S e ss u e H aya k awa

A John Hope Franklin Center Book

SESSUE HAYAKAWA
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 © 2007 Duke University Press
All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper ♾

Designed by Jennifer Hill

Typeset in Scala by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
appear on the last printed page of this book.
In memory of Mitsunori Miyao and Makoto and Kyoko Shibasaki
 Contents

List of Illustrations  ix
List of Abbreviations  xi
Acknowledgments  xiii

Introduction  1

Pa rt O n e
Emperor, Buddhist, Spy, or Indian
The Pre-Star Period of Sessue Hayakawa
(1914–15)
1 A Star Is Born: The Transnational Success of The Cheat and Its
Race and Gender Politics  21
2 Screen Debut: O Mimi San, or The Mikado in Picturesque Japan  50
3 Christianity versus Buddhism: The Melodramatic Imagination in
The Wrath of the Gods  57
4 Doubleness: American Images of Japanese Spies in The Typhoon  66
5 The Noble Savage and the Vanishing Race: Japanese Actors
in “Indian Films”  76

Pa rt T w o
Villain, Friend, or Lover
Sessue Hayakawa’s Stardom at Lasky-Paramount
(1916–18)
6 The Making of an Americanized Japanese Gentleman:
The Honorable Friend and Hashimura Togo  87
7 More Americanized than the Mexican: The Melodrama
of Self-Sacrifice and the Genteel Tradition in Forbidden Paths  106
8 Sympathetic Villains and Victim-Heroes:
The Soul of Kura San and The Call of the East  117
9 Self-Sacrifice in the First World War: The Secret Game  127
10 The Cosmopolitan Way of Life: The Americanization of
Sessue Hayakawa in Magazines  136
 Pa rt Th r e e
“Triple Consciousness”
Sessue Hayakawa’s Stardom at Haworth Pictures Corporation
(1918–22)
11 Balancing Japaneseness and Americanization: Authenticity
and Patriotism in His Birthright and Banzai  153
12 Return of the Americanized Orientals: Robertson-Cole’s Expansion
and Standardization of Sessue Hayakawa’s Star Vehicles  168
13 The Mask: Sessue Hayakawa’s Redefinition of Silent Film Acting  195
14 The Star Falls: Postwar Nativism and the Decline of
Sessue Hayakawa’s Stardom  214

Pa rt F o u r
Stardom and Japanese Modernity
Sessue Hayakawa in Japan
15 Americanization and Nationalism: The Japanese Reception
of Sessue Hayakawa  235

Epilogue  261

Notes  283
Filmography  333
Bibliography  337
Index  365

viii  C o nt e nt s
 I l l u s t r at i o n s

1 Triple billing featuring Charlie Chaplin, William S. Hart,

and Sessue Hayakawa  4
2 Still from The Cheat  40
3 Ad for The Cheat  47
4 Collage of Sessue Hayakawa and other popular film stars of 1916  48
5 Ad for The Wrath of the Gods  60
6 Ad for The Honorable Friend  93
7 Still from The Honorable Friend  98
8 Ad for The Soul of Kura San  121
9 Ad for The Call of the East  123
10 Cover page of an article about Sessue Hayakawa
and his wife, Tsuru Aoki, in Picture-Play Magazine  141
11 Photo of Sessue Hayakawa from the same article  141
12 Photo of the Hayakawas from the same article  141
13 Ad for Sessue Hayakawa and Haworth Pictures Corporation  160
14 Ad for Hayakawa Productions sponsored by
Haworth Pictures Corporation  160
15 Ad for Hayakawa Productions sponsored by
Haworth Pictures Corporation  160
16 Ad for The Gray Horizon  171
17 Ad for The Man Beneath  175
18 Ad for The Dragon Painter  177
19 Ad for The Tong Man  182
20 Ad for An Arabian Knight  189
21 Ad for The Brand of Lopez  192
22 Still from The Man Who Laughs Last  264
23 Still from The Bridge on the River Kwai  277
 Abb r e v i at i o n s

EH : Exhibitor’s Herald
ETR : Exhibitor’s Trade Review
MPN : Motion Picture News
MPW : Moving Picture World
NYDM : New York Dramatic Mirror
SHE : Sessue Hayakawa: Locke Collection Envelope 659,
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
Robinson Locke Collection
SHS : Sessue Hayakawa: Scrapbook,
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
Robinson Locke Collection
 Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s

The completion of this book was enabled by numerous individuals and insti-
tutions that offered generous support. The bulk of this project was done while
I was a graduate student at the Department of Cinema Studies at New York
University, which provided a tremendously supportive environment. First,
I want to thank Robert Sklar, who kindly and patiently managed to trans-
form me from a naïve Japanese student who knew very little about the prac-
tice of cinema studies into a slightly more articulate scholar. I thank Zhang
Zhen, who has been enthusiastic about my project from the very beginning.
Without her inspiration, insights, and friendship it would have taken me for-
ever to complete this book. I am very much obliged to William G. Simon for
making my life in New York so much easier than it would have been if he had
not been around. Without his clear-sighted reading and commenting, this
project would have never come into existence as a book. Mitsuhiro Yoshi‑
moto’s work has always been a great model of scholarship on Japanese
cinema. Charles Affron has taught me the appreciation of various melo-
dramas, including literature, opera, and films, and shared a love of silent
movie stars with me. Thanks to Richard Allen, the late William K. Everson,
Ed Guerrero, Antonia Lant, Toby Miller, Robert Stam, and Chris Strayaar for
their advice at various stages of this project. I must also thank the disserta-
tion group, particularly Heather McMillan and Augusta Lee Palmer. They
were willing to read all of my chapters at various stages, give me valuable
comments, questions, and ideas, and even polish my English expressions, all
without any complaint. Their friendship, generosity, intelligence, and sense
of humor have always encouraged me.
My project involved extensive transnational research in the United States,
Japan, and Europe, and I have been very fortunate to be assisted by many
institutions in this regard. I thank above all Charles Silver at the Museum of
Modern Art Film Study Center in New York and Okajima Hisashi at the Na-
tional Film Center of the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Our friendships
started in 1993 when the National Film Center had a film series entitled
“American Films—The Little Known,” and Charles gave an opening lecture.
That was the series in which I saw Sessue Hayakawa’s silent films for the first
time, and those films laid a beautiful spell on me.
I also thank Kyoko Hirano at the Japan Society Film Center; Koike Akira,
Okada Yoshiko, Sakano Yuka, Waji Yukiko, and staff members at the Kawa-
kita Memorial Film Institute, who made it possible for me to read many
early Japanese film magazines within short periods of time; Saiki Tomonori,
Okada Hidenori, and Tsuneishi Fumiko at the National Film Center; Aoki
Kazunori at the Chikura Town Office; Moriwaki Kiyotaka and staff members
at the Museum of Kyoto; Madeline F. Matz and Brian Taves at the Library
of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division;
Barbara Hall at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Center for Motion Pic-
ture Academy; Jennifer Tobias and Steven Higgins at the Museum of Mod-
ern Art; Ronny Temme at the Nederlands Filmmuseum; Edward Comstock
at the University of Southern California Film-Television Library; Toshiko
McCallum and Marie Masumoto at Hirasaki National Resource Center of the
Japanese American National Museum; Russ Taylor at Brigham Young Univer-
sity’s Harold B. Lee Library; Richard Andress at the New York State Archives
Cultural Education Center; Ann Harris at the Study Center of the Depart-
ment of Cinema Studies at New York University; Edith Kramer, Mona Nagai,
Jason Sanders, Nancy Goldman, and Stephen Gong at the Pacific Film Ar-
chive; and John Mhiripiri and Shannon McLaclan at the Anthology Film Ar-
chive. I have also benefited greatly from my visits to Cinemateca Portuguesa,
the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles Department of Special Collections, the Theater Museum at
Waseda University, the National Diet Library, Shochiku Otani Library, and
the Library of Sociology and Media Studies at the University of Tokyo. Thanks
to Pat Padua and John Harris for their assistance in obtaining illustrations.
The Freeman Postdoctoral Fellowship in Expanding East Asian Studies at
Columbia University and the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Humanities
at the University of California, Berkeley, provided me with precious time to
complete this book. More importantly, thanks to these fellowships, I was able
to have wonderful opportunities to talk profoundly about my project with
Carol Gluck, Heidi Johnson, Paul Anderer, Richard Peña, and the colleagues
of ExEAS at Columbia (Kenji, Si, T.J., and Bill, in particular); as well as Linda
Williams, Alan Tansman, Paula Varsano, Kristen Whissel, Miryam Sas, Tony
Kaes, Kaja Silverman, and the colleagues of Film Studies and East Asian Lan-
guages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. I also received

xiv  A c k no w l e d g m e nt s
financial support from the Ito Foundation for International Education Ex-
change, Rotary International, and the Matsushita Foundation.
Among many friends, colleagues, and mentors on both sides of the
Pacific who have provided invaluable professional and emotional support, I
would like to particularly thank Chris Arnold, Cari Beauchamp, Joanne Ber-
nardi, John Boccellari, David Bordwell, Barbara Brooks, Christy Burks, John
Whiteclay Chambers II, Doi Shigeru, Ebina Suezumi, Fujiki Hideaki, Fujita
Fumiko, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Funatsu Akiko, Will Gardner, Tom Gunning
(I really appreciate his extremely valuable and encouraging advice at various
stages), Elise Hansen, Hasumi Shigehiko (without his writings and lectures
on cinema, I would never have started thinking seriously about the subject),
Sumiko Higashi, Hirobe Izumi, the late Yuji Ichioka, David Jaffee, Sergei K.
Kapterev (my fellow “cinemania”), Alex Keller, Kido Yoshiyuki, Kinoshita
Chika, Donald Kirihara, Kitamura Hiroshi, Kitano Keisuke, Richard Koszar-
ski, Kotani Mari, Kurita Toyomichi (who was supposed to be the director of
photography for Oshima Nagisa’s unrealized film on Sessue Hayakawa, Holly-
wood Zen), James Latham, Hyung-sook Lee, Maeda Koichi, Gina Marchetti,
Masuda Hikaru, Matsuura Hisaki, Keiko I. McDonald, Mizuno Sachiko, Livia
Monnet, Murakami Yumiko, Nogami Hideyuki, Ochi Toshio, Okada Mariko,
Onishi Naoki, Abé Markus Nornes, Oshio Kazuto, Misa Oyama, Michael
Raine, Paula Ratzsky, Donald Richie, Saito Ayako, Shinogi Naoko, Takagi
Noritsune, Deborah A. Thomas, Mitsuyo Wada Marciano, Gregory Waller,
Yamaguchi Masaaki, Uzawa Yoshiko, Yomota Inuhiko, Yoneyama Hiroshi,
Yoneyama Miho, and Yoshida Kiju. I also thank enthusiastic audiences of my
talks at the University of Oregon, Berkeley Film Seminar, Weatherhead East
Asian Institute at Columbia University, Kinema Club, West Virginia Univer-
sity International Conference, Hawaii International Conference in Humani-
ties, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and the Association for Asian
Studies.
Mari Yoshihara deserves a separate paragraph of special thanks. Mari has
been not only my intellectual and professional mentor but also a precious
friend since my sophomore year at the University of Tokyo. It is impossible
for me to think of being in academia without her guidance and friendship.
I would like to sincerely thank Nishimura Taro, Matsumoto Toshio, Tatsumi
Takayuki, and the Faculty of Letters at Keio University; Notoji Masako, Ku-
nishige Junji, Kamei Shunsuke, Shimada Taro, Shinkawa Kenzaburo, Takita
Yoshiko, Sato Yoshiaki, Shibata Motoyuki, Hayashi Fumiyo, Endo Yasuo,

A c k no w l e d g m e nt s   xv
Uchino Tadashi, and the Faculty of American Studies at the University of
Tokyo, Komaba, for their tremendous generosity.
Special thanks go to my editor at Duke University Press, Ken Wissoker,
who has done an amazingly thorough and insightful job. I thank Katharine
Baker and Courtney Berger as well for patiently guiding me through the
book’s production. I appreciate the extensive and extremely helpful com-
ments and suggestions by anonymous readers for Duke University Press.
This book is dedicated to Sessue Hayakawa’s family and relatives. Haya-
kawa Tokuko and the late Hayakawa Yukio in Los Angeles, and Hayakawa
Masahiko in Chikura, generously showed me many personal photos and let-
ters of Hayakawa Sesshu and Aoki Tsuruko, and shared many episodes of
their family lives. Meeting with them has surely made this project more inti-
mate to me.
I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Oregon for their
extreme kindness and generosity: Steven Brown and Alisa Freedman in Japa-
nese Literature and Film, Maram Epstein in Asian Studies, Steve Durrant
and Marjorie Woollacott in East Asian Languages and Literatures, and Mike
Aronson, Sangita Gopal, and Kathleen Karlyn in Film Studies.
I am very grateful to my parents, Miyao Shunsuke and Masami, from the
bottom of my heart for always believing in me. I am also very grateful to
Akagi Sadao and Kimiko.
Finally, very, very special thanks go to Yoko and Dica, the loves of my life.

xvi  A c k no w l e d g m e nt s
 Introduction

Sessue Hayakawa. The greatest movie star in this century. . . White women
were willing to give themselves to a Japanese man. . . . When Sessue was
getting out of his limousine in front of a theater of a premiere showing, he
grimaced a little because there was a puddle. Then, dozens of female fans sur-
rounding his car fell over one another to spread their fur coats at his feet. . . .
Valentino was very popular, too, but I think Sessue’s popularity was greater.
. . . Never again will there be a star like Sessue.
—Miyatake Toyo

​T hese words of Miyatake Toyo, the renowned Japanese photographer in

​Los Angeles in the early 1900s, are astonishing because many popu‑
lar audiences of cinema remember the Japanese actor Sessue Haya-
kawa (1886–1973) for his Oscar-nominated role as a frowning Japanese mili-
tary officer in The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957). No matter how
exaggerated Miyatake’s words, they indicate that Hayakawa was very popu-
lar among white female audiences in the United States, in spite of his Japa-
nese nationality. A film trade journal, Wid’s Daily, stated in 1919 that Haya-
kawa had “a particularly large following among women” by the late 1910s.1
A Japanese film magazine, Katsudo Zasshi, noted in 1922 that Hayakawa had
“a mouth that all women love. When he opens his mouth and shows his
crystal-like teeth, he becomes very attractive.”2 That is, Hayakawa had the
status of a “matinee idol,” whose career was “perceived as depending upon
female fans.”3 Hayakawa himself was once quoted by an American journalist
as saying, “My crientele [sic] is women. They rike [sic] me to be strong and
violent.”4
In 1917, a film fan magazine, Motion Picture, published a letter from a
female fan addressed to Hayakawa:
 O land of quaint and fascinating people,
Here’s to thy son, who plays so well his art
That we take side with him in each creation,
Tho villain, friend or lover be that part.
Quiet he is, and smiles but very seldom,
Unerring in his mastery of the art;
The silent drama speaks in every picture–
When Sessue comes he leads, whate’er the part.
Kate May Young, 842 W. 63d St., Seattle, Wash.5

This poem, especially the line “Tho villain, friend or lover be that part,” in-
dicates a (supposedly white) female fan’s enthusiastic but ambivalent fasci-
nation with the actor from Japan, despite the fact that Hayakawa’s attraction
was obviously difficult for her to define. Was he villainous and evil? Was he an
alien monster? Was he an example of the yellow peril, the pseudo-scientific
discourse of the time among middle-class Americans who feared a Japanese
imperialistic invasion of the United States? In Cecil B. DeMille’s acclaimed
film The Cheat (1915), Hayakawa was a sensationally villainous Japanese man.
Was he friendly and gentle? Was he the representation of the American melt-
ing pot? Was he the model minority in American society? In his star vehicles
that followed The Cheat, Hayakawa frequently played a Japanese or Asian im-
migrant hero who was eager to assimilate himself to American culture. Or,
was he a good lover? In his star vehicles, Hayakawa’s Asian hero often sacri-
ficed himself for a white American woman whom he loved. Yet, in the end,
his ethnicity often prevented him from being united with the one he loved.
Did he become cruel when his wish was not fulfilled? Did he become erotic,
instead, and seduce the woman he loved? What about Hayakawa himself as a
person? Was he a villain, friend, or lover in early Hollywood and in American
society as a whole? Was he an ideal, or lovable, product as an ideally Orien-
talized film star at the very beginning of the star system? Was he a villainous
alien rebel against the emerging film industry with his unprecedented star
image and his extraordinary acting skills? Was he an outsider of the industry
and eventually excluded from it? Was he a representative of Japan who stra-
tegically embodied exotic Japaneseness for foreign viewers in order to secure
a position in international political and economic relations? Or, was he a
friendly Westernized Asian immigrant, a representative of Japanese immi-
grants who are willing to adapt to American society? No matter how difficult
it was to define Hayakawa’s star image, according to the film critic DeWitt

  I nt ro d u c t i o n
Bodeen, “the effect of Hayakawa on American women was even more electric
than Valentino’s. It involved fiercer tones of masochism as well as a latent
female urge to experience sex with a beautiful but savage man of another
race.”6 Both ethnic matinee idols, Hayakawa (in the 1910s to the early 1920s)
and Rudolph Valentino (in the 1920s), redefined the imagery of a masculine
star in new ways that appealed to female fans. The (in)famous Valentino cult
was created in the 1920s via female-oriented media in consumer culture, such
as women’s magazines, fan magazines, plays, and popular literature, which
were widely accessible to a broad segment of the female population.7 The
feminine quality of Valentino’s star image could have had a subversive effect
against “the socially imposed dominance-submission hierarchy of gender
roles, dissolving subject-object dichotomies into erotic reciprocity.”8 Haya‑
kawa’s star image, which seemed to combine masculinity and femininity, and
its tremendous success preceded the Valentino cult.
In the mid-1910s, Hayakawa suddenly emerged at the very beginning
of the star system in Hollywood and rapidly became a superstar. As early
as May 1916, only five months after The Cheat was released, Hayakawa was
ranked number one in the Chicago Tribune popular star contests.9 In 1917,
the Madison Theater at Broadway and Grand Circus Park in Detroit juxta-
posed Hayakawa in The Call of the East (George Melford, 1917) with other big
stars, Charlie Chaplin (The Adventurer) and William S. Hart (Double Crossed),
in its advertisement of “A Mammoth Triple Feature Program” (see fig. 1).
Hayakawa had thus by 1917 achieved star status equal to that of Chaplin and
Hart.10
Hayakawa’s popularity was not limited to the United States. In Germany,
in 1920, the critic Claire Goll named Hayakawa as one of the three “Ameri-
can” actors “most famous and most celebrated throughout the world,” along
with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Charlie Chaplin. Goll describes how sensa-
tional Hayakawa was to German audiences: “Wholly spiritual is the great
Japanese actor, Sessue Hayakawa. He knows no trivial little feelings, but only
primal sensation. One finds no trace here of an art sullied by civilization.
When he portrays sorrow, his pain is of ancient dimensions. When he plays
the lover, his smile has the grace and aroma of lotus and cherry blossoms. As
the avenger, his body explodes in exotic wilderness. Whoever sees him knows
everything about Japan, everything of the beauty of the mystical East.”11 In
Russia, in 1922, Sergei Yutkevich and Sergei Eisenstein named Hayakawa as
one of the “wonderful actors” in America, with William S. Hart, Mary Pick-
ford, Douglas Fairbanks, Roscoe Arbuckle, and Charlie Chaplin.12

I nt ro d u c t i o n   
1 A triple billing featuring Charlie Chaplin, William S. Hart, and Sessue Hayakawa, at the
Madison Theater, Detroit. Motion Picture News 16.20 (17 November 1917): 3435.

French audiences were even more enthusiastic. The drama critic Louis
Delluc named Hayakawa and Charlie Chaplin, “whatever film they appear
in,” as “two expressions of beauty” and “the two masterpieces.”13 In Le Film,
on 6 August 1917, Delluc wrote:

Of Hayakawa, one can say nothing: he is a phenomenon. Explanations here

are out of place. . . . Once more I am not speaking of talent. I consider a cer-
tain kind of actor, especially him, as a natural force and his face as a poetic
work whose reason for being does not concern me when my avidity for beauty
finds there expected chord or reflection. . . . It is not his cat-like, implacable
cruelty, his mysterious brutality, his hatred of anyone who resists, or his con-
tempt for anyone who submits; that is not what impresses us, and yet that is
all we can talk about. . . . And especially his strangely drawn smile of childlike
ferocity, not really the ferocity of a puma or jaguar, for then it would no longer
be ferocity. The beauty of Sessue Hayakawa is painful. Few things in the cinema
reveal to us, as the lights and silence of this mask do, that there really are alone
beings. I well believe that all lonely people, and they are numerous, will dis-
cover their own resourceless despair in the intimate melancholy of this savage
Hayakawa.14

  I nt ro d u c t i o n
Cecil Sorel, a renowned actress of the time, also praised Hayakawa’s acting
and compared it to classic arts: “Silence is the sum total of the emotions.
Leonardo da Vinci expressed this in his ‘Joconde,’ Michelangelo in his ‘Pen-
sur,’ and, in our day, in my own realm of the arts, . . . the Japanese, Sessue
Hayakawa, condenses in his oblique gaze a whole inner tumult too great for
expression.”15
Delluc’s claim (and Sorel’s comparison between Hayakawa’s acting and
premodern arts) could be located within the primitivist dichotomy between
the civilized West and the premodern East. Delluc insisted that Hayakawa’s
“beauty” came from “his race and virile style” and connected his “beauty” and
acting skill with “a natural force.” He even called Hayakawa “childlike” and
“savage.”16 Yet, no matter how deeply French intellectuals’ views on Haya-
kawa resided in primitivism and Orientalism, the impact of Hayakawa upon
the French film culture was tremendous. Hayakawa’s acting style inspired
French intellectuals to develop the concept of photogenie, the unique aesthetic
qualities that motion picture photography brings to the subject it films. The
photogenie later became a significant theoretical basis of the French impres-
sionist movement, filmmaking that “displayed a fascination with pictorial
beauty and an interest in intense psychological exploration.”17
Even when Hayakawa lost his popularity in the United States in the 1920s,
French audiences enthusiastically embraced Hayakawa and made his French
debut film La Bataille (The Danger Line, E. E. Violet, 1923), critically and fi-
nancially successful. In April of the same year, 1923, when Hayakawa’s star
vehicle The Swamp (Colin Campbell, 1921) was released in France as Le Devin
du faubourg [The neighborhood fortune-teller], the renowned film director
René Clair, famous for his fantasy films, such as Paris qui dort (The Crazy
Ray, 1924), and his experimental work, Entr’acte (1925), passionately praised
Hayakawa:

Everyone knows Sessue Hayakawa’s talent, that powerful sobriety he revealed

to us in The Cheat. Here Bessie Love seems to be inspired by him and worthy of
that inspiration. Her frightened eyes, her curt gestures, her sad pout, remind
us of the best moments of Lillian Gish. . . . That is where the cinema seems to
me to have some advantage over the theater. . . . The expression of a silent face,
taken in isolation, can be as beautiful appearing in a bad film as in a master-
piece. Working with mediocre and false material, actors like Sessue Hayakawa
and Bessie Love are able to evoke beauty and truth.18

I nt ro d u c t i o n   
Consequently, Hayakawa even stayed in France throughout the period of
World War II.
The popularity of Hayakawa is remarkable when one considers the fact
that there were some popular non-Caucasian actors and actresses in the
silent era, but they had mostly supporting roles as foils for white leading
characters. From the early days in Hollywood, even when major characters
were supposed to be Asians, Caucasian stars usually played the roles and
displayed artificial Asian features (“yellow face”). Hayakawa was the one and
only non-Caucasian star of the period. Hayakawa’s stardom occupied an ex-
traordinarily unique space in the racial and cultural map of early Hollywood.
A Paramount Pictures ad in film trade journals in June 1917 noted that “Ses-
sue Hayakawa has brought to the American motion picture the mysterious,
the magic and mystic of Japan. No foreign-born actor of a generation has won
so many admirers as this brilliant young Japanese, whose interpretations of
the problems of the Oriental in Occidental lands has given him a unique
place in the motion picture firmament.”19 Hayakawa was one of the first and
most unusual stars of silent cinema.
Hayakawa’s stardom was all the more astonishing because it went against
the sociopolitical discourse of the time on Japan and the Japanese people.
The period from the 1910s to the 1920s witnessed the rapid increase of
anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States along with a xenophobic atmo-
sphere, especially after World War I. Starting in the Pacific states, anti-Japanese
movements developed against Japan’s growing military and political power.
Such anti-Japanese feelings were crystallized in the movements against im-
migrants from Japan. In 1920, the Japanese Exclusion League of California
was organized. In November 1922, the Federal Supreme Court’s Ozawa v.
United States decision legally defined Japanese people as “aliens ineligible for
citizenship” and denied naturalization to Japanese people.20 Then, in 1924,
the new immigration act passed by the U.S. Congress prohibited the entry
of “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” thus targeting Japanese immigrants. It
is incredible that Hayakawa, in spite of his Japanese nationality, became a
superstar under such sociopolitical conditions.
Simultaneously, however, the popularity of Hayakawa seemed to go along
with that of Japanese culture. Alongside Japan’s rapid sociopolitical and mili-
tary modernization, Japan’s image of cultural refinement, especially in the
form of Japonisme, the European vogue in art and style, fascinated Ameri-
can women. Since the late nineteenth century, the penetration of Japanese
goods into the American market brought about a “Japan craze.”21 Japanese

  I nt ro d u c t i o n
art and culture were not only considered exotic but also high art because
they were imports of European vogue. Especially after the Centennial Exhibi-
tion of 1876 in Philadelphia and the other international exhibitions that fol-
lowed, where many Americans made their first contact with Japanese art and
culture, high-class Japanese art and culture became gradually popularized
among those of the middle class and fitted to their taste. In 1910, for instance,
Moving Picture World, a film trade journal, remarked on the popularity of
Japanese objects among “the American people”: “The affection of the Ameri-
can people for the Japanese, then, springs from the fact that there is a senti-
mental link between the two nations. . . . Japanese art, Japanese life and Japa-
nese costumes appeal to the occidental mind for many reasons. The grace,
the charm, the poetry of Japan never fail to please us of the West. . . . We
love our America, but oh you Japan!!!!”22 Because of his Japanese nationality,
Hayakawa had the potential to portray an image of cultural refinement that
fascinated many Americans. Hayakawa’s worldwide stardom thus existed in
the midst of the dual identity that Japanese people were gaining in interna-
tional political and cultural relations.
Even though it was unique and extremely complex, the career of Haya-
kawa has barely received critical attention in film history and was almost
completely ignored in star studies. Books on the general history of film rarely
mention Hayakawa. There are only a few studies focusing on his career, but
most of them are speculative. Was Hayakawa’s career so bizarre and paradoxi-
cal that it has been untouchable and hidden in a Pandora’s box?
In these limited numbers of writings on Hayakawa, he has largely been
described as a screen villain. Almost all of the obituaries of Hayakawa in
November 1973 called him a villain, most likely because of his role as a ruth-
less Japanese officer in The Bridge on the River Kwai and his sensational image
in The Cheat, in which Hayakawa’s character brands a white woman’s naked
shoulder. For instance, the New York Post stated, “He [Hayakawa] was noted
for his silent screen roles as a sinister Oriental during a bygone era of stereo-
types.”23 However, his roles and his star image in silent films were not lim-
ited to only one category but were surprisingly varied and ambivalent.
How was Hayakawa able to become a movie star in the second decade
of the twentieth century? How did early Hollywood studios construct Haya‑
kawa’s stardom in their formative period as an industry? What did Haya-
kawa think of his star image? How did the audiences in the United States, in
Japan, and in Europe respond to Hayakawa’s star image? The study of “early
cinema,” not only as a period term (approximately between 1895 and 1917 in

I nt ro d u c t i o n   
the United States and Europe) but also as a critical category (films as well as
media intertexts, industry, and market), emphasizes the practice of exhibi-
tion in film culture as well as that of production. In particular, it highlights
the experience of early cinema in its intimate relation to a wide range of social
and cultural practices, such as the vaudeville theater, the amusement park,
shopping arcades, and so forth, to envisage the cinema in a broader landscape
of modern life in the street and in the theater, in the city and in the country,
and, as the historian Zhen Zhang insists, “in the West as well as in many
other parts of the world.”24 Both at the stages of production and exhibition,
Hayakawa’s stardom in early cinema was entangled with many contradictory
issues around gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and nation, which were
spread in the complex network of social and cultural practices and experi-
ences in modern life in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
In his influential work in star studies, Richard Dyer writes that all stars
embody a tension, or a paradox. Dyer defines a star as a “structured polysemy”
and explains the term as “the finite multiplicity of meanings and affects they
[stars] embody and the attempt to structure them so that some meanings and
affects are foregrounded and others masked or displaced.” Dyer believes that
a star, as a “real” individual “existence” in the world, succeeds in reconciling
the contradictions through “magical synthesis.”25
Yet, was Hayakawa a “real” individual “existence” in the world who suc-
ceeded in reconciling such various contradictions through “magical synthe-
sis”? Hayakawa’s career in silent cinema reveals that stardom is not a stable
form of synthesis but an ongoing process of negotiation, a transnational
negotiation in particular. This process of cross-cultural negotiation some-
times synthetically reconciles contradictions of images, but in many cases,
especially in global contexts, it often enhances the contradictions. Cinema
has been a transnational cultural form from the early period of its history. As
the film scholar Miriam Hansen argues, “To write the international history
of classical American cinema, therefore, is a matter of tracing not just its
mechanisms of standardization and hegemony but also the diversity of ways
in which this cinema was translated and reconfigured in both local and trans-
local contexts of reception.”26 Hayakawa’s stardom had different meanings
and modes of reception in different geographical and historical sites. It did
not necessarily own a synthetic power over various contradictions but kept
maintaining ambivalences.
Hayakawa’s star image was initially formed in the early period of the
American film industry. Then, Hayakawa’s stardom was appropriated and

  I nt ro d u c t i o n
articulated within various and contradictory political, ideological, and cul-
tural contexts in the United States, Japan, and Europe during the period of
public circulation. Hayakawa’s stardom was the site of an infinite struggle
between white American (and European) cultural domination and Japanese
(and European) cultural resistance for control of representations of Japan.
Hayakawa himself struggled within the Hollywood film industry that pro-
duced his films, while at the same time his stardom was rearticulated in
a continuous cross-cultural dialogue in distribution and exhibition. Thus,
there was a transnational war of images in Hayakawa’s star persona among
Hayakawa himself, the filmmakers, and the various audiences.
First, what was the mechanism that initially formed Hayakawa’s stardom
at the point of production in the United States? In the mid- to late 1910s, the
Hollywood film industry was facing two interrelated structural transforma-
tions: the move toward production efficiency and the emergence of the star
system. The star system exploited acting personalities as commodities with
specific images in order to enhance audiences’ horizon of expectations in a
rationalized manner. Simultaneously, the Hollywood film industry was mov-
ing toward the refinement of motion pictures in order to appeal to broader
middle-class audiences.27 How did the Hollywood film industry create Haya‑
kawa’s star persona at the very beginning of the star system in accordance
with the middle-class discourse?
The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company devised a specific strategy as
to how to publicize and promote Hayakawa’s films and control Hayakawa’s
star image. What Lasky exploited most was Japan’s movable middle-ground
position in a racial and cultural hierarchy. The image of Japan was caught
between the white and the nonwhite, between “uniformity” and “difference,”
and “between the pull of modernization and the antiquity of native tradi-
tions” in a racial and cultural hierarchy in American middle-class discourse
in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth.28
Between the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 and the U.S. Supreme
Court’s Ozawa v. United States decision in 1922, a certain discourse existed
that culturally and racially differentiated the Japanese from other nonwhites.
The popularity of Japonisme and Japan’s rapid sociopolitical and military mod-
ernization and Westernization served to picture Japanese culture as “more
advanced” than other “primitive” or “exotic” ones, and, simultaneously, the
Japanese race as “closer” to Caucasian. Thus, racial imagery and sociocultural
imagery went hand in hand in the case of Japan in the early twentieth cen-
tury.

