Japanese Performers in 19th-20thcentury Norfolk

This display was originally created for Heritage Open Days 2023, held at theSainsbury Institute on 16th September 2023 and with an associated talk given byPernille Rudlin.
Some of the first Japanese people to be born in Norwich were the descendantsof Japanese performers who came to the city as part of acrobatic troupes. By
following the lives of the individuals involved in these groups, we can explore
what life was like for some of the earliest Japanese immigrants to come to theUK, and how their interactions and traditions changed and evolved over time.
This mini-display will focus on some of the families and performers that came toNorwich and Norfolk, their experiences, and what life might have been like as
they conducted their performances in the UK.
This display is part of an ongoing research project by Pernille Rudlin - Ninjin:
Digital museum of Japan-UK (show) business.

This display is created in collaboration with and with thanks to Pernille Rudlin and Dr
Robert H. Sayers.
Text by Olivia Butler, Project Support at the Sainsbury Institute.

A Family Affair
Understanding the idea of family in the performing arts of the late 19th century浮かれの蝶

Performers demonstrate the butterfly act () [left] and the barrel act. Image
courtesy of Dr Robert H. Sayers.

Many of the families you will read about today were not all blood-related. Performers fromJapan would frequently take on a common surname amongst their troupe, but may have comefrom different families, backgrounds or areas in Japan. Membership of the troupe and thecraft of their act was then passed down through generations in these performing families as
they travelled the UK and beyond.
Children in performing families were often from poorer backgrounds and joined the troupes
in order to earn money and survive. There are also reports that some of the children whobecame involved in the performing families were abducted and sold to proprietors of thetroupes. Children were sought after within acrobatics as they tended to be more supple andflexible to perform certain tricks, and were more likely to recover from trips or accidents – acommon feature of a performer’s life given the complexity of the acts they were undertaking.
Popular acts for children included contortion acts (kakubeijishi), barrel acts, andthe Risley act, where children balanced and flipped on the raised feet of an older, stronger
performer. This was named after "Professor" Risley, an American performer who brought overthe Imperial Troupe of Japanese to USA and Europe.

角兵衛獅子

The Great Dragon Troupe (1867 – 1889)
Families, marriage and children between performers and the public

Postcard showing members of the Great Dragon Troupe. Image courtesy of Pernille Rudlin.

The Great Dragon Troupe first visited Britain in 1867 and first performed in Norfolk in
March 1871 at Regent’s Hall in Great Yarmouth. The troupe was originally formed of 24-25
performers during their 1867 visit, and was likely led by Hotaka Chōjirō who performed thebutterfly trick– a popular act in Japan from the 1820s that was a success withBritish audiences. The trick created the illusion of a paper butterfly delicately hovering overa paper fan. Butterflies are known as chō
in Japan, which performers often incorporated
into their stage names.

浮かれの蝶

蝶The troupe fell under several proprietors during their years of performing and merged with
Tannaker’s troupes in 1871. While troupes were dynamic and fluid in terms of theirmembership and proprietorship, the concept of a performing family remained important totheir lives, as seen in the postcard in this display. Members of a troupe would often adopt thesame stage surname to consolidate themselves as a performing family unit, but still retained
the memories of their lives and families back in Japan - at least five different Japanese familynames can be identified in the photo here. The layers of identity that these performers
embodied, from their names to their clothing, highlights the many dimensions of their lives atthe time.
As generations passed, new families were borne of the troupes – sometimes between
Japanese and British people. In August 1876, Kondo Yasokichi of the Great Dragon Troupeand his wife Emma Corbett, the daughter of a farm labourer, were married in Walsall. By
1882, their fourth daughter, Motto Laura Matilda Kitchie, is recorded as being born inNorwich and was baptised at St Martin at Palace Plain in February 1884. While the itinerant
nature of performing troupes meant that the family did not settle permanently in Norwich,
the growth of these families and many like it signalled a new era of cross-cultural relationsfacilitated by the increasing presence of Japanese performers in the UK.

The Mystery of Tannaker
Commodifying a taste for Japanese culture in the UK

Perhaps one of the most enigmatic proprietors of the Great
Dragon Troupe was Tannaker Buhicrosan (, possiblyin Japanese).
Tannaker’s identity is still a topic of debate, and the only
known image of him is a drawing which perhaps
intentionally fails to show his face. He was likely ofWestern descent, taking on the name Tannaker (possibly aRomanised adaptation of the common Japanese surnameTanaka) as he became involved in the business ofJapanese performance and merchandise. He was also
known to wear a chonmage (a traditional Japanese topknothairstyle) to give the impression that he was of Japanesedescent and to add authenticity to his involvement in theincreasingly lucrative Japanese acrobatic world.

ヒクロサン

田中武一九郎

タナカー・ブ田中

Drawing of Tannaker. Illustrated
Sporting and Dramatic News, 1885.

The frequent mention of Tannaker in newspapers of thetime show he was a prolific proprietor of many troupes ofJapanese performers. Several of these troupes came toNorwich from 1869 onwards and performed in St Andrew’sHall, New Victoria Hall, and on Unthank Road for the People’s Fete in 1873. At one 1878
performance at Victoria Hall in Norwich, audience members even received a variety ofcomplimentary Japanese objects, including vases, antique ornaments, and writing desks.
Tannaker is perhaps most renowned for setting up the Japanese Village in Knightsbridge in1885, set in the heart of Victorian London and featuring replica Japanese houses, a Buddhist
temple, and populated by Japanese artisans and families. The village received much press
attention and was visited by many people at the time following an increasing interest in Japanafter the end of sakoku, the policy of limited external contact in Japan by the Tokugawa
shogunate which ended in 1853.

