Paper short abstract:

The face of the Japanese actress, Hanako, has been sculptured several times by Rodin, who was fascinated by Hanako's death scene and attempted to sculpt it. Their encounter is a symbolic example of how the West and the East used each other's preconceptions for their own purposes in the early 1900s.

Paper long abstract:

Rodin was a renowned French sculptor, while Hanako (Ōta Hisa, 1868-1945) was a barely known Japanese actress arriving in Europe in 1902. Their individual arts became one in the masterpiece of The Face of Death.

Hanako, an insignificant member of a small Japanese troupe was discovered by the well-known dancer, Loïe Fuller. After Fuller saw the Japanese actress' death scene, she decided to become Hanako's impresario. Therefore, she organised each European tour of Hanako and wrote her many Japanese style dramas always ending with the cruel but utterly expressive death of the protagonist.

Hanako met Rodin at the Marseilles Colonial Exhibition in 1906. The master was fascinated by Hanako's performance and tried to form her "death face" perceived by the audience in her death scenes. This face with a weird expression is most probably a nirami, a mie pose in kabuki theatre. Rodin created numerous kinds of busts and faces from different materials trying to catch the emblematic moment when Hanako saw Death.

In my presentation I examine the short but interesting period of Hanako's Western career, focusing on her meeting with Rodin. I use their story as a unique and symbolic illustration of Japanese artists' efforts to transform themselves and their art to "match" the Western eye - and of the ways how the West was looking for verification of its preconceptions of the "strange" and "exotic" East in the early 1900s. I analyse the questions of what Rodin saw in Hanako's death face, where Hanako learnt this powerful expression and why she applied it. I draw attention to the absolute paradox of the situation in which Rodin saw something ancient and natural in Hanako's acting, while Hanako was performing in artificially Japanese style dramas written by a European dancer, trying to smuggle something traditional to her performances which were far from being ancient and natural. However, as I will argue, Hanako was only the projection surface for Rodin's idea, while their co-operation became the source of some masterpieces characterising the whole era.