I nt ro d u c t i o n   
 Japanese art was regarded as echoing the ancient Greeks through its em-
bodiment of an eternal, universal “spirit of antique time.”29 William Elliot
Griffis, in his article in North American Review in 1913, juxtaposed the Japa-
nese people, who “transformed their imported Buddhism as well as their
exotic politics and social ideals,” with the Greeks, who “transfused the
simple, spiritual ethics of Jesus into an elaborate theology,” and the Romans,
who “turned it into an ecclesiastical discipline.” Griffis continued: “It is as
unscientific to call the Japanese ‘Mongolians’ as to say that Englishmen are
Jutes or that Americans are Angles. . . . Their [Japanese] history, language,
ethnology, physiology, religion, culture, tastes, habits, and psychology show
that instead of being ‘Mongolians’ they are the most un-Mongolian people
in Asia. There is very little Chinese blood in the Japanese composite and no
connection between languages. Physically the two peoples are at many points
astonishingly unlike.”30
This movable middle-ground positioning of Japan in the racial and cul-
tural hierarchy was most typically observed in the world’s fairs of the late
nineteenth century and the early twentieth, where careful racial and cultural
classifications were visually presented to naturalize imperialist thoughts.
Especially in the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which was held in
Chicago, Japan was placed at an “ambivalent and twisted” position between
the “civilized” European countries and the other “primitive” cultures.31 The
fair’s hierarchical concept that connected culture and race was most symboli-
cally visualized by the dichotomized layout of the fair ground: the White City,
rows of white colossal monuments based on Greek and Roman classicism,
where the modern technologies, products, and arts of European and North
American nations were exhibited, and the subordinating adjacent Midway
Plaisance, where “primitive” peoples and cultures were displayed for exotic
entertainment.32
The Japanese exhibit, Ho-o-den, or the Phoenix Hall, was located on the
Wooded Island in the Lagoon, a small piece of land near the Fine Arts Build-
ing in the White City, in spite of the exotic display of Japanese culture that
was obviously different from Greek and Roman classicism or the technologi-
cal products of the European and North American nations. The racial and
cultural position of Japan, located not in the Midway Plaisance, not within
but near the White City, typified the middle position between the “civilized”
nations and the “primitive” regions.
According to the official guidebook of the exhibition, “Recognizing the
radical differences between Japanese art and that of the western world, the

10  I nt ro d u c t i o n
authorities of the Art Department of the Columbian Exposition did not bind
Japanese art exhibitors to the rigid classification established for other nations,
but urged that the exhibit be made thoroughly national in character—exactly
such an exhibit as would be formed under a classification devised for an art ex-
hibition to be held in Japan.”33 The American studies scholar Mari Yoshihara
argues that this passage suggests “the authorities’ recognition of Japanese
arts as having high enough standards to be included among those of western
civilizations, while, at the same time, containing it in a separate space which
allowed for a distance between it and its western counterparts.”34 Even when
the American people recognized Japan’s cultural adherence to the Western
standard of refinement in its art and craftwork, they simultaneously had
a “thirst for exotica” and were unwilling to give Japan more than honorary
white racial status.
The Japanese government, however, self-consciously utilized this mov-
able middle-ground status in the racial and cultural hierarchy in order to
secure its position in international relations rather than trying to show a
modernized and therefore Westernized sociopolitical and cultural status.35
The Western recognition of the beauty of Japanese art had an important im-
pact on the formation of Japanese national identity.36 Japan chose to display
not the modernized Japan of the present but the traditional, classical artifacts
from Japan’s past because it was “well aware of the Western gaze which valo-
rized the ‘authentic’ artifacts from the Oriental past.”37 At the same time,
Japan “longed to learn and appropriate the Western vision for itself, gazing
at its own neighbors with imperial and colonial eyes.”38 Positioning itself in
a middle ground between Europe and America on the one hand and Asia
on the other, Japan was voluntarily, as well as involuntarily, trapped in the
middle of a Eurocentric evolutionary ladder in the racial and cultural hier-
archy.39
Japan’s movable middle-ground position in a racial and cultural hierarchy
also had to do with legal racialization of Asians in the late nineteenth century
and the early twentieth. While Hayakawa was achieving superstardom, racial
inassimilability of Asians was gradually but steadily being legalized. In an
ongoing process, Asians were gradually categorized as “nonwhite” through
various acts of Asian exclusion until the 1940s, for the purposes of American
national formation and for the “construction of whiteness” and “a homoge-
nous citizenry.”40 The sequence of laws in 1882, 1917, 1924, and 1934 that
excluded immigrants from China, India, Japan, and the Philippines consis-
tently racialized each national origin group as “nonwhite.” Following the Chi-

I nt ro d u c t i o n   11
nese precedent, the legal racialization of Japanese as nonwhite “aliens ineli-
gible for citizenship” was completed by the 1922 Ozawa case. Yet, until the
early 1920s, Japanese people were not legally racialized and defined as “non-
white” by immigration laws. Japanese people had been able to move around
in the middle ground of a racial hierarchy until the early 1920s.
Hayakawa’s star image, initially formed at the Lasky Company, strongly
fit into the popular imaginary and legal movable middle-ground position of
Japan in this racial and cultural hierarchy. Particularly, Hayakawa’s image,
which positioned him in the middle ground, was visualized with regard to
the ideological structure of Americanism. Under the conditions of rapid
industrialization, urbanization, and increased immigration, middle-class
Americans prompted the nationwide “Americanization Movement.” Holly-
wood studios made Hayakawa’s star image symbolize successful assimilation
into Euro-American culture. Through his display of the American way of life,
Hayakawa became a representative of the model minority in the ethnically
and culturally heterogeneous society who attained success in a legitimate
industry without threatening the current sociopolitical and economic system
or the middle-class sense of values.
In his star vehicles, Hayakawa’s characters become sympathetic because
they try to reform their traditional lifestyles to fit into the American way
of life and to obey American laws and follow American customs. Or, they
become heroic when they sacrifice themselves for white American women
and maintain the patriarchal family system. In magazine articles, Haya‑
kawa’s lifestyle was publicized as being Americanized on the one hand, and
the uniqueness of Hayakawa as a Japanese actor was emphasized on the other.
Yet, this Japaneseness of Hayakawa was safely domesticated within the Ameri-
can middle-class cultural discourse on Japan. The embodiment of Japonisme,
with its “civilized” high-art connotations, was considered valuable for prod-
uct differentiation in the star system and effectively connected Hayakawa’s
star image to the refined cultural image that was appropriate for middle-class
audiences. Thus, Hayakawa’s star image was formed as a complex mixture of
Americanization and Japaneseness: the middle ground between “civilized”
white and “primitive” nonwhite, between “West” and “East.”
Second, what was the mechanism of the rearticulation of Hayakawa’s star
image in transnational contexts? Lasky fit Hayakawa’s Japanese star image
strategically within a certain standard for the imagination of middle-class
American audiences. Yet, Japanese spectators both in the United States and
in Japan had ambivalent attitudes toward Hayakawa’s stardom, an achieve-

12  I nt ro d u c t i o n
ment “made in the U.S.A.” They were often dismayed by the result and pro-
tested against Hayakawa’s representation of Japan often in the light of au-
thenticity. They criticized Hayakawa for appearing in anti-Japanese films that
were considered as distorting actual Japanese national and cultural character-
istics. They called Hayakawa hi-kokumin, an insult to the nation, or a national
traitor.
At the same time, they praised Hayakawa for his star image, which had a
universal appeal well beyond Japanese cultural boundaries. Japanese immi-
grants in the United States, who had been challenging anti-Japanese move-
ments, tried to utilize Hayakawa’s stardom in Japanese immigrants’ identity
politics. Across the Pacific, Japanese intellectuals and government officials,
who were also enthusiastic viewers of foreign films, tried to reconstruct Haya‑
kawa’s stardom for their own political or nationalist concerns. They highly
valued Hayakawa’s films for their popularity in international markets and
nationalistically praised Hayakawa as an ideal representative of the Japanese
people. They even called Hayakawa the “Ambassador of the nation.”41 Since
the 1860s, the Japanese government had adopted a modernization policy.
Particularly after World War I, Japan tried to participate in world politics
and economies as a modern nation. In the course of this effort, Hayakawa’s
American stardom was incorporated into Japan’s modernity in a complicated
manner. For instance, two completely different ways of appreciating Haya‑
kawa’s acting style simultaneously came to exist. In one case, a Japanese film
magazine that praised Hayakawa’s acting style for its fully utilized panto-
mimic gestures and facial expressions simultaneously acclaimed Hayakawa’s
“lack of moving facial muscle to tell tragic love stories with his two East-
ern eyes,” simply translating articles from American film magazines and ac-
cepting their views.42 While Hayakawa’s acting style was highly valued for its
Americanized aspect, the rather stereotypical view of Japanese culture that
was observed, or fictionalized, by American filmmakers and audiences also
became an integral part of the Japanese reception of Hayakawa’s stardom.
Thus, Hayakawa’s stardom functioned as a site of transnational conflicts
and negotiations, especially between the United States and Japan. It appeared
in a continuing process of cross-cultural dialogue among filmmakers, vari-
ous audiences, and the actor himself. During the period from the 1910s to
the 1920s, Hollywood became a global center of film production and promo-
tion. However, in the context of the globalization of film culture, Hayakawa’s
stardom was formed, consumed, and reconfigured in diverse ways within
the struggle to define and control the cultural, racial, and national images

I nt ro d u c t i o n   13
of Japan on the part of white America and within the setting of Japanese
cultural resistance. Not only did Hayakawa embody American stereotypical
depictions of Japanese people, as well as represent a model minority who was
successfully assimilated into American society, he also led Japanese specta-
tors to question, “What is Japanese?” Hayakawa’s transnational stardom re-
vealed the volatile intersections between the Japanese and (white) American
cultures.

The phenomenon of Sessue Hayakawa’s stardom emerged suddenly. In late

December 1915, a film made at the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company and
a Japanese actor in it shocked film spectators in the United States, Europe,
and Japan. The film was The Cheat. The actor was Sessue Hayakawa. Chap-
ter 1 of this book describes how Hayakawa became an overnight sensation
through his fully stereotypical screen image of a Japanese man in The Cheat.
Chapter 2 then goes back in time and discusses Hayakawa’s pre-superstar
roles in films about Japan and Japanese people made at the New York Motion
Picture Company (NYMPC) under the renowned producer Thomas H. Ince in
1914–15. What was the nature of the cultural discourses toward Japan when
Hayakawa entered the film business? Key terms will be Japanese Taste, the
middle-class fascination with Japanese artifacts and culture, and the yellow
peril, the middle-class fear of Japanese imperialist expansion and Japanese
immigrants.
Ince was making films with Japanese subjects, which had certain popu-
larity among American audiences who appreciated other cultural forms with
the same subjects: novels, opera, and theatrical dramas. Chapter 2 analyzes
Hayakawa’s debut film O Mimi San (Reginald Barker, 1914) with regard to the
discourse of Japanese Taste and in reference to the intertext of The Mikado,
or The Town of Titipu, a popular light opera with Japanese subjects. Then,
chapter 3 examines how The Wrath of the Gods (Barker, 1914), one of the first
big spectacular productions, or sensational feature films, uses melodramatic
imagination to construct an archetypal narrative between East and West and
how Japanese actors were exploited in such a film made in early Hollywood.
Chapter 4 analyzes The Typhoon (Barker, 1914) in reference to the relation-
ship between the discourse of the yellow peril and the spy film genre, one
of the first popular film genres in which Japan was a favorite subject matter.
Chapter 5 discusses Hayakawa’s Native American films in terms of the issues
of racial masquerade and racial hierarchy.

14  I nt ro d u c t i o n
 Part 2 of this book deals with the strategy of the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play
Company to form Hayakawa’s stardom. How did the early Hollywood film in-
dustry invest its stars with images that were fraught with certain sociopoliti-
cal and cultural conditions? How did Lasky draw out Hayakawa’s own screen
persona from the mere cultural stereotypic roles of Japanese people in order
to establish Hayakawa’s star status? Lasky took a double-barreled strategy
that would make Hayakawa heroic, sympathetic, and assimilated enough
to become a star while keeping his nonwhite persona safely distanced from
white middle-class Americans.
Lasky had roughly four strategies to form Hayakawa’s stardom. First, Lasky
emphasized the Americanized characteristics of Hayakawa’s (and his charac-
ters’) personas (obedience to American laws, assimilation to the American
way of life, and so forth). Second, in Hayakawa’s star vehicles, Lasky resorted
to melodramatic structure, the clear distinction between good and evil,
and the motif of self-sacrifice for white women and white American fami-
lies. Third, Lasky fully utilized the political conditions of World War I, the
allied relationship between the United States and Japan in particular. Fourth,
Lasky made clear the aspect of refinement in Hayakawa’s image, especially
his embodying of Japanese Taste, typified by his acting skill and manifested
in his performances. All these tactics were mainly meant to heighten Haya‑
kawa’s (and his characters’) racial and cultural status beyond that of other
nonwhites to the middle-ground position, but not necessarily to equal that of
white American characters.
Examining Lasky’s strategy of Americanizing Hayakawa’s star image,
chapter 6 traces the ephemeral discourses of white patriarchal hegemony
in American culture and illuminates how the representational means—the
film culture—maintained and consolidated dominant sociopolitical and cul-
tural discourses. This chapter reveals the ideological structure of an Ameri-
can pluralism that mobilized a sense of shared American community and
shows that films made in Hollywood at that time functioned as a means of
maintaining crucial cultural myths about American assimilative capacities.
With a close textual analysis of Forbidden Paths (Robert T. Thornby, 1917),
chapter 7 examines the melodramatic structure and thematic motif of
self-sacrifice in Hayakawa’s star vehicles. The motif of self-sacrifice marked
Hayakawa’s characters as the moral center of the narrative and at the same
time depicted them as ultimately inassimilable to white American society.
Chapter 8 turns to Hayakawa’s villainous roles. In The Soul of Kura San

I nt ro d u c t i o n   15
(Edward J. LeSaint, 1916) and The Call of the East (George H. Melford, 1917),
Lasky provided Hayakawa with sympathetic and moralistic victim roles de-
spite his villainy.
Chapter 9 discusses the influence of World War I upon Hayakawa’s star
image. Lasky integrated the allied situation between Japan and the United
States after the latter’s declaration of participation in World War I into Haya‑
kawa’s star vehicles.
Chapter 10 demonstrates how Hayakawa’s lifestyle was publicized in fan
magazines as overtly Americanized, while the uniqueness of Hayakawa as a
Japanese actor was emphasized at the same time. Hayakawa’s Japaneseness
was codified within the middle-class discourse of Japanese Taste, which effec-
tively connected Hayakawa’s star image to the refined cultural image.
In 1918, when his contract with Lasky expired, Hayakawa established his
own production company, the Haworth Pictures Corporation. Part 3 of this
book documents the establishment of Haworth; this period marked the clear
beginning of a triangular conflict in Hayakawa’s stardom, consisting of a
war of images. In this war there were three elements: cultural stereotypes
of Japan versus Hayakawa’s star image, which had been formed and popu-
larized at Lasky, versus the identity politics Hayakawa took on as a Japanese
entrepreneur at his own company. Part 3 traces how Hayakawa struggled
with the horizon of expectations in regard to his star image, not only from
American audiences but also from the newly founded film distribution com-
pany Robertson-Cole.
An Americanized Japanese image was so successfully created for Haya-
kawa at Lasky that it set up an entrenched assumption about Hayakawa’s star
persona. Yet, reactions from Japanese spectators made Hayakawa realize the
need to re-create, or at least to adjust, his star image by balancing his already
established star image for American audiences with his reputation among
Japanese spectators both in the United States and in Japan. Hayakawa under-
stood the relationship among his national identity, his cinematized cultural
stereotype, and his star image, as well as how the market encoded his racial
and cultural identity in the form of marketing, reviews, and audience recep-
tion. As a result, Hayakawa had to negotiate between the star image created
by Lasky to appeal to American audiences and a more realistic image of Japa-
nese people. The demands of authenticity from both American and Japanese
audiences suggest the contradictions and slippage between the American
stereotypical image of Japan, the “real” self-image of Japan, and the actual
condition of Japan at a certain historical moment. One of the criteria that

16  I nt ro d u c t i o n
Hayakawa had to use at Haworth was not to represent the reality of Japan at
that time, but to conform to the ideal image that Japanese immigrants in the
United States and Japanese spectators liked to convey of Japan.
Hayakawa’s attempt to reconstitute his star image at Haworth was a prod-
uct of “triple consciousness.” W. E. B. Du Bois uses the concept of “double
consciousness” regarding African American people’s self image and identity
politics: “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”43 Part 3
demonstrates that there were at least two “other” groups that influenced the
course that Haworth would take when Hayakawa re-created his own star
image, in addition to Hayakawa himself: American audiences and Japanese
spectators.
Chapter 11 analyzes the first two films made at Haworth: His Birthright
(William Worthington, 1918), a feature film, and Banzai (1918), a short pro-
motional film for the Liberty Loan Campaign during World War I, in order to
examine Hayakawa’s intended direction at his own company.
Chapter 12 illustrates the continuous negotiation between Hayakawa and
Robertson-Cole, which ended up depriving Hayakawa of his authority over
his star image, through a close analysis of three of Hayakawa’s star vehicles,
The Dragon Painter (Worthington, 1919), The Tong Man (Worthington, 1919),
and An Arabian Knight (Charles Swickard, 1920).
Not only at Lasky but also at Robertson-Cole, legitimate acting was the
essential element of Hayakawa’s stardom. What distinguishes Hayakawa as
an actor from his co-stars? Chapter 13 focuses on the actual quality of Haya‑
kawa’s acting and examines the status of Hayakawa within the trend of acting
styles in the early Hollywood film industry.
Hayakawa’s popularity declined under the nativist conditions in the United
States in the early 1920s. Hayakawa’s farewell to the American film industry
resulted from this change of social discourse on race and immigrants, par-
ticularly on Japan. Chapter 14 documents the final days of Hayakawa’s star-
dom in Hollywood.
Hayakawa’s American-made star image evoked different meanings in Japa-
nese communities in the United States and in Japan. In the United States,
Japanese audiences used Hayakawa’s image for the purpose of construct-
ing their identity politics; in Japan, audiences wanted to regard Hayakawa’s
image as an affirmation of Japan’s modernization policy. Part 4 of this book
examines these multiple modes of reception of Hayakawa’s stardom from a
cross-cultural perspective.
Chapter 15 first examines how Japanese communities in the United States,

I nt ro d u c t i o n   17
which were fighting against the nativist anti-Japanese movement in the
United States, reacted to Hayakawa’s stardom. Then, this chapter illustrates
how Japanese spectators responded to Hayakawa’s American stardom. Japa-
nese reception of Hayakawa’s stardom had a complicated relationship with
the issues of nationalism, Americanization, and modernization. Japanese
spectators, especially intellectuals, intensely felt the need for modernization
of Japanese cinema, but their attitudes were extremely ambivalent toward
Americanization and nationalism with regard to the representation of Japan
in mainstream media. Jun’eigageki undo, or the Pure Film Movement, the
intellectual attempt to modernize Japanese cinema (not only the practice of
production but also that of exhibition) by way of adopting Western film cul-
ture, was a tension-ridden process of negotiating between cosmopolitanism,
which regarded film as a potential “universal language” or visual Esperanto,
and nationalism.44 This tension had a huge impact upon the Japanese recep-
tion of Hayakawa’s stardom and vice versa: Hayakawa’s star image also en-
hanced this tension.
Hayakawa’s standardized star image and the ambivalent modes of recep-
tion of it continued in his post-stardom career in the era of talking pictures.
Examining La Bataille, Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931), Atar-
shiki tsuchi (Die Tochter des Samurai, Arnold Fanck and Itami Mansaku, 1937),
Tokyo Joe (Stuart Heisler, 1949), Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1950),
and The Bridge on the River Kwai, among others, the epilogue discusses the
relationship between the lingering star image of Hayakawa, its reception,
and the issues of nation and nationalism in Japan and in the United States.

18  I nt ro d u c t i o n
 One

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A S ta r Is B o r n
The Transnational Success
of The Cheat and Its Race
and Gender Politics

​O ​ December 13, 1915, a film titled The Cheat, produced at the Jesse L.
n
Lasky Feature Play Company, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, and star-
ring Fannie Ward, a renowned stage actress in New York and Lon-
don, was released in the United States.1 The Cheat soon achieved big box
office success2 and opened a gate for the Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa to
become a “full-fledged star.”3 Before the success of The Cheat, Hayakawa had
already appeared in many films, but it was The Cheat that paved the way for
him to achieve superstardom.
In The Cheat, a rich Japanese art dealer on Long Island, Hishuru Tori (Ses-
sue Hayakawa), offers money to Edith Hardy (Fannie Ward), a white middle-
class woman, who has invested money from the Red Cross Fund and even-
tually lost it, in exchange for her body. When Edith tries to return his money
after her husband’s success in the stock market, Tori assaults her and brutally
brands his mark on her shoulder. However, Edith fights back and shoots Tori
in the shoulder. Knowing everything, Edith’s husband decides to be arrested
on a charge of attempted murder in order to save her name. During the trial,
Edith confesses the truth, and the excited court audience attacks Tori in the
end.
Not very many reviewers and audiences were impressed by the film’s lead-
ing actress. What fascinated them most was the supporting Japanese actor,
Sessue Hayakawa. The New York Times insisted, “Miss Ward might learn
something to help her fulfill her destiny as a great tragedienne of the screen
by observing the man who acted the Japanese villain in her picture.”4 Variety
agreed: “The work of Sessue Hayakawa is so far above the acting of Miss Ward
and Jack Dean that he really should be the star in the billing for the film.”5
Moving Picture World (MPW) noted that Hayakawa had “a prominent role” in
The Cheat and added, “It is rumored he is soon to be starred by the Lasky
Company in a big feature production.”6 Sessue Hayakawa thus became an
overnight sensation to the moviegoers in America.
Cecil B. DeMille, the director of the film, recalled later that The Cheat
was “Sessue Hayakawa’s first giant stride on the road that made him within
two years the peer of such contemporary bright stars as Douglas Fairbanks,
William S. Hart, and Mary Pickford.”7 The New Orleans Times in February 1916
reported how prominent Hayakawa was after the release of The Cheat: “Un-
doubtedly the greatest success ever scored by a Japanese actor on [sic] Ameri-
can moving pictures was that of Sessue Hayakawa in the Lasky-Paramount
production of “The Cheat,” and so strong an impression thot [sic] make on
New Orleans spectators that when the Japanese appeared for the moment on
the screen in the part of a valet in “Temptation,” at the Crescent, a murmur
of recognition such as we have never known to greet any other player went
through the audience—a most sincere tribute.”8 Similarly, Wid’s Films and
Film Folk Independent Criticisms of Features pointed out that Hayakawa was
used in an inappropriate way in a minor role in Temptation (Cecil B. DeMille,
30 December 1915), the film that was released right after The Cheat: “Our Jap
friend, of ‘The Cheat’ fame, is brought in for a very small ‘valet’ part at the
finish. I think this is wrong. That boy is too big and too clever to be shoved
into such films to do a small bit. It hits you in the eye like it would be to see
Blanche Sweet come into the film as a maid.”9
The Lasky Company dared not miss this opportunity. Right before the
release of The Cheat, the studio head, Jesse L. Lasky, praised The Cheat as
“one of the very best” films ever made, even though his claim should have
contained a promotional intention. He said he was “so impressed by his
[Hayakawa’s] performance” that he “immediately signed him for a long term”
contract.10 After the box office success of The Cheat, the company came to
recognize Hayakawa as its new potential moneymaker and to undertake a
specific strategy to establish, publicize, and promote his star image.
Motion Picture News (MPN) reported on 15 April 1916: “Partly in response
to the hundreds of requests from exhibitors and photoplay goers all over the
United States, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company announces that it
will present as a star early in May the well-known Japanese screen player,
Sessue Hayakawa, in a photoplay production entitled ‘Alien Souls.’ Haya‑
kawa’s work in ‘The Cheat,’ in which he appeared in leading support of Fannie

22  C h ap t e r O n e
Ward, stamped him immediately as a proficient figure in motion pictures.”11
Lasky spent five months before releasing the first star vehicle for Hayakawa,
Alien Souls (Frank Reicher, 3 May 1916). This long five-month gap indicates
the extent of Lasky’s well-prepared publicity for the company’s new star. When
Alien Souls was finally released, reviews of the film appeared in various local
papers such as the New York Sun, Philadelphia Telegraph, Detroit News, Evening
Wisconsin, Louisville Times, Springfield Mirror, Cleveland Daily, Atlanta Consti-
tution, Los Angeles Examiner, Chicago Tribune, Toledo Blade, and Washington
Star, and they unanimously called Hayakawa a “star.” After Alien Souls, Haya‑
kawa’s star vehicles were released in approximately two-month cycles.
But stardom has more than a national perspective, and Hayakawa, like
Charlie Chaplin, was one of the first stars whose international reputation
forms an essential part of his story. American spectators were not the only
ones who were immensely impressed by Hayakawa in The Cheat. Hayakawa’s
performance was sensationally received in Europe and in Japan.12 In France,
when The Cheat opened at the Omnia Pathé Cinema in Paris in the summer of
1916, French intellectuals were “dumbfounded” by Hayakawa and the inno-
vative aesthetics of The Cheat.13 On 3 June 1918, the drama critic Louis Delluc
claimed, “No one actually wanted to see anything in it [The Cheat] except the
Japanese. . . . [The film] inspired nothing but pro-Japanese polemic.”14 In Ex-
celsior, on 7 August 1916, the renowned poet, novelist, and essayist Colette
reported, in an excited tone, on the impact of Hayakawa’s performance in The
Cheat on many artists:

In Paris this week, a movie theater has become an art school. A film and two of
its principal actors are showing us what surprising innovations, what emotion,
what natural and well-designed lighting can add to cinematic fiction. Every eve-
ning, writers, painters, composers, and dramatists come and come again to
sit, contemplate, and comment in low voices, like pupils. To the genius of an
oriental actor is added that of a director probably without equal. . . . We cry
“Miracle!” . . . Is it only a combination of felicitous effects that brings us to this
film and keeps us there? Or is it the more profound and less clear pleasure of
seeing the crude ciné groping toward perfection, the pleasure of divining what
the future of the cinema must be when its makers will want that future . . . ?
. . . This Asiatic artist whose powerful immobility is eloquence itself. Let our as-
piring ciné-actors go to see how, when his face is mute, his hand carries on the
flow of his thought. Let them take to heart the menace and disdain in a motion

A S t a r I s B or n   23
 of his eyebrow and how, in that his life is running out with his blood, without
shuddering, without convulsively grimacing, with merely the progressive petri-
faction of his Buddha’s mask and the ecstatic darkening of his eyes.15

As mentioned in the introduction, Hayakawa’s acting, which Delluc and

Colette fervently described, inspired certain French intellectuals to gener-
ate a concept, photogenie, the unique aesthetic qualities that motion picture
photography brings to the subject it films. For them, the concept of photo-
genie was the basis of a new idea of film as a unique art form, thus Haya-
kawa of a new form of acting. According to Delluc, using the camera and the
screen, photogenie changes “real” into something else without eliminating
the “realness” and makes people “see ordinary things as they had never been
before.”16 It is a mystical and theoretically incoherent concept due to the fact
that photogenie is “designed to account for that which is inarticulable, that
which exceeds language and hence points to the very essence of cinematic
specificity.”17 Yet, such a theorist as Delluc believed that the cinema would
give viewers access to a realm beyond everyday experience and show them
the souls of people and the essence of objects. The concept of photogenie later
became a significant theoretical basis of the French impressionist film move-
ment, filmmaking that “displayed a fascination with pictorial beauty and an
interest in intense psychological exploration.”18 As a result, by 1921, French
intellectuals achieved a consensus that The Cheat’s “revelation actually initi-
ated the greater French public’s education about the cinema.”19
This enthusiastic reception of Hayakawa in France had a certain connec-
tion to the popularity of Madame Sadayakko, a Japanese actress. Sadayakko,
who was in fact the aunt of Hayakawa’s wife, Tsuru Aoki, was sponsored by the
popular dancer Loie Fuller in the 1900 Exposition in Paris, together with her
husband Kawakami Otojiro, who tried to modernize Japanese theater by dis-
sociating it from the dominant world of kabuki and pleasure quarters. Sada‑
yakko’s geisha dance and act of dying and Kawakami’s act of hara-kiri, which
were in fact added at the request of Fuller, were sensationally received not
only by the popular audience, but by some intellectuals and artists, includ-
ing the renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin. Moreover, their acts were cap-
tured by a motion picture camera, which was another sensational form of
entertainment at the Paris Exposition. After the Kawakami troupe returned
to Japan, even Japanese-style dresses became fashionable in Paris. They were
called “Yacco” style because Sadayakko always wore a kimono at parties. Sada‑
yakko’s fame was such that Guerlain introduced a perfume called “Yacco.”20

24  C h ap t e r O n e
 Without Sadayakko, Kawakami, and Aoki, Hayakawa would never have
entered the film business. In 1899, when Aoki was eleven, she went to the
United States as a part of the Kawakami troupe. It was the first time a Japa-
nese theater troupe had toured in the United States.21 Aoki stayed in the
United States as an adopted daughter of Aoki Toshio (Hyosai), an artist in
San Francisco, and later, after Aoki Toshio died, of Louise Scher, a journalist
at the Los Angeles Examiner. Aoki started her film career much earlier than
Hayakawa and quite possibly introduced him to an influential producer in
early Hollywood, Thomas H. Ince.
In 1925, the filmmakers Henri Fescourt and Jean-Louis Bouquet dated
“the origins of the cinema around 1915–1916, with the appearance of the first
good American films,” and stated that “the most striking was The Cheat.”22
In 1937, Marcel L’Herbier remade The Cheat, entitled Forfaiture, using Haya-
kawa in the role of a Mongolian prince who attracts a French engineer’s wife
and entraps her using her gambling debts.23 The images behind the opening
credits of Forfaiture, a compilation of notable scenes with Hayakawa from The
Cheat, clearly indicate the immense popularity of Hayakawa and The Cheat in
France. Forfaiture thus presupposed the viewers’ knowledge of the original.
Moreover, Excelsior, on 28 August 1917, reported that The Cheat was about
to be staged as an opera. André de Lorde of the Théatre du Grand Guignol
and Paul Milliet wrote a music drama based on The Cheat, for which Camille
Erlanger wrote the music. The opera, entitled La Forfaiture, was in fact pro-
duced by the Opéra-Comique in 1921, after Erlanger’s death, and became the
first opera to be based on a motion picture scenario, even though the opera
was not successful and played only three times.24 Colette’s reaction to this an-
nouncement of the stage production of The Cheat, written in a conversation
style, indicates how highly she valued Hayakawa’s eloquent performance. Co-
lette’s insight even predicts Hayakawa’s future, his loss of popularity after
talking pictures arrived:

“And who will play it? Have they already found people worthy of taking over for
Hayakawa and Fannie Ward?”
“Ah . . . that’s the difficulty. What do you think of Mary Garden for the role
played by Fannie Ward?”
“Mary Garden would be fine. And the Japanese?”
The friend of film leaned forward, with an anxious face: “The Japanese, the
Japanese . . .”
He looked at me steadily.

