented by the Western press was a romanticised version of her real story, warped in ways that played to Western tastes, in that, before becoming an actress, Sado Yacco had led the life that was so often falsely ascribed to female Japanese entertainers in the Western press, that of a geisha. However, although the story presented in the Western press was that she was “not a geisha of the Western idea” but rather an aristocratic woman and a “geisha of the highest class in Japan”,[27] the true story is that she was sold into the profession by her formerly prosperous merchant family after they fell on hard times and rose in stature by attracting the patronage of the most prominent Japanese statesman of the age, Prince Itō Hirobumi.

As the Puccini story demonstrates, Sada Yacco’s training as a geisha meant that the elements of her performance that centred on music and dance were authentically Japanese. However, her acting style was rather a product of Otojirō Kawakami’s attempts to create works that would appeal to a Western audience—Japanese in setting and seeming style, but, in reality, tailored to Western tastes; something much more naturalistic than Kabuki, which, as Kawakami had discovered to the company’s cost, alienated Western audiences in its pure form, but retaining enough of the Japanese art to represent something that set Kawakami’s Company performances apart from Western attempts to represent Japan on stage like ‘The Darling of the Gods’.[28]

This also, not coincidentally, became the signature style of the actress who followed Sada Yacco in bringing genuine geisha dance and musical performance to Western audiences, Hisa Ōta (大田ひさ, Ōta Hisa, 1868–1945), known in the West as Madame Hanako.

Petite even for a Japanese is Mme. Hanako, the talented actress now at the Hippodrome, but all agree that she is an artist of great talent, and she closely resembles Miss Louie Freear in her ability to depict comedy and tragedy with equal facility.[29]

The stories of Sada Yacco and Hanako are connected by more than their shared history as geisha, as Hanako, the actress, as opposed to dancer and musician, was in large part the creation of American dancer and producer Loie Fuller (1862–1928) whose aim it was to create an artist in the Sada Yacco mold. Fuller was a pioneer of modern dance (a rival of Martha Graham), who, although born in the USA, had made Paris her home. After the Kawakami Company and Sada Yacco achieved great success at the 1900 Paris Exposition, it was Fuller who arranged for them to return for an extended tour of Europe the following year—she even appeared on the same bill in performances in London.[30]

Fuller was not alone in recognising that Sado Yacco’s success had created an appetite in European audiences for more of the same. A Japanese impresario based in Copenhagen struck upon the idea of importing performing artists fom his home country to serve as entr’acte entertainment. One of those artists was Hisa Ōta, already 33, already twice divorced, hired for the dancing and musical skills that she, like Sado Yacco, had acquired through long training as a geisha. It was Fuller again who saw the potential for Ōta to become much more than just entr’acte entertainment when she saw her perform in London a year later, and she set about turning her from Hisa Ōta, geisha, into Madame Hanako, actress.[31]

(It should be acknowledged here that there is a problem with the timeline of events as recounted by Fuller, as she claims to have discovered Ōta/Hanako after seeing her in a minor role in a play in London in 1902; however, this appears to be a reference to Hanako’s supporting role, which consisted largely of playing the shamisen and dancing, in the play ‘Hari-Kiri’, mounted by the Arayama Company in London in 1905, not 1902.[32] Certainly, the version of events that Fuller recounts, which consists of her training Hanako as an actress in 1902, then losing touch with her until 1904, at which time, at Hanako’s request, she helped Hanako set up her own company, seems inconsistent with Hanako still playing minor roles in other companies in 1905.)

Fuller saw in Hanako only a cut-and-paste Sada Yacco, a business opportunity to create a second company in the vein of the Kawakami Company but under her direct control and at a much-reduced cost (as an unknown, Hanako, of course, commanded much lower fees than Sada Yacco, the star). Hanako herself, once she came into her own as an actress—and established her own company—saw things differently, and developed a varied career that borrowed from her training in Japanese music and dance for drama but owed much to her exposure to European theatre when it came to comedy (she would, in time, even appear in Western plays in comedic roles, performances for which her Japanese nationality was incidental).[33]

Hanako made and built her career in continental Europe, and it was there that she lived and worked, famously sitting as a model for Rodin in Paris in 1906, and spending extended periods living and working in Berlin. However, she would perform in London with her own company in 1908 and 1910.[34] As these were formative years for Sussie Wata, it is tempting to suggest that hearing of, or even seeing, the Hanako company perform is what revealed to the young acrobat that a Japanese stage artist could do more than just turn somersaults. However, set against this is the fact that there is nothing in Wata’s subsequent career to suggest that she had any interest in the Japanese performing arts, which is what the Hanako company presented (albeit in a form tailored to Western tastes). As we have already seen, there was nothing authentically Japanese about ‘The Darling of the Gods’, it was a Western play performed in the Western style, and Wata would spend most of her stage career in musical revues.[35] If there were actresses she was emulating, it was the numerous English and European actresses who surrounded her throughout her early life.