鎖国

Tannaker was one of many proprietors that capitalised on the popularity of Japanese
performance in the late 19th century. He came over to Britain in 1868 with a Japanese
woman, Otake, whom he claimed he had married in Shinto and Christian ceremonies inNagasaki. They married in Britain in 1879 and had 11 children together.

The Okabes (in Britain 1900 – 1914)
Exchanging traditions through life and deathOkabe Family. Poster of a Japanese troupe on tour. 1898.

The Okabe family, active in Britain between 1900 and 1914, were originally formed of sevenmembers, later becoming eight, who performed juggling, acrobatics, slack wire walking, andkakubējishi, acrobatic performance by young boys that usually involvedcontortion. The poster here demonstrates some of the acts they performed, particularly ladderclimbing (Hashigonori) which features prominently on the poster and dates back to
the 17th century. Possibly inspired by firefighting equipment in Edo (now Tokyo) at thetime, the stunt involved dramatic movements at the top of a ladder and required greatstrength and balance. The tradition continues today where firefighters still perform ladderstunts at festivals across Japan, particularly on New Year’s Day.

角兵衛獅子
梯子乗り

Aside from the risk of injury from the elaborate
tricks they performed, Japanese performers werealso vulnerable to diseases and illnesses whentravelling which could have fatal consequences.
One of the original members of the Okabe troupe,
Kiyoshi Hata, contracted meningitis and died inMarch 1903 aged 12. He was buried in Earlham
Road cemetery where you can still see his grave
today (right). The gravestone is typical of a Britishburial, but features on its bottom right aninscription of Kanji (characters used for writing inJapanese). The gravestone embodies how, even atthese pivotal moments in their lives, there was aprocess of cultural exchange facilitated by thepresence of Japanese performers in Norwich thatsaw the blending of traditions from both the UKand Japan.

Lukushima Troupe (active in Britain 1901 - 1918)
Japanese names for a British audience

The Lukushima Troupe. Image courtesy of Robert H. Sayers.

‘Lukushima’ is not a word that would naturally occur in Japanese. Fukushima is a common
Japanese surname, and it is possible that this was adapted to Rokushima and later toLukushima to avoid deterring any potential English-speaking audiences withmispronunciations of ‘Fuku’. The decision to use Lukushima as their performing name may
also be a play on words as fukumeans luck in Japanese. This practice of Romanising
Japanese names was common across troupes to ensure the widest possible appeal to theirEnglish-speaking audiences.

福Otora Lukushima. Image courtesy ofPernille Rudlin.

In 1904, the Lukushima Troupe are recorded as
performing at the Hippodrome in Norwich. One of themost popular members of the troupe was included
individually by name in this record - Otora Lukushima,
pictured in this photo in Japanese costume. Otora sanwas known for their performance of sliding down anextended tightrope directly above the audience in
impressive Japanese costume, made all the moreastonishing that it was performed by a woman. If weclosely observe the photograph, there are some hints
that Otora san may not have been born female. Thekatakana writing at the bottom of this photograph reads“Tora Ichitarō Taka Rokushima”. Ichitarō is boys’name in Japan, and it was commonplace for Japanesemale performers to act as women during complex
acrobatic stunts. Whatever the case, Otora san certainly
captured the imagination of audiences with theirmastery of tricks and flavour of Japanese culture
through their grand costumes.

The Deguchi Troupe (1900-1980)
Navigating changing attitudes to Japan in the 1900s

Johnny and Suma Lamonte. Image courtesy of Pernille Rudlin.

Many of the troupes of Japanese performers that came to the UK had remarkable longevity
and continued to perform for many generations. The troupe which began as the Deguchi
Troupe are first recorded as performing in 1900 in New York, and their descendants arerecorded as performing across the world until 1980. In 1937, Masu and Yuri, two of the troupe
who had been regularly performing hand balancing and juggling acts together since 1921,
came to Norfolk and appeared at the Union Cinemas Regal in Great Yarmouth. Yuri
means Lily in Japanese, and she performed using both names throughout her career. She
married into the family in 1917 when her mother Margaret Blanchard married Jujiro Deguchi,
who later become known as Masu and had led the troupe from the 1880s.

百合The pair continued to perform their juggling and balancing acts across the UK and beyond,
yet after 1939 there is an absence of any description of them being Japanese and by 1942,
they had dropped their Japanese names of Masu and Yuri altogether in favour of Lamonteand Julie. Tracing the changing names of these performers gives an important demonstrationof some of the challenges that Japanese performers faced as immigrants to the UK. Many ofthese performers had spent most of their lives in the UK, but still retained elements of theirJapanese identity as a means of distinguishing their performance and craft. The increasingly
unfavourable climate for people of Japanese descent during World War II presented
performers with a difficult choice, and many opted to hide their Japanese heritage.
The last surviving performers of this troupe were Johnny and Suma Lamonte, the son anddaughter of Masu and Lily, pictured in this display, who performed across the world fromaround 1947 until 1980 when their agent, Don Ross, died.

References and related publications
Budden, P. 2020. Paper Butterflies: Unravelling the Mystery of Tannaker Buhicrosan.
Florida: Gatekeeper Press
Cortazzi, H. 2009. Japan in Late Victorian London. The Japanese Village inKnightsbridge and the Mikado, 1885. Norwich: Sainsbury Institute for the Study ofJapanese Arts and Cultures.
Groemer, G. 2016. Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600-1900: The
Beggar's Gift. London: Routledge.
Schodt, F.L. 2012. Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe. Berkeley:
Stone Bridge Press.

This is ongoing research, and comments and information are always welcome. Pleasecontact info@ninjin.co.uk for further information about the research.