A S t a r I s B or n   25
 “It’s strange,” he said, “the Japanese . . . I don’t conceive of that role, you under-
stand, as being sung. Or, let’s say there’d be very little singing. One would need
a great artist capable of mime. Gesture, stage presence . . . Very little voice.
No vocal effects, no melodic phrases. Everything in recitative. But silence, you
understand, above all, silence. Jean Périer, perhaps . . .”
“Of course. Besides”—I insinuated with a poisonous sweetness—“really,
the Japanese has nothing to say in the story.”
“That’s quite right. My opinion exactly. He has nothing to say. The first, the
glare, that’s the whole role. I see so clearly what’s needed. I can see it as if I were
there.”
“I think you were there. Wait, one moment, I have an idea. Supposing that
the Japanese, in your opera, were made evil, seductive, and . . . mute?”
“Mute?”
“Mute. As mute as a screen. He could, by mime, make himself understood
just as easily—perhaps better—and then . . .”
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” the friend of film cried. “We’ll get Hayakawa to create
the role in the opera!”
“I hoped you’d say that.”
“Magnificent! Magnificent! That takes a weight off me . . . It’s foolish, per-
haps, but the idea of hearing the role of the Japanese sung . . . and even that of
the woman, if it comes to that, in the great scene, the struggle between Fannie
Ward and Hayakawa, I can’t yet imagine how they would exchange the lines ‘Be
Mine!’ ‘No, never!’ ‘You swore it!’ ‘Pity, pity! Oh, the villain—!’ and so on.”
“I share your apprehension. One could, though, get around the difficulty
with those cries . . .”
“How?”
“One could arrange, for example, a silent scene, very rapid, in the style of
that lovely scene in the film . . .”
“Of course . . .”
“. . . and since the scene would be silent, there wouldn’t be any difficulty in
having it played by Fannie Ward . . .”25

Hayakawa’s performance in The Cheat was sensationally received by Japanese

spectators, too. However, the tone of the Japanese reception was not as favor-
able as that of the American and French ones. Japanese communities in the
United States severely protested The Cheat, insisting that the Japanese char-
acter in the film was depicted unfavorably. On 23 December 1915, right after
The Cheat was released at the Tally Theater in Los Angeles, the Rafu Shimpo,

26  C h ap t e r O n e
a Japanese newspaper in Los Angeles, started a campaign against the film.
Hayakawa wrote in his autobiography, “Recalling my experiences in making
this picture [The Cheat] brings to mind the opposition my playing the role of
the villainous Japanese stirred among those of my nationality in Los Angeles
and throughout the country after the film was released. For portraying the
heavy, as screen villains are called, as a Japanese, I was indignantly accused
of casting a slur on my nationality.”26
The Rafu Shimpo criticized The Cheat by insisting that the film “distorted
the truth of Japanese people” and would “cause anti-Japanese movements.”
A report in the Rafu Shimpo noted, “The film depicts Japanese people as out-
rageously evil. . . . This film would have a bad influence on people, living in
places where there are not so many Japanese. They would come to think that
the Japanese people are extremely savage. The film destroys the truth of the
Japanese race. It is unforgivable for Japanese actors to appear in such a film,
even for money.”27
Another report in the paper similarly stated,

The issue of Japanese exclusion is a big problem not just between the U.S. and
Japan, but in the world. The intellectuals in both the U.S. and in Japan have
made every effort to solve this problem. Our people in the U.S. have experi-
enced many troubles and hardships, and 60 million Japanese people have been
extremely patient, in order to solve this problem. Under such conditions, how
could Hayakawa, despite his blood of Japanese race, shamelessly appear in an
anti-Japanese film, which leaves an impression of extremely evil Japanese? You,
traitor to your country!! . . . The Japanese Embassy should do something to pre-
vent this film from being exhibited.28

The Rafu Shimpo reported many incidents in which Japanese people were at-
tacked by “white bad boys” after the release of The Cheat. A report noted, “Bad
boys, who were crowded in front of the Tally Theater [where The Cheat was
being played] and crying out anti-Japanese words, lynched a Japanese noodle
shop owner, who came out of the theater, as Hayakawa was lynched in the
courtroom scene.” The report concluded, “the influence of the anti-Japanese
film is doubtless.”29
As a response to these serious criticisms against his character, Hayakawa
had to quickly publish a note of apology in the Rafu Shimpo on 29 December.
He wrote, “Sincere Notice: It is regrettable that the film The Cheat, which was
exhibited at the Tally Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles, unintentionally

A S t a r I s B or n   27
offended the feelings of the Japanese people in the U.S. From now on, I will
be very careful not to do harm to Japanese communities.”30
Yet, the campaign against The Cheat continued after Hayakawa’s apology.
In February 1916, members of the Japanese Association of Southern Cali-
fornia filed a protest against the showing of The Cheat with the Los Angeles
City Council. The Rafu Shimpo reported almost every day until March 1916
the news about the Japanese Association’s effort to ban The Cheat from play-
ing in theaters. As a result, when The Cheat was re-released in 1918 because
of popular demand, Hayakawa’s character’s nationality was changed from
Japanese to Burmese in order not to excite anti-Japanese sentiment because
Japan and the United States were allies during World War I. In the re-release
version, which is the only version now extant, Hayakawa’s Japanese character
became a Burmese ivory king, Haka Arakau, by a change in intertitles.
Across the Pacific, in Japan, after The Cheat caused the anti-exhibition
campaign in Japanese communities in the United States, Hayakawa’s name
was widely reported in newspapers and magazines for the first time. Haya-
kawa was scandalously introduced to Japanese spectators as a person who was
recklessly enhancing anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. Hayakawa
was called “a cooperator in anti-Japanese propaganda films like The Typhoon
and The Cheat.” He was labeled as a “traitor” for appearing in such “insults to
the nation.”31 The Japanese film magazine Katsudo no Sekai criticized Haya‑
kawa’s Japanese character in The Cheat as “a slave of carnal desire” and called
Hayakawa an “unforgivable national traitor.”32 The Cheat was not released in
Japan in the 1910s. It was imported in 1923 but never had a chance to be re-
leased.33 Lasky and Paramount, the producer and the distributor of The Cheat
in the United States, did not have a distribution branch in Japan at that time,
which was the direct reason that most of Hayakawa’s films did not come to
Japan until 1918, when Hayakawa established Haworth Pictures Corporation,
his own production company.34 Yet, at the same time, there was no enthusi-
astic request for Hayakawa’s films in Japan because they were considered too
shameful to Japanese audiences.35 As a result, for several years, Hayakawa
had an extremely notorious reputation among Japanese spectators who knew
him in name only. Okina Kyuin, a novelist and journalist who spent eighteen
years in the United States, from 1907–24, wrote in 1930, “He [Hayakawa]
made his way into the world with the success of The Cheat, but at the same
time, he was cursed by the Japanese people with the success of The Cheat.”36
Thus, the success of The Cheat and Hayakawa’s performance in the film had
a huge transnational impact, positive and negative, in the history of cinema,

28  C h ap t e r O n e
and in the history of the sociopolitical relationship between the United States
and Japan as well.
Hayakawa had appeared in many films with Japanese subject matter be-
fore The Cheat at the New York Motion Picture Company (NYMPC) and some
others at Lasky. Yet, these films did not provide Hayakawa with as tremen-
dous and sensational a success as The Cheat. Thomas H. Ince, the managing
director at the NYMPC, never publicized Hayakawa as his star. What was
different about The Cheat? What made Hayakawa stand out as a potential
American star?
Thematically, most of the films in which Hayakawa appeared before The
Cheat were set in faraway lands. In these films, Japanese people were objects
to be looked at, but not people for American audiences to encounter in every-
day life. Japan existed outside of the American domestic sphere. This image
of Japan as a faraway land to be looked at in these early films was rooted in
the nineteenth-century illustrated travel lecture, which was “a predominant
form of magic lantern entertainment in America.”37 Such popular lecturers
as John L. Stoddard and E. Burton Holmes, who actually spent five months
in Japan in 1892, often talked about Japan and its people and drew mainly
middle-class audiences. In contrast, in The Cheat, the Japanese man actually
lives among white middle-class Americans.
There were actual human encounters between Japanese men and white
American women in the middle-class domestic sphere in the Pacific states
by the 1910s. Many male Japanese immigrants, who had entered the United
States since the 1880s, were hired as domestic servants or valets. In con-
trast to Japanese art, which had been brought into the middle-class domestic
sphere for the purpose of refining the home, Japanese immigrants, working
as helping hands in the houses of white families, were often seen as a threat.
The historian Robert G. Lee claims that the employment of the male Japa-
nese servant to do “women’s work” destabilized the gendered nature of labor.
According to Lee, Japanese domestic servants were often regarded as a “third
sex,” which is “an alternative or imagined sexuality that was potentially sub-
versive and disruptive to the emergent heterosexual and monoracial ortho-
doxy.”38 Japanese people, as opposed to Japanese art, could create threaten-
ing desires across race (multiracial), sex (homoerotic), and class and disturb
conventional gender roles. Japanese in the middle-class American domestic
sphere thus occupied an ambiguous middle-ground position between refined
objects and threatening (human) subjects.
In fact, many tragic incidents were reported as a result of encounters be-

A S t a r I s B or n   29
tween white women and Japanese men in the American domestic sphere.
According to a report in the Rafu Shimpo, a married white woman named
Mabel Smith shot to death Iguchi Eitaro, her Japanese lover, in July 1915.39
The report noted, “Smith’s husband knew the Japanese man as a nice guy. . . .
During their three-year love affair, the Japanese man bought her clothes, and
so forth. . . . The white woman got jealous when she heard that the Japanese
man dated another woman. . . . The woman shot Iguchi when she thought he
attacked her. . . . She said she killed Iguchi out of jealousy first, but she tes-
tified that she shot Iguchi to defend herself from him, who attacked her and
her husband.”40 As in The Cheat, the white woman was declared not guilty on
the grounds of self-defense.
In another case, a Japanese employee, Matsuno Shinkichi, was arrested
because it was said that he threatened a white housewife with a pistol in order
to rape her. The Rafu Shimpo reported, “The truth was . . . the housewife liked
Matsuno very much and gave him extra money and her handkerchief, etc.
Matsuno behaved carefully for a year because he had decided to marry a Japa-
nese woman from Japan as soon as possible. One day, she woke up Matsuno
in the middle of the night and took his hand and led him to the front door
to check whether it was locked. The same thing happened the next day, and
it is impossible to report here what kind of relationship they began to have
then.”41
The cases of Iguchi and Matsuno resembled that in The Cheat. They were
tragic love affairs between married white women and rich Japanese men or
Japanese servants. The white women were attracted to Japanese men and
eventually destroyed them. Since these cases were reported when the Rafu
Shimpo was conducting its campaign against The Cheat, the affinities of the
situations stood out. The Cheat surely exploited such encounters between
white American middle-class women and Japanese immigrants in the do-
mestic sphere.
Hayakawa’s rise as a prominent figure in The Cheat and the formation of
his star image after The Cheat had a close relationship to these encounters.
When the popular American cultural and racial imagination of Japan was
connected to the discourse of the American middle-class domestic sphere,
especially to that of gender politics, a strong momentum for Hayakawa’s star-
dom was born.
More specifically, a white woman’s sexual and economic transgression is
metaphorically and metonymically expressed in the form of Japanese Taste
and the yellow peril in The Cheat. The film historian Sumiko Higashi argues,

30  C h ap t e r O n e
“The threat of sexual difference, represented by the demands of the ‘new
woman’ . . . in a materialistic consumer culture, is displaced onto ethnic
difference” in The Cheat.42 Japanese objets d’art and the Japanese art dealer
played by Hayakawa function as racialized rhetoric of consumption and the
New Woman.
Historically, Japanese Taste and the yellow peril co-existed and formed
ambivalent popular discourses on Japan in the early twentieth century. They
were not simply antithetical but intersected in a complicated manner, espe-
cially in the middle-class domestic sphere. Japanese Taste in the middle-class
home symbolized the fact that the gendered construction of the middle-class
domestic sphere was extended to the turn-of-the-century racial paradigm.
Japanese Taste was the use of Japanese motifs, decorative style, and objects
in the Western home with “congeries of attributes: physical, philosophical,
moral, and educational” from the late 1870s.43 Japan was first articulated in
the American imagination through its arts, goods, and culture that were ac-
cepted favorably in accordance with the middle-class discourse on arts and
the home.
After the forceful “opening” of Japan to the West in 1853 following the ar-
rival of a U.S. naval squadron under the command of Commodore Matthew
Perry, commerce between the United States and Japan was established. In
the exchange, American male intellectuals, who were hired by the Japanese
government to teach and consult in many areas, became the first “Japan-
ologists,” introducing Japanese culture to Americans. Many Japanologists
were upper-class men from New England, such as Edward Sylvester Morse,
who collected thousands of Japanese vernacular tools and daily objects, and
Ernest F. Fenollosa, who became a curator at the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts, who brought their knowledge about Japan to Americans as high cul-
ture.44 In the 1870s Japanese goods penetrated American markets, following
the European vogue of Japonisme in art and style. Because Japanese culture,
art, and design were introduced by upper-class men or imported as European
vogue, they were considered high art in the beginning.
After the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, when many middle-class Ameri-
cans encountered Japanese art for the first time, upscale Japanese Taste be-
came gradually popularized. The first height of Japanese Taste came in the
1885–89 period, when the number of publications on the social trend was
peaking in popular magazines. Lafcadio Hearn, the most influential writer to
interpret Japanese culture for genteel society, published a number of works
in Harper’s Magazine and others and introduced Japanese culture in the form

A S t a r I s B or n   31
of artifacts, architecture, natural scenery, religious beliefs, folk tales, and so
forth, to middle-class female readers.
In this middle-class notion of Japanese Taste, Japanese art, design, and
culture were nostalgically regarded as premodern and primitive and highly
valued as an alternative or an antithesis to the modernity that was threaten-
ing the concept of Victorian morality.45 Compared with Western “progress” in
art, the painter John La Farge claimed in 1893, the “simplicity of attitude” of
Japanese painters was that of “children.”46 Their childlike simplicity was an
attribute of inherent sincerity, and, in terms of the Christian desire to reach
heaven, was more expedient than extreme erudition and modern, scientific
technique.
More specifically, Japanese Taste came to reflect “an exemplum of middle-
class women’s desire to carry out moral reforms in their own households
and to present their families and themselves favorably to the public,” and
Japanese art was considered to incorporate “a number of moral and spiritual
qualities.”47 In the industrialization, mechanization, urbanization, and the
development of materialism in the 1880s, a wide range of magazines mainly
targeted for women discussed the roles of both home and women in terms
of their moral influence on the family. The cult of domesticity, or the idea of
home as an agent of “Christian nurture,” was propounded in such magazine
articles. Home became regarded as a place that would provide physical shel-
ter and artistic and general education for the whole family in order to contain
the deepening contradictions between the new urban life and the older ideals
of community, family, and social order.48
Japanese art was used in Christian homes to enhance morality, purity, and
good taste, but the use was only justifiable by its evocative relationship be-
tween nature and religion in the imagination of the American middle class.
That is, in the American domestic sphere, Japan was located in a middle-
ground position in a cultural hierarchy: morally and artistically refined on
the one hand, and premodern and primitive on the other.
Together with Japanese Taste, there was another discourse on Japan in the
popular American imagination in the early twentieth century: the one that
viewed Japan as a modernizing nation, often with the image of a political
and economic threat. In such a view, Japan’s modernization was a fanatical
ultra-nationalistic patriotism in service to its emperor, and the Japanese were
thus ultimately different from other Western modernized nations. Alfred T.
Mahan, a captain of the U.S. Navy and an influential writer on American

32  C h ap t e r O n e
foreign policy, had a high estimation of Japan’s “remarkable capacity and dili-
gence in the appropriation and application of European ways.” At the same
time, Mahan insisted that ultimately Japan is “Asiatic,” and “it must . . . be
recognized and candidly accepted that difference of race characteristics . . .
entails corresponding temporary divergence of ideal and of action, with con-
sequent liability to misunderstanding, or even collision.”49
American people largely admired Japan’s fast-paced modernization, which
had occurred since its “opening” to the West. However, especially after the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, when Japan’s military power became obvious,
anti-Japanese sentiment developed in the Pacific states, where the number of
Japanese immigrants was steadily increasing.50 Japanese immigrants became
regarded as a threat because Japanese immigration was seen in the light of
Japanese military power. Together with the specter of Japanese immigration,
the fear of Japanese expansion into China, where the U.S. government had
substantial interests, or a Japanese invasion of the mainland United States
or the Philippines and Hawaii, which had come under American control,
appeared.
Yellow journalism spread the discourse of the yellow peril in sensational
articles and books.51 In February 1905, a series of articles that regarded Japa-
nese immigration as the “problem of the day” appeared in the San Fran-
cisco Chronicle. The Chronicle stated that Japanese immigrants would pose
“a threat to American working men, American women, schoolchildren and
the white race in general” because they were unable or unwilling to assimi-
late to the Anglo-American way of life.52 Valentine Stuart McClatchy, an
anti-Japanese agitator in San Francisco, called Japanese immigrants an “in-
coming yellow tide.”53 Jack London, who went to Asia as a journalist during
the Russo-Japanese War, expressed his fear of Japan’s expansion in his essay
“Yellow Peril” (1904). The laboring classes in the Pacific states came to be-
lieve that Japanese immigrants achieved their working opportunities unfairly
or dishonorably and formed the Asiatic Exclusion League in May 1905.
Except for those who were living in the Pacific states and facing immi-
grants from Asia in their daily lives, Japan’s threat was still an ambiguous
issue, not yet seen as a serious “peril.” The number of Japanese residents
in the United States was still limited, and the economic threat from Japa-
nese immigrants was not yet a nationally perceived problem. Even President
Theodore Roosevelt, although he recognized the potential conflict between
Japan and the United States over control of the Pacific, was irritated by the ac-

A S t a r I s B or n   33
tivities of the anti-Japanese agitators on the West Coast. Yet, the term “yellow
peril” gradually came to appear in such magazines for middle-class readers
as the Nation, Outlook, and the North American Review.
In accordance with such popular discourses of the period, the narrative
of The Cheat emphasizes the double-edged images of Japan, Japanese Taste,
and the yellow peril from the very beginning and connects them to the am-
bivalent conception of consumerism in the middle-class American home, re-
finement and over-consumption. The first two scenes introduce the twofold
image of the Japanese art dealer, Hishuru Tori. While the first scene implies
Tori’s threatening and primitive characteristics, the second scene shows how
the same Japanese man looks Americanized and assimilated to American
high society on the surface. The second scene also emphasizes that the Japa-
nese man attracts a white woman by his refined and luxurious lifestyle.
The first shot of The Cheat after the title and credits is a medium shot of
Tori in extremely low-key lighting. He is wearing a black Japanesque robe
and a serious facial expression. Seated at his desk against a completely black
backdrop, he brands a small objet d’art with his symbol mark (torii, a Japanese
word meaning a shrine gate), using an iron poker from an Asian-style brass
brazier. A line of smoke ominously rises from the brazier. He turns off the
light with a satisfied expression and puts a lattice cover on the brazier. The
glow of the brazier casts shadows of cross stripes on his face as though horri-
fying makeup has created a sinister mask.
The Cheat is famous for its innovative Rembrandt-like extreme low-key
lighting effects that bathe characters in darkness but for a single source of
illumination from the side. The film historian Lea Jacobs argues that in the
DeMille films in 1915–16 “lighting is quite baldly used to create striking pic-
tures which punctuate and heighten dramatic situations” and those films
were “actually much more careful to motivate and integrate effects lighting
than later classical filmmakers would be and than DeMille himself would be
by the late teens.”54 In the opening shot in The Cheat, these lighting effects
clearly enhance Tori’s ominous and possibly villainous characteristics. Since
this scene is directly followed by a medium shot of Richard Hardy (Jack
Dean), a New York stockbroker, similarly seated at his desk but in uniform
lighting, the effect of the low-key lighting in the first shot is emphasized. This
scene clearly visualizes the ethnic and personality differences between Tori
and the ordinary American gentleman.
While the introductory shot of Richard has a direct diegetic relationship
with the following scene, the temporal connection between the shot of Tori

34  C h ap t e r O n e
in this opening and the next scene remains ambiguous. In the next scene
Richard calls his wife, Edith, from the same office of the opening scene to
scold her about her overconsumption. In contrast, the opening shot of Tori
branding an object remains outside of the linear temporality of the narrative.
It is unclear when this act of Tori’s happens: Did it happen long before the
actual story of The Cheat takes place? Does it happen in the middle of the
story? Or is this simply Tori’s habit? In either case, the temporal relationship
between the first shot of Tori and the incidents in the narrative of The Cheat
stays unclear. As a result, the major function of the first shot becomes to pro-
vide Tori with an innate ominous characteristic.
In the original script, however, Tori is located in the actual narrative tem-
porality. In this script, Tori is first introduced as “One of Long Island’s Smart
Set in smart American flannels” just “reading magazine or newspaper, and
smoking.”55 When his servant in Japanese kimono comes in and hands him
a hat, he “looks at watch—smiles—and rises to go” to pick up Edith. Yet,
there is a handwritten note in pencil, added in a margin, that reads “Scene
dyed Red, Black Drop, brazier of branding” and “his face shown in light from
coals.”56 Because of the change in the script, Tori’s mysterious foreign nature
is located in an atemporal and archetypal space in the film version.
In contrast, the following scene adopts an entirely different lighting tech-
nique and a costume strategy in order to emphasize the other characteristics
of Tori: his apparent Americanized quality. In this scene, Tori is depicted
as a person who has been assimilated into Long Island high society. Wear-
ing a white duster, cap, casual tweed suit, and bow tie, Tori comes into the
frame driving an expensive high-powered roadster in the flat high-key light-
ing of daytime. He is about to escort Richard’s wife, Edith, to the Red Cross
Fund Bazaar. He jauntily runs up the steps. When he enters Edith’s room,
he shakes hands with her and gives her a relaxed smile. In the script, in this
scene, Tori gets angry when Edith tells him that Richard objects to her ex-
travagance and to her seeing him. According to the script, Tori thinks he
“would like to wring [Edith’s] husband’s neck.” However, in the film, Tori’s
anger is not displayed on the screen. A handwritten note in the script crosses
out this display of ­Tori’s anger in order to emphasize Tori’s cheerful, gentle,
and restrained nature in this particular scene.
On their way back from the Red Cross Bazaar, Tori opens the door of his
car for Edith, and when Edith stumbles, he gently helps her to get up. In the
script, “for just a second he holds her close—Edith is confused,” and “Tori
abruptly lets Edith go—as if coming to himself and bows—deeply respect-

A S t a r I s B or n   35
ful—Edith holds out her hand to Tori, striving to be at ease.” However, on
the screen Edith does not show any confusion. With his gentle behavior, Tori
looks well assimilated into the American way of life.
In addition to their differences of ethnicity and personality, another sig-
nificant difference between the two gentlemen, Tori and Richard, is implied
in this second scene. Tori does not have to work during the day, while Edith’s
husband, a typical middle-class American, is working in the stock market.
Tori appears in the main narrative right after Richard blames Edith for her ex-
penditure on luxuries. As soon as Tori hears Edith say “He’s [Richard is] forc-
ing me to give up everything,” he replies, “Can’t I help? No one need know.”
This line, which tempts Edith to the forbidden pleasure of overconsumption,
is the first line spoken by Tori in The Cheat. The rich Japanese art collector
is the man who can satisfy her desire for leisure and luxuries. Thus, the nar-
rative of The Cheat connects a white woman and a Japanese man within the
American domestic sphere via the transgressive attraction of leisure and con-
sumption.
In reality, both consumerism and Japanese Taste had twofold meanings
and functions in middle-class families. Therein lay a paradoxical situation
of American modernization. On the one hand, there was an economic struc-
ture based on consumerism, and on the other hand, there were social values
based on traditional Puritan ethics about productive and restrained behavior,
which were linked with Victorian morality. In order to satisfy both of these
imperatives, middle-class women had to spend money in order to display
genteel status but to spend within reason and on appropriate objects for their
families and for the consumerist economy. According to the film scholar
Janet Staiger, “Women were important in the expansion of consumption into
the realm of pleasure and leisure,” and, simultaneously, a woman was “ar-
ticulating the status of her family” by her dress, belongings, and furniture in
the home; this became considered to be part of a woman’s job.57 During the
period of the popularity of Japanese Taste among middle-class Americans,
the collection of Asian art was an integral part of these women’s assertions
of their social positions both as cultural leaders and as New Women.58 Japa-
nese art and culture were recognized as having refined standards and high
moral values that could be incorporated by Western civilizations and into the
domestic sphere, while at the same time they should be financially and spa-
tially contained in order not to threaten the image of Western gentility they
projected.

36  C h ap t e r O n e
 Edith’s words to Richard, when she is criticized for her expenditures, ap-
propriately summarize middle-class women’s new role of “conspicuous con-
sumption,” purchasing expensive clothes and exotic Asian objects to express
her family’s social status to other people. She says, “I must have new gowns
for the Red Cross affairs.” As a treasurer of the Red Cross Fund, Edith’s vol-
untary charity work also symbolizes the “conspicuous leisure” of her upper
middle-class life. In 1899 Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure
Class, based on his observation of late-nineteenth-century American society.
Veblen argued that the wealthier an individual the more able he is—and the
more necessary it is—to adopt an affluent lifestyle, with a strong emphasis
on waste, to demonstrate to others an ability to consume time and goods in
nonproductive ways (“conspicuous leisure” and “conspicuous consumption”).
This is because the ostentatious display of goods and services that are both
expensive and highly valued by others provides the individual with a path to
social prestige in any society, which recognizes wealth as a major determi-
nant by which status is conferred. Furthermore, according to Veblen there
comes a point on the economic scale, as the social order descends, where the
husband must work to support his family and so he passes the responsibility
for conspicuous leisure to his wife. Similarly, if the husband is obliged to
forego conspicuous expenditure then the responsibility for maintaining a so-
cially “decent” level of conspicuous consumption to maintain an “expected”
standard of living falls on the wife.59
Despite the fact that his assumptions and conclusions were empirically
unfounded or unproven, Veblen’s views on conspicuous consumption in
American society went largely unchallenged and were accepted as the basis
to condemn ostentatious economic display as a social evil in the United
States in the years leading up to World War I.60 The Cheat’s characterization
of Edith as a conspicuous consumer and the eventual restriction of her be-
havior should be located in this context of the theorization and condemna-
tion of conspicuous consumption. Edith, as a wealthy middle-class wife, is
required to have conspicuous leisure and consumption, of Japanese Taste,
in particular, in order to display the expected standard of living, but to have
them at a socially decent level. Edith, as a New Woman, is expected to recon-
cile her consumer desire and sexual freedom with traditional obligations to
her family and society.61
Richard himself understands the necessity of his wife’s “conspicuous”
behavior for generating and maintaining the appearance of the appropri-

A S t a r I s B or n   37
ate middle-class family life. Therefore, he cannot respond to Edith’s words,
“If you want me to give up my friends and social position—well—I won’t.”
Richard is not mad at her spending itself. He is irritated because Edith is on
the verge of overconsumption and about to lose the respectability of their
middle-class family life.
Throughout its narrative, The Cheat substitutes and enhances a fear of
overconsumption with a fear of racial hybrids.62 The film’s melodramatic bi-
nary structure attributes the cause of Edith’s overconsumption to the racially
and culturally inassimilable and threatening Japanese man. Edith’s words to
Tori, “My husband objects to my extravagance—and you,” not only explicitly
indicate that Japanese Taste is an integral part of her behaviors of consump-
tion but also imply Edith’s possible sexual transgression. The Japanese man is
not only the rich art collector who brings refined products of Japanese Taste
to her home but is also a consumable object himself in her domestic space.
Tori’s luxurious costume and belongings, including his beautiful car, and his
words “Can’t I help? No one need know,” function in the narrative as a tempt-
ing but threatening voice of overconsumption and implicit miscegenation.
Eventually, the white American man controls the white woman’s overcon-
sumption by regulating the nonwhite man’s economic and sexual transgres-
sion.
The scene at Tori’s low-key lighted Japanesque shoji room during the eve-
ning of the Red Cross Ball clearly connects the threat of overconsumption
and the fear of miscegenation. The shoji room, with its proliferation of Japa-
nese objects, not only represents Tori’s luxurious lifestyle, which Edith appre-
ciates, but also functions to reinforce Tori’s ultimately inassimilable Japanese
cultural and racial traits.
The contrast between the shoji room where Tori and Edith enjoy looking
at Japanese objects and the main room where the ball is held is particularly
emphasized in the script. While the main room is a “gorgeous combination
of modern luxury and oriental beauty—Not typically Japanese as is the Shoji
Room,” the shoji room is “the typically Japanese room” with “Shoji Doors,”
“The Shrine of Buddha,” a “gold screen,” a “tall black vase full of cherry blos-
soms,” and a “brazier of coals with small branding iron.”63 When Edith finds a
brand of Tori’s seal on the bottom of a small wooden statue of Buddha in the
room, Tori demonstrates how to brand and explains to Edith, “That means it
belongs to me.” Edith gets “confused,” according to the script, or even looks
frightened on the screen and retreats back into the rear of the room toward
the shrine of Buddha. She “tries to throw confusion off by laughing lightly.”

38  C h ap t e r O n e
Yet, Tori remains at the table for a while with a poker in his hands and his ex-
pression shows he has something on his mind. Here, for the first time since
the introductory shot, the strong Rembrandt-like sidelight emphasizes the
contrast of light and shadow on Tori’s face, even though, at this point, Tori
does not obviously show his villainous characteristics in his gestures or in his
facial expressions.
Right after this, Edith’s friend tells her that her stock investment using the
Red Cross money has failed. When Edith faints, Tori kneels beside her, turns
off the light, carries her out of the room, and hides in a dark corridor behind
a shoji. In the off-screen light and the blue toning that imitate the moon-
light, Edith’s skin looks strikingly white. There, Tori steals a kiss. The sense
of stealing is more emphasized on the screen, especially in the low-key light-
ing effects, than in the script and makes the scene more threatening.64 The
scene is much more romantically described in the script than on the screen.
In the script, Tori brings the unconscious Edith to a bench in the garden, and
“struck with her beauty and helplessness,” he kisses her.
When Edith becomes conscious, she is scared by the thought of a news-
paper headline, “EXTRA! SOCIETY WOMAN STEALS RED CROSS FUND,” which
is visually shown on the screen in double exposure. Tori leans closer to Edith
and offers her money “if she will come to him,” as the script is written, even
though the intertitles on the screen never clearly state the line nor the details
of their agreement. An intertitle states, “Do you agree?” before Tori signs his
ten thousand dollar check for Edith and adds, “Tomorrow” after Tori hands
the check to her. Here, The Cheat becomes a horrifying narrative of a fallen
woman becoming a white slave under Asian despotism (see fig. 2).
The horror of miscegenation as a result of transgressive consumption
reaches its height in the following scene after the intertitle declares, “The
Cheat.” The day after the ball, Edith comes back to Tori’s place to return the
money. Declaring that “You can’t buy me off,” Tori tries to assault her. He
tears her clothes, grabs her hair, and throws her face forward onto the desk.
In a close-up, Tori with the branding iron comes closer and closer to Edith’s
bare shoulder, and the iron almost reaches the white flesh. The lighting from
the brazier casts ominous shadows on Tori’s face and creates a horrifying ex-
pression. The branding itself is completed off screen, but the smoke comes
up from off screen in front of Tori, who is grimacing with a tightly closed
mouth.65 His expression looks like a kabuki actor’s exaggerated and tempo-
rally static face before entering his climactic violent act, mie, circling his head
once, opening his eyes wide, raising his eyebrows, and glaring fiercely. The

A S t a r I s B or n   39
2  A still from The Cheat.

strongly contrastive makeup that emphasizes Tori’s black eyebrows, slanted

eyes, and red lips reminds viewers of a special makeup technique of kabuki
actors who play violent acts (kumadori) that suggests extremes of hatred or
anger.
Moreover, in this scene, Tori wears a Japanese-style dressing gown over
his Western-style evening dress, white tie, and tuxedo shirt. Even though he
wears the gown over his shirt, it serves to represent his Japanese traits that
are hidden behind the Westernized surface. The script emphasizes the “ori-
ental” atmosphere surrounding Tori in this scene. Tori is “standing under big
oriental light over table” and “another lantern remains lighted over shoji door
leading outside.” Tori’s property—the gown, the poker, the brazier, the shoji,
the Japanese garden that Edith has to pass through, and the Japanese ser-
vants—all change from attractive consumable objets d’art of Japanese Taste
into dangerous weapons and an ominous backdrop for the eruption of Tori’s
hidden threat. Thus, the horrifying action of this scene is achieved by empha-
sizing the Japanese traits that exploit the makeup and the facial expression

40  C h ap t e r O n e
of kabuki and the “oriental” costume and objects. In this sense, Tori is the
“cheat” who has hidden his Japaneseness under his disguise of a Westernized
gentleman.
Yet, Edith is also the “cheat.” She breaks her promise with him. Economi-
cally speaking, she should keep the promise, even if the promise is that she
will be Tori’s mistress. At the same time, Edith is about to deceive her hus-
band. Morally speaking, Edith should stay faithful to her husband.
Eventually, the narrative of The Cheat represses the two “cheats,” the hero-
ine and the villainous Asian male, simultaneously under white American
patriarchal control. First, Tori is a vehicle for white male desire. In their re-
lationships with Edith, Richard and Tori become juxtaposed as masculine
counterparts. When Tori attacks Edith, he is a victimizer. Tori’s brutal way of
treating Edith may be seen as the repressed desire of white men who have
apparently become too civilized. With the contract and the branding, Edith is
even treated as an object by Tori.
However, by the end of the film, Tori also turns into a victim of white male
dominant society. Throughout the narrative of The Cheat, Tori is juxtaposed
with Edith, the white woman, both visually and thematically, and portrayed
as an effeminate character.66 Even though Tori is a man, he does not find his
place among men but among women. In the scene at the Red Cross Bazaar,
Tori mingles only with women. The extreme long establishing shot of the
bazaar and the following long shots show that Tori is introduced to other Red
Cross women, surrounded by them, and chats cheerfully with them.
The pursuit of consumption connects Edith and Tori more fully. First,
their elaborate costumes indicate the similarities between them. Edith ap-
pears in a striped coat, and Tori wears a striped shirt. The striped design may
imply their twofold characteristics, refinement on the surface and hidden
desire beneath. Then the two flirt in Tori’s Japanesque shoji room, sharing
the experience of admiring a woman’s gorgeous kimono and looking at exqui-
site small objects on a table and a statue of Buddha seated before an incense
burner releasing puffs of smoke into the air. Edith does not hide her happy
excitement when she sees those objects. Tori offers the kimono to Edith, even
though Edith refuses it after some hesitation. Tori playfully shakes a potted
cherry and its blossom petals rain down on Edith. As Sumiko Higashi points
out, this scene in the shoji room juxtaposes Edith and Tori as if they were two
window shoppers at “a site replicating exotic displays in department stores,”
or two New Women, playing around in consumer culture.67
The branding sequence in the shoji room clearly emphasizes the visual