This stands in contrast to the career of another actress of Japanese heritage active in this period, an actress who, like Sussie Wata/Susan Watanabe, was born and raised in Europe (specifically, Scotland). Coincidentally, her name was also Watanabe—Musmé Watanabe (Ellen Mary Watanabe, 1887–1940). Musmé Watanabe was the child of a Japanese father and a Scottish mother, but was raised alone by her mother in Scotland. As far as we can tell, she received no formal training in the Japanese performing arts, nor visited Japan; despite this, she presented herself as a Japanese actress and performed Japanese works, including at least one (‘The Tea House’) that Hanako had first brought to the British stage.[36] It is much easier to draw a direct line from Hanako to Musmé Watanabe than it is to Sussie Wata, and Hanako was undoubtedly an inspiration to artists and performers across Europe.  

She was also, of course, an artist in her own right; however, at the same time, in truth, she was performing in Sada Yacco’s shadow, and it was Sada Yacco and the works that she inspired that were to have the lasting impact, albeit not always a positive one.

GEISHA’S ROMANCE. TALE OF JAPANESE LOVE AND PATRIOTISM. WAITING FOR PEACE. Ten-Katsu, a sweet-faced geisha, who belongs to the troupe of Japanese magicians now appearing at the Alhambra, has a strange and romantic history.[37]

With the real Sada Yacco story altered to suit Western tastes as a model, fueled by the success of Madame Butterfly as a short story, straight play, and then, opera, female Japanese entertainers would again and again be erroneously presented in the Western press as having a past as a geisha. This was the case in 1903–1904 with Tenkatsu, the star of the Tenichi troupe of stage magicians, the daughter of a pornbroker recruited into the troupe as a child, who was recast as a geisha rescued from that life by the troupe’s founder Tenichi,[38] and it became the case in 1914 when Taku Takagi eventually debuted in London. However, before examining that latter incident, we should first look at another, albeit indirect, connection between Sada Yacco and Taku Tagaki that may also have a role in our story here, particularly, as it is one that also concerns Sussie Wata. And this relates to actresses of Japanese heritage in early American cinema.

Two years after Taku Takagi became the first Japanese actress to take a leading role in an American movie, actress Tsuru Aoki (青木鶴, Aoki Tsuru, 1892–1961) embarked on her ultimately much more substantial American movie career.[39] Although known primarily now for being the wife of the most famous Asian actor of his time, Sessue Hayakawa (早川雪洲, Hayakawa Sesshū, 1886–1973), whom she often starred alongside, of more interest to us here is the more-or-less forgotten fact that she was born Tsuru Kawakami and was Sada Yacco’s niece by marriage (the daughter of Otojirō Kawakami’s brother). When the Kawakamis embarked on their 1899 tour, they took young Tsuru (aged 6) to America with them as a member of their theatrical company. However, in an event that flies against modern Western ideas but was in line with Japanese views of familial responsibility in this period, when the theatre company struggled to make its way in its early months in the US, Kawakami decided to give his niece up for adoption to a US-based Japanese sketch artist Hyosai Aoki, seeing this as, in the context of Japanese familial responsibility, the correct decision to make for her future prosperity.[40]

By 1913, after a period appearing on stage, Tsuru Aoki had embarked on a career as a film actress. Although, her first really big hit would not be released until the summer of 1914 (‘Wrath of the Gods’, in which she starred alongside Hayakawa; the two married a few weeks before the film was released), her first starring role was in the 1913 short ‘The Oath of Tsuru San’. The Takagis were likely aware of her arrival on the screen, as this was during Taku Takagi’s own film career with Thanhauser.

Sussie Wata must also have been aware of Tsuru Aoki’s film career by the time she made her French film debut in 1923. We can be sure of this because Tsuru Aoki and Sessue Hayakawa were the stars of ‘La bataille’, the film that director Édouard-Émile Violet shot after he wrapped shooting on Sussie Wata’s starring vehicle ‘Le Voile de Bonheur’.[41] This project with the famous American-based Japanese stars must have been the talk of the ‘Le Voile de Bonheur’ set, not least as preparations must have been underway for their imminent arrival in France. (Did Wata meet Aoki and Hayakawa? She must surely have felt tempted to do so, given her obvious desire to emulate the career of actresses like Aoki. However, set against this were the risks involved in being exposed as, at the very least, not the Griffith star she claimed to be, and potentially, as someone who had never worked in America at all, something that would become readily apparent as soon as she entered into conversation with two actors who had made their names there.[42])

Thus, Sussie Wata had two opportunities to learn of the American film career of Tsuru Aoki, from Taku Takagi in 1914 and from the crew of her own starring vehicle ‘Le Voile de Bonheur’ in 1923, more knowledge that could have either inspired a real attempt to break into American movies (if learned in 1914) or served as the basis for a story that she had not only made the attempt but succeeded (if learned in 1923).

