Presented By: Center for Japanese Studies
CJS Noon Lecture Series | Dancing in Motion: Untangling the Framing of ‘Geisha’ in Early Cinematic Records
Mariko Okada, 2024–25 Visiting Scholar, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan; Professor of Japanese Literature, Oberlin University in Tokyo
Please note: This lecture will be held in person in room 1010, Weiser Hall, and virtually via Zoom. The webinar is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Once you've registered, joining information will be sent to your email.
Register for the Zoom webinar at: https://myumi.ch/r84Ae.
In November 1896, a newspaper reported that Prince Komatsu, a member of the imperial family, had viewed a photographic dance performance on Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, featuring a moving image titled The Dance of Geisha from Kyoto’s Gion, which was later exhibited in Kobe as part of a sideshow before touring Osaka and Tokyo. Recognized as Japan’s earliest publicly exhibited moving image, its recording and exhibition circumstances remain unknown. This talk examines the cultural and historical significance of the film—now accessible on platforms like the Library of Congress under the title Imperial Japanese Dance—while exploring how this “unknown dance” became framed as a geisha dance and investigating the performers’ origins in the 1890s.
Mariko Okada is the 2024–25 CJS Visiting Scholar and a professor at the Faculty of Humanities, J. F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan, and she previously served as the CJS Toyota Visiting Professor in 2012–13. Her research focuses on traditional Japanese performance, particularly geisha practices in Kyoto and the experiences of Japanese female performers in the United States during the Meiji period. She is the author of The Birth of Kyōmai: Inoue-ryu Dance in Nineteenth-Century Kyoto, Japan (written in Japanese), which won the 2013 Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities, and has contributed to several English publications, including “Before Making Heritage: Internationalisation of Geisha in the Meiji Period” in Making Japanese Heritage (2009), “Interlude Nihonbuyo: Classical Dance” in History of Japanese Theatre (2016), and “Masking Japanese Militarism as a Dream of Sino-Japanese Friendship: Miyako Odori Performances in the 1930s” in Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia (2020).
This lecture is made possible with the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at cjsevents@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
Register for the Zoom webinar at: https://myumi.ch/r84Ae.
In November 1896, a newspaper reported that Prince Komatsu, a member of the imperial family, had viewed a photographic dance performance on Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, featuring a moving image titled The Dance of Geisha from Kyoto’s Gion, which was later exhibited in Kobe as part of a sideshow before touring Osaka and Tokyo. Recognized as Japan’s earliest publicly exhibited moving image, its recording and exhibition circumstances remain unknown. This talk examines the cultural and historical significance of the film—now accessible on platforms like the Library of Congress under the title Imperial Japanese Dance—while exploring how this “unknown dance” became framed as a geisha dance and investigating the performers’ origins in the 1890s.
Mariko Okada is the 2024–25 CJS Visiting Scholar and a professor at the Faculty of Humanities, J. F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan, and she previously served as the CJS Toyota Visiting Professor in 2012–13. Her research focuses on traditional Japanese performance, particularly geisha practices in Kyoto and the experiences of Japanese female performers in the United States during the Meiji period. She is the author of The Birth of Kyōmai: Inoue-ryu Dance in Nineteenth-Century Kyoto, Japan (written in Japanese), which won the 2013 Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities, and has contributed to several English publications, including “Before Making Heritage: Internationalisation of Geisha in the Meiji Period” in Making Japanese Heritage (2009), “Interlude Nihonbuyo: Classical Dance” in History of Japanese Theatre (2016), and “Masking Japanese Militarism as a Dream of Sino-Japanese Friendship: Miyako Odori Performances in the 1930s” in Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia (2020).
This lecture is made possible with the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at cjsevents@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
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