A S t a r I s B or n   41
equivalence between Tori and Edith. As Higashi points out, Edith is branded
off screen and Edith shoots Tori off screen after his branding of her. Both
lie diagonally on the tatami mat clutching their left shoulders in high angle
shots.68 We see the brand on Edith’s left shoulder, and the shot wound on To-
ri’s left shoulder. Each leans on the shoji while staggering with pain.
Eventually, both Tori and Edith come under white American patriarchal
control. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the increased par-
ticipation of the New Woman in the suffrage, reform, and anti-imperialist
movements and the increased presence of women and immigrants in the
workplace and the spheres of commercialized leisure, white masculinity’s
privileged grip on political legitimacy, cultural authority, and social control
appeared to loosen. The Cheat participated in “the discursive construction of
a rejuvenated white masculinity that was manufactured in response to, and at
the expense of . . . the new woman” and Japanese masculinity.69 This is sym-
bolically displayed in the final courtroom scene of the film. After Edith con-
fesses what really happened at Tori’s shoji room to the all-white male jury, the
excited crowd, which previously included both men and women, becomes
all white male.70 Tori is arrested in the courtroom, surrounded by the mostly
white male spectators. At the end of the scene, the white middle-class Ameri-
can husband embraces his penitent wife. The final shot of the film symbol-
izes the white woman’s reintegration into the white male patriarchy. In a
symbolical remarriage, Edith walks down the aisle of the courtroom, tightly
embraced and protected by Richard. Edith’s sexual and consumerist desires
become “contained within the institutional framework of middle-class mar-
riage and the family” and “the Victorian ideal of womanhood.”71
Yet, as the courtroom scene indicates, no matter how similar Edith and
Tori are, the narrative of The Cheat eventually makes an invidious distinction
between the white woman and the Japanese man. The problem of female
overconsumption in a white middle-class family is cleverly replaced in the
end by the threat of the inassimilable Japanese. The morality tale of the attrac-
tion and threat of overconsumption is concluded in the form of the protec-
tion of the white middle-class family from transgressive foreignness by the
white male. In order to defend the white woman and incorporate her into the
American patriarchal system, the narrative of The Cheat puts all the blame
on the Japanese man and excludes him from American society. An intertitle,
“East is East and West is West and never the Twain shall meet,” which is
placed right before the final courtroom scene, clearly indicates the difference
between the white woman and the Japanese man. At the climax of The Cheat

42  C h ap t e r O n e
the discourse of consumerism is finally differentiated from that of Japanese
Taste, and the latter is overridden by the discourse of the yellow peril.
The largest difference between Tori and Edith is that Tori has almost no
opportunity to speak out in court while Edith can speak out to make up for
her mistake. In melodrama, in which muteness is a signal feature according
to the literary critic Peter Brooks, the breaking of silence is a climactic decla-
ration of personal identity and the confrontation of villainy.72 Moreover, Janet
Staiger argues, “For the middle class talk was becoming vital to protect the
class from infringements upon its boundaries and to regulate the behavior of
the New Woman and the New Man.”73 Edith experiences a conversion from
an inappropriate New Woman, who has indulged in overconsumption, to a
proper middle-class wife when she chooses to talk in the courtroom. Speak-
ing up in the courtroom, she declares her personal identity and confronts
the villain who embodies the peril of overconsumption and sexual transgres-
sion. Her expenditure, her overconsumption, and her improper entry into
the world of men are forgiven because of her devoted public act of speech in
the interest of her family.
In contrast, Tori is not allowed to speak up about what happened; he can-
not tell the court about Edith’s immoral conduct, which was tantamount to
prostitution. No one questions why Edith was attacked. Edith does not take
the heat for assault charges despite Tori’s actions. Literally, the already con-
cluded case is dismissed after Edith’s nonofficial testimony without even a
cross-examination of Tori.
Tori is not even permitted to express his emotion. The script gives elo-
quent expression to Tori’s feelings, such that he smiles “with satisfaction”
when Richard testifies that he shot Tori and that he “registers pleasure” at
the verdict. Additionally, he shows “surprise and dissatisfaction” when Edith
starts to talk. However, on the screen, Tori remains a speechless and emo-
tionless object, despite several close-ups—sometimes irised—being inserted
during the courtroom scene. Since there are no intertitles following those
close-ups, Tori’s emotion stays unexplained and much more ambiguous than
Edith’s. Tori sneers slightly only once during the trial when Richard testifies
that he shot Tori and Edith. Also, he changes his expression slightly when
Edith starts her desperate confession. Both of these changes in Tori’s expres-
sion are so slight that they are not eloquent gestures that convey his entire
thought or emotion, whereas Edith speaks out loudly with her exaggerated
gestures: running to the judge with extended arms, wide open mouth, and
eyes full of tears. Tori’s emotionless facial expression and sardonic slight

A S t a r I s B or n   43
smile restrict him to the mere stereotypical image of Japanese despotism,
rather than allow him to be a human being with psychological depth. Tori is
given no opportunity to talk and no chance to deviate from an evil persona of
a melodramatic villain.
In comparison, a film dealing archetypally with an all-American identity,
such as Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), relies on the hero finally
breaking his silence and speaking in public. Deeds’s (Gary Cooper) willing-
ness to speak, to express desire, comes in response to the woman’s (Jean
Arthur) courtroom declaration of her thought under cross-examination.
Stanley Cavell calls the film “the comedy of equality and reciprocity” be-
cause Arthur’s character grants Deeds “his wish to rescue, to be active, to
take deeds upon himself, earning his name; as he grants her wish to her.”74
In contrast, we can call The Cheat a tragedy of inequality and non-mutuality
because Edith never grants Tori his desperate wish to be active and to regain
his reputation.
In the end, Tori is attacked by the dominantly male audience in the court-
room and bleeds from his mouth. The crowd yells, “Lynch him! Lynch him!”
Historically, lynching was a punishment meted out to Negro men who had or
were believed to have had sexual relations with white women. Tori turns into
a stereotypical representation of the oversexualized nonwhite (racialized)
male, a unidimensional villain because of his skin color, and a mere tool for
the reunification of a white American patriarchal family. The Cheat thus inte-
grated middle-class American discourses on family, gender, and race with
American people’s popular and stereotypical views of Japan. Photoplay called
The Cheat “a melodrama so rational, so full of incisive character touches,
racial truths.”75 Hayakawa’s character embodied the popular twofold cultural
and ethnic images of Japan, the refinement of Japanese Taste and the threat
of the yellow peril, within a domestic melodrama that eventually supported
white American patriarchy.
Contradictorily, although Hayakawa’s lack of affect may silence him as a
character in The Cheat, it opens up big potentiality for him to become a star.
With his refined and villainous, apparently Americanized and ultimately in-
assimilable, role in The Cheat, Hayakawa vividly impressed the public con-
sciousness. This ambivalent coexistence of refinement (Japanese Taste) and
threat (the yellow peril), Americanization and Japaneseness, which is eventu-
ally controlled under the white patriarchy, became an essential core of Haya‑
kawa’s star image. Even in 1920, a review of An Arabian Knight (Charles

44  C h ap t e r O n e
Swickard, 22 August 1920), a Hayakawa star vehicle, noted, “Whenever we
hear of Sessue Hayakawa we think of ‘The Cheat,’ a five-reel production made
about five years ago and to this day considered as the best example of photo-
dramatic work ever presented on any screen. . . . And whenever we think of
‘The Cheat’ we think of Sessue Hayakawa because he was, in a big measure,
instrumental in making ‘The Cheat’ the excellent production that it was.”76
No matter how sensational Hayakawa’s role in The Cheat was, it was not
a result of Lasky’s careful star-making plan. It was rather an accident. Haya-
kawa was only one of the supporting actors for Lasky. Hayakawa was origi-
nally engaged by Lasky in March 1915 to support Ina Clare with an “impor-
tant” role.77 Yet, Clare ended up making her debut on screen in a comedy,
Wild Geese Chase (June 1915), in which there was no role for Hayakawa. In-
stead, Hayakawa appeared in several supporting roles for Blanche Sweet be-
fore being chosen to support Ward in The Cheat.
Lasky was recruiting such renowned theatrical figures as David Belasco,
a Broadway producer, and William DeMille, Cecil’s brother and a celebrated
playwright, and such famous stage actors as Clare, Ward, and the opera singer
Geraldine Farrar to “upgrade” cinema for respectable middle-class audi-
ences.78 According to Higashi, Lasky was “prescient in developing a strategy
to legitimate cinema for ‘better’ audiences and to appeal as well to the aspir-
ing masses by demonstrating the intertextuality of cultural forms as spec-
tacle in genteel society.”79 Lasky modeled films after stage productions al-
ready deemed part of so-called highbrow culture for middle- and upper-class
consumption and exploited “the affinity between stage and screen in order to
acquire cultural legitimacy during an era of progressive reform.”80
Lasky cast Hayakawa to support these famous stage actresses for a spe-
cific reason. The company was particularly interested in Japanese Taste in
cinema for its prestigious value to middle-class audiences. Lasky planned to
produce a film of The Darling of the Gods, which originally opened on Broad-
way on 3 December 1902, and became a hit.81 Lasky also wanted Belasco to
come to California to supervise the filming of his plays, including “probably
Madame Butterfly.”82 To Lasky, the Japanese actor Hayakawa was the perfect
fit for these productions with Japanese subjects. Hayakawa and his image
of embodying Japanese Taste were to enhance the legitimate quality of the
company’s films. The NYMPC, which first used Hayakawa and other Japanese
people to make films with Japanese subjects, had publicized that Hayakawa
had a background in the Japanese theatrical arts. In reality, Hayakawa did not

A S t a r I s B or n   45
have any theatrical career in Japan, but the promotional biography made by
the NYMPC was persuasive enough for the studio producers at Lasky to hire
him to support renowned stage actresses.
Not only Lasky, but also Paramount Pictures Corporation, which distrib-
uted the Lasky films, was interested in films with Japanese subjects for their
prestige status for middle-class audiences. One article in Paramount’s own
promotional magazine stated, “Lafcadio Hearn’s wonderful word-paintings
are like memorial pictures done with the golden brush of a master on panels
of ivory, and he is only one of many who have contributed to our joy and
interest in that Land of the Lotus Flower. Prominent among the ceremonies,
feasts and celebrations which have become known to us through books and
the drama and lately through motion pictures, in the Japanese play ‘The
Typhoon,’ as representative of the social and religious habits of that people
of the distant Empire of the Northern Pacific, none is more appealing and
beautiful than the feast of Nobori No Sekku.”83 Paramount even distributed a
NYPMC film with Japanese subjects, The Typhoon (Reginald Barker, 8 October
1914), even though the Mutual Film Corporation usually distributed NYMPC
films.84
However strongly Lasky and Paramount were interested in the prestige
status of the films with Japanese subjects, they did not consider making a star
out of Hayakawa before the success of The Cheat. Before The Cheat, Hayakawa
only played small roles like those of Japanese spies disguised as valets waiting
for an opportunity to lay hands on valuable documents and to violently mur-
der people in After Five (Oscar Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille, 28 January 1915)
and The Clue (James Neill and Frank Reicher [credited as Frank Reichert],
8 July 1915). He also played a villainous Chinese “hop joint proprietor” who
lures the innocent Blanche Sweet into opium addiction in a labyrinth-like
den in San Francisco’s Chinatown that is filled with stereotypically vicious
Chinese faces in The Secret Sin (Frank Reicher, 21 October 1915). The New
York Dramatic Mirror (NYDM) juxtaposed Hayakawa with other “Celestial
actors.”85 Variety even spelled his name incorrectly, “Succo Hayakawa,” and
possibly considered his ethnicity to be Italian in its review of After Five.86
These mistakes in trade journals indicate that Hayakawa was regarded as just
another nonwhite supporting actor even in his early work with Lasky.
The Cheat was merely another film for Hayakawa to play a supporting Japa-
nese character. Not only does the opening title of The Cheat feature Fannie
Ward as the star of the film, but all of the advertisements of the film in trade

46  C h ap t e r O n e
3  An ad for The Cheat. Moving Picture World 26.14 (25 December 1915): 2296.

journals before the film’s release also treated Ward as the star, while they al-
most completely neglected Hayakawa (see fig. 3).
In spite of the fact that Jesse L. Lasky praised Hayakawa’s performance in
The Cheat before its release, he did not think of Hayakawa’s potentiality of
becoming a star at that point. Lasky did not say that he would produce star
vehicles for Hayakawa.87 When another film with Hayakawa in a support-
ing role as a Japanese valet, Temptation, starring the famous opera singer
Geraldine Farrar, was released right after The Cheat, there was almost no pub-
licity about his minor appearance in it.88 Lasky and Paramount recognized
Hayakawa as their potential star only when The Cheat achieved a huge box
office success and the popular recognition of Hayakawa became sensational;
at this point their attempts to make Hayakawa their star finally started (see
fig. 4).
As the forerunners of the star system in early Hollywood, Lasky and Para-
mount carefully prepared for Hayakawa’s first star vehicle and planned how

A S t a r I s B or n   47
4 Portraits of Sessue Hayakawa and other popular film stars of 1916.
Motion Picture News 14.16 (21 October 1916): 2545.
they should promote Hayakawa as a star. When Alien Souls (Frank Reicher,
11 May 1916) was finally released after a five-month gap, Hayakawa was no
longer simply a capable supporting performer with a Japanese cultural stereo-
type. He became a star of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and Para-
mount Pictures Corporation.89 After Alien Souls, fifteen star vehicles were
made for Hayakawa at Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount
between 1916 and 1918.90 When The Cheat was re-released in 1918, not Ward
but Hayakawa was publicized in trade journals as the star of the film.
In order to establish Hayakawa’s star status, Lasky attempted to distin-
guish Hayakawa’s own screen persona from the more pedestrian cultural
stereotype roles accorded to Japanese people. Lasky also needed to carefully
adjust his star image from the sensationally villainous one in The Cheat to a
more appropriate but equally attractive one for middle-class audiences. Yet,
before discussing Lasky’s strategy in detail, I would like to go back in time a
little and examine Hayakawa’s film career before The Cheat. Before the suc-
cess of The Cheat and before contracting with Lasky, Hayakawa appeared in
many films at the NYMPC that stereotypically depicted Japan and its people.
Hayakawa also played similarly stereotypical non-Japanese roles. What kind of
stereotypes did the cinematic images of Japan, and other nonwhite cultures,
contain, from which Lasky drew to distinguish Hayakawa’s star image?

A S t a r I s B or n   49
 « 2 »

Screen Debut

O Mimi San, or The Mikado

in Picturesque Japan

​A ​lthough The Cheat launched Sessue Hayakawa’s stardom, Hayakawa

​had appeared in numerous films before The Cheat. According to
​studio publicity of the NYMPC and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play
Company, Hayakawa had had acting experience in Japan even before his film
career. Furthermore, Hayakawa’s autobiography indicates that he was very
popular at a theater in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo, where he played in dramas,
including an adaptation of Tokutomi Roka’s Hototogisu [The nightingale]. In
his book, Hayakawa claimed that he started his film career as a star from the
very beginning, with a high salary for The Typhoon, a feature production at
the NYMPC.1
In reality, Hayakawa did not have any acting experience in Japan. He did
not come to the United States to go into the film business, either. Hayakawa
was never invited into the Hollywood film industry as a star. Hayakawa’s
entry into the film business happened accidentally under the distinct socio-
political conditions of Japan and the cultural conditions of the United States
in the early twentieth century.
Hayakawa, the son of a rich Japanese fisherman in Chiba prefecture, came
to the United States in 1907. The main reason was that his elder brother, Oto-
jiro, and other temporary immigrants from his hometown, Nanaura village,
had been engaged in abalone fishing in California since the turn of the cen-
tury. From the 1868 Meiji Reconstruction onward, the Japanese government
had been addressing a plan for enhancing national prosperity and defense
and had been supporting the modernization of fisheries in order to obtain
foreign currency. The government subsidized Kodani Gennosuke and Ko-
dani Chujiro from Nagao village in Chiba prefecture to help them engage in
abalone fishing in California. Hayakawa’s parents asked the Kodani brothers
to manage Hayakawa’s trip to America. With their support, Hayakawa was
able to enroll in the Home-Study Department of the University of Chicago in
1908 to study political economy. In Hayakawa’s passport, it is written that the
purpose of his U.S. visit is “to study.”2
After he left the University of Chicago, he struggled to survive as a tempo-
rary immigrant. Hayakawa was a dishwasher and a waiter at a restaurant, an
ice cream vendor (1911), and a factory worker at a Mexican company in the
United States (1911). According to his autobiography, after he left the Univer-
sity of Chicago, he appeared in theatrical dramas for Japanese immigrants in
Little Tokyo in Los Angeles with Fujita Toyo’s company. Even though Haya-
kawa insisted that he had been interested in theatrical dramas, joining Fu‑
jita’s company seemed to be just one of his temporary jobs.3
While Hayakawa was performing in theatrical plays, Thomas H. Ince, the
managing director of the NYMPC, happened to see one such play and hired
him for his films. Ince recognized that films with Japanese subjects had a
certain appeal to Caucasian audiences, especially those who were open to
trying to experience the East and were attracted to Japanese Taste, and he had
been looking for Japanese actors and extras. On 12 December 1913, Variety
reported that the NYMPC would produce a series of five films about Japan
starring the Japanese actress Tsuru Aoki, who had already appeared in Fred
Mace’s comedy films and a Majestic film, The Oath of O’Tsuru San (28 Octo-
ber 1913).4 Two weeks later, the NYDM reported that a Japanese village was
under construction at Inceville, the NYMPC studio in the Santa Ynez Canyon
between Santa Monica and Malibu, named after Ince.5 Ince was possibly per-
suaded by Aoki, Hayakawa’s future wife, to see the plays in which Hayakawa
appeared in Little Tokyo and eventually hired him to use in his films about
Japan, but never as his star.6 According to a letter that Hayakawa sent to his
brother, he was not hired as an actor by the NYMPC but as a screenplay writer,
who earned 300 dollars a month.7
According to the release record of the NYMPC, the first of Ince’s “Japanese
film” series was O Mimi San (Reginald Barker, 5 February 1914).8 This two-
reel short film seemed to be Sessue Hayakawa’s debut film. In 1919, Haya‑
kawa admitted that his first film was called O Mimi San, even though he de‑
cided not to mention this film later in any interviews or writings, probably
because only Aoki was regarded as the prominent actor among the Japanese
performers in the NYMPC at that point.9 Then, what was his role in this film?
The MPW called O Mimi San a “picturesque Japanese number.”10 It is

S c re e n D ebu t   51
noteworthy that MPW used the term “picturesque” and a music metaphor, a
“number,” to describe O Mimi San because it indicates the film’s ambivalent
quality (authentic but stereotypical) and its intertextual relationship with The
Mikado, or The Town of Titipu (1885), a popular light opera.
Using the term “picturesque,” reviews in trade journals praised the “au-
thenticity” and the “perfect atmosphere” of Japan that were depicted in
O Mimi San. The “picturesque” was an anthropological notion that prevailed
at that time. Sara Suleri claims that the “picturesque” was meant to catalog
the distant in a discourse of “an unhinged aestheticism that veils and seques-
ters questions of colonial culpability.”11 The emphasis in the notion of the
picturesque was on detailed images in order to achieve verisimilitude. The
presupposition was that the essence of the picturesque imagery of the subor-
dinate country was waiting to be recorded by the more civilized people of the
West.
At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth
in the United States, as a response to the vast consumer culture and indus-
trialization, a “culture of authenticity” was shaped by an intellectual elite and
spread its influence beyond its core.12 The historian T. J. Jackson Lears argues
that the “feeling of overcivilization” in the industrialized and urbanized con-
sumer culture of America by the 1880s led the “educated bourgeoisie” to feel
that life had become “curiously unreal.” In order “to experience ‘real life’ in
all its intensity” for “alternatives to modern unreality,” they turned to quests
for “authentic” experience.13
This pursuit for authenticity acted hand-in-hand with nostalgia for pre-
modern work. Japanese Taste among middle-class Americans’ domestic
sphere was one such example. With the help of such pseudo-scientific theo-
ries as social Darwinism and eugenics, which had been widely influential in
the United States since the mid-nineteenth century, the nonwhite culture
was nostalgically linked to premodern innocence or idyllic ruralness.
Striving for authenticity, show business developed the commercialization
of authenticity in the form of films about the “Other.” Informed by earlier
representational practices such as travel novels, postcards, and the world’s
fair exhibits, commercial producers made early films featuring nonwhite
peoples mainly for popular audiences in nickelodeons. Cinema functioned
as an ideal apparatus to prepare audiences to encounter the real “Other.” In
cinema, the “Others” did not need to be exhibited outside their own environ-
ment as they were in the world’s fairs. With movie cameras, they could be
“authentically pictured” in their native place doing daily things.

52  C h ap t e r T w o
 Japan and the Japanese people were popular subjects for early films. The
American Film Institute Catalog 1893–1910 lists ninety-four films under the
category “Japan and Japanese,” and the 1911–1920 volume lists forty-three
films under the categories of “Japan” and “Japanese.”14 Gregory Waller has
identified over one hundred films noted in the pages of the MPW between
1909 and 1915 that were “distributed in the United States and that took Japan
as their subject or setting and/or featured characters identified as Japanese.”15
The MPW noted already in 1910 how popular Japan was in early American
cinema: “The affection of the American people for the Japanese, then, springs
from the fact that there is a sentimental link between the two nations. The
film makers take advantage of that sentiment. . . . Japanese art, Japanese life
and Japanese costumes appeal to the occidental mind for many reasons. The
grace, the charm, the poetry of Japan never fail to please us of the West. . . .
We love our America, but oh you Japan!!!!”16
Ince took advantage of the popularity of films with Japanese subjects and
the cultural conditions leaning toward these “authentic” experiences. He ex-
pected performers from the “Japanese race” to play Japanese roles in order to
achieve the authentic representation of their culture, at a time when it was
unusual to cast Asian actors in major roles in films; Caucasian actors usually
played the parts. Actors from a certain race were considered to represent
their cultural traits most appropriately because biological race was regarded
as the determinant of personal characteristics or cultural traits.
At the same time, Ince thought that using Japanese subjects and Japa-
nese actors could help the refinement and bourgeoisization of cinema for
the newly cultivated middle-class audiences, who were interested in Japanese
Taste. The success of the English operetta The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu,
one of the typical works of Japonisme, which had been written and composed
by William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, and the popularity of the
Madame Butterfly narrative (novel, play, opera; 1898–), which had an influ-
ence on strengthening the popular imagination about Japan among middle-
class American audiences, were persuasive enough for Ince to produce films
about Japan.
In the United States, The Mikado was first performed with the original
cast in 1885, and it ran for 430 performances in New York. Then, the touring
companies went across the country and “produced a rage for Japanese art and
for things Japanese throughout Canada and the United States.”17 Under the
influence of the popularity of The Mikado, many plays set in Japan appeared,
including David Belasco’s Madame Butterfly (1900). Even Japanese plays, in-

S c re e n D ebu t   53
cluding kabuki and shinpa (modern play), were played in several cities and
appealed to middle-class audiences. In such cultural circumstances, films
with Japanese subjects could be received as refined art forms.
O Mimi San pursues authenticity by using Japanese actors and by depict-
ing Japanese sets and objects. The film displays such Japanese objects as gar-
dens, scrolls, shoji, swords, torii (a shrine gate), costumes, and houses in con-
siderable detail. Simultaneously, the pursuit of authenticity in O Mimi San is
structured within the popular imagination or the cultural stereotype of Japan
as premodern, atemporal, and ahistorical. O Mimi San has a close intertex-
tual relationship with the narrative and visual imagery of The Mikado. What
such narratives with Japanese subjects as The Mikado and Madame Butterfly
emphasize most is archetypal dichotomies between civilized and primitive,
urban and rural, modern and premodern, and Western and Eastern. With the
wide popularity of these stories and limited access to more diverse narratives
of Japan, there was no reason to doubt the representational authenticity of the
archetypal narrative about Japan among American audiences.
The story of O Mimi San is set in Japan at a certain historical period when
a shogun ruled the country. The shogun betroths his eldest son, Yorotomo
(Hayakawa), to Sadan San (Mildred Harris), the daughter of the prime min-
ister. Yorotomo’s younger brother, Togowawa, who wants to succeed in the
shogunate, conspires against the shogun and Yorotomo. Yorotomo becomes
a political refugee, disguises himself as an ordinary man, and hides in the
countryside. There, he falls in love with O Mimi San (Tsuru Aoki), a daughter
of a gardener. But when the political conspiracy against him is resolved, he
has to give up his love. Togowawa is captured, and the shogun orders him to
commit hara-kiri, the samurai style of suicide. However, the shogun has a
heart attack and Yorotomo has to go back and succeed in the position of sho-
gun. Yorotomo then marries the prime minister’s daughter.18
From the very beginning, O Mimi San is filled with images that are in
accordance with the notion of the “picturesque.” The film opens with a long
shot of a room with a small platform, on which the shogun, Yorotomo, Sadan
San, and Yorotomo’s younger brother, Togowawa, are sitting close together.
The old shogun staggers and leaves the room accompanied by Yorotomo,
Togowawa, and the prime minister. They go to the shogun’s private tatami
room. Both rooms are ornamented with detailed Japanese objects, including
vases and flowers, to simulate a Japanese domestic space. However, many
of the details are incorrect. The platform is three high steps up from the
tatami floor, but it is set too high. Usually, the platform is just one low step

54  C h ap t e r T w o
up from the tatami floor. Yorotomo’s hairstyle tries to simulate an authentic
chyonmage, the traditional Japanese style, although the bald part is too nar-
row and the topknot is too far back. Even though the stripe design of Yoro‑
tomo’s kimono is too unusual, and his haori, the Japanese overgarment, is too
long and looks like a white Western cloak, Yorotomo’s costume, and those of
the others, try faithfully to follow the design of the Japanese kimono. Even
the family crests appear on the costumes, although they should not be on
the chest and sleeves of the kimonos. The shogun has makeup that imitates
kumadori, a special makeup for kabuki actors. Moreover, “Yorotomo” and “To-
gowawa” are improper for actual Japanese names, but they still sound Japa-
nese and resonate historically, since they appear to derive from the names of
actual shoguns, Minamoto-no Yoritomo in the twelfth century and Tokugawa
Ieyasu in the seventeenth century.
The narrative of O Mimi San articulates these detailed images as premod-
ern. O Mimi San is characterized as an embodiment of an idyllic maiden,
displaying primitive innocence and pure love. Yorotomo, coming from the
urban center, “discovers” her when he is cheerfully taking a walk in nature.
First, O Mimi San is shown only in Yorotomo’s point-of-view shots. She does
not realize she is captured in his gaze. O Mimi San, in a kimono, cheerfully
and in childlike fashion, runs out of a gate made of bamboo. At this point,
Yorotomo functions almost as a Western gaze that records premodern lives
in the Japanese countryside.
The following medium close-up of the pair sitting under a tree emphasizes
an idyllic atmosphere and the pure love between Yorotomo and O Mimi San.
O Mimi San plays a Japanese-style guitar and sings at the side of Yorotomo.
When Yorotomo tries to take her hand, she stops playing the music, looks
down shyly, and smiles. This depiction of the relationship between Yorotomo
and O Mimi San fits perfectly with M. M. Bakhtin’s articulation of “the love
idyll” in the history of literature in the West. In “the love idyll,” Bakhtin ar-
gues, the “utterly conventional simplicity of life in the bosom of nature is
opposed to social conventions, complexity and the disjunctions of everyday
private life; life here is abstracted into a love that is completely sublimated.”19
What Yorotomo finds in the rural area surrounded by nature where O Mimi
San lives is a timeless world where only love exists. The literary works that
Bakhtin examines are basically European ones, and the notion of the idyll he
discusses comes from them. If the relationship of Yorotomo and O Mimi San
fits the “love idyll,” it is clearly within the European imagination regarding
temporal and spatial articulation.

S c re e n D ebu t   55
 In the case of O Mimi San, this ahistorical and atemporal notion of the pic-
turesque is especially emphasized by the film’s intertextual reference to The
Mikado. The plot summaries of O Mimi San in film trade journals identify
the father of Yorotomo as the emperor of Japan (the Mikado) instead of the
shogun.20 These indicate Ince’s commercial framework, which articulated
O Mimi San in relation to The Mikado. In fact, O Mimi San refers to The
Mikado in its narrative structure and visual reliance, even though the former
ends on a tragic note and the latter is a comedy with a happy ending.
In The Mikado, Nanki-Poo, who has been ordered by his father, the Mikado,
to marry Katisha, “an elderly lady” of the Mikado’s court, flees to the town
of Titipu. There, disguised as a wandering minstrel, he falls in love with
Yum-Yum, who is about to marry Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner of Titipu.
Ko-Ko needs to execute someone within a month in order not to lose his post,
because the Mikado thinks the post is unnecessary given that there is no one
to execute in Titipu. Nanki-Poo tells Ko-Ko that Ko-Ko can execute him after
one month if he permits his marriage to Yum-Yum. Ko-Ko agrees. On the
day of marriage between Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum, the Mikado arrives with
Katisha, looking for Nanki-Poo. Not ready to carry out the execution, Ko-Ko
believes that the Mikado has come to check that someone has been executed
and lies to him, saying that he has executed Nanki-Poo. When Nanki-Poo
appears with his newly wedded wife, Yum-Yum, the Mikado feels so happy
that he forgives his son’s non-fulfillment of his engagement and accepts his
marriage.21
The motifs of disguise of the prince, betrothal, a love triangle, and a love
affair across class boundaries are the obvious affinities between the two
stories. Both in O Mimi San and in The Mikado, the sons of the Mikado (or
the shogun), who are betrothed to high-class women, go to a secret hideout
in disguise and fall in love with innocent and cheerful young girls. As in
The Mikado, Japan and Japanese people are represented as ahistorical and
archetypal entities in O Mimi San. Japanese people and objects, depicted in
great detail, were ideal embodiments of premodern ruralness and idyllness.
When Hayakawa started his film career, the major emphasis in films with
Japanese subjects was upon the picturesque, the nostalgic pursuit of authen-
ticity, no matter how stereotypical and Eurocentric was the imaginary Japan
in those films. Playing the son of the shogun/mikado, Hayakawa started his
film career in O Mimi San merely as a human element, or an object of an
American audience’s gaze, to enhance the “authentic” atmosphere of Japan.

56  C h ap t e r T w o
 « 3 »

Christianity versus
B u d d h i sm
The Melodramatic Imagination
in The Wrath of the Gods

​O ​ 12 January 1914, a volcano erupted on the island of Sakura-Jima

n
in Kagoshima prefecture, in the southern part of Japan. Because of
the stream of lava, the island of Sakura-Jima became connected to
Osumi Peninsula on Kyushu, one of the main islands in Japan. It was one of
the largest disasters in the history of Japan.
Thomas H. Ince lost no time in grasping an opportunity to make a film
based on this event. Only two weeks after the eruption, the Toledo Blade (24
January 1914) and the NYDM (28 January 1914) reported that Ince was rush-
ing to make a feature film entitled The Wrath of the Gods (also known as The
Destruction of Sakurajima, Barker, 22 June 1914) with Aoki and her company
of twenty Japanese players who had been working under Ince’s direction. Ac-
cording to the Toledo Blade, “News of the eruption was hardly a day old before
Mr. Ince had built in the Santa Monica Canyon a whole Japanese village.”1
Ince constructed a large and detailed Japanese village in his studio, Inceville,
and used many Japanese people, not white American actors with makeup, as
extras. On 31 January 1914, the New York Clipper reported that in addition to
the Japanese company of performers, “Mr. Ince is scouring the lower part of
California for Japanese laborers who are to be worked in as peasants.”2 The
MPW reported that “actually 1,000 extras were used recently in a big Broncho
picture, ‘The Wrath of the Gods,’ ” and “most of the employees were Japanese
people.”3 The filming of The Wrath of the Gods began on 27 January 1914, only
fifteen days after the eruption, and finished on 13 February.4 The eruption of
Sakura-Jima was not only a subject with hot news value but also a good op-
portunity for Ince to make a spectacular film with an authentic depiction of
Japan and its people.
 Following the popularity of foreign imports, by 1914 the American film
industry had begun to produce feature films with spectacles. The MPN an-
nounced the screening of “the super-spectacle” Italian film Cabiria (Giovanni
Pastrone, 1914) and noted, “A NEW meaning was given to the words, ‘mo-
tion picture,’ and a new definition to the possibilities of Cinematographic art
when ‘Cabiria’ . . . was displayed in the grand ballroom of the Hotel Astor
on Saturday, May 9.”5 Set in the Roman Empire of the third century B.C.,
Cabiria tells a story of kidnapping and human sacrifice. Spectacular scenes in
the film show a palace destroyed by an erupting volcano and a huge temple
within which children are thrown into a fiery figure of the pagan god Moloch.
Cabiria portrays these scenes effectively by using slow tracking shots toward
or away from static action, which give a three-dimensional depth and solidity
to the enormous sets. That traveling camera style was called the “Cabiria
Movement” in the United States.6
Ince wanted to make The Wrath of the Gods his Cabiria. The Wrath of the
Gods was far more than a news film or a travelogue. Ince made this project
into a spectacular melodrama and sensational event movie by exploiting the
exotic landscape and people. Hayakawa was not a star of this film. He was not
even a leading character of this project but merely an ingredient to compose
the melodrama. Aoki played a leading role in the film but in a strategic man-
ner. First of all, Ince fictionalized Aoki’s birthplace and connected it to the
eruption of Sakura-Jima in a tear-jerking way. A report in the MPW stated,

It so happens that Miss Aoki is a native of the Island of Sakura, which was prac-
tically destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Sakura-Jima. Miss Aoki, having
lost practically all her relatives in this eruption, was inconsolable and Mr. Ince
thought that he was due to lose her, that she would have to go back home. But
in consoling her, he induced her to work in conjunction with him on a thrilling
and powerful heart interest story, entitled “The Wrath of the Gods,” a four reel
Domino feature, evolving around Japanese legend and depicting the scenes and
actions of her countrymen during the eruption, so that she could show the
world the sufferings of her people.7

This report emphasized that Aoki was both the personal “eyewitness” and the
melodramatic heroine of the event.
In real life, Aoki was not from the Sakura-Jima area but from Obara Tsuru,
in Fukuoka prefecture, the largest city in the Kyushu area, which is located
about 180 miles north of Sakura-Jima.8 Moreover, the hierarchal race and

58  C h ap t e r T h re e
gender relationship between an American man and a Japanese woman was
implicitly indicated. Ince functioned to protect Aoki and provided her with
the opportunity to work. In order to construct Aoki as a heroine of a melo-
drama that would appeal to middle-class audiences, Aoki’s biography was
thus fictionalized in the promotion of The Wrath of the Gods.
Aoki’s fictionalized biography in Reel Life, the promotional magazine for
Mutual, the distributor of NYMPC films, emphasized her Americanized char-
acter in order to make it easy for American audiences to identify with her as
a melodramatic heroine. In the biography, Aoki became “the daughter of an
illustrious Japanese artist who has done much to make the subtle art of his
country known to the Occidental peoples,” and the “influences which had
shaped her growing years were American.”9
Several articles also emphasized Aoki’s Americanized education. Aoki
entered a convent in Pasadena, California (her symbolic conversion to Chris-
tianity), where she studied the piano and vocal music.10 Then, Aoki studied
ballet in Chicago. According to an article that reported the marriage of Aoki
and Hayakawa in the New York Clipper, “Just prior to the time Nat Goodwin
was injured at Santa Monica, Miss Tsuru Aoki was rehearsing with Mr. Good-
win in a vaudeville sketch, which he had booked on the Orpheum Circuit,
but owing to the disastrous outcome, his propect [sic] had to be given up, and
Miss Aoki turned to the pictures.”11 In real life, Aoki did not go to the convent
but studied at the Egan Dramatic School in Los Angeles before she joined
Fred Mace’s company and Ince’s company.12 The publicity that fictionalized
Aoki’s biography for American audiences indicated that The Wrath of the Gods
mixed actual news with melodramatic fiction. For Ince, Japan and its people
were merely raw materials for his project and their historical and biographi-
cal backgrounds were easily transformable.
Ince made the release of The Wrath of the Gods itself a sensational event
specifically targeting middle-class audiences by way of a large-scale publicity
campaign. As early as 14 February 1914, nearly four months before the film’s
release, the NYMPC put a fair-sized ad in the New York Clipper announcing
“Wait for The Wrath of the Gods.”13 Right before and after the film opened,
major trade journals carried one-page ads of the film every week with dif-
ferent pictures, still photos, and such sensational ad lines as: “THE MOST
THRILLING AND GRIPPING PRODUCTION OF THE AGE,”14 or “A STU-
PENDOUS AND GORGEOUS SPECTACLE: THE VOLCANO OF SAKURA-
JIMA IN ACTION—LAVA FLOWING—ASHES FALLING—HOUSES
CRUMBLING—VILLAGES BURNING—THOUSANDS FLEEING FOR

C h r i s t i an i t y v e r su s B ud d h i s m   59
5  An ad for The Wrath of the Gods. Moving Picture World 20.7 (16 May 1914): 929.