In short, the answer to the mystery of why Sussie Wata was said in 1923 to have starred in a D.W. Griffith movie is because, by the time of her French film debut, she at least knew of and perhaps had even met at least one and possibly two Japanese actresses of roughly the same age who had already starred in American movies. Whether the D.W. Griffith story was wholly false or only partly so is still unknown, but we do now at least have a working theory as to the origin of it.

THE DARLING OF THE GODS (Last Night.) By David Belasco and John Luther Long. Presented with new scenery, dresses and appointments. HERBERT TREE. MARIE LOHR. LAST MATINEE TO-DAY, at 2.15.[43]

‘The Darling of the Gods’ ended its three-month run at the end of March 1914 (to make way for the London debut of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’, also starring Sir Herbert Tree). Coincidentally, just as Sussie Wata’s London debut as an actress came to an end, Taku Takagi’s London debut as a singer and dancer began. She opened at the Trocadero Restaurant on Monday, 30 March 1914, two days after ‘The Darling of the Gods’ closed at the Ambassadors. She performed a nightly supper show, 11.00 p.m.–12.30 a.m., for the entertainment of the restaurant diners, accompanied by the Trocadero orchestra and performing in a space cleared between the tables. Her set included two popular songs of the day, ‘You Made Me Love You’ (1913) and the ragtime number ‘Hitchy Koo’ (1912), emphasing that it was very much what we would call today a late-night cabaret show.[44]

The Trocadero Restaurant, which opened in 1896, was the jewel in the crown of the J. Lyons & Co. tea rooms empire, which was built on bringing the restaurant dining experience to as many people as possible in restaurants for all budgets. The Trocadero, which, despite the name, comprised a number of dining rooms (Empire Room, Alexandra Room, Banqueting Hall), was lavish and expensive and designed to appeal to London’s richer nightflies.[45] (The building, at Piccadilly Circus, is still there, although the restaurant is long gone.) This was unquestionably a prestigious booking. According to Chinpei Takagi’s later account,[46] Taku was chosen from among 30 or 40 potential performers. If true, although quite the coup, this again reinforces the fact that there were, despite Chinpei Takagi’s claims to the contrary, no arrangements in place for Taku to perform in London; the couple had to look for work in competition with all the other artists doing the same.

Taku was billed as ‘Taki-Taku, Europe’s only Geisha’, an 18-year-old (she was 22) member of an ‘aristocratic family’, who was tutored in Japan by an English professor and had studied in America. She was said to have danced ‘at the chief theatres in Tokyo and many places in America’ (the former was, of course, nonsense, although the latter was broadly true). There was no mention of a husband (in one report, she is quoted as saying, ‘I ran off to America all by myself’).[47]

She was being presented as at once innocent because of her youth and knowing because of her ‘profession’ (geisha). In short, the typical post-Sada-Yacco, post-Madame-Butterfly Western fantasy of a Japanese female performing artist. This was unquestionably a fabrication created by Chinpei Takagi to pander to the prejudices of the English newspapers and audiences. (And not a very good fabrication: where did this 18-year-old aristocrat tutored by an English professor and star of the stage on two continents find the time to become a geisha?)

The news reports included one other piece of information: that in a few weeks, ‘Taki-Taku’ would be leaving for Russia. This Russia trip is dealt with at length by Chinpei Takagi in his account of events at this time, and has some significance, but for now, it is worth examining what this statement that the trip was to take place a few weeks after ‘Taki-Taku’ debuted at the Trocadero means for other statements that are made about the Takagis’ stay in England.

Taku Takagi’s biographer, quoting Chinpei Takagi, writes at length about the success that Taku had in England and how the Trocadero appearance led to her being befriended by Clive Holland, author of ‘My Japanese Marriage’,[48] who praised her performance at the Trocadero in the Times newspaper, just one of the reviews that led to Taku going on a tour of England’s halls. However, it is not possible for Taku to have fulfilled an engagement at the Trocadero and toured the English halls in the space of only a few weeks. More than this, Clive Holland did not write for the Times newspaper and there is no review of Taku’s performance at the Trocadero written by anyone in any issue of the Times—nor, indeed, beyond the three or four articles that were published to accompany her debut, all of which focused on her [fabricated] life story, not the quality of her performance, were there any real reviews of the performance published in any English newspaper. Similarly, there are no reports in English newspapers of any performances by Takagi anywhere else in England. In short, little of what Chinpei Takagi claimed about the English trip can be confirmed, and most of his claims are easy to debunk based on counter-evidence.

Were it not for the mention by Taku of the Russia trip to a reporter interviewing her about the Trocadero engagement, it would even be tempting to dismiss this as another later fabrication. Although details of what performances Taku gave in Russia are scarce (ballet seems to have featured), its significance is its timing: this was the late Spring/early Summer of 1914; Europe was on the brink of war.

By Chinpei Takagi’s later account, the Russian trip coincided with an offer of a long-term contract for a tour of Europe from a Berlin-based promoter; thus, after travelling with Taku to Moscow for her debut there, Chinpei first backtracked to Berlin to sign the promised contract, then returned to London to make arrangements for the tour, which was to start in September. While he was in London, Great Britain declared war on Germany (4 August 1914); Japan, as Britain’s ally, followed suit on 23 August 1914. By that date, Taku Takagi had reunited with her husband in London, apparently after being urged to leave Moscow by the owner of the theatre at which she had been performing.[49]

It should come as no surprise that none of the above can be supported by any independent documentation. Instead, the first definite information we have about the Takagis after newspaper accounts of Taku’s Trocadero debut is their departure from England on 29 August 1914, onboard the NYK cargo–passenger ship, the Hitachi Maru, bound for Kobe, Japan.[50]

In truth, they had arrived and departed with little fanfare, despite later claims to the contrary. Taku Takagi’s true impact as an artist would only come on her return to Japan, where she became a leading light in a new theatre movement that combined different styles of Western drama, music, and dance to create a modern, populist, but political entertainment for the masses, a uniquely Japanese take on vaudeville and the music hall that was nearly a decade ahead of the much more famous political cabaret scene of Wiemar Germany. This form of entertainment would eventually become known as ‘Asakusa Opera’ (浅草オペラ), after the district in Tokyo that was most associated with it and the name that Taku Takagi gave to the troupe that she formed to perform it.[51]

SYDNEY BLOW and WILL COLLINS Present the Brilliant British Burlesque “BEAUTIES.” A strong Entente-Cordiale Company, including HARRY COLE, W. Wilson Blake, Bert Beswick, Steve Frayne, MIA SYLVA, Peggy Doyle, Pamela Page, ERIC MASTERS, and the Allied Chorus of Beauties.[52]

Back in England, the war had created a demand for feel-good patriotic entertainment that Britain’s variety producers were only too pleased to meet. With Japan being Britain’s ally, Japanese performers were welcomed more than ever. Thus, when Will Collins, the king of musical revues (by the summer of 1915, he had no less than nine revue companies touring the English halls[53]), set out to assemble an ‘Allied Chorus of Beauties’, decked out in couture dresses worth £2000 representing the national dresses of the countries who made up the allied armies,[54] it was natural he would include a Japanese representative. This was for the Sydney Blow-penned revue ‘Beauties’, and it would mark Sussie Wata’s second credited performance in a stage production. She would remain with the company for at least 16 months (February 1915–June 1916).[55] (It is of course possible, if not probable, that she spent at least some of the 11 months between the close of ‘The Darling of the Gods’ and the opening on ‘Beauties’ as an uncredited chorus girl in one of the many other Collins revues that toured England that first year of the war.)

By a curious coincidence, Taku Takagi’s earliest hit in the Asakusa entertainment scene, and the work that was said to have launched Asakusa Opera as a genre, was ‘Born to Serve [in the Military]’ (従軍出生, Jūgun shussei, 1917), in which Taku led of an Allied Army of Beauties—female performers decked out in the uniforms of allied nation generals—marching off to war.[56] The tastes of the working classes of Japan and Great Britain were not so far apart.

This newfound-love in England for all things allied would provide active employment for two other Japanese performers of interest to us, both of whom had been in Berlin when England declared war on Germany, leaving only at the insistence of the Japanese Embassy (which, of course, was aware that Japan would herself soon declare war on Germany).

The first of these performers was Hanako. It is hard to know at this distance how she felt about having to leave Berlin, the city she had come to call home; however, once in London, she immediately joined in efforts to provide people with an escape from news of the war, if only for a few hours, performing in a double bill that paired one of her comedic Japanese-themed works, ‘Otake’, with revivals of popular West End comedic hits, such as ‘East Lynne’. One of the people who came to see her perform was Rodin, eight years after he had sculpted her in bronze.[57]

She would remain in London until 1916 and then return to Japan with the idea of recruiting a new company of players there. However, once in Japan, she found that the exigencies of war prevented her from returning to England. She performed in her home country for the next three years and then retired from the stage. She died in 1945. Today, if she is remembered at all, it is as Sada Yacco’s shadow and Rodin’s muse.[58]