THEIR LIVES—THE TYPHOON AT SEA—SHIPS DESTROYED BY FIRE

AND WATER—DAZZLING IN ITS MAGNIFICENCE.”15 These ads simul-
taneously exploited exotic Japanese people and objects with detailed “pictur-
esque” illustrations, such as an angry-looking statue of the Buddha and a
Japanese woman in a kimono praying in front of it (see fig. 5).16
Even the marriage of the leading performers of The Wrath of the Gods, Aoki
and Hayakawa, became included in this publicity campaign as an attraction.17
This was the first time the portrait of Aoki appeared in the major film trade
journal MPN, and it was also the first time the name of Hayakawa appeared
in a news column in MPN. Hayakawa’s private life was thus connected to his
public image for the first time in the ad campaign for The Wrath of the Gods.
The Wrath of the Gods opened on 7 June 1914, at a new “Million-Dollar”
New York theater, the Strand.18 A review of The Wrath of the Gods in MPN

60  C h ap t e r T h re e
reported, “The lobby display not only rivaled the efforts of the best legiti-
mate houses, but in many respects surpassed them. Fourteen magnificent
framed oil paintings, colored drawings and photographs were on exhibition.
The frames, six feet high by four feet wide, were decorated in the subdued
shades of old gold. The most graphic scenes of the drama were shown in a
blend of harmonious color; the clear perspective and the expression on the
features of the characters indicated the work of an artist and showed that as
much thought had been employed on this detail as on the pictorial details of
the play.”19
The NYMPC ad proudly announced on 20 June 1914, that The Wrath of the
Gods “SCORED THE BIGGEST HIT EVER RECORDED AT THE STRAND
THEATER, New York: BOX OFFICE RECORDS BROKEN UNPRECE-
DENTED APPLAUSE.”20 After its premiere at the Strand, The Wrath of the
Gods opened in “all first class houses in New York and Brooklyn, including
The Strand, Broadway, Proctor’s Fifth Avenue, Regent, The New Law, Odeon,
Pictorium, Burland and the Lenox.”21 On Monday evening, 22 June, the ex-
hibitor Marcus Loew opened up Ebbets Field, the National League’s baseball
ground in Brooklyn, whose capacity was about 20,000 people, to show The
Wrath of the Gods. The NYMPC ad reported that on that night “over 40,000
tried to get in. Consequence was a riot ensued, quite a few people hurt and the
Police Reserves from three different precincts had to be called. Over 15,000
turned away.”22 Thus, Ince publicized the exhibition of The Wrath of the Gods
as a sensational event, specifically targeting urban middle-class audiences.
Ince had another strategy to attract middle-class audiences to The Wrath
of the Gods. Using religious images, Ince made this film a morality tale with a
melodramatic dichotomy between the East and the West. First and foremost,
The Wrath of the Gods is an archetypal fable between the civilized West and
the primitive East, presented as a religious battle between Buddhism and
Christianity. The review in MPN noted that the “big themes” of The Wrath of
the Gods included the “irreconcilable attitude of Orient and Occident” and the
“polar antithesis of two great religions.”23 The eruption of the volcano, the
spectacular device, also symbolized the collision between the cultures and
the religions.
In The Wrath of the Gods, Hayakawa plays old Baron Yamaki, the last male
descendant of an old samurai family of Japan. In this first feature-length film
for Hayakawa, he does not play a heroic handsome lead but an elderly sup-
porting character with heavy makeup. This indicates Hayakawa’s nonstar,
subordinate role at the NYMPC. Aoki plays his daughter, Toya-San. Accord-

C h r i s t i an i t y v e r su s B ud d h i s m   61
ing to an old local legend of Sakura-Jima, Yamaki’s family has been cursed
by the Buddha. If Toya-San marries, it would displease the Buddha and the
long inactive volcano, Sakura-Jima, would erupt. When an American vessel is
shipwrecked off the coast, Yamaki rescues a sailor named Tom Wilson (Frank
Borzage). Tom and Toya-San fall in love. Tom tells Toya-San about the Chris-
tian God, who is more powerful than the Buddha. The villagers try to prevent
Toya-San from getting married to Tom. When a furious crowd is about to
lynch Yamaki, the volcano erupts. Lava, fire, and an earthquake kill most of
the villagers, but Tom and Toya-San escape to an American ship anchored in
the harbor.
Using the characters’ appearances, written words, and a cross-cutting tech-
nique, the film clearly represents the Japanese village as a superstitious com-
munity bound by a primitive religion. The opening scene emphasizes that
Toya-San is a melodramatic victim of the primitive community. When young
villagers speak to Toya-San, an old prophet named Takeo intervenes. Takeo
warns the villagers that “She came from [a] family that [is] accursed.” Takeo
embodies a primitive religion with his broken English, dirty long hair, beard,
a torn white kimono, and a large wooden cane. Toya-San bursts into tears
and runs back home, which is a wrecked house that is segregated from the
village. When she tells the prophet’s words to her father, Yamaki, he brings
out an old scroll. Japanese letters on the scroll that dissolve into English read
“Buddha appeared and said thy daughter to be wife/curse on your race. . . .”
It is significant that the term “race” is used, instead of “family” or “village.”
Japanese “race” is thus presupposed as primitive and superstitious in this
letter.
Toya-San and Yamaki go out of the house to an altar next to the house, in
which sits a statue of the Buddha. The stone-carved statue looks unsophis-
ticated, as if to emphasize the primitiveness of the religion. Yamaki prays to
the Buddha to lift the curse but then angrily cries out, “I renounce my faith.”
Then, the sky darkens and a strong wind blows. Yamaki says, “The heaven has
heard me! God will [be] angry.” He is irritated with the religion that victim-
izes him and his daughter, but still he is tied up with his superstitious belief
in the Buddha, whose curse seems very strong to him.
The following sequence introduces the opposite religious belief. In bright
daylight, Tom asks Toya-San to marry him. In front of the statue of the Bud-
dha, Toya-San wipes her tears with a sleeve and tells Tom that the volcano is
the “symbol of God” and will erupt if she gets married. A shot of Takeo is

62  C h ap t e r T h re e
inserted as a flashback, enhancing Toya-San’s superstitious fear of the threat-
ening religion. Tom gives Toya-San a cross-shaped necklace and says that this
represents the “god of justice.” The cross is shown in the first close-up of the
film, which emphasizes its importance in the narrative. Tom helps Toya-San
put on the necklace. Toya-San throws herself into Tom’s arms, like a heroine
of a Western melodrama. Then the close-up of the cross is inserted once
again. Symbolically, Toya-San converts to Christianity here. Using a melodra-
matic dichotomy between the good religion and the bad one, this scene em-
phasizes the American sailor’s position as an enlightening force that pater-
nalistically helps a Japanese girl to change her religious belief and to free her
from the primitive culture.
The actual collision of cultures occurs in the following scene. The collision
is displayed as a religious battle. Cross-cutting among three locations height-
ens a tension between the superstitious villagers and the Yamaki family,
which converts to Christianity. Toya-San and Tom go to the American mis-
sion in town to get married. A sinister-looking rickshaw driver spies on the
couple with a clergyman in the mission and tells the villagers about it. The
villagers rush to Takeo. Takeo tells the crowd, “Look, birds and animals are
leaving Sakura-Jima,” and he suggests that they should regard it as a “bad
omen from Buddha.” The camera cuts back to Yamaki alone at his place. He
makes a cross with two branches and walks up to the statue of the Buddha.
Yamaki throws away the statue of the Buddha, replaces it with the cross, and
pushes his arms to the sky. Here, Yamaki portrays his conversion to Chris-
tianity in a violent manner. The camera goes back to the mission, where the
clergyman in a clean black sacred costume faces Takeo in a dirty torn cos-
tume. At Yamaki’s place, Yamaki raises the cross, shaking his right fist, and
addresses the angry crowd: “I deserted god as god deserted me. I will not
forgive anyone who prevents my daughter’s happiness.” The crowd flinches
from the cross for a moment but then starts to assault Yamaki. Dying, Yamaki
hopes that Tom and the Christian God in America will protect his innocent
daughter. Yamaki, the major Japanese male character played by Hayakawa,
is a more feminized character than Tom, the American sailor.24 Yamaki is
clearly passive and susceptible to the American man’s idea about religion.
He is incapable of making Toya-San, a woman with whom he lives, satisfied
and happy. Moreover, Yamaki is incapable of fighting back against the super-
stitious group of men. He is easily and passively swallowed up in the violent
lynching mob. All he can do is to accept his victimized position in the com-

C h r i s t i an i t y v e r su s B ud d h i s m   63
munity and to leave his daughter to the American man. This view of femi-
nized Asian men self-sacrificing for the creation of an American family con-
tinued to be one of the bases of Hayakawa’s sympathetic star image later.
At this moment, when the religious battle between the superstitious crowd
and the newly converted Christian becomes violent, the volcano erupts. The
result of the collision of cultures is displayed as a sensational cinematic spec-
tacle. The village is covered with smoke, lava comes down, rocks fall from the
sky. Takeo dies in the smoke. Many villagers suffer in the streets. In contrast,
Toya-San and Tom safely reach an American vessel. The shots of the disaster-
stricken streets of Kagoshima are cross-cut several times with those of the
American vessel safely off the coast.
Thus, the final spectacular sequence emphasizes the fact that a Christian
American man saves a Japanese girl from a primitive land inhabited by a
superstitious lynch mob. Tom says, “Your God is powerful, but ours proved
to be omnipotent.” Tom’s remark transforms the status of the volcano in
the narrative. The volcano used to be the symbol of Toya-San’s superstition,
but eventually it turns into the embodiment of the omnipotent power of
the Christian God, who destroys the superstitious and punishes primitive
people. This narrative may also refer to the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah in
the Old Testament, civilizations entirely destroyed by God because of the evil
of their citizens. The curse of Buddhism was chosen arbitrarily to represent a
primitive religion’s superstitions, even though the idea of curses has no part
in Buddhism.25 The moral of this tale is that the power of the Christian God
overcomes the obsolete religion and the value of humanism is emphasized as
a result of this Christian power.
In this melodramatic moralistic dichotomy, Japan is not regarded as a
modern nation. It is not an independent existence, but a place somewhere
in a totalized primitive region. It is not so much a historical community
as an atemporal space where superstitious savages live. In The Wrath of the
Gods, the binary axis is not drawn between a historical region and a mod-
ern nation-state, but in a more archetypal way between the civilized and the
savage. With this de-historicization, the film, which originally has a news or
travelogue quality, turns into a melodramatic fable that regards the civilized
America and Christianity as good and the primitive space and its religion as
evil.
The theatrical nature of The Wrath of the Gods reinforces its melodramatic
quality. The film opens with a shot that imitates stage curtains, on which the
name “Ince Company” is written in Japanese. When the curtains are opened,

64  C h ap t e r T h re e
as an introduction of the film, each actor as himself or herself appears behind
the curtains and dissolves into a shot of the same actor in costume. Haya-
kawa turns from a bowing young man in a black kimono to an old man with
a thick beard.26 An actor who plays a rickshaw driver takes a particular pose
drawn directly from one of the most typical kabuki styles, called mie. Mie,
“exaggerated freezes in tableaux,” in kabuki means to stop one’s movement
in the middle of the act and to stare forward with eyes wide open. Mie creates
a moment of static time that functions to express the enhanced emotion of
the actor in a “bombastic gesticulation” and “brings all action onstage to a
halt with it.”27 The technique of mie is closely related to a kabuki genre called
aragoto, which literally means a “rough” or violent style of acting, perfected
by the famous Edo kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro I (1660–1704). Many audi-
ences may not have recognized the origin of this pose in kabuki. However,
they should have noticed the sense of theatrical stylization in the pose. In The
Wrath of the Gods, the rough and violent connotation of the pose is connected
to the primitive and savage quality of the rickshaw driver and enhances these
characteristics.
After the introduction of the major characters, the black curtains open
again onto a location shot on the beach. At the end of the film, the curtains
close on the shot of a ship that Tom and Toya-San have boarded. A reviewer
from Variety unfavorably pointed out the theatricality of the curtain device:
the curtain “helps to heighten the picture facts, that everything is set or
staged, that the camera is there, so forth and so on. It’s not the best way to
start off a picture. If the actors are to be featured in this way, it would be
better for them to appear after the finale, bowing their thanks for the ap-
plause, if any.”28 In any case, the curtains theatrically declare the beginning
and ending of a fable.
Thus, the ideological narrative of The Wrath of the Gods is constructed
around melodramatic binary oppositions, good/evil, civilized/primitive, mas-
culine/feminine, and West/East. The role Hayakawa played in The Wrath of
the Gods, as a supporting character with heavy makeup, was the embodiment
of the latter. It morally justifies a white American male character’s religious
view. Ince made The Wrath of the Gods not only as a sensational event movie,
but also as a morality tale targeting middle-class audiences, in which the
white American patriarchal system plays an overarching role.

C h r i s t i an i t y v e r su s B ud d h i s m   65
 « 4 »

D o u b l e n e ss

American Images of Japanese

Spies in The Typhoon

​M ​ tion pictures have been using spies and espionage as one of

o
​their favorite topics since the very beginning. The American Film
​Institute Catalog lists 18 films under the subjects “spies” and “es-
pionage” from 1898 until 1910, and 156 from 1911 until 1920.1 Most of the
early spy films deal with the motifs of international political conspiracy and
the tragic results. The first spy film listed in the AFI Catalog was Execution
of the Spanish Spy (distributed by Sigmund Lubin, 1898).2 Thereafter, many
spies who end up with tragic fates in early American silent films were repre-
sented as holding nationalities other than American, as if their tragic fates
were only caused by their non-American citizenship.
Japan was a popular subject of spy films from the early period. Japanese
men appeared as spies in many early American films, especially after Japan
defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Ten out of fifty-four films
listed under the subject heading “Japan and the Japanese” from 1910 until
1920 in the AFI Catalog were spy films.3 The first was Capture and Execution
of Spies by Russians, which was distributed by the Edison Company and the
Kleine Optical Company in July 1904, only five months after the beginning
of the Russo-Japanese War on 8 February.4 In this film, two Japanese spies,
disguised as coolies, fail to dynamite railway tracks in Russia. After a chase,
they are captured and sentenced to death. The spies give three cheers for
their emperor and are shot dead.5
As this early example shows, Japanese spies on screen tended to have
images of double identities. They were often in disguise as devoted servants
in American households, or sometimes as refined gentlemen in the high
societies in Europe or in the United States. Their peculiarly or exotically dig-
nified deaths, often occurring at the end of the film, symbolically emphasized
their inassimilability to American standards. The 1910 film The Japanese Spy
(Kalem) tells a story of a Japanese spy who secures secret information about
the latest maneuvers of the U.S. Army. He leaves his wife and children in
Japan and, disguised as a peddler, pursues his mission in the United States.
He is finally captured and “dies like a Samurai, committing hari-kari.”6
The doubleness in the representation of Japanese people in spy films refers
not only to a two-sided (disguised, double) character—that is, high-class
gentleman or faithful servant and betraying enemy—but also to the two-sided
(ambivalent, contradictory) image that American audiences had of Japan—
that is, refined, attractive, and threatening; Westernized and inassimilable;
Japanese Taste and the yellow peril; premodern and modern; primitive and
civilized. The motif of spies’ double identities in early American cinema cor-
responded to, and enhanced, the ambivalent popular image of Japan in inter-
national politics at that historical moment.
After the Russo-Japanese War, the supposed omnipresence of an interna-
tional spy system run by the Japanese government drew the attention of the
Americans and the Europeans, in accordance with their awareness of Japan
as a modernizing nation. From 1900 onward Japan increasingly directed its
intelligence services to take a keener interest in the United States, regarding
the United States as a rival imperialist nation in the Pacific. From time to
time Japanese warships and fishing vessels carried out extensive surveying,
charting, and photography off the American Pacific coast. In one such inci-
dent in 1908, a number of Japanese officers took the opportunity to wade
ashore and explore the whole area.7 The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy started
paying attention to these probes.
Similarly, in Britain, in 1907, Ian Hamilton, who was attached to the Japa-
nese First Army as a British military observer, wrote, “The Japanese real-
ized the weakness of Russia much better than any American or European
observers. The British believed that Russia was in Manchuria to stay. Japan
weighed the evidence—superior intelligence—and came to a precisely con-
trary conclusion. . . . The Japanese accept what their experts tell them.”8 In
a report to the German General Staff in 1908, another British officer also
attributed the swiftness of the Japanese victory over Russia to “superior intel-
ligence—especially on the naval side.”9
This concern about the Japanese spy system began to appear in popular
media in the United States. In 1907, Harper’s Weekly, a magazine for middle-
class readers, noted, “During the war between Russia and Japan, Manchuria

D ou bl e n e ss   67
was inhabited by spies and soldiers. . . . We shall not know how the Japs did
in their conduct of the elaborate spy system, save as the Russians tell of it in
their present discussion. . . . The Japanese . . . were able to use the Russian
spies for Japanese purposes, and in the end to outwit the Russians at every
turn.”10
The European and American conception of the Japanese spy system is an
example of racist imagination that trapped Japan in the middle of a eugeni-
cist evolutionary ladder, or a racial and cultural hierarchy. On the one hand,
the Japanese spy system was praised for its order and effectiveness. Japan’s
technical advances in espionage were noted in order to picture the Japanese
as more advanced than other “primitive” cultures and thus closer to Euro-
peans and Americans. In this perspective, Japan was allowed to be a member
of a modernized European league. On the other hand, Japan was considered
threatening for the same reason. The fact that the “scientific” advances of
Japan were placed in the service of a fanatical, ultra-nationalistic patriotism
to its emperor, which Europeans and Americans deemed primitive, clearly
implied that Japan was still different from the modernized nations, especially
in the discourse of yellow journalism.
Ince was well aware of the popularity of spy films in the early period of
cinema and of the suitability of Japanese characters in this genre. He cast
his Japanese actors in several spy films, including his second feature with
Japanese subjects, The Typhoon (Reginald Barker, 8 October 1914). Hayakawa
had already played several spy roles and he achieved popular recognition as
an individual actor for the first time when he played a Japanese spy in The
Typhoon.11 A review of The Typhoon in the Milwaukee News even called Haya-
kawa “a movie star” for the first time.12 The role of a young Japanese man who
displays his ambivalent characteristics, torn between Westernized gentleness
and inassimilable Japaneseness, would be repeated in The Cheat and become
one of the basic star images that would be developed a few years later.
Hayakawa himself regarded The Typhoon as the film that formed the basis
for his later stardom. In most of his interviews or his memoirs, Hayakawa
ignored all the other films in which he appeared at the NYMPC and identified
The Typhoon as his first film. In 1914, Hayakawa said that his character in The
Typhoon was “his favorite role.”13 He also said, “I am anxious to see the play
as I consider it my very best work. . . . It is seldom that an Oriental is given
such an exceptional opportunity to portray his dramatic skill in America, and
I know I did my best in ‘The Typhoon.’ ”14 Hayakawa even said, “ ‘ Typhoon’
opened at the Strand Theater in New York, and made a great sensation,” but

68  C h ap t e r F ou r
he, intentionally or not, confused the film with The Wrath of the Gods, in
which he did not play a leading role.15
In The Typhoon, Dr. Nitobe Tokoramo (Hayakawa), a Japanese diplomat
who lives in French high society in Paris, is actually on a secret mission for
his country. He is creating a secret report on France. With his refined life-
style, Tokoramo attracts a French sweetheart, Helene (Gladys Brockwell).
She is more interested in Tokoramo than in her American fiancé, Renard
Bernisky (Frank Borzage). However, for Tokoramo, “Nothing but death will
make me forget my duty to Nippon.” Once Helene insults his duty to his
country, he becomes furious and strangles her to death. In order to let the
spy complete his mission, Japanese officials choose a young student Hironari
(Henry Kotani) to be executed instead of Tokoramo. Tokoramo suffers from
his conscience and his love and commits suicide in the end.
The Typhoon depicts a more contemporary Japan with a more topical sub-
ject matter than do O Mimi San and The Wrath of the Gods. However, The
Typhoon is still a fable rather than an actual depiction of Japanese culture and
its people at that time. The film melodramatically displays Japanese spies’
barbarous and primitive patriotism in opposition to Western people’s civi-
lized manners. Hayakawa’s Japanese character is represented as the one who
is caught between the melodramatic dichotomy and falls into a tragic fate in
the end, as in The Cheat later.
The Japanese spies in The Typhoon are, in fact, depicted with twofold char-
acteristics. On the one hand, they are disguised as men of respectable posi-
tion, who appreciate the life of French high society. Their refined lifestyles
and their embodiment of Japanese Taste are attractive to French people,
women especially. On the other hand, they are the representatives of an inas-
similable culture. They become threatening when it comes to the interest of
their own country. They represent the yellow peril discourse.
The introductory shots of Hayakawa foreshadow the double identity of the
Japanese spy whom he plays. The film opens with the device of drawing up
the stage curtains as in The Wrath of the Gods.16 Beneath the curtains, each
actor is introduced as himself or herself, then the shot dissolves and each
actor appears in costume for the film. As himself or herself, each actor smiles
and bows toward the camera, and in costume, he or she makes some gesture
or expression that is suitable for his or her role. The boundaries between the
actors and the characters that they play are clear.
However, in the case of Hayakawa and the character that he plays, it is
difficult to draw a distinctive line between fiction and reality. After an inter-

D ou bl e n e ss   69
title saying “Mr. Sessue Hayakawa as ‘Tokoramo,’ ” in a medium-long shot,
Hayakawa, in a Japanese kimono with a Japanese fan in his hands, looks right
and left with a vacant expression. He turns to the front, grins while raising
his right eyebrow, and then smiles and bows. The shot dissolves into a shot of
Hayakawa, with a frowning expression, in a long black coat reading a book.
He looks up with an embarrassed face and goes back to the book. Even when
Hayakawa is supposed to be an actor himself, he shows exaggerated gestures
and expressions. Therefore, it seems that the Japanese man in a kimono is
a character that Hayakawa plays. At the same time, the man who is reading
a book, which is supposed to be the character that Hayakawa plays, can be
Hayakawa as an actor. Using Hayakawa’s costume and expression, these intro-
ductory shots of The Typhoon strategically locate Hayakawa as an actor and
his character in an ambiguous position between Japaneseness and Western-
ization, which would become the major thematic and visual motif in Haya‑
kawa’s later star vehicles.
The excessively theatrical quality of the opening scene, which is situated
in Japan, makes a clear contrast to the other less theatrical scenes in Paris.
It visually declares that this film is about the collision of two cultures and
peoples. Medium-long shots of the first scene emphasize the function of the
frame as a theatrical stage frame. The composition of the first scene in a
Japanese room simulates a stage set. A dense collection of furniture, such as
tatami mats, shoji screens, sitting mats, a vase, a pot, a Japanese-style writing
desk, a hanging scroll, and a Japanese plant, creates a claustrophobic and
stage-like space. Three people enter the crowded room from the right side of
the frame as if they had appeared on a stage. The theatrical set of the opening
scene in the Japanese room emphasizes the exotic and premodern quality of
Japanese culture.
At the same time, the opening scene portrays Japan as a modernizing na-
tion. Japanese people in the scene read a letter, the content of which empha-
sizes Japanese nationalism. It is a letter of reference introducing Hironari, a
young Japanese student who is entering a French university, to Baron Yoshi-
kawa (Joshikawa, in the letter in English) in Paris. On the screen, the letter
written in Japanese dissolves into English for American audiences.
The English translation emphasizes the young student’s strong patriotism
and Japan’s ultra-nationalism, not mentioned in the Japanese original. The
Japanese letter reads, “Hajime Hironari comes to Paris to study at a univer-
sity. I would be grateful if you could take good care of him and introduce him
to other Japanese people in Paris.”17 The English version reads, “This will

70  C h ap t e r F ou r
introduce Hironari, who leaves to enter a French University. The Young man
is ambitious to serve his country. Advise him in what capacity he can serve
Nippon.” The choice of the term “Nippon” rather than “Japan” may serve to
emphasize a nationalistic tone to the letter. Thus, the opening scene of The
Typhoon uses theatrical spaces filled with objects of Japanese Taste and strate-
gically juxtaposes the nostalgic image of a premodern region with the topical
image of a nationalist modernizing nation.
The following scene in Paris introduces the Japanese protagonist, Toko-
ramo, as a twofold character, portraying him as a metaphorical embodiment
of the collision of two cultures. The shots of Tokoramo’s room display his
refined European lifestyle surrounded by luxurious European furniture. The
house in which Tokoramo lives is a large European-style mansion. In the first
shot, Tokoramo is wearing a suit and reading a book that is not written in
Japanese. The only Japanese decor in this shot is a small Japanese inkstone on
a desk. In a frame hung on the wall is a calligraphy that is possibly Japanese
but looks more like hieroglyphics. When his French servant brings him tea
in a Japanese teapot, Tokoramo frowns and makes a gesture that he does not
want it. He looks as if he is refusing a Japanese lifestyle. The limited number
of Japanese objects does not function as a symbol of Tokoramo’s Japanese-
ness but as his refinement in appreciating Japanese Taste.
By 1905, Colonel Akashi Motojiro, the supreme Japanese intelligence offi-
cer in Europe, who worked as a Japanese attaché, had, according to his own
claim, seven spies and five assistants working for him on a regular basis,
within a network that extended to Paris, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen,
Rome, Lisbon, and even to Warsaw. Colonel Akashi, who was both a poet and
a painter, was described as “most conscientious, hard-working, considerate
. . . a trifle over-careful, ponderous and precise from the military attaché
point of view, but obviously upright and reliable in every sense” and became
a favorite in the European salons.18 Such figures as Akashi possibly served as
models for Tokoramo’s Westernized surface in the original play Taifun, on
which the film version was based.
In opposition to Tokoramo’s Westernized appearance, his hidden Japa-
neseness is also visually displayed in the mise-en-scène of the scene. When
Helene disturbs Tokoramo’s work for his country, he stares at her with a
severe expression. In this brief shot, chrysanthemums and the hieroglyphic
calligraphy suddenly occupy the background. This framing implies Toko‑
ramo’s Japanese traits hidden behind the Westernized surface. At this point,
Tokoramo’s Japaneseness is only briefly indicated. He takes her hand and

D ou bl e n e ss   71
gently says, “My work is of the utmost importance. It will soon be finished,
when I can give more time to you.” Helene reaches her arms to his shoulder
and kisses him. When they kiss, the shot regains a Western-style painting
in the background. The Japanese traits inserted into the previous shot com-
pletely vanish.
It was rare to show a kiss between a nonwhite man and a white woman in
this period because it would cause the anxiety of miscegenation. In the case
of Hayakawa’s career, as far as the available film prints are concerned, this
scene in The Typhoon is the only case that shows an “ordinary” kiss between
Hayakawa and a white actress. The kiss in this scene basically functions to
emphasize Tokoramo’s Westernized character, which hides his Japanese traits
at the core. Yet, it is still possible to argue that this kiss is not “ordinary” but
indicates an unequal racial status between the two. Since Helene sits on the
arm of the chair, she kisses Tokoramo from above, as if she is trying to con-
quer him. This may suggest a European subject’s imperialistic possession
over an Asian object.
The twofold characterizations of Japanese people in The Typhoon, hiding
their inassimilable Japaneseness behind their Westernized disguise, are most
typically displayed in a later party scene, in which Japanese diplomats/spies
in Paris celebrate “Nobori no Sekku,” a national holiday in Japan. In the scene,
Tokoramo’s refined European room turns into an extremely exotic Japa­‑
nesque space. Japanese spies set up a white portable folding screen on which
Mount Fuji is painted, Japanese-style sitting mats, Japanese-style paper lan-
terns, and Japanese teapots. They open the doors, on which the hieroglyphs
are written, in the background. A little statue of the Buddha appears from be-
hind the doors. The spies put on Japanese kimonos over their Western suits
and start drinking sake and dancing Japanese style dances. Japanese orna-
ments cover all the European furniture and become dominant in the room.
This is the only scene in Paris in which the mise-en-scène emphasizes the
theatrical quality as does the opening scene in Japan.
When Helene comes into the ornamented room, she looks extremely
out of place in the Japanese surroundings. Helene’s entrance indicates the
mutual incompatibility of the two cultures. Her intrusion causes the party
to end prematurely. All the Japanese people apparently welcome Helene very
politely, but behind her back, Yoshikawa gets furious at Tokoramo. While
Tokoramo sees his colleagues off, Helene drinks and smokes in front of the
statue of the Buddha and laughs at it. With a severe face, Tokoramo forces her
to stop touching the statue. Helene says, “Can’t you appreciate my great love