The second artist of interest to us, who, in August 1914, fled Berlin for London, is Tamaki Miura (三浦環, Miura Tamaki, 1884–1946). At first glance, other than in terms of her nationality and general description as a performing artist, Miura bears no resemblance to any of the other female artists we have thus far discussed, as she was a singer of grand opera, who played concert halls, not theatres or music halls. However, a closer examination reveals some important points of intersection. First and foremost, she was what the chattering classes in Japan referred to as a mondai no onna (問題の女), a ‘problem woman’, a term applied to any woman who showed a spark of independence, which is to say, who contemplated any role for herself other than that of the ‘good wife, wise mother’ (良妻賢母, ryōsai kenbo) ideal promoted by conservative Japanese society. In Miura’s case, this manifested itself both in insisting on pursuing a career in Western music and in divorcing the man her parents had picked for her to marry and running off to Singapore with the lover she had chosen for herself. In 1913, the couple returned to Japan to marry, but rumours began to circulate that Miura had rekindled her relationship with her ex-husband behind her new husband’s back, just the kind of thing a mondai no onna would do.[59]

(A few years later, it would be Taku Takagi who would be branded a mondai no onna, after she divorced Chinpei and took a new lover; there was even a further echo of the Miura story in rumours that Takagi had rekindled her relationship with Chinpei in exchange for Chinpei transferring the rights to the works that she had created while they were married, which Chinpei still owned, to her.[60])

Miura and her new husband fled the scandal caused by their liaison and rumours of infidelity and set sail for Europe. Like Hanako, they settled in Berlin, and, like Hanako, they left for London at the Japanese Embassy’s insistence when Britain declared war on Germany. Although we cannot know how Miura’s career would have progressed if it were not for the war, we can say that she arrived in London at just the right moment: like Hanako and Sussie Wata, as a representative of one of Britain’s allies, she was greeted warmly by British audiences.

Miura’s London debut was on the biggest stage possible, a gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary. The undoubted star of the evening was the grande diva Adelina Patti, who, aged 71, came out of retirement for the occasion and was treated to a rapturous reception. However, Miura also made her mark.[61]

Madame Miura, the Japanese prima donna, also had a splendid reception. She sang “Sakura” (cherry blossom), “Hotaru” (glow worm), and “Caro Nome” (Verdi).[62]

“Hotaru” almost certainly refers to “Hotaru no Hikari” (蛍の光)—'The Light of the Fireflies’—a Japanese standard sung to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. We can be fairly sure about this as ‘Hotaru no Hikari’, like ‘Auld Land Syne’, was a song of parting, and a popular choice for occasions like the departure of loved ones on military service. It also had strong patriotic undertones, particularly in this period, when it included two verses, since dropped, that spoke directly about a love of country and living in the service of Japan.[63] (Slightly more prosaically, as it was sung to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the Royal Albert Hall orchestra would have had sheet music for it.) The opening stanza forms the opening quote of the current work and is the inspiration for its title.

Miura would go on a concert tour of the provinces in late 1914, but it is the work she embarked upon in the spring of the following year that would lend her enduring fame. In May 1915, she became the first Japanese prima donna to tackle the role of Cio-Cio San in a Western production of Puccini’s ‘Madame Butterfly’.[64] (It is important to make this distinction as Sumiko Takaori—the benefactor of Taku Takagi in New York—played the role in Tokyo in 1913 and 1914, conducted by her husband Shuuichi; performances, alas, little heralded outside of Japan.[65]) The production was mounted at the London Opera House[66] by Vladimir Rosing, and the production design was by none other than Yoshio Markino.[67]

Miura was a huge success in a role, and it would go on to define her career. She replicated her London success first all across America and then, after the 1918 Armistice, all across the world. Western audiences were happy to embrace a Japanese singer in this ‘Japanese’ role, even though it was one created by Western writers catering to Western tastes. Miura herself, the mondai no onna, was well aware of the contradictions and sought space to inject something of her authentic self into the role.

After all, this story was first written by a foreigner based on his imagination; and then a foreign genius composed the music out of his own head by incorporating melodies of Japanese music here and there. Therefore, no matter how hard I try to perform in an authentically Japanese fashion, such a performance would not fit neatly with the opera as a whole. One has to harmonize Japanese emotions and manners into the opera.[68]

Whether she succeeded or simply played into the Orientalist fantasies of the audiences who saw her is still a matter of debate. As is the extent to which she owed her success in the role simply to being Japanese as opposed to being a gifted singer. What is certain is that she was yet another female Japanese performing artist for whom the enduring success of Puccini’s ‘Madama Butterfly’ was a double-edged sword. She completed her first world tour in 1922 but almost immediately embarked on a second, which lasted until 1932. At the close of this second tour, she finally returned to Japan for good. She died in 1946.

Miura departed England for America in 1915. As we have seen, Hanako would leave England for Japan the following year. Takagi, of course, had returned to Japan as early as 1914. Of the four performers on whom we have focused, that left only Sussie Wata still in England by 1917. As I have written elsewhere,[69] there is still much that is unknown about Sussie Wata’s career, and, indeed, life. After the war, she returned to the London stage and then spent some time in France making films. She may also have made at least one film in America. What we know for certain is that the remaining members of the Lukushima troupe returned to Japan in the summer of 1923, and the next year, she followed them. For now, that is where her story ends.

When we last left Taku Takagi (1917), she was in Tokyo and the star of a new genre of theatre that she had helped to create, Asakuka Opera. In Tokyo, the pace of her already hectic life only accelerated. In the space of four years, she joined and left several performance troupes, and started and dissolved at least two troupes of her own. She divorced Chinpei and began and ended a relationship with her new creative partner, Takashi Iba (伊庭孝, Iba Takashi, 1887–1937). She fought with a resentful Chinpei over the rights of the works that she created while they were married, and was, like Tamaki Miura before her, branded a mondai no onna as a result. She rid herself of Chinpei, only to then fall under the baleful influence of a gangster who was attempting to gain control of the Asakusa entertainment scene. She made headlines wherever she went and whatever she did. She was brilliant and brittle, loved by the masses and loathed by the chattering classes. She died, of mental and physical exhaustion, on 30 March 1919, aged just 28.[70]

The light of the fireflies burns brightly but briefly.

蛍の光、窓の雪、書読む月日、重ねつゝ。何時しか年も、すぎの戸を、開けてぞ今朝は、別れ行く。By the light of the fireflies and the moon reflected by the snow under our window, we spent our days and months reading. Before we knew it, years had passed, and the time had come to open the door, step through, and part ways.[71]

Jamie Barras, July 2025 

Notes

[1] Opening stanza of Light of the Fireflies (蛍の光, Hotaru no Hikari), lyrics by Chiaki Inagaki (稲垣千穎, Inagaki Chiaki). Translation by the author.

[2] I tell the story of Sussie Wata here: https://www.ishilearn.com/wata-san, accessed 2 July 2025. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only work to study her career.

[3] My main sources for the life and work of Taku Takagi are the following:

1.        Teruko Yoshitake, ‘Die Dancing: Tokuko Takagi, Queen of the Musicals’ (Butō ni shisu: Myūjikaru no joō Takagi Tokuko) (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1985). A full-length biography in Japanese.

2.        Charles Exley, “Popular Musical Star Tokuko Takagi and Vaudeville Modernism in the Taishõ Asakusa Opera.” Japanese Language and Literature, 2017, 51, no. 1, 63–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44508506.

3.        https://web.archive.org/web/20080929005911/http://creative.cside2.jp/kindai-daigakuin-nb/sosaku-hyoron/project/catalogue/ca-1918-09-01.html, accessed 2 July 2025.

[4] For information on the Tenichi Troupe, see the following and references therein: https://www.ishilearn.com/staged-identities-ten, accessed 2 July 2025. For a comprehensive overview of touring Japanese acrobatic and stage magician troupes like the Fukushima and Tenichi Troupes, see the Digital Museum of Japan–UK Show Business curated by Pernille Rudlin: https://ninjin.co.uk/, accessed 2 July 2025.

[5] The information in this paragraph comes mainly from Note 3 above, third reference, translated by the author. For the story of Sumiko Takaori and Madame Butterfly, see the section in the text on Tamaki Miura and Note 59, below.

[6] See Exley, Note 3 above, second reference, for the movie career of Taku Takagi. For a Japanese actress who followed Takagi into American movies, but whose career would be much for substantial, Tsuru Aoki, see Note 39 below.

[7] ‘N Y World Interviews Jap Actress’, The Moving Picture World, 1912, 13, 1286. Available here: https://archive.org/details/movpicwor13movi, accessed 2 July 2025.

[8] See, for example, ‘Daughter of Japanese Banker is to Act on American Stage’, St Louis Star and Times (St Louis, MO), 17 September 1910.

[9] Chinpei Takagi, ‘The Life of Tokuko Takagi, Who Died Mad’ (Tokyo: Seibunshu, 1919). Quoted by Yoshitake, Note 3 above, first reference.

[10] Yone Noguchi, ‘Yoshio Markino’, Japan Times, 4 March 1917. Available to read in English here: https://www.botchanmedia.com/YN/articles/markino.htm, accessed 2 July 2025.

[11]  I write about Yoshio Markino’s life in London here: https://www.ishilearn.com/nile-voyagers-darling-of-the-gods, accessed 2 July 2025.

[12] See Note 10 above and references therein.