72  C h ap t e r F ou r
for you?” Her question implies that it is her love that rescues Tokoramo from
the world of premodern Japan, symbolized by the the statue of the Buddha,
and helps him to achieve a Westernized self.
In the scenes that follow, the lovers’ quarrel is cleverly transformed into an
archetypal collision of the two different cultures. The French woman’s words
question the discrepancy between the Westernized surface of Tokoramo and
his hidden inassimilable Japaneseness. Bernisky appears and confesses that
Helene is his fiancée. After he leaves, Tokoramo shouts at Helene. “You told
me there was no other man in your life. You have deceived me. Go, and never
return.” This behavior of Tokoramo is simply that of a jealous man. Toko-
ramo is not depicted here as a stereotypically ultra-nationalistic Japanese
man, but as a man expressing a rather universal human emotion. In turn,
Helene chides Tokoramo for his sense of obligation to his country and makes
him a parting threat in racist terms: “All right I will go, but my face will ever
come between you and your work for you love me in spite of all. I am going
back to Bernisky and laugh with him at you—you whining yellow rat—and at
your Japan, a dirty yellow blot upon the face of the earth.”
As a result, within the narrative of The Typhoon, Tokoramo’s jealousy is re-
placed by his anger, caused by Helene’s debasing of his nationalist duty. What
is presupposed behind Tokoramo’s character is a stereotypical image of the
Japanese people, who are viewed as being dominated by their ultra-nationalist
duty. Helene’s words function to reveal the inassimilable core of Japanese
people in spite of their superficial assimilation. Her lines encapsulate Haya‑
kawa’s Japanese character in a stereotypical image of Japan and emphasize
the archetypal binary opposition between the East and the West. The signifi-
cant narrative motif that The Typhoon employs concerns a Japanese man who
shows a possibility of Westernization/modernization, psychological as well
as apparent. Yet, he is eventually positioned within a cultural stereotype of
primitive and premodern Japan, which is visually emphasized from the be-
ginning in a melodramatic dichotomy between the East and the West.
Helene’s clear insulting attitude toward Japan turns Tokoramo into a
stereotypical embodiment of the yellow peril. Tokoramo attacks Helene and
strangles her to death. The novelization of the original stage version, Taifun,
published in 1912, clearly locates Tokoramo’s assault within the yellow peril
discourse. “Gone was the carefully taught self-control of generations! Gone
was the thin varnish of culture that hid the fighting, yellow savage of the
Pacific! The long-schooled features were twisted into a horrible grimace of
anguish and rage. The dark eyes flamed with a maniacal fire. He crouched

D ou bl e n e ss   73
forward like a beast about to spring. His strong fingers were crooked like the
talons of a carrion bird and his breath escaped through the clenched teeth
with a hissing, rattling sound.”19
The Japanese portable folding screen appears in the background behind
Tokoramo and visually emphasizes the abrupt gush of Tokoramo’s threaten-
ing Japaneseness. As soon as Tokoramo hears Helene’s racist line, he widens
his locked lips and opens his eyes wide to gaze at Helene. Then, he stops his
movement for a while with this expression before he assaults her. His way of
posing, which creates a moment of static time and brings all action onscreen
to a halt, imitates the mie posture, the style taken right before an act of vio-
lence in kabuki. The positioning of his legs (placing one leg forward) is simi-
lar to the ashi o waru in the mie pose. The positioning of his arms (raising one
arm high and the other fist in front of the chest) follows the stance of Ichi-
kawa Danjuro I, the famous Edo kabuki actor of the aragoto genre. Hayakawa
claimed in a later interview that Danjuro inspired his performance.20 Haya-
kawa explained his experience of watching Danjuro’s gaze and his ability to
create a dramatic moment of static time: “In Japan we had a great actor, his
name was Danjuro. I remember one time seeing him come into the middle
of the stage and fix the audience with his gaze. He didn’t speak a word. His
face was absolutely immovable. Every trace of expression was gone from it. It
was set like stone. He just stood there and looked, and as he looked you could
feel the audience catch its breath. He kept on looking. The audience became
so tense that it seemed as tho [sic] you must scream if he did not move. I
remember that I myself was almost hysterical when Danjuro finally relaxed
and released his hold.”21
This imitation of the stylized pose of kabuki and the resulting static mo-
ment reinforce the image of violent collision of cultures between the East
and the West. The stylized kabuki pose emphasizes that Tokoramo’s hidden
cultural trait has superceded his Westernized appearance, even if only a few
U.S. viewers would have recognized Hayakawa’s performance as a reference
to kabuki.
The shots of Baron Yoshikawa and his men dressed in European suits en-
joying themselves in their European-style office are cross-cut several times in
this sequence of Tokoramo’s assault on Helene. A shot of Yoshikawa and his
men laughing is inserted right after the shot of Tokoramo strangling Helene.
They look as if they were laughing at Helene being strangled by Tokoramo.
This cross-cutting enhances Tokoramo’s unquestionable bond with Japan
and the image of the Japanese people as cruel.22 This cinematic technique

74  C h ap t e r F ou r
functions to identify Japanese people’s savagery as the reason for the breach
between Tokoramo and Helene, rather than Helene’s deception. The cross-
cutting embodies a line that appears later in the film as an intertitle, “East is
East and West is West and the twain shall never meet.”
In spite of the melodramatic binary structure of the narrative, the charac-
ter of Tokoramo still shows possible room for his psychological development
beyond the cultural stereotype. He does not look triumphant after murder-
ing the person who insulted Japan. His hair is disheveled and his lips are
distorted. He falls down on the chair and bends over the desk. He turns to
his left absentmindedly and desperately combs his hair with his hand. How-
ever, the possibility of Tokoramo’s psychologically detaching himself from
this Japanese cultural stereotype is soon denied by the intrusion of other
Japanese people.
Tokoramo’s attempt to express his humane emotions is hampered by Japa-
nese ultra-nationalism, stereotypically represented by Yoshikawa, Hironari,
and the other Japanese men. Yoshikawa insists, “Your country is first in im-
portance. You must finish your report. Hironari will confess [to] the crime.”
Hironari looks extremely happy to sacrifice himself for his country. Toko‑
ramo’s choices to faithfully follow the decision of his countrymen and then
commit suicide for his own honor evoke a stereotypical image of Japan, a
country of bushido, the code of the samurai and their honor. As a result, the
representation of Tokoramo in the finale of The Typhoon comes close to that
of Hironari, who sacrifices himself for the sake of ultra-nationalist duty.
Baron Yamaki in The Wrath of the Gods also has a distorted self, a hybrid
between a superstitious Japanese samurai descendant and a “human being”
who converts to Christianity. Just as Yamaki is swallowed up by the barba-
rism of the stereotypically primitive and superstitious Japanese crowd, To-
koramo’s depth of psychological development is denied in the narrative of
The Typhoon. In the beginning, the imaginary Japan embodied by Tokoramo
is an ambivalent mixture of a modernizing nation and a premodern space.
However, eventually, Hayakawa’s character falls into a cultural stereotype of
ultra-nationalism, which is completely in accordance with the popular yel-
low peril discourse. The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company and Hayakawa
himself, when they shaped Hayakawa’s star image, had to deal with the exis-
tence of such a strong cultural stereotype of Japan that prevented the Japa-
nese protagonist from expressing sympathetic human emotions and from
displaying any psychological development on the screen.

D ou bl e n e ss   75
 « 5 »

Th e N o b l e S ava g e a n d
t h e Va n i sh i n g R a c e

Japanese Actors in “Indian Films”

​H a​ yakawa’s role in The Typhoon indicated a possibility of further

​psychological development beyond a mere cultural stereotype. Yet,
​Ince never decided to promote Hayakawa as his star. No star vehicle
for Hayakawa was made at the NYMPC. In spite of the fact that many stars,
including William S. Hart and Sessue Hayakawa, started their careers under
Ince, Ince’s films, mainly “authentic” spectacles that fully utilized cultural
stereotypes, did not need movie stars. By 1915, when the NYMPC aligned with
the newly formed Triangle Film Corporation and Ince joined D. W. Griffith
and Mack Sennett in filmmaking, Ince came to admit the necessity of stars
for product differentiation. He disclosed that his idea was “to get stars, teach
them the tricks of the camera and then keep them at salaries high enough
to restrain them so that they cannot work first for one company and then for
another.”1 Still, it seems that at least before 1915, stars were “workers” who
were “interchangeable part[s] in the script” for Ince, who pursued the specific
division of labor in his studio.
Under Ince before 1915, Hayakawa appeared as a Native American in
four “Indian films,” a genre that constituted a separate popular genre from
Westerns in the early 1910s. Ince specialized in the genre. The film historian
Eileen Bowser claims, “Authenticity was an important advertising point for
Indian films and was used with even more emphasis here than for the West-
erns of the period.”2 According to the film historian Steven Higgins, Ince
used Japanese and Native American performers in order to achieve the “au-
thentic” feeling.3
In fact, the status of both Native Americans and Japanese were similar
in the popular American imagination of the time. While Native Americans
were often highly regarded as “noble savages,” Japanese were regarded as
sophisticated in the middle-class discourse of Japanese Taste. Both Japanese
and Native Americans had been considered as descendants of the Mongoloid
race, lower levels on the human ladder envisaged by the thought of social
Darwinism or eugenics, but yet higher than the Negroid in the racial hier-
archy. In Ince’s supposedly “authentic” films, there were no big differences
in the thematic motifs and narrative structures between the films with Japa-
nese subjects and those with Native American subjects. Both of them circled
around the cultural conflict between the civilized and the primitive.
Moreover, in a broad trade journal discourse of the time, both Japanese
and Native American actors’ acting abilities were praised, or publicized, for
their dignity and restraint. Ince used Japanese and Native American actors
interchangeably. While Hayakawa played some Native American roles in
Ince’s films, some Sioux Indians played Japanese villagers in such films as The
Wrath of the Gods. Ince cast Hayakawa as a dignified son of a Native American
chief in Death Mask (Jay Hunt, 25 September 1914) and as a wayward son of
a dignified Native American chief, played by William Eagle Shirt, a member
of the Sioux Nation, in The Last of the Line (probably directed by Jay Hunt or
C. Gardner Sullivan, 24 December 1914). Steven Higgins argues, “Ince might
have recognized dignified and refined features in the Japanese performers in-
cluding Hayakawa that were necessary for his authentic Indian characters.”4
In 1977, four years after Hayakawa’s death, the film critic Harvey Elliot stated,
“Hayakawa’s countenance was that of the noble savage.”5 Elliot emphasized
the dignified and restrained acting styles of Hayakawa, compared to other
actors of the period, and consciously or unconsciously explained the Japanese
actor’s acting skill using the term that signified Native Americans.
The major theme of the two extant Indian films in which Hayakawa ap-
peared as Native Americans, Death Mask and The Last of the Line, is a racial
and cultural middle-groundness of a certain group of Native Americans.
Some Native Americans in these films accept the American middle-class
discourse of home and family and distinguish themselves from the more
primitive others. As a result, these films provide narratives that naturalize
the construction of white supremacy, as do The Wrath of the Gods and The
Typhoon.
In Death Mask and The Last of the Line, the binary axis between the civi-
lized culture and the primitive one is indicated in melodramatic structures
and with the motif of death. This connection of melodrama and the motif of
death would later be one of the most important elements in Hayakawa’s star

T he N obl e S a va ge and t he V an i sh in g R a c e   77
vehicles. The connection in the Indian films also refers to the social discourse
on Native Americans in early twentieth-century America.
Peter Brooks argues that the world of melodrama is imbued with moral
Manichaeism and that characters in melodrama are either morally good or
evil with no one in the middle. Moral conflicts between heroes and villains
are unambiguously presented and often violently played out. The character
system necessarily reflects this clear-cut division within the melodramatic
worldview: characters in melodrama are either morally good or evil.6 The
film scholar Gregory S. Jay argues that the “ability of the melodrama to rep-
resent so expertly stark confrontations of good and evil proved to fit Indian
subjects nicely, and not because the Indians were evil and the whites were
good. On the contrary, many of the films create sympathy for the Indians,
who are often the victims of the whole catalogue of historically documented
white oppressions.” According to Jay, the melodramatic mode in Indian films
functioned to translate the political conflict between Native Americans and
the United States into a “domestic tragedy” that was “seemingly unconnected
to contemporary political decisions.” The viewer “can feel sympathy for the
individual victims without questioning the larger dominant narratives of
white manifest destiny and racial superiority that these films presume.”7
The melodramatic structure in Indian films coincided with Frederick
Jackson Turner’s famous thesis of the “closing of the frontier” in 1893, which
implied the belief that Native Americans were inevitably vanishing before
the power of America’s “Manifest Destiny.” As Jay points out, in Indian films,
the “Indian served both as a nostalgic reminder of what was purportedly
passing away,” whose nobility lies in a “primitive defense against the com-
plexity of modernity,” and a “focus for perceiving the superior qualities of
the dominant culture.”8 The melodramatic imagination thus functioned to
turn Native Americans into the imaginary “noble savages” and the “vanishing
race.”
Death Mask, the third film in which Hayakawa played a Native American
character, is a melodramatic adventure film. Its narrative emphasizes a cer-
tain hierarchy within Native American cultures and justifies white supremacy
in a twisted manner. Hayakawa’s character obtains the status of a “noble sav-
age” only because he belongs to a tribe that is more civilized and moralistic
than other primitive tribes. Hayakawa’s character believes in romantic love,
monogamy, and chivalry. He saves an innocent girl who has been trapped
within a community of superstitious beliefs and despotism, as the American

78  C h ap t e r F i v e
sailor in The Wrath of the Gods saves a Japanese girl from a primitive com‑
munity.
In Death Mask, Hayakawa plays Running Wolf, the son of the high chief
of a Southland tribe. In the opening scene, Running Wolf gently repulses
the advances of Little Fawa, a maiden of his own tribe. In the council lodge,
asked by his father, “Can my son find no maiden of all the tribe that pleases
him?” Running Wolf answers, “There is a maiden in my heart but I have
seen her only in my dreams—some day I shall find her.” The next day of
the council, an exhausted wanderer from the far north staggers into the vil-
lage and tells the villagers of “a tribe of warriors fierce and cruel, ruled over
by three brothers.” The wanderer also describes a beautiful girl in the tribe
(Tsuru Aoki). “With them dwells their sister, of whose beauty men sing from
the lakes to the sea. Many young men have come to woo her; none have re-
turned.” Imagining the girl as the one of his dreams, Running Wolf starts for
the far country that night. After many perils, Running Wolf sights the lodges
of the three brothers, but a storm forces him to seek shelter in a cabin near
the village. That night, he saves a Native American girl who is soaking wet
from the storm. Running Wolf realizes that she is his dream girl. At dawn,
Running Wolf wakes up and finds that the girl has gone. When the sun is
highest, Running Wolf enters the village. When Running Wolf easily defeats
the first two brothers, the tribe calls for the third brother, who wears a Death
Mask, whom they regard with superstitious awe. When Running Wolf makes
a dash for the third brother, the third brother throws away his spear and runs
away. Infuriated by the astonishing cowardice of the third brother, the fanatic
tribe clamors for his death. The chase leads into the forest, where Running
Wolf unmasks the third brother and reveals the face of the Native American
girl he had sheltered the previous night. She says, “There is no third brother;
my brothers forced me to play the part.” They run off.
From the opening scene, Death Mask emphasizes the civilized character-
istic of Running Wolf ’s tribe. The tribe’s patriarchal system maintains the
order of heterosexual monogamy. The son of the chief (Hayakawa) is de-
picted as gentle and well mannered. He does not take advantage of a woman’s
approach to him. His vision of his dream girl emphasizes his romantic na-
ture.
The existence of a more primitive tribe enhances the civilized image of
Running Wolf ’s tribe in comparison. The wanderer compares the rulers
of the warrior tribe to animals. Together with the tribe’s superstitious awe

T he N obl e S a va ge and t he V an i sh in g R a c e   79
of the Death Mask, this comparison emphasizes the image of the tribe as
more primitive than Running Wolf ’s. The wanderer says, “The first brother is
like the panther.” A shot is inserted showing a Native American man jump-
ing around. “The second’s strength is that of a great white bear.” A shot of
a masculine Native American man, chopping woods with an axe, is inserted
this time. “The third brother no man may meet and live. His face is ever hid-
den in the ‘Death Mask.’ ” Several shots are inserted: that of a man with the
Death Mask, sitting with snakes and skulls; that of a Native American child
attempting to peep into the house of the third brother and stopped by others;
scared Native American men watching the third brother coming out of his
house. Thus, the structure of the narrative of Death Mask is clearly based on a
melodramatic binary opposition: between the civilized, “noble” tribe and the
primitive, superstitious one. As in The Wrath of the Gods and in The Typhoon,
the collision of cultures occurs when a couple is being created between two
different cultural origins. Running Wolf ’s quest for his dream girl turns into
a chivalric romance to save an innocent victim from an uncivilized group of
people.
The scene of the night storm emphasizes Running Wolf ’s civilized char-
acteristic once again. Running Wolf does not take advantage of a suffering
woman. His respect for an unmarried virgin is extreme. He goes out of the
cabin into the storm with only a blanket and sleeps outside of the door.
In contrast, the primitiveness of the warrior tribe is emphasized when
the actual face under the Death Mask is revealed. An innocent woman with
a Death Mask, an object of superstitious awe, has been made into a taboo.
Because of Running Wolf ’s intrusion into the tribe, the tribe’s superstitious
belief is overthrown, as the American sailor in The Wrath of the Gods helps to
destroy the superstition toward the Buddha.
Running Wolf ’s refined characteristic is also indicated by his actions
in the climactic fight scene. Running Wolf stops his movement, holding
the knife with his right hand, raising it, and putting his left leg forward.
He stares at the people of the tribe with his eyes wide open. As with Toko‑
ramo’s pose in The Typhoon before he strangles Helene, this pose of Running
Wolf creates a static moment in which the action onscreen comes to a halt.
It looks exactly like the mie posture in kabuki, with his legs in the ashi o
waru pose and his arms positioned to mimic Ichikawa Danjuro I, the famous
kabuki actor. The Wrath of the Gods also utilized the rough and violent con-
notation of this pose to imply the primitive quality of a Japanese man. Here,
the pose may suggest the primitive characteristic of Native American culture.

80  C h ap t e r F i v e
However, simultaneously, this pose distinguishes Running Wolf from the
opposite tribe. His mie pose also signifies his grandiose heroism right before
the act of violence. Kabuki was considered a refined art form from Japan in
early-twentieth-century America. To some audiences who were familiar with
kabuki, Running Wolf ’s kabuki-style pose functioned to enhance his embodi-
ment of higher cultural status, despite the fact that the issue of authenticity
in this artificial connection of Japanese Taste and the Native American cul-
ture is never questioned.9
Thus, the motif of cultural hierarchy among Native American tribes is
clear in the narrative of Death Mask. The melodramatic binary distinction
between the civilized and the primitive constructs this chivalric romance nar-
rative. Japanese Taste serves to enhance Running Wolf ’s image of embody-
ing a refined culture. The hero from the more civilized and refined culture
encounters a primitive culture. As a result of the collision of cultures, the
hero destroys the superstition and saves an innocent girl as does the hero in
The Wrath of the Gods. The nonwhite hero functions to defend the Victorian
morality of heterosexual monogamy in the end.
While Death Mask is a romantic story of a cultural collision, The Last of
the Line is a story of a tragic encounter between Native American culture and
white American culture. In The Last of the Line, Hayakawa again plays a son
of the chief of a Native American tribe. Gray Otter, the last of a long line of
powerful Sioux chiefs, prepares for the return of his son Tiah (Hayakawa)
from a white American school. At the frontier station, the tribe’s men are
embarrassed when Tiah, who is supposed to be the most educated and civi-
lized future chief, arrives completely drunk. Even though Gray Otter scolds
Tiah, he keeps drinking and tries to take advantage of women. He also endan-
gers the tribe’s livestock and children. Following a new peace pact with the
U.S. commander at the frontier garrison, Gray Otter pledges his word that
no white man shall be molested by Native Americans while Tiah plots with
a band of renegades to rob the Army paymaster. Enraged at the attack, Gray
Otter shoots down his own son. Wishing that his son should be honored in
death, Gray Otter seeks to make it appear that his son gave his life defending
the paymaster. When the belated rescuers arrive, he tells them, “Word came
to our village that those not our tribe had attacked the paymaster. My son
went to help him. I now seek him.” The commander says, “Gray Otter, your
son died a hero.” The army men bury him with military honors. The coffin is
covered with the star-spangled banner, and at the conclusion of the ritual a
priest reads lines from the Bible. Alone after the funeral, Gray Otter holds a

T he N obl e S a va ge and t he V an i sh in g R a c e   81
cross over the grave with his hands, looks up at the sky, and then looks down
absentmindedly.
In The Last of the Line, the heroism of the Native American people is dem-
onstrated through their moralistic attitude toward alcohol and women and
eventual sacrificial commitment to the U.S. nation. Parallel editing is exten-
sively used in The Last of the Line and clearly displays two possible types of
behaviors of Native Americans. When Gray Otter gives the commander his
pledge and shakes hands with him, the scene is cross-cut to that of Tiah
drinking at a bar with his follower Native American and Mexican renegades.
When the band lead by Tiah ambushes the coach of the army paymaster, the
parallel editing shows Gray Otter prancing on his beautiful white horse. He
uses a saddle in a civilized manner while Tiah does not. Since Tiah has been
continuously shown mounting the horse awkwardly and riding on it wearily,
Gray Otter’s dignified riding style stands out. The MPW points out, “The old
Indian is fine. He has all the dignity and grandeur that one could want.”10
The collision of cultures is represented in a form of family melodrama,
when the battle occurs between the band of the renegades and the army pay-
master. The cross-cutting that has been used throughout the film ends here
and, thus, visually emphasizes the collision of two types of Native Americans
in the tragic form of a dual between the father and the son. When Gray Otter
witnesses his son shooting at the army wagon, even though Tiah is not aim-
ing at Gray Otter, the use of shot/reverse shot editing between Gray Otter
and Tiah makes Gray Otter and Tiah appear to be facing each other.
Thus, the collision depicted in The Last of the Line is not between white
Americans and Native Americans but between two Native Americans. The
actual cause of Tiah’s fall is hidden from the surface on the screen, and only
the tragic result is shown. What is hidden in this narrative is the fact that Tiah
has learned to drink and has been spoiled in white American culture. His-
torically, many Native Americans educated at the schools created for them
by white Americans eventually found themselves rejected by both Native
American and white societies. The ordeal of separating children from their
families and cultures through the Indian boarding-school policy—and the
trauma of their return home as outsiders—is fully recognized in silent West-
erns and “Indian dramas” from 1908 to 1916, which were produced during a
time when federal Indian policy encouraged both assimilation and removal
from the land. During the silent film era from the turn of the century through
the 1920s, the primary federal policy structuring Indian-white relations was
the drive for assimilation through the General Allotment Act (1887) and the

82  C h ap t e r F i v e
removal of Native American children to government boarding schools. Many
of the Westerns produced during this period reflected, if not a sense of na-
tional guilt, then certainly a public and cultural awareness that despite the
rhetoric of assimilation as progress, children and land were being siphoned
away from Native American peoples and placed under white control with
devastating consequences.11
The historian Joanna Hearne suggests that the Western genre’s special
reliance on costume to signify social roles and ethnic differences leads to a
fluidity when clothes, props, and identities are exchanged during the course
of the action. In The Last of the Line, Tiah’s appearance—short hair, a jacket, a
tie, pants, a cowboy hat, and heavy makeup that makes Hayakawa’s skin look
darker—stands out among the Sioux Indians and emphasizes his alienation
from his tribe. With his dark skin he looks like a failed white “wannabe.”
The Last of the Line tapped into this widespread popular ambivalence about
the negative aspects of the federal Indian policy. However, in The Last of the
Line, the existence of white American culture is not directly questioned
within this narrative of a family melodrama. Since Gray Otter serves for the
white American army in a civilized and obedient manner, the white American
culture maintains its symbolic status as a moral and civilized center. From
the very beginning, Gray Otter is depicted as a person who acknowledges
the value of modernization and the importance of learning white American
civilization: the typical image of the “noble savage.” In the opening scene,
Gray Otter, in his tent with his large authoritative pipe, which signifies his
authority in the tribe, remembers the past. The flashback shows the time
when Tiah was born. The medium shot of Gray Otter smoking dissolves into
a medium shot of him holding a baby accompanied by his wife on his right.
A close-up of the baby is inserted here. Gray Otter says, “He shall grow up
to be a great chief and the white man’s wisdom shall be as an open book to
him.” The parents nod happily to each other. Gray Otter, with his baby in his
arms, goes outside the tent where his men are waiting to salute their future
chief. This shot dissolves back to Gray Otter smoking and smiling. What he
remembers is not the past when he was deprived of his lands and people by
white Americans, but the one when his baby was born and promised the
bright future of his tribe with his understanding of white American culture.
The Last of the Line legitimates the dominance of white American culture in
the form of a family melodrama.
Gray Otter looks wretched in the end of the film because of the loss of his
own son. However, his blame is not aimed at white America. Tiah is buried as

T he N obl e S a va ge and t he V an i sh in g R a c e   83
a national hero. Positioned in opposition to the more primitive and barbarous
Native American and Mexican renegades, the civilized chief Gray Otter thus
comes to embody the stereotypical image of the “vanishing race.”
After the success of two feature films, The Wrath of the Gods and The Ty-
phoon, Hayakawa was “well regarded at Ince,” but he kept being cast in “odd
stories” with archetypal narrative structures and stereotypical characters.12
Casting Japanese actors in Indian films was an example of such oddities.
Ince simply did not want to leave “this prestigious group of Japanese actors,”
especially Hayakawa and Aoki, jobless. Even after the successful features The
Wrath of the Gods and The Typhoon, the Japanese actors were cast for a series
of two-reelers until their year-long contract expired in late November 1914. It
was a business and aesthetic decision for Ince as a producer having an eye on
the bottom line.13
There was no consistency in roles in which Hayakawa was cast. In both
Death Mask and The Last of the Line, Hayakawa played sons of Native Ameri-
can chiefs, but their characters were completely opposite: a relatively civilized
romantic hero and a drunk prodigal son. The latter was not even a leading
role. Ince also cast Hayakawa in non-Japanese, non–Native American roles.
In The Chinatown Mystery (Barker, 10 February 1915), for instance, Hayakawa
played a Chinese murderer, Yo Hung, who is captured by a hero, an Ameri-
can reporter, in the end.14 Hayakawa, as a supporting character, was treated
only as a component of the chaotic landscape of Chinatown. Nipped (George
Osborne, 19 November 1914) is another example of such “odd stories.” It is
a spy film with an interracial love story set in Mexico. Hayakawa played a
Japanese protagonist in this film, but his character was a stereotypically ultra-
nationalistic spy. Because of the spy’s conspiracy, a Japanese girl, who reveals
the conspiracy to her American boyfriend, dies in the end.
In 1915, Hayakawa decided to quit the NYMPC and moved to the Jesse L.
Lasky Feature Play Company. It was unusual behavior for an actor to walk
away from Ince, who was a big name in the industry at that time.15 By 1915
Hayakawa must have felt strongly that his career under Ince was headed
toward a dead end.

84  C h ap t e r F i v e
 Two

Villain, Friend, or Lover

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Th e M a k i n g o f
a n Am e r i c a n i z e d J a pa n e s e
Gentleman
The Honorable Friend and Hashimura Togo

​S e​ ssue Hayakawa’s role as Tori in The Cheat was so sensationally re‑

​ceived that the creation of Hayakawa’s star persona inevitably started
​with that image. One natural strategy that the Jesse L. Lasky Feature
Play Company could undertake was to make Hayakawa a refined-looking
villainous star with his embodiment of the yellow peril and ultimate in-
assimilability into American society. Yet, Lasky did not simply undertake this
strategy. Hayakawa played villainous roles in his star vehicles at Lasky, but
these roles were carefully constructed in order not to offend middle-class
morality.
Around the time when The Cheat was released, the Hollywood film in-
dustry was in the middle of an attempt to acquire cultural legitimacy for
middle-class audiences. Movie stars were meant to assert that the cinema
was morally a “healthy phenomenon,” compared with the scandalous theater
world.1 Since Hayakawa’s role was a supporting one in The Cheat, it was not
necessary to make his villainous character sympathetic. In the film, there
were heroic white characters with whom audiences were able to sympathize.
It was possible to make star vehicles with stars as villains, as in the gangster
films in the 1930s. However, even these villains were usually given some
sympathetic characteristics in order to lead in feature-length films that would
not subvert the morality of middle-class audiences.
Another option of Lasky’s company was to turn Hayakawa into a heroic
star. Many early stars played on-screen roles as virtuous heroes and hero-
ines whose moral course withstood whatever challenges were put in their
way. Charles K. Field wrote in 1916, “Had he [Hayakawa] kept on playing vil-
lains, he might have veiled his good looks in the whiskers of the hairy Ainu
and never won the feminine admiration which now unquestionably greets
his picture.”2 However, right after The Cheat, it seemed too adventurous for
Lasky to create a brand new heroic star image for Hayakawa that would be
substantially different from his sensational image in the film.
The film scholar Paul McDonald claims, “Star discourse picked out certain
film actors as worthy of identification and desire.”3 For “identification,” the
threat and villainy that Hayakawa showed in The Cheat needed to be tamed,
but at the same time, for “desire,” the consumerist and sensual attraction
that Hayakawa represented in The Cheat needed to be maintained. Hayakawa
later said, “Sessue Hayakawa double character . . . very, very complicated.”4
Lasky had to employ a “complicated” strategy of creating Hayakawa’s star
image that would strike a balance between following The Cheat and deviating
from it. The whole complication of Lasky’s twofold strategy came from the
fact that the studio had to enable white American middle-class audiences to
sympathize, or identify, with Hayakawa’s characters and his star image, as
well as to let them safely desire those characters and image, despite Haya‑
kawa’s nonwhite cultural origin.
In short, Lasky’s strategy was to locate Hayakawa in the movable middle-
ground position in the racial and cultural hierarchy between white Ameri-
can and nonwhite other. On the one hand, Hayakawa’s (and his characters’)
status had to be raised and distinguished racially or culturally from other
nonwhite actors (and their characters) in order for the American middle-class
audiences to sympathize with, identify with, or even desire Hayakawa more
easily. On the other hand, Hayakawa’s status had to be clearly differentiated
from white Americans in terms of race. Any sexual relationship between
Hayakawa’s characters, no matter how heroic they were, and white women
must be avoided in order not to cause any anxiety around miscegenation. The
control of a Japanese man’s racial, cultural, and sexual transgression within
the discourse of white American middle-class family and domesticity, which
was the thematic motif of The Cheat, came to play a dominant role in the for-
mation of Hayakawa’s star image at Lasky.
“Americanization” was a feasible strategy for Lasky to take to make this
Japanese actor heroic and sympathetic enough for middle-class audiences.
According to the final result of the “Motion Picture Hall of Fame” popularity
contest in the Motion Picture magazine in December 1918, five of the male
stars listed in the top ten, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Harold Lockwood, William S.
Hart, Wallace Reid, and Francis X. Bushman, were from the “clean-living

88  C h ap t e r S i x
group of all-Americans.”5 When the most popular stars of the time embodied
this “all-American” image, it was a proficient strategy for Lasky to provide its
new, promising, but non-American, star with this image.
In fact, the popularity of the stars with “all-American” images corresponded
to a nationwide “Americanization” movement by middle-class Americans in
the early twentieth century. According to Philip Gleason, the words “Ameri-
canize,” “Americanizing,” and “Americanization” came into common usage
during the antebellum nativist controversies of the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, when many Irish Catholic immigrants arrived in the United States,
and clearly referred to the immigrants’ assimilation into American life. The
idea of “Americanization” was that immigrants must change.6 Even if the
wide-spread expression “the melting pot” may imply America’s cosmopolitan
nationality based on diversity or pluralism (at least among Europeans) and
Israel Zangwill’s 1909 play The Melting Pot appeared to express Americans’
confidence in the nation’s absorptive powers of differences, the fact was that
immigrants were expected to merge into the national community by being
willing to identify themselves with American principles and customs.
From the eighteenth century on, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs)
had been viewed as the dominant ethnic majority and touted as a people dis-
tinguished by their desirable qualities without being basically changed them-
selves. Therefore, basically, Americanization was Anglo-conformity, based on
this Anglo-Saxonism.7
Then, beginning in the 1890s, Americanization and Americanism became
attached to a more specific movement. As a result of rapid industrialization,
urbanization, and the increase of immigrants by the early twentieth century,
reorganization of the social order was debated, especially among middle-
class Americans. More Americans began to feel that the United States as a
nation would require a higher level of cohesion, homogeneity, and solidarity,
a closer conformity to the cultural majority (WASP) in language, religion, and
manners, and a more active policy of purposeful Americanization, or more
forceful assimilation.8 The historian Lynn Dumenil claims that there was a
strong undercurrent during this period of using numerous federal laws “to
control and assimilate immigrants to American Protestant morality and stan-
dards.”9 Immigrants were required to learn the middle-class sense of values,
that is, to learn English, the American concepts of law and order, and the
work ethic.
In 1907 the North American Citizens League started using the term

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   89
“Americanization” for its activities that helped new immigrants understand
American ideas in their daily lives. The ethnic reverberation set off in the
United States by the outbreak of World War I in 1914 marked the opening
of a far more intense phase of the Americanization movement.10 In 1915, the
National Americanization Committee was organized. On 4 July 1915, “Ameri-
canization Day” was celebrated by the Chambers of Commerce and Industry,
churches, organizations of mutual aid in immigrant communities, and so
on, in more than one hundred cities all over the United States. In 1916 Royal
Dixon, an activist of the Americanization Movement, published a book en-
titled Americanization and insisted on refocusing of the nation on American-
ization.11
The Americanization movement had two orientations. One insisted that
Americanization was needed to protect the national character, which was
based on the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestant principles, from the
dangers posed by the immense immigration of the time. The other desired to
assist the immigrants in adjusting to the different conditions of life they en-
countered in the United States. Eventually, the former emphasis dominated
and, by the 1920s, the Americanization movement became more nativist and
came to mean the exclusion of people on an ethnic or racial basis. Therefore,
Americanization meant at the same time forceful assimilation and nativist
exclusion of the inassimilable.
The early Hollywood film industry, which pursued legitimatization and
institutionalization of cinema, needed to respond to this middle-class move-
ment, which stressed Americanization. Motion pictures, thus, tended to be-
come a medium that institutionally supported the Americanization move-
ment that forced assimilation of immigrants to white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
thoughts and customs. They also began to exclude inassimilable immigrants
on and off the screen. On the screen, “bad” immigrants are punished in oppo-
sition to “good” immigrants. Off the screen, for instance, Chinese immi-
grants, who had been prohibited from entry to the United States since 1882,
rarely obtained jobs in film studios until the early 1920s, when anti-Japanese
movements became severe and many Japanese actors decided to go back to
Japan.
Hayakawa’s star vehicles displayed an acceptance of immigrants who were
willing to identify themselves with American principles and, especially, to
adopt white Anglo-Saxon Protestant customs. The negotiation between as-
similation to white Anglo-Saxon Protestant customs and inassimilable Japa-
neseness became the first major motif for forming Hayakawa’s star persona,