[13] ‘Last Night’s Theatre Gossip: A Famous Composer’, Daily News (London), 18 January 1914; ‘Signor Puccini in London’, Western Mail, 17 January 1914.

[14] Yone Noguchi, ‘Onoto Watanna and her Japanese Work’, Taiyo, 1907, 13:8, 18-21 and 13:10, 19-21. Available to read in English here: https://www.botchanmedia.com/YN/articles/Watanna-Taiyou.htm, accessed 2 July 2025.

[15] See Note 14 above. The story of Winifred Eaton including her friendship with Noguchi and their estrangement is told in Diana Burchill, ‘Onoto Watanna, the Story of Winifred Eaton’ (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

[16] ‘A True Japanese and a Stage Japanese’, The Sketch (Supplement), 28 January 1914.

[17] A copy of the script to ‘Darling of the Gods’ can be found here: https://archive.org/details/darlingofgods00bela, accessed 2 July 2025.

[18] For a concise discussion of the issue of geisha versus courtesan, see, for example, https://chaari.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/did-geisha-engage-in-acts-of-prostitution/, accessed 2 July 2025. For a longer, academic treatment, see: Amy Stanley, ‘Enlightenment Geisha: The Sex Trade, Education, and Feminine Ideals in Early Meiji Japan’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 2013, 72, 539–562. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43553525.

[19] ‘West End Theatres’, London Daily Chronicle, 1 January 1914.

[20] Entries for C Takagi and Toka Takagi, passenger list, SS Lapland, arriving Dover, 29 January 1914, UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 2 June 2025.

[21] Yoshitake (Note 3 above, first reference) treats the Takagis’ London trip as a success and an immediate one; however, there is no getting around the fact that the Takagis arrived in England at the end of January, but Taku Takagi’s first London performance did not take place until a full two months later. See Note 44 below. Exley (Note 3 above, second reference) mentions a brief engagement in Paris before the Trocadero engagement but this is not mentioned by Yoshitake in her exhaustive biography.

[22] ‘Engagement de Artiste’, Comoedia, 11 February 1923.

[23] See Note 2 above.

[24] Ko-Ten-Ichi Troupe, ‘Fautmi’ Troupe, Fuji Troupe, Royal Mitsuis, Prince Kuroki, De-Breans, Riogoku Family, Tojo Troupe, Yamamoto and Miss Kiyoshi, Nik-Ko Troupe, Yamagata Troupe, Hamamura Family, Ten-Ka Troupe, the Sakuras, and stage magician Takase [Kiyoshi]. This list was assembled from notices and advertisments in the theatrical press. For more information, see the Digital Museum of Japan-UK Show Business, Note 4, final reference.

[25] ‘Engagement de Artiste’, Comoedia, 11 February 1923.

[26] See Note 4, above, first reference, and references therein.

[27] ‘Otijiro Kawakami and Sada Yacco’, Era, 2 June 1900.

[28] Leonard C. Pronko, ‘After Hanako...’, Asian Theatre Journal, 1988, 5, 86–91, https://doi.org/10.2307/1124026.

[29] A Jap Louie Freear’, Bystander, 27 July 1908.

[30] This account  the role of Loie Fuller in the second Kawakami Company European tour is taken from: Nicola Savarese and Richard Fowler. “A Portrait of Hanako.” Asian Theatre Journal, 1988, 5, no. 1, 63–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/1124024. For Fuller on the same bill as Sada Yacco and the Kawakami company, see, for example, St James Gazette, 21 June 1901.

[31] This account is again drawn from Saverese and Fowler, Note 30 above, first reference.

[32] ‘Savoy Theatre: A Japanese Drama’, Daily Telegraph & Courier (London), 4 October 1905.

[33] For Hanako in a Western play, see, for example, her performances as Lady Isobel in ‘East Lynne’: ‘In and Out and Round and About’, Lady’s Pictorial, 19 December 1914.

[34] Hanako brought her own company to London in 1908 to perform ‘Otake’ at the Hippodrome: See Note 29, above. In 1910, her company performed ‘The Tea House’ at the Coliseum Theatre: ‘A Japanese Tragedy’, London Daily Chronicle, 21 June 910.

[35] See Note 2 above.

[36] Pernille Rudlin, ‘Ellen Mary Watanabe, 1887–1940’, https://ninjin.co.uk/2025/03/08/ellen-mary-watanabe-1887-1940/, accessed 3 July 2025.

[37] ‘Geisha’s Romance’, Daily Express, 26 August 1904.

[38] See Note 4, above, first reference.

[39] Sara Ross, ‘Tsuru Aoki’, Women Film Pioneers Project, https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-tsuru-aoki/, accessed 3 July 2025.