90  C h ap t e r S i x
both on and off the screen. Hayakawa came to embody an image of a suc-
cessfully Americanized immigrant from Asia, beginning with his first star
vehicle, Alien Souls (Frank Reicher, 3 May 1916), and continuing throughout
his Lasky years. In complex manners, these films portrayed the implicit ten-
sions in becoming Americanized: the choices one must make between the
older culture and group and the new, and between the way one views oneself
as either American or ethnic.12
Even though no film print or film script of Alien Souls exists any longer,
Lasky’s strategy of Americanizing Hayakawa’s image in the film is indicated
in reviews. Thomas C. Kennedy of Motography regarded the character that
Hayakawa plays as the paradigmatic Japanese merchant who “would become
American in customs and ideals.”13 The Philadelphia Telegraph also noted,
“An Americanized Japanese gentleman (Sessue Hayakawa) . . . must educate
and support the Japanese daughter (Tsuru Aoki) of a patriarch in old Japan.”14
A still photo published in trade journals with Kennedy’s review emphasizes
Hayakawa’s Americanized image in the film.15 In the photo, Hayakawa is
wearing a suit, sitting at a desk with an open book, and talking with a white
American man. The photo also shows such Japanese-style objects as a vase
and a screen in the background, indicating Hayakawa’s exotic foreignness.
However, these objects are carefully arranged in an American room. They
certainly indicate Japanese Taste in the room but they do not dominate the
space as if emphasizing the exotic and foreign nature of the Japanese charac-
ter. In general, publicity photos tend to emphasize the more spectacular ele-
ments of a star persona and reduce the star’s meaning to certain foundational
essences that lodge quickly and easily in public consciousness.16 The photo
from Alien Souls reprinted in the journal indicates that Americanization was
one of the “spectacular” and “foundational essences” of Hayakawa.
A reviewer wrote, “The bad memory left by Mr. Hayakawa’s villainies has
almost been erased by his splendid heroic work as Sakata in Alien Souls.”17
Another reviewer claimed that Hayakawa’s character “seizes and holds the
[spectators’] sympathy with ease.”18 Hayakawa himself wrote, “It was in Alien
Souls that I was seen in one of my sympathetic roles, and one which helped
redeem me with those who damned me for my portrayal in The Cheat.”19
Thus, Lasky’s strategy to emphasize Americanization and make Hayakawa’s
star image sympathetic and heroic was successfully launched.
Lasky took the same strategy in The Honorable Friend (Edward J. LeSaint,
24 August 1916), the second Hayakawa star vehicle, whose print is lost but
whose script is extant. Contrasting two types of Japanese immigrants, the

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   91
film makes Hayakawa’s character stand out because of his faith in and obe-
dience to the American legal system and his successful assimilation to the
American way of life.
In The Honorable Friend, Hayakawa’s character is portrayed as an ideal
Japanese immigrant, who Americanizes himself by learning American laws
and the American way of life. Hayakawa plays Makino, a young, honest, and
industrious Japanese-American man. Makino works for Kayosho, an old,
ugly, unscrupulous, and greedy Japanese-American art dealer. Kayosho has
an affair with Hana, his servant Goto’s daughter. When Kayosho sees a photo
of Hana’s pretty cousin Toki-ye (Tsuru Aoki), he conspires to make her his
mistress also. Kayosho promises Makino, who is anxious to get married soon,
that he will bring a pretty girl from Japan as Makino’s fiancée. When Toki-ye
arrives in the United States, Kayosho tries to make her his mistress. One
night, Kayosho is found dead. To protect Toki-ye from a police investigation,
Makino tells the police that he murdered Kayosho. Later, Goto confesses to
having murdered Kayosho out of revenge for his daughter, whom Kayosho
had betrayed. Makino is freed and reunites with Toki-ye.
There was a general dramatic approach in films of this era to the portrayal
of immigrants of all ethnicities by dividing them into “good” and “bad” char-
acters. For instance, it is very frequent in D. W. Griffith’s films that deal with
Italians and Chinese. Hayakawa’s role in The Honorable Friend is fit into this
larger pattern. According to Variety, the story of The Honorable Friend “is of
a melodramatic turn.”20 Using the melodramatic binary structure of conflict
between good and evil, The Honorable Friend emphasizes the differences be-
tween the two Japanese immigrant types and characterizes Makino as the
moralistic hero of the film in opposition to the sensual and deceitful villain.
As Japanese immigrants, Kayosho and Makino are the mirror images of
each other. The MPN claims that The Honorable Friend “deals with Japanese
aliens who bring to this country their oriental customs and manners and
who have difficulty in conforming to the occidental idea of law and honor.”21
Only the levels of assimilation to Anglo-American society define the differ-
ences between Makino and Kayosho. One group of “Japanese aliens,” repre-
sented by Makino, tries to “conform to” the American “idea of law and honor”
and to form an ideal American family, fighting against obstruction from the
other group. The other group of immigrants, represented by Kayosho, sticks
to “oriental customs and manners” and consciously violates both American
laws and the U.S.-Japan diplomatic agreement.
The one-page ad for The Honorable Friend in MPN uses photos to visually

92  C h ap t e r S i x
6  An ad for The Honorable Friend. Motion Picture News 14.10 (9 September 1916): 1449.

contrast the favorable and unfavorable images of Japanese immigrants (see

fig. 6). The ad effectively uses racial stereotypes emphasized by makeup,
costumes, and gestures of the actors for this purpose.22 Kayosho, who was
played by a white American actor, Raymond Hatton, wears a luxurious black
Western-style suit, a tie, and a hat. Because of a special makeup his eyes look
extremely slanted. He is grinning, looking up slightly, showing his buck-
teeth, and putting his hands on his fat belly, like an ugly and vulgar nou-
veau riche. His catfish-like mustache is one of the significant visual marks
of Fu Manchu, the notorious Asian character in American pulp novels.23 The
exaggerated ethnic stereotype created by special makeup for a white actor
emphasizes the threat of collapsing nationalities intrinsic to the Fu Manchu
narratives.
In contrast, Makino wears a poor-looking white work shirt. He does not

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   93
have any exaggerated makeup that emphasizes his Japanese traits. He is
young and smiling. Makino also places his hands in front of his body, but his
hands touch each other, as if he were shy and did not know exactly where to
put them.
Similarly, the script of The Honorable Friend clearly differentiates Makino
from Kayosho.24 Following the intertitle, “Kayosho, Japanese-American of
‘honorable’ wealth, dishonorably gained,” Kayosho is introduced in a shot
in which he puts a high price tag on a piece of broken china that he has
dropped. This shot is in accordance with the anti-Japanese discourse in the
Pacific states, which insisted that Japanese immigrants were “dishonorably”
committing to commerce and agriculture in the United States and stealing
jobs and profits from American workers.
Moreover, Kayosho embodies a stereotypical image of the sexually threat-
ening, lustful Oriental male. When he looks at a photo of Toki-ye, he “gloat-
ingly, covertly, moisturizes his thin lips, as he looks greedily at the fresh
beauty of the girl in the picture.” The script stresses that his “Desire Breeds
Cunning.” When Toki-ye arrives in the United States, Kayosho tries to fulfill
his desire in a barbarous manner. The script reads, “Kayosho towers over the
terrified Toki-ye as though about to draw her into his embrace.”
The historian David Grimsted claims that the melodramatic villain’s
“vileness was proved by his deceit toward women.”25 Kayosho deceives two
women for the fulfillment of his sexual desire. This proves his melodramatic
“vileness.” He double-crosses Toki-ye because he sends Makino’s portrait to
her and invites her to America as Makino’s wife, but he has intended to make
Toki-ye his mistress from the very beginning. At the same time, Kayosho has
pledged to wed his servant Goto’s daughter but breaks his vow.
Betraying women, Kayosho simultaneously dishonors the U.S.-Japan diplo-
matic agreement, the 1907–8 Gentlemen’s Agreement, which prohibited un-
married Japanese women from entering the United States. What he practices
is the infamous “picture marriage.” The original purpose of this agreement
was to decrease the number of Japanese laborers, who were blamed by
working-class Americans in the Pacific states for unfairly stealing jobs from
other American laborers.26 The agreement was meant to force single male
laborers to go back to Japan to get married. However, the agreement had a
flaw. It allowed Japanese women to immigrate to the United States as family
members. Picture marriage, which rapidly became popular among Japanese
immigrants in the 1910s, played a role in exploiting this flaw. One character-
istic that facilitated picture marriage was that arranged marriage itself had

94  C h ap t e r S i x
been customary in Japan. Parents often consulted go-betweens to help them
select partners for their sons and daughters. An exchange of photographs
often took place in the screening process. The picture bride practice con-
formed to this marriage custom. The prospective groom in America and the
bride in Japan exchanged their photos before the initial meeting, and even-
tually they got married in Japan only on paper. Then, the brides crossed the
Pacific Ocean. From 1912 to 1919, there were at least 6,321 “picture brides”
who comprised over half of all the married women arriving in the United
States through Seattle and San Francisco.27
No matter how customary arranged marriage was in Japan, some agita-
tors of the anti-Japanese immigrant movement in the United States criticized
the picture bride practice. The large number of anti-Japanese articles in West
Coast newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco
Examiner, contended that the picture bride practice was a strategy to outwit
the agreement. Also, some women’s groups regarded the picture bride cus-
tom as savage human traffic and criticized it as violating “women’s rights.”28
Such negative views on the practice of picture bride marriage tended to en-
force the notion that Japanese people were uncivilized savages who were able
to marry strangers.
Another major issue in the accusation of the picture bride practice was the
supposed high birthrate of Japanese immigrants, “the purported enormous
fertility of Japanese women, when mated to persons of their own race.”29
The increase of the childbirth rate of Japanese immigrants was considered
threatening, especially by white landowners and farmers in the Pacific states.
Even though the 1906 naturalization law did not clearly define the Japanese
as “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” an administrative measure in the Pacific
states regarded that definition as a fact and prohibited Japanese immigrants
from owning land based on the 1913 alien land laws. Yet, this administra-
tive measure was not applied to those newly born Japanese children, because
then, as now, every American-born child was an American citizen by birth.
The actual size of the Japanese population and the amount of land owned
by Japanese immigrants were relatively limited compared with the white
population and land owned by whites.30 However, exclusionist agitators in the
Pacific states tried to connect the threat caused by the increase of American-
born Japanese children and their eventual land ownership to the discourse of
yellow peril. They insisted that those children would not be assimilated into
American society and would become the forerunners of a Japanese invasion
of the United States.

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   95
 In The Honorable Friend, Kayosho is portrayed as the most typical and vul-
gar embodiment of the picture bride practice. Kayosho’s old and ugly appear-
ance relates to numerous incidents in which picture brides arrived in the
United States and discovered that their husbands did not resemble the photo-
graphs they had sent.31 A large portrait of Kayosho on the wall is described in
the script as “even more hideous than Kayosho.” When the heroine Toki-ye
looks at Kayosho’s portrait, she says, “Kayosho is like ape, is he not?”
The narrative of The Honorable Friend emphasizes how Makino, in oppo-
sition to Kayosho, departs from the old Japanese custom and accepts the
American way of life. In the beginning of the film, Makino is characterized as
a man with stereotypical Japanese traits, similar to Kayosho. Makino shows
feudalistic loyalty to his Japanese boss and displays his expertise in Japanese
martial arts. He saves Kayosho from two gangs at the dock using jiu-jitsu.
When Kayosho orders him to treat Toki-ye as a guest, he “respectfully holds
out sword,” and says, “Honorable guest is safe here—none shall intrude.” Ma-
kino here sounds like a samurai with his sword, who is loyal to his ­master.
However, as the narrative progresses, Makino learns American ways.
While Kayosho only uses servants with “Samurai blood” and tries to be like a
feudalistic Japanese lord, Makino has an Irish-American man as his “guard-
ian angel,” who teaches Makino about American lifestyles. He teaches Ma-
kino how to drive a nursery wagon for flowers and instructs him in American
laws on immigration. The Irish-American man, as another new immigrant in
the United States in the late nineteenth century to early twentieth who has
already assimilated into American society, functions as a mentor who has
experienced the Americanization process and helps Americanize Makino, as
Lasky attempted to Americanize Hayakawa’s image.
Another example of Makino’s Americanization process is his American-
style wedding. Makino and Toki-ye marry at the dock in San Francisco in
order to bring her into the United States as his legal wife. Kayosho insists
that this marriage between Makino and Toki-ye is invalid because it was not
done in a Japanese way but in an American manner. Kayosho misrepresents
American law, saying, “The ceremony at the dock is only a part of the Immi-
gration routine. You are not yet legally married.” Despite Kayosho’s efforts at
obstruction, Makino and Toki-ye choose to follow the American way for their
marriage instead of obeying the Japanese method. In a still photo published
in Motography, Kayosho wears a luxurious kimono, while Makino is in a suit
and Toki-ye is in a Western dress. Here, the contrast between Kayosho and

96  C h ap t e r S i x
the newlyweds is visually transferred into the difference between Japanese-
ness and Americanization.32
Makino also facilitates the heroine’s process of Americanization. Makino
shows the heroine around his room while the two are alone, as Tori does to
Edith in The Cheat. Toki-ye is very curious about American domestic objects,
such as a gas stove, an American bed, and so forth. Toki-ye’s Americaniza-
tion process is slow and comical. She uses a dustpan, instead of a cooking
pan, to make a pancake. Makino enjoys explaining how to use the American
products to Toki-ye, much as Tori shows Japanese objets d’art to Edith. How-
ever, unlike Tori, Makino never tries to take advantage of her appreciation of
these things. As a helping hand for Americanizing the female Japanese immi-
grant and rescuing her from the “exploitative” Kayosho, Makino functions as
a teacher of the American lifestyle to a newly arrived Japanese immigrant.
In the end, a baby is born to Makino and Toki-ye. The birth of a Japanese
baby in America was what the yellow peril rhetoric feared most. However, in
The Honorable Friend, this racial issue is cleverly replaced by an image of the
creation of an Americanized family. The MPW published a still photo of the
final scene of the film in its review of The Honorable Friend (see fig. 7).33 The
photo shows a smiling Hayakawa embracing Aoki. Aoki holds a baby with her
left arm and a dog in her right hand. Hayakawa is wearing a black three-piece
suit and tie, and Aoki is in a middy blouse and skirt. Hayakawa is handing a
candy-like toy to the baby. Even though their faces are Asian, their costume,
the bulldog, and their pose, a husband gently embracing his wife, child, and
dog, make them look more like an ideal middle-class American family. This
obvious manner of suggesting an ideal image of a middle-class American
family does not follow the more “restrained” ways in which Japanese hus-
bands of the time should have behaved despite how much they loved their
wives and children. Usually, a husband did not physically embrace his wife in
public in Japan, no matter how deeply he loved her. Most Japanese husbands
at that time did not consider it proper behavior to embrace their wives in
public.
The couple’s Americanized lifestyle was reproduced in fan magazine
articles as the actual life of Mr. and Mrs. Hayakawa in their American-style
bungalow. Lasky’s strategy was to make Hayakawa’s screen persona and his
real-life actor identity go hand in hand in order to form his Americanized star
image. This strategic blurring of the line between the private personality and
the on-screen personality constituted the basis and powerful appeal of movie

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   97
7  A still from The Honorable Friend. Moving Picture World 29.11 (9 September 1916): 1685.

stardom of the period. Hayakawa’s case initiated this consciously confusing

nature of the publicity in film trade journals and fan magazines.
Sociohistorically, in the 1910s before the end of World War I, the nation-
wide discourse on Japan and Japanese immigrants observed in articles in
middle-class magazines was generally positive and sympathetic to Japan and
Japanese immigrants. According to the Nation, the “Japanese problem” in the
United States “almost limits itself to California, where the climate is thor-
oughly congenial to Japanese habits.”34 David Starr Jordan claimed, “Japan
is a nation of hard working people, very peaceful, very poor, very heavily
taxed, with a huge war debt,” and insisted that the “rulers of Japan are saga-
cious and cautious men, largely educated in American universities” and well-
Americanized.35 In August 1913, in an article titled “Can We Assimilate the
Japanese?” the Literary Digest quoted “Mr. Takekoshi, a leading publicist and
a well-known author in Japan” and indicated how the assimilation of Japa-
nese immigrants into American life would become possible. “Mr. Takekoshi”
said, “If assimilation means preference on the part of Japanese for American

98  C h ap t e r S i x
civilization and institutions, political and social, as well as a desire to adapt
themselves to the new surroundings, then the Japanese are assimilable and
are being assimilated.”36
William Elliot Griffis insisted in 1914 that the Japanese “are so wickedly
zealous in reclaiming our waste land, so offensively industrious, and so
shamefully eager to learn our language, read newspapers, patronize libraries
and life-insurance companies, become builders and supporters of Christian
churches.” Overall, Griffis favorably described the Japanese people as eager
to Americanize themselves, despite the fact that his choice of terms such as
“wickedly” and “shamefully” ironically implied his innate unfavorable view of
Japanese people. Griffis claimed that the “recent hostile anti-Japanese legisla-
tion in California—race hatred in its most immoral form—violates in spirit
and letter the treaty with Japan, to which we promised the same treatment as
to ‘the most favored nation.’ ”37 While Kayosho embodies such “wicked” and
“shameful” images of Japanese immigrants, Makino plays a role of recon-
ciling the images of Japanese immigrants with Griffis’s more favorable and
optimistic view. In 1917 Tully C. Knoles wrote that the United States was a
nation composed of people who would love America, respect its government,
and desire to become Americans.38 By emphasizing the process of Ameri-
canization of Makino, who desires to become an American and respect the
American legal system and customs, The Honorable Friend tells an ideal as-
similation narrative of Japanese immigrants into American society. Playing
Makino, Hayakawa’s star image turned from inassimilable Japaneseness to
successful Americanization.
The Honorable Friend was a film written for Hayakawa. Yet, star vehicles
are often based on popular fictions or novels with famous characters. Some-
times, such popular characters are changed into ones that fit stars’ existing
personas and vice versa. Lasky’s strategy of Americanizing Hayakawa’s star
image is observable in one such film, Hashimura Togo (William C. DeMille, 19
August 1917). Hashimura Togo is a film adapted from Wallace Irwin’s popular
short stories, “Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy,” first published in Collier’s on
2 November 1907, and in such publications as the American Magazine, Good
Housekeeping, Sunset, Life, and the New York Times after that.
“Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy” comically tells stories of Hashimura
Togo, “a 35-year-old Japanese schoolboy” in the form of unsolicited letters
from Togo to an editor of a New York newspaper. “Letters” has a form of a
first-person narrative written by a Japanese man, a fictional character created
by an American author. In this form, American views on Japanese people are

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   99
presented as if they are innate Japanese points of view, no matter how imagi-
nary and stereotypical they are. The first-person narrative enhances the fic-
tional authenticity of the stereotypical views and normalizes the alien image
of Japanese people.
In “Letters,” Hashimura Togo is clearly a caricature of inassimilable im-
migrants. Togo keeps being fired from his jobs because of his ignorance of
American customs. For instance, Togo misunderstands what Thanksgiving
Day means. He believes that the Pilgrim Fathers were thankful because they
did not have an appetite when they had no food. Therefore, Togo cannot
understand why his employer serves a huge dinner on Thanksgiving Day.
When the employer’s dog steals a cooked turkey that Togo has left to cool at
a window, everybody gets angry because the Thanksgiving dinner is spoiled.
Togo says, “You should all be very thanksgiving. . . . He [the dog] should
be gave medal of Pilgrim Fathers for eating a bird you would not dare to
bite.”39
Even though Togo is conscious about his alienness as a “heathen” Japa-
nese, he does not intend to change his Japanese way of thinking. In a letter
talking about Christmas in America, Togo writes,

Japanese can not be Christmas persons, thank you. Why so is it? Because Japa-
nese is all heathens, which is not eligible to Christmas present. If Japanese
would obtain valuable presents on this date they must become Christians. This
is too much trouble to do. . . . In getting civilized all over herself must Japan do
this Hon. Christmas also? I do not require this, because many Christmas cus-
toms is not best good for all human races. Therefore Japan can get along more
quicker without Hon. Christmas. . . . I am going to eat like heathen, think like
heathen, act like heathen, so that everything about me shall remain in good-
healthy condition for 4th of July, when it is unnecessary to be a Christian, thank
you.40

Even though Togo supports the value of family as do middle-class Americans,

what he is highly proud of is the feudalistic family system in Japan. Togo
gives advice to a henpecked American husband to be like “a Japanese father.”
Togo says, “Japanese father are steam-roller Czar. Wife are sipposed [sic] to
approach him with frightened elbows, daughter must be sipposed [sic] to ask
for favors and not get it. All parties, presents, etc. are given by him. All ser-
vants must attend his selfishness while neglecting females around house.”

100  C h ap t e r S i x
As a result, Togo is fired, being told by the American husband, “I am very
respectful to your Oriental uncivilization and know what you snuggest [sic]
can be accomplished 10,000 miles distant from New Jersey. . . . And since
you are so crazed about Japan, maybe you should return there and teach Do-
mestic Science where it shall be understood.”41 Thus, “Letters” emphasizes
Togo’s Japanese characteristics that are inassimilable to American customs
and family living. Togo even states that one of the reasons why he has come
to America is “To go back to Japan.”42
The film Hashimura Togo follows such stereotypical views of the original
stories. Lasky’s massive ad campaign for the film emphasized the stereotypi-
cal aspect of Japanese culture. Lasky surely regarded the images of Japan as
marketable product distinction. To publicize the film, letters from Hashimura
Togo in his “twisted” English to exhibitors appeared in major trade journals:
“ ‘Dearest Sir’ Next August P. M. Boss he tell me he release great picture. Him
funny like nothing so much. ‘Togo’ he report ‘this is great statistics which
I make on last Paramount Picture with Mr. Susie [sic] Hayakawa.’ So now,
sh-sh-sh!! a state sneckrut [sic]—get ahead from all picture house in your city.
Hoping you are the same, yours truly ‘Hashimura Togo’ P. S.—I make love
like anything.”43
These ads utilized Japanesque designs, such as bamboo-shaped letters,
illustrations of a Japanese shrine gate, a statue of the Buddha, and so forth,
together with still photos of Hayakawa in a white kimono committing hara-
kiri.44 When the film was released, the NYDM put Hayakawa in a Japanese
kimono on its cover for the first time on 8 September 1917.
According to the script, the film opens with a scene of a tea ceremony in
Japan. A middle-class American mother and her daughter, who are visiting
Japan as tourists, perform the tea ceremony. This opening scene emphasizes
the exotic foreign atmosphere of Japan, viewed from the American perspec-
tive. At the same time, this scene depicts Japanese culture within the middle-
class imaginary framework of refined Japanese Taste.
However, contrary to the ad campaign, which emphasized exotic Japanese
culture in the film, the narrative of Hashimura Togo, a prequel to “Letters,”
which shows how Hashimura Togo came to the United States and started
writing his famous letters to newspapers and magazines, does not empha-
size Hashimura Togo’s Japanese traits. In the film, the Japanese schoolboy’s
inassimilable point of view in the original stories is carefully eliminated. As
a review in MPN correctly suggests, “It is only in the substitutes and the main

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   101
title that the picture discloses a relationship to the popular magazine and
newspaper stories. Togo performs none of the extravagant pieces of foolish-
ness on the celluloid that he did on paper.”45
Instead, the emphasis in the film is on Hashimura Togo’s successful pro-
cess of Americanization. In fact, the film Hashimura Togo upgrades the nega-
tive discourse of Japanese immigrants in American yellow journalism to a
more favorable one. Purposefully or not, this film, as a result of Lasky’s star-
making strategy, offers a more progressive view on racial integration than
the original stories. Even a racist attitude toward the Japanese immigrant is
treated as villainous in Hashimura Togo. A racist chauffeur calls Togo “you
Yeller Peril,” but in the end he comes to respect Togo’s Americanized atti-
tude.
In Hashimura Togo, Young Baron Katzu (Hayakawa) lives in Japan and in-
dustriously studies American language and history. His brother loses his fa-
ther’s important document when he is drunk. A wily old proprietor finds the
document and blackmails Katzu’s father. Katzu is disowned by his father in
place of his brother and decides to go to America. Katzu changes his name to
Hashimura Togo. On his way to America, Togo falls in love with an American
girl, Corinne (Florence Vidor), at first sight. He is so devoted to Corinne on
the ship that she hires him as a servant in her home. Even though Corinne is
in love with a young doctor, Garland, she is forced into an engagement with
Anthony, who secretly forges a document to withdraw all the property from
Corinne and her mother. Togo finds out about the conspiracy and writes to
an American newspaper, explaining the entire situation and demanding that
George Washington stop this marriage. Learning that Washington has been
dead for a long time, he sees a district attorney next. The district attorney and
a newspaper reporter help Togo. In the end, Togo’s father, who has found out
the truth of the stolen document, comes to the United States and forgives
Togo.
According to the script, Katzu is first introduced in a room, surrounded
by Japanese objects. He is “in very dignified native costume, sitting on floor
before ‘alcove’—a recess in the shoji containing [a] figure of large and impres-
sive god. Hanging ‘sacred lamps’ on either side of recess.” Katzu sits in front
of an altar in a room with a tatami floor and shoji screens and looks at a statue
of the Buddha.46 Katzu’s brother, who is not in the room, though, is absorbed
in two Japanese ways of indulgence: sake and geisha.
Even though he is surrounded by these Japanese objects and customs,

102  C h ap t e r S i x
Katzu aspires to Americanize himself. In the introductory scene, the script
describes how Katzu is studying English “laboriously.” In front of Katzu, on
a low Japanese writing table, there is “an open Japanese-English Primer on
[sic] First Reader.” In the following scene, Katzu “delightedly” buys a book,
Life Story of Hon. George Washington: Most Truthful Father in Native Country by
I. Ta-Naka.
When Katzu decides to go to America, he changes his name to Hashi-
mura Togo. This change of name is a sign of his disconnection from his past
in Japan. At this point, Togo’s Americanization is not yet sufficient. He still
shows his attachment to Japanese culture. He does not change his name to a
Western one like George or Abraham. The suit he chooses is too small and is
inappropriate by American standards. Togo packs the English textbook and
the Washington biography, but simultaneously he brings a Japanese white
burial robe and a hara-kiri sword to America.
However, from then on, the film shows how Togo becomes Americanized,
even though in a comical way. Like The Honorable Friend, Hashimura Togo is a
story of a Japanese immigrant who is eager to Americanize himself. As soon
as Togo realizes his suit is improper, he changes it to a cabin boy’s white uni-
form, the only American-style clothing that is available on a ship to America.
After that, he never puts on Japanese dress, except when he attempts to com-
mit hara-kiri for the sake of a white American girl whom he loves.
When Togo is told by an American man, “To get job in America you must
have boastful manuscript telling all things you can do—written by former
boss,” he follows his advice right away. Since he does not have any former
boss, he has to write a letter of recommendation by himself. The content of
the letter implies that Japanese people of the day could not function well in
the United States: “To lady, Dir [sic] Sir: Hire Togo and you will wonder why!
He can cook without pain. O see. See how well he boils pies and other Ameri-
can vegetables. Can ron [sic] furnaces, babies and ottomobiles [sic]. Behaves
like sweetheart to strangers. He will be a nice trial for you. I have know [sic]
Togo since baby. Yours truly, Togo.” Yet, later in the narrative, Togo makes
every effort to learn how to do these things properly.
Togo is hired as a servant by Corinne, a middle-class white woman. Togo
falls in love with Corinne, but contrary to The Cheat, his desire for the white
woman never becomes threatening in this film. As soon as Togo learns that
she loves a young white American doctor, he gives her up. Togo’s attitude
looks moralistic and heroic in contrast to the melodramatic villain of this

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   103
film, who deceives Corinne to obtain her. As in The Honorable Friend, the
vileness of the villain is proven by his deception of women, and the Japanese
hero is clearly contrasted to the villain.
Togo’s heroism mainly comes out of his self-sacrifice for a white American
woman, which is one of the major motifs of Hayakawa’s star vehicles and will
be discussed in the next chapter in detail. The MPW regarded Hashimura Togo
as “a story of attempted sacrifice on the part of Togo to save his family honor,
while he becomes the unwitting instrument of saving an American heroine
from a sacrifice at the altar to save her family honor.”47 In some advertising
photos of the film, Hayakawa protects a woman in a kimono.48 Since the
woman in a kimono is obviously played by a white actress, these photos ap-
pear to show Hayakawa protecting a white woman. This motif of self-sacrifice
for a white woman was not observed in the original stories by Irwin and was
newly added to the film version.
Togo’s heroism is also generated from his Americanized behaviors. He
respects the Founding Fathers of America and is obedient to American laws.
When Togo finds out about the villain’s conspiracy against Corinne, he does
not resort to any Japanese method, using jiu-jitsu or his sword, to solve the
situation, but asks for help from the American legal system and from Ameri-
can journalists. First, he tries to find George Washington for help. Then,
he writes a letter of protest to an American newspaper, not with a Japanese
brush and ink but with a typewriter. In the course of this search, Togo sees
a district attorney. Since Washington has been dead for a long time, Togo’s
act would look silly and inappropriate to American viewers. Hayakawa said
about his characterization of Togo in an interview: “It is not a true Japanese
nobleman to rush into the courts and into the newspapers with his family
troubles.”49 Yet Togo’s behavior indicates his efforts to Americanize himself.
Like Makino in The Honorable Friend, Togo has mentors for his Ameri-
canizing process. The district attorney and the reporter stop Togo from com-
mitting hara-kiri, a Japanese method of suicide. They help Togo deviate from
Japanese customs. In the end, Togo’s “well-fitting American clothes” signify
his successful Americanization and Anglo-conformity.
In the American suit and a pair of black-framed glasses, Hayakawa as
Hashimura Togo looks like Harold Lloyd, a popular comedian with the star
image of a middle-class white-collar worker, or the “city boy next door.” It
is significant that Lloyd suddenly started wearing the pair of horn-rimmed
glasses in a baseball comedy, Over the Fence, and changed his comic per-
sona from the more clownish “Lonesome Luke” to the normally dressed and

104  C h ap t e r S i x
everyday-appearing youth in June 1917, only two months before Hashimura
Togo was released. Lloyd began to merge the physical comedy of slapstick
tradition, which targeted working-class audiences, with the situation com-
edy, which had more realistic characters and events, which middle-class audi-
ences were accustomed to.50 Even though it may not be possible to find any
records of a direct influence of Lloyd’s characters on Hayakawa’s Hashimura
Togo, the comic elements of the film, which relate Hayakawa’s character to
Lloyd, a popular comedian of the time, provide Hayakawa with a more es-
capist image, deviating from the actual sociopolitical issue of Japanese im-
migration. Albert F. McLean Jr., argues in his book on vaudeville in America
that humor based on ethnic stereotypes functioned primarily “to encourage
a sense of community among the diverse groups constituting the American
city.” McLean states, “When this humor began to single out its scapegoats,
and when its appeal became limited to narrow and particular areas of discon-
tent, it was losing its essential character as mass humor.”51 Without “singling
out” a Japanese immigrant as a scapegoat, Hashimura Togo utilizes ethnic
stereotypes to create “mass humor” for middle-class audiences, especially
those in urban areas experiencing ethnic diversity.
Thus, Hashimura Togo is another ideal assimilation narrative of a Japanese
immigrant. In both The Honorable Friend and Hashimura Togo, Lasky made
Hayakawa’s characters heroic and sympathetic by showing their processes
of Americanization in their lifestyles and in their obedience to American
law and order. Hayakawa’s characters obtain higher positions in the racial
hierarchy than other nonwhite characters because they make every effort to
Americanize themselves. Lasky’s star-making strategy on Hayakawa began
in this manner, focusing on Americanization.

A n A m e r i c an i z e d J ap an e s e G e nt l e m an   105
 « 7 »

M o r e Am e r i c a n i z e d
than the Mexican

The Melodrama of Self-Sacrifice and the

Genteel Tradition in Forbidden Paths

​A ​ccording to the film scholar Linda Williams, melodrama has been “a

​central mode of American popular culture” since the mid-nineteenth
​century, “a major force of moral reasoning in American mass cul-
ture,” and “the basic vernacular of American moving pictures.”1 In fact, Lasky
used the melodramatic structure in many of Hayakawa’s star vehicles. It was
a common device to provide the status of melodramatic heroes to stars all
through the silent period. This strategy of Lasky was again meant to make
Hayakawa’s star image heroic and sympathetic.
Williams also points out melodrama’s “incalculable influence on Ameri-
can attitudes toward race.” In American melodramas with black and white
characters, “the emotionally charged ‘moral legibility’ . . . [that is] so crucial
to the mode of melodrama is intrinsically linked to a ‘racial legibility’ that
habitually sees a Manichaean good or evil in the visual ‘fact’ of race itself.”
According to Williams, the dynamics of American melodramas with black
and white characters make the viewers “feel for the raced and gendered suf-
ferings of some and to hate the raced and gendered villainy of others.”2
In Hayakawa’s star vehicles, racial issues are almost always connected to
moral issues. Through self-sacrifice and self-victimization, the virtues of the
nonwhite characters played by Hayakawa are recognized. As a result, they
earn the sympathy of other characters and the viewers. Even when Hayakawa
played villains, Lasky characterized them as racially beset virtuous victims, in
order to make them sympathetic and heroic.
One of the major thematic motifs in melodrama is a hero’s self-sacrifice,
especially for a white woman. At the same time, the film historian Robert
Sklar claims that noble sacrifice of oneself for womanhood or honor was a
major character trait of the romantic hero of the genteel tradition, which
was “so ubiquitous a part of American culture as it was like air” for about
half a century until World War I.3 According to Sklar, the aim of genteel cul-
ture was “to teach how to behave, and to do so in the guise of disinterested
benevolence—or of noble self-sacrifice. The ultimate weapon of control was
the censorious power of social opinion, but the everyday forms of persua-
sion and manipulation were the schools, literature, the press, the pulpit. The
basic trick, the most subtle and challenging, was getting people to adopt the
desired manners and morals as if they had been spontaneously generated
and freely accepted from within.”4 The genteel tradition was a conservative
attempt at social control by middle-class Americans, who faced such social
issues as the arrival of new immigrants, the rise of the New Woman, urbani-
zation, and industrialization.5
Motion pictures became one of such “everyday forms of persuasion” in
the genteel tradition. In the movement toward refinement for middle-class
audiences, the film industry took part in the genteel tradition. Hayakawa’s
star image followed the romantic heroes of the genteel tradition to a certain
degree, with the melodramatic motif of self-sacrifice.
In fact, the motif of self-sacrifice was very useful for the creation of Haya‑
kawa’s star image. It could place Hayakawa’s nonwhite characters at the
moral center of the narrative while keeping them out of full assimilation
into American society and prohibiting them from interracial marriages. If
Hayakawa’s romantic heroes of the genteel tradition sacrifice themselves
and die for the good of white American women, such anxiety as that caused
by miscegenation will never occur. Sklar argues, “Danger and sexual allure
are not alien to the genteel romantic hero in his performer’s role.”6 Even
when Hayakawa’s characters show any sexual threat to white American hero-
ines, the motif of self-sacrifice compensates for the “danger and sexual al-
lure” in the end. With this motif, Hayakawa’s characters became safely desir-
able for the middle-class white women on the screen and for the middle-class
audiences. Hayakawa’s nonwhite heroes gain the hearts of white women, and
their places in America, with their self-sacrificial deaths. Consequently, the
status quo of white American society is maintained because the inassimi-
lable nonwhite characters willingly destroy themselves. While Tori in The
Cheat is capable of social assimilation but remains morally inassimilable, the
motif of self-sacrifice can make Hayakawa’s characters morally assimilable
but racially inassimilable in American society. There is no room for fearing
that nonwhite men might ascend the steps of the racial and class hierarchy.

M ore A m e r i c an i z e d t h an t he M ex i c an   107
The boundaries posed by race and by conventional morality of the genteel
tradition are entirely insurmountable. Thus, the motif of self-sacrifice, which
serves to maintain the genteel American racial and social order, could safely
provide Hayakawa with a high degree of moral stature.
Another use for the motif of self-sacrifice is to maintain the unique Japa-
nese traits in Hayakawa’s star image for the purpose of product differentia-
tion. The motif of self-sacrifice connected Hayakawa to the traditional Japa-
nese idea of bushido, the code of samurai, one of the stereotypical images
of the Japanese people. In the thought of bushido, a samurai warrior should
serve his master for life and be willing to sacrifice himself for the honor
of his family name.7 Lasky and Paramount, the distributor, had publicized
the notion of self-sacrifice as one of the prominent traits of Japanese men.
In its own promotional magazine, Paramount reported that a “magazine
writer, while presenting ‘Japan’s Commercial Crisis’ recently, had this to say:
‘Woman has no place in the much-talked-of and boasted ‘bushido,’ or self-
sacrifice of the man.”8 Here, the notion of self-sacrifice was treated as a syn-
onym of bushido, which was already “much-talked-of” as a trait of Japanese
men.
The motif of self-sacrifice was also a typical device in romances of chivalry
used to turn a masculine protagonist, who is at the beginning of the story
misogynistic, brutal, and terrorizing, into a hero genteelly devoted to con-
cern for a heroine’s pleasure. T. J. Jackson Lears argues that bushido and Euro-
pean chivalry were integrated into American anti-modernist thought in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in terms of the notion of self-
sacrifice.9 This coincidence of values, despite their different cultural origins,
was conceived as another convenient proof given for the popular discourse
that regarded the Japanese people as closer to whites than other nonwhites.
Along with this mechanism, which enhanced Japan’s position in the racial
hierarchy, the motif of self-sacrifice even placed Hayakawa’s nonwhite char-
acters within the tradition of European chivalry.
In Forbidden Paths (Robert T. Thornby, 5 July 1917), Hayakawa’s charac-
ter becomes sympathetic, moralistic, and heroic mainly because of his self-
sacrificial act for a white woman and for a white American family. This act
favorably distinguishes Hayakawa’s character from other nonwhite charac-
ters in this film. Yet, eventually, this motif of self-sacrifice prevents Haya‑
kawa’s character from completely assimilating into American society.
In Forbidden Paths, Hayakawa plays Sato, a young Japanese man who is
a devoted assistant of James Thornton, a wealthy white American importer

108  C h ap t e r S e v e n
of Japanese art in San Francisco. Sato secretly loves Thornton’s daughter
Mildred, but Mildred loves Harry Maxwell, a young white American diplo-
mat. In Mexico, Harry is seduced by Benita Ramirez, “the most notorious
woman in the capital” of Mexico, and marries her.10 When Harry realizes
Benita is unfaithful, he leaves Mexico. In San Francisco, when Thornton dies,
he asks Sato to take care of his business. Harry sees Mildred again, but Benita
comes from Mexico to bring back her husband. Sato gets angry at Harry be-
cause he betrayed Mildred, but he decides to sacrifice himself to Mildred’s
love for Harry. Sato seduces Benita onto a boat and sinks the boat in the
middle of the ocean.
One of the most obvious narrative devices in Forbidden Paths that serves
to make Hayakawa’s character sympathetic is the melodramatic binary struc-
ture between good and evil. The binary line is drawn between the two non-
white characters, in terms of their relationships to a white American family.
While Sato devotes himself to the happiness of a white American family,
Benita seduces a young American man and endangers the formation of a
white American family. The continuous use of the parallel editing tech-
nique throughout this film emphasizes the distinct contrast between Sato
and Benita. In this melodramatic structure, Japanese people, represented by
Sato, occupy a more favorable position than Mexican people, represented by
Benita. Not only are national, racial, and cultural stereotyping used here, but
so too are gender politics: the nonwhite male is more highly regarded than
the nonwhite female. However, Sato is never fully accepted into American
society. A racial hierarchy is formed among Japanese, Mexican, and white
American people.
The cross-cutting that opens the film emphasizes the distinction between
the two nonwhite characters. In Mexico City, the extravagantly but indecently
gowned Benita drinks liquor in a squalid bar and mingles with Luis Valdez,
“Her Latest Conquest,” according to the intertitle. In San Francisco, James
Thornton admires a Japanese-style pot in front of a small statue of a Japanese
god, and Mildred in a Japanese-style kimono enjoys a branch of a cherry tree
in blossom in a Japanese-style vase. While Mexican culture is introduced as
dirty and sexually indulgent, Japanese culture is so refined that white Ameri-
can people can appreciate it without lowering themselves. Nevertheless,
Japanese culture here stays in an inferior position. It is commodified and
consumed by white Americans as a refined but exotic art form and safely
incorporated into the middle-class American family space. The script em-
phasizes that Mildred, like her father, “loves the Art of Old Japan.” The way

M ore A m e r i c an i z e d t h an t he M ex i c an   109
Thornton and Mildred appreciate Japanese artifacts literally represents Japa-
nese Taste, which was so influential among white middle-class American
families.
Together with Japanese objets d’art, Sato, the Japanese assistant, is safely
accepted both in a white American family space, the realm of women accord-
ing to the discourse on the cult of domesticity, and in an American business
space, the realm of men. First, Sato in a kimono teaches Mildred how to draw
a picture on a plate, using a Japanese brush, in his Japanese-style room in
Thornton’s house. Sato’s room is furnished with a shoji screen, a pot, and a
Japanese-style desk. A Japanese stone lantern and a plum tree in Thornton’s
garden behind the shoji screen are also observable. Despite this intimate
atmosphere, like Tori and Edith in a Japanese room in The Cheat, there is no
sexual tension between Sato and Mildred.11 Mildred never regards Sato as her
love or sexual interest. For Mildred, as the script states, Sato is just “Good
Old Sato.”
At the same time, Sato is depicted as a repressed, or even castrated, per-
son. Sato feels sexual attraction toward Mildred, but it is always curtailed.
With this desexualized characterization, Hayakawa’s star image is safely im-
mune from the fear of miscegenation. Moreover, Hayakawa’s character ob-
tains a genteel image of chivalry. The hero is masculine enough to remove a
threat to the heroine but is rather feminine when it comes to romance. In the
case of Hayakawa, there is no actual romance between the hero and the hero-
ine in the film. The Japanese hero literally sacrifices himself for the heroine.
The hero’s repression is a major characteristic of Hayakawa’s star vehicles.
In regard to Sato’s repression, in one scene, when Sato hears Mildred
come into his room, he cannot even turn to her at first. He keeps looking
down shyly. He can only say, “Today, in Japan, begins the Fete [Festival] of the
Cherry Blossoms.” He finally turns to her, but he looks down to a pot that he
has at hand and draws something on it with a brush. Shots of the sensual-
looking Benita and her boyfriend with a dark beard who says brutally, “Your
smiles belong to me—I pay for them,” are inserted several times into this
sequence and create a clear contrast between the sensual Mexicans and de-
sexualized Sato.
Sato is also accepted into an American business space without any sign of
difficulty. The narrative of Forbidden Paths carefully avoids anxiety about any
possible economic yellow peril, in addition to the sexual one—fear of mis-
cegenation—in the domestic sphere. Sato is faithful to Thornton. He never
shows any ambition to take over Thornton’s business. When Thornton tells

110  C h ap t e r S e v e n
Sato, “Sato, you’re a better business man than I am—I have decided to make
you an equal partner,” Sato is simply astonished. The script states, “His face
loses its Oriental inscrutability overcome with the honor.”
Moreover, Sato is depicted as Americanized enough to succeed in Thorn-
ton’s business. Symbolically, Sato never wears a Japanese kimono when he
works in Thornton’s shop. When Sato accepts Thornton’s offer by shaking
hands, he shows his feelings outwardly, not like a stereotypically restrained
Japanese man. He looks like an American businessman in a black tuxedo
suit. The script even uses a Christian religious term to describe how Sato
takes Thornton’s hands when he accepts the offer. It is “as if he were fulfilling
a sacrament.”
A parallel editing in the following scene, between the two couples, Sato
and Mildred in San Francisco, and Benita and Harry in Mexico, reinforces the
contrast between the desexualized Japanese man and the sensual Mexican
woman. In Thornton’s garden, Mildred prepares Japanese tea while wearing a
kimono. She turns around and shows the obi of her kimono to Sato. Sato first
shows his embarrassment but then happily looks at Mildred in kimono in his
point-of-view shot. He says, “You are very beautiful, little Cherry Blossom.”
Here, for the first time, the subject-object relationship between Mildred and
Sato is reversed. Mildred becomes objectified in Sato’s gaze. Yet, this reversal
of their positions becomes possible only because she has put on Japanese
commodities and has “Japanized” herself. She takes on the stereotypical role
of an obedient Oriental woman. Sato symbolically takes off his kimono-style
gown before he comes out to join Mildred in this scene. Sato is in West-
ern clothes, while Mildred is in a Japanese kimono. Sato’s Americanized ap-
pearance allows him to be in a superior subjective position over Japanized
Mildred.
In this complicated racial masquerade, a sexual tension, or the anxiety of
miscegenation, between the white woman and the nonwhite man comes to
the surface for the first and only time in Forbidden Paths. Mildred’s Japanese
kimono hides her normally superior white position to Sato, who is wearing
a Western suit, and thus almost reverses the power relationship between the
two. Sato leans toward Mildred. His hand touches Mildred’s on the table for
the first time. Their hands are shown in an irised close-up. According to the
script, a “wild hope flares in his breast. She does not realize this. Sato almost
loses control of himself.” Sato comes close to crossing the prohibited line of
miscegenation because of Mildred’s masquerade, imitating in her imagery an
obedient Japanese woman.

M ore A m e r i c an i z e d t h an t he M ex i c an   111
 However, Sato abruptly stops his act himself. According to the script,
when Sato looks at their hands in his point of view, their hands’ “difference
brings to his mind the difference of race.” A stern expression comes back to
his face. He moves his hand away from Mildred’s. Mildred restarts preparing
tea as if nothing has happened. This complex masquerade scene depicts Sato
not only as a desexualized man who attempts to reject his sexual impulse
toward Mildred but also as a man of restraint who consciously maintains the
unconquerable barrier of different races in American society. In other words,
a racialized object, Sato’s hand, controls his emotion here. Sato is depicted
not only as a person who can perfectly control his feelings but also as a man
who perfectly understands the ideology of race and the unsurpassable power
relations between white and nonwhite, subject and object. Sato remains safe
and faithful to the white American family. Sato’s desexualized status in the
narrative does not allow him to approach Mildred, and simultaneously his
well-tempered self as an Americanized gentleman forbids him to take advan-
tage of the Japanized Mildred.
In contrast, Benita seduces Harry in her room, “furnished garishly and
untidy. Bottle, cigarettes, ashes, etc.,” contrary to the gay and beautiful Japa-
nese flower garden in San Francisco. Benita cunningly appeals to Harry’s
imperialist point of view. From the beginning, Harry is portrayed as a young
and naïve American imperialist with a “slight shade of race prejudice.” He
dreams of Mexican people obeying him. In this sense, no matter how inno-
cent and naïve, Harry, in contrast to Sato, is ignorant and exploitative about
the racial hierarchy. At Benita’s place, Harry tries to save Benita from Valdez,
a sexually abusive Mexican man. Listening to Benita’s honeyed words filled
with racism, “Ah Señor—men of your race are so quick to protect the weak
and innocent,” Harry becomes overjoyed. As Mildred imitates a Japanese
girl, Benita pretends to be a coy and bashful Mexican girl. She keeps tempt-
ing Harry by saying, “I couldn’t go out alone, señor.” Sato can control him-
self not to make advances to a woman, even when he appears to be in a su-
perior position to her because of their racial masquerade. In contrast, Benita
skillfully makes advances to a naïve man and Harry easily yields to Benita’s
temptation, which appeals to his superior position vis-à-vis his gender and
race. She purposefully emphasizes her victimized position as a doubly in-
ferior existence: nonwhite and female. Benita lures Harry and forces him
to protect her. Harry is trapped by Benita’s seduction. He kisses Benita and
proposes to her. “Marry me. Let me protect you.” When Harry leaves, Benita
becomes triumphant and says, “I’ve got him.” Contrary to Sato, Benita thus

112  C h ap t e r S e v e n
represents the sexually threatening aspect of nonwhite people. Harry and
Benita’s wedding in Mexico is cross-cut with the scene in San Francisco in
which Thornton is dying. The trouble at home enhances the vicious atmo-
sphere in Mexico City.
Moreover, Benita threatens the monogamy of the American family sys-
tem. She seduces a young and naïve white American man, even when she has
a Mexican husband. At Harry’s and Benita’s wedding, the American ambassa-
dor angrily says to Benita, “Tell him you are married to Luis Valdez!” Benita
does not give up and says to Harry, “It’s true what he says, but I love you!”
Seeing Harry still disappointed, she threatens Harry by saying, “You lied to
me. I’m your wife. You can’t undo that.”
In addition to the cross-cutting technique, the narrational focalization dif-
ferentiates Hayakawa’s character from Benita’s.12 The main focalization in
the narrative of Forbidden Paths goes to Sato and constructs Sato as a main
character with a full psychological development beyond just a stereotypical
representation as with Benita.
First, the longest screen time is given to Sato, clearly indicating that he
is the protagonist of the film, even though the opening credit states, “Vivian
Martin supported by Sessue Hayakawa.” Since Hayakawa is the star of the
film, this credit also implies the motif of a nonwhite man’s self-sacrificial
“support” of a white woman.
Second, all of the point-of-view shots in the film are from Sato. Point-of-
view shots lead particular characters to be narrative agencies of the films.
Sometimes, point-of-view shots even create a way for the audience to psycho-
logically identify with or sympathize with the characters, because they usually
place the viewers in the identical position with the characters in terms of
their visual perspectives. In comparison, there is no point-of-view shot pro-
vided for other major characters, Mildred, Harry, or Benita. In this sense,
they are objectified characters from the focalized perspective of Sato: the one
to sacrifice himself for (Mildred), the one to save from evil (Harry), and the
one to eliminate from American society (Benita).
Third, most of the close-ups in Forbidden Paths are of Sato’s face. Not only
is Sato’s visual point of view often provided, but also his facial expressions are
clearly displayed many times and eloquently indicate his psychological state
or his emotions.
The focalization on Sato is particularly enhanced in a scene in which he
observes a quarrel between Benita and Mildred from behind a curtain. The
repeated close-ups of Sato and his point-of-view shots depict his gradual

M ore A m e r i c an i z e d t h an t he M ex i c an   113
psychological development until he comes to realize that “Love is Sacrifice.”
In this scene, Sato is visually and stylistically connected to the thematic motif
of the film: self-sacrifice for a white woman.
The first close-up of Sato shows his stern expression, raising his left eye-
brow slightly. In the next close-up, after Benita tells Mildred, “Love him—till
your heart breaks—you’ll never get him,” Sato squints, grabs a curtain with
his right hand, and makes a cold-hearted expression. In Sato’s point-of-view
shots, Benita is seen as a melodramatically evil character enjoying the fright
of her victim. Even after knowing Mildred’s devotion to Harry, Benita does
not become remorseful and cease her revenge. Then, after Benita says, “Love
is sacrifice—if you want him, you’ll have to be—what I was [a mistress],” Sato
opens his eyes wide, clenches his teeth, frowns, closes his mouth tightly, and
squints. This close-up of Sato indicates his fury against Benita, but, at the
same time, it implies his astonishment at the words “Love is sacrifice,” which
have come from Benita’s mouth, because that is the rule that he is to obey.
Sato then hears Mildred make up her mind and say, “Love is sacrifice—
I will go with him.” Sato frowns several times and, finally, achieves a con-
cretely decisive expression. The thematic line “Love is sacrifice” is delivered
by Benita and Mildred, but it is Sato who shows his sacrificial act for his love.
He leaves the room with dignity to go to a climactic showdown with Benita,
the melodramatic encounter between the Americanized hero versus the inas-
similable villain. Sato puts on a black bow tie and formal dress, as if attempt-
ing to show his complete Americanization.
Yet, the Japanese character’s Americanization is achieved in a twisted
manner. The finale of Forbidden Paths even uses such stereotypical images of
Japan as the embodiment of threatening sensuality to make the motif of self-
sacrifice more dramatic. Sato approaches Benita, using his sensual appeal.
They sit on a sofa. Sato lights a cigarette for Benita in a very polished way and
says to her, “Our interests lie together. I have come to help you. Your husband
is in the position of my worst enemy.” The strong lighting from above and
below creates stripes of shadows on his face, which may remind the viewers
of Tori in The Cheat. Sato comes near to her, looks ardently at her, and says,
“If your husband does not appreciate your beauty there is one who does.” In
the script, Sato’s approach to Benita is written in more direct mode. Sato says,
“Your beauty is maddening.” Benita answers, “Not so fast.” At this point,
the viewers do not know whether Sato’s act is for the purpose of protecting
Mildred and Harry from the evil nonwhite woman. Since Sato never clearly
declares his self-sacrificing aim in words at this point, Sato’s true intention

114  C h ap t e r S e v e n
remains ambiguous. There is a possibility that Sato will betray Mildred to
take advantage of her.
Eventually, both Sato’s Americanized aspect, which has been established
early in the narrative and signified by his American costume, and his stereo-
typical Japanese traits, indicated by his conspiring sensual behavior, are inter-
twined in his self-sacrificial act for a white woman. Sato, in the clothes of a
Western leisure-class gentleman, with a hunting cap and leather gloves, visits
Benita, with a gentle smile on his face. He cheerfully says to her, “It is too
beautiful a day to remain indoors, Señora. You like yachting—a motor boat?”
Once she turns her back to him, his disguise as an Americanized gentleman
is gone. Sato grins and his expression indicates that he has a secret scheme.
When Benita is pleased and goes out of the room, Sato starts writing a letter
and asks a servant to deliver it to Mildred. The intertitle reads “The Greater
Love.”
The parallel editing shows the anguish of the young white American
couple in opposition to the apparent joy of the nonwhite couple. This par-
allel editing emphasizes the greater price that Sato is ready to pay for “The
Greater Love.” While Mildred and Harry hold each other in tears, Sato throws
away the steering wheel and pulls off the stopper at the bottom of the boat,
avoiding Benita, who resists and cries out, “Why do you do this?” Black water
comes into the boat. Sato shakes off her hands and says impassively, “I love
her.” When Benita prays with her knees already under water, the letter from
Sato reaches Mildred: “Little Cherry Blossom: When you receive this—you
will not have loved in vain. Sato.” The shot of a life buoy, an oar, and Sato’s
hunting cap is inserted. Mildred shows a mournful expression for a while,
but Harry turns to her with a cheerful smile.
With his own death, Sato accomplishes his mission, “love-is-sacrifice,” for
Mildred and his duty to Thornton, who has helped him to live in American
society. Not only does Sato eliminate the unwelcome nonwhite alien to pro-
tect the white American family, but also he makes up for the mistake that the
naïve white American imperialist (Harry) has made. Thanks to the suicidal
act carried out by Sato, Harry’s error, caused by his imperialistic naïveté and
by the devious act of a nonwhite evil woman, is compensated. Sato provides
an opportunity for Harry, the imperialist and racist, to change into an ideal
husband in a white American family. According to the script, even Benita,
an unwelcome immigrant to the United States, “is fascinated by his calm.”
She becomes “overcome with wonder and into her mind creeps a realization
of how great is this man’s love and how petty her own. . . . She looks into his

M ore A m e r i c an i z e d t h an t he M ex i c an   115
face, admiration growing on her own.” Sato eliminates the seductive Mexican
woman from America. At the same time, he even educates her to understand
the American way of thinking about love and family.
Forbidden Paths is a tragedy of interracial romance. Yet, at the same time,
it is a morality tale, in which a nonwhite man devotes himself to protecting a
young white American couple from a devious outsider and helps them form
an ideal American family. It is indicative that the credit of Forbidden Paths de-
clares, “Vivian Martin supported by Sessue Hayakawa,” despite the fact that
this film is a Hayakawa star vehicle, according to the listings in trade jour-
nals. William Elliot Griffis wrote in his pro-Japanese essay in North American
Review in 1914, “We need the Orientals among us for our refinement and best
development.”13 Hayakawa’s character in Forbidden Paths works for a white
man’s “refinement and best development” as the moral center of such a nar-
rative.
There is a definite racial hierarchy among the Thorntons (James, Mildred,
and her future husband Harry), Sato, and Benita. Sato occupies a more
morally civilized and socially Americanized position than the other nonwhite
people. Sato’s act is chivalrous in a European sense. Simultaneously, it can
be derived from the feudalistic notion of bushido, which requires subjects
to devote their lives to their lords. Sato faithfully obeys his master’s will to
look after his daughter. Sato’s self-sacrificial decision functions to maintain
the status quo of the white American family system, but, simultaneously, it
can be regarded as a primitive act. Thus, the motif of self-sacrifice in Forbid-
den Paths is a valuable device to naturalize the racial hierarchy that prohibits
interracial romance, avoids miscegenation, and keeps nonwhite people out of
white American society.
The reviews of Forbidden Paths in trade journals indicate that the motif of
self-sacrifice was considered to be effective in making Hayakawa’s star per-
sona heroic and sympathetic. The NYDM stated, “It [Forbidden Paths] presents
Sessue Hayakawa in one of his most sympathetic and touching roles. . . .
[The situations of the plot] end in a tragic solution with the Oriental idea of
poetic justice.”14 The MPN also claims it is “a powerfully dramatic story that
has as its climax the well-known Japanese personal loyalty equal even to the
sacrifice of life itself—in this case for his love of an American girl whom he
cannot honorably seek in marriage because of his race.”15 Thus, the motif of
self-sacrifice was explicitly and overtly used to enhance Hayakawa’s heroic
and sympathetic star image based on the racial hierarchy.

116  C h ap t e r S e v e n
 « 8 »

S y m pat h e t i c V i l l a i n s
and Victim-Heroes

The Soul of Kura San and The Call of the East

​A ​fter The Cheat, some spectators wanted Hayakawa to play villain‑

​ous roles and Lasky dared not completely ignore their demand. The
​popular reception of Hayakawa’s first two vehicles, Alien Souls and
The Honorable Friend, in which Hayakawa played Americanized heroes, had
been merely “not bad.” Beginning 14 September 1916, a trade journal, Wid’s
Films and Film Folk Independent Criticisms of Features, published weekly ex-
hibitors’ reports on the number of “pleased patrons” and “box office” by per-
centage. “Exceptional” was 100 percent, “Excellent” 80 percent, and “Poor”
20 percent.1 Wid’s reports may not have been factually accurate, but they
surely convey certain tendencies of industrial practices consistent with the
discourses of exhibitors. According to Wid’s, The Cheat received sixteen re-
ports by 1 February 1917, and the average “pleased patrons” figure was 94
percent, more than “Excellent.”2 In contrast, the average “pleased patrons”
figures of Alien Souls, based on twelve reports, and of The Honorable Friend,
based on twenty-one reports, were 69 percent and 65 percent respectively.3
The Soul of Kura San (Edward J. LeSaint, 30 October 1916), in which Haya-
kawa played a villainous role for the first time in his star vehicles after The
Cheat, received a better figure, 90 percent, from four reports.4 The New York
Times noted that Hayakawa’s role in The Cheat was “better adapted to his tal-
ents” than that in Alien Souls.5 Consequently, Lasky began to provide Haya-
kawa with more villainous roles.
However, in the context of legitimization of cinema, film studios ascribed
their stars with images consistent with middle-class morality, even when they
played villainous roles. Hayakawa, especially given his non-American nation-
ality, should not have been exceptional. A trade journal reported that The
Soul of Kura San “is a picture that ought to have a wide appeal, especially to
people of refinement.”6 As this report suggests, Lasky took a specific strategy
to make Hayakawa’s nonwhite characters moralistic and sympathetic, in
spite of their vileness. Lasky again utilized the melodramatic structure and
its major motif of self-sacrifice for this purpose. Lasky provided Hayakawa
with roles of racially beset victims with virtues the audiences could relate to,
thus making the characters sympathetic and heroic for genteel middle-class
viewers.
In most cases, Hayakawa’s villainous nonwhite characters are not ulti-
mately evil from the beginnings of the films to the ends. They usually trans-
form themselves twice in the narratives. In most cases, they become villainous
to enact revenge on the racist and imperialist white American male charac-
ters, but, in the end, they turn remorseful for their vengeful thoughts after
being moved by the pure love of white heroines. They accept their victimized
position in white American society and often decide to sacrifice themselves
to help white middle-class families. These transformations in the narratives
differentiate Hayakawa’s characters in his star vehicles from his villainous
role in The Cheat, where the Japanese character expresses no remorse and is
punished by white American men.
In these narratives, the racism and imperialism of white American male
characters, which make Hayakawa’s characters villainous and vengeful, are
not seriously questioned. The main issue of these stories is whether, and
how, the villainous characters accept their victimized positions. Conversion
narratives then substitute for revenge stories. The motif of self-sacrifice for
white women makes this conversion possible. Hayakawa’s characters give up
their vengeful desires because of white women’s devotion or petition for their
loved ones. Through victimization and self-sacrifice, the victim-heroes played
by Hayakawa achieve recognition of their inner virtue, earn moral sympathy,
and find their appropriate positions in America. In this manner, the status
quo of white male dominance in American society is safely maintained.
The Soul of Kura San and The Call of the East (George H. Melford, 15 Octo-
ber 1917) are typical films in which Hayakawa played villainous victim-hero
roles.7 In The Soul of Kura San, Hayakawa plays Toyo, a young Japanese man,
who is in love with Kura San (Aoki). Kura San’s greedy father prohibits their
love affair only because Toyo is poor. When Toyo and Kura San attempt double
suicide out of despair, Toyo receives news that he will inherit his uncle’s busi-
ness in America. Toyo asks Kura San to wait for him until he becomes rich in
America. However, Kura San’s father hides all of Toyo’s letters from America

118  C h ap t e r E i gh t
and forges a letter saying that Toyo is getting married there. Kura San is
heartbroken and becomes a geisha. When she poses for an American artist,
Graham, as a model, Graham takes advantage of her, even though he has a
fiancée in America. When Toyo returns from America, Kura San commits
suicide out of shame. After Kura San’s death, Toyo goes back to America to
take revenge on Graham. Using his wealth, Toyo seduces Anne, Graham’s
fiancée. As he is on the verge of murdering Anne and Graham, Toyo’s con-
science comes back, only because of Anne’s devotion for Graham. He for-
gives Graham and kills himself at the foot of the portrait of Kura San.
In The Call of the East, Hayakawa plays Takada, a young Japanese aristocrat,
who falls in love with Sheila, an American woman who is visiting Japan. At
a street festival in Tokyo, Takada mistakes Sheila as Japanese because she is
in a Japanese kimono. Sheila falls in love with Takada, too. In the meantime,
Alan, Sheila’s brother, makes love to Omitsu (Aoki), Takada’s sister, just for
fun. Takada plots revenge on Alan and his sister, not knowing that his sis-
ter is Sheila. After running Alan into debt by cards, Takada takes Alan to
his home on a distant island, Hakoshima, and tortures him. Hearing from
Omitsu, who loves Alan in spite of what he has done to her, Sheila sails to
the island. When Takada learns that Sheila is Alan’s sister, he forgives Alan
because of Sheila’s devotion to her brother. Takada also decides to give up his
love for Sheila because of their racial differences. However, Alan tells them
that Sheila is half-Japanese.
Both The Soul of Kura San and The Call of the East follow The Cheat in
the characterizations of the Japanese protagonists: the simultaneous embodi-
ment of a refined American lifestyle on the surface and of ultimate inassimi-
lable and threatening Japaneseness at the core.8 The villainy of these protago-
nists stems from their double identities. In The Soul of Kura San, Toyo looks
Americanized in a “natty American business suit” in his office in America.
Furniture, files, phone, and so forth, are “up-to-date and prosperous look-
ing.” The script clearly notes that the “only Japanese flavor [in his office] is
from objects of art, scattering about . . . evidently not part of the permanent
furniture.” In contrast, Toyo’s private room, which signifies his hidden self, is
described as a “Japanese room, richly furnished according to Japanese ideas
which preclude crowding or over-ornamentation.”
When he becomes vengeful, Toyo turns into a typical yellow peril villain
like Tori in The Cheat. Toyo’s vileness is described in the script in sexually
threatening terms. “Toyo grimly eyes painting (CU [close-up]). A vision of
Anne disheveled, clothes torn as if in struggle, face tear-stained and convulsed

S y m p a t he t i c V i l l a in s and V i c t i m - H e ro e s   119
with horror and shame. Toyo bestial expression, crouches to spring upon her
(FI, FO [fade-in, fade-out]).” Toyo seduces a white American woman with his
masquerade as a refined Americanized gentleman, as Tori does. The heroine
Anne is characterized as a New Woman, like Edith in The Cheat. She is intro-
duced in the film as a connoisseur of Japanese art. She joyfully purchases an
“antique Japanese bronze” at a shop filled with such Japanese art objects as
a “big, forbidding figure of warrior or athlete.” Graham, Anne’s fiancé, like
Richard in The Cheat, becomes jealous of Toyo, the rich and refined art dealer,
who offers luxury to Anne.
The villainous aspect of Toyo’s character bursts out on the eve of the wed-
ding between Anne and Graham. Disguising his