[40] The version of this story told at the time was that the Kawakamis placed their niece in a boarding school on their arrival in the US to further her education. No explanation was given as to the change in family name, or why they did not return to collect her at any point. See, for example, ‘Tsuru Aoki—the Madame Butterfly of the Screen’, Picturegoer, 17 July 1920.

[41] ‘La bataille’: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214526/; ‘Le Voile de Bonheur’: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443285/, accessed 4 July 2025.

[42] Even if the director, Violet, was aware of the deception and perhaps was involved in it, he wouldn’t have wanted to risk it being exposed, and so would also have had reason to keep his current and future leading actors apart (he couldn’t control what Aoki and Hayakawa would tell the press after they had finished shooting ‘La bataille’ and returned to America).

[43] ‘West End Theatres’, London Daily Chronicle, 28 March 1914.

[44] ‘Geisha’s Supper Dance’, London Evening Standard, 31 March 1914.

[45] Rob Baker, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Lyons’ Cornerhouses and their Nippy Waitresses’, Flashbak, https://flashbak.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-lyons-cornerhouses-and-their-nippy-waitresses-35186/, accessed 3 July 2025.

[46] Quoted in Yoshitake, Note 3 above, first reference, pages 77–80.

[47] ‘Europe’s Only Geisha’, Morning Advertiser, 1 April 1914; ‘Geisha Girl at the Trocadero’, London Daily Chronicle, 1 April 1914.

[48] https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/57167/pg57167-images.html. Interestingly, the name of the titular Japanese wife is ‘Mousmé’. Was this the inspiration for Ellen Mary Watanabe’s stage name?

[49] Taken from Yoshitake, Note 3 above, first reference, pages 81–82.

[50] Entry for Mr and Mrs C Takagi, passenger list for the Hitachi Maru, departing London, 29 August 1914, UK and Ireland, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 2 June 2025.

[51] This aspect of Takagi’s career and legacy is covered in depth by Exley, see Note 3 above, second reference.

[52] ‘Hippodrome, Coventry’, Coventry Graphic, 21 July 1916.

[53] ‘London News Letter’, Billboard, 8 May 1915.

[54] That at least was the claim: ‘Beauties: Exeter Theatre Attraction’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 15 May 1915. The counties represented—supposedly by actresses from those counties—were France, Belgium, Russia, Serbia, Japan, Italy, the USA, and Spain (clearly, Collins had only a shaky knowledge of what countries were actually fighting alongside Britain against the Central Powers).

[55] Susie Wata’s billing can be found in ads for stagings of ‘Beauties’, in for example, Portsmouth Evening News, 20 February 1915, and Edinburgh Evening News, 20 January 1916. She is last mentioned in a review of the show in Portsmouth Evening News, 20 June 1916.

[56] See Exley, Note 3 above, section reference. The title has a double meaning, as, at the end of the play, the Army of Beauties submit to their male counterparts and returns to domestic duties.

[57] ‘One of Our Allies’, Daily Mirror, 16 December 1914; ‘Ambassadors Theatre’, London Daily Chronicle, 11 November 1914. See also Note 33 above.

[58] Savarese and Fowler, Note 30 above, first reference.

[59] Mari Yoshihara, ‘The Flight of the Japanese Butterfly: Orientalism, Nationalism, and Performances of Japanese Womanhood’, American Quarterly, 2004, 56, no. 4, 975–1001. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068292..

[60] See Note 3 above, final reference.

[61] ‘King and Queen Attend a Patriotic Concert’, Scotsman, 26 October 1914.

[62] See Note 61 above.

[63] Yoshimi Naoto, ‘Variations on Hotaru no Hikari’ (in Japanese), https://www.dwc.doshisha.ac.jp/research/faculty_column/2018-02-13-12-33, accessed 4 July 2025.

[64] ‘Mme Tamaki Miura’, Queen, 29 May 1915; ‘Japanese Prima Donna in Madame Butterfly’, Daily Mirror, 4 June 1915.

[65] See Yoshihara, Note 59 above.

[66] Not to be confused with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the London Opera House, built in 1911 as a rival venue, was on Kingsway. It failed to lure patrons away from Covent Garden, however, and had been used as a variety theatre for 3 years before Rosling chose it as the venue for his new opera programme in 1915. The building was demolished in 1958 to make way for what is now the Peacock Theatre: http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Stoll.htm, accessed 5 July 2025.

[67] See Yoshihara, Note 59 above. For Markino’s involvement, see Graphic, 5 June 1915.

[68] Quoted in by Yoshihara, Note 59 above.

[69] See Note 2 above.

[70] The actual cause of death was heart failure but this was viewed at the time and since as being the result of the physical, emotional, and mental strain she had been under from the earliest days of her marriage to Chinpei. See Note 3, final reference.

[71] See Note 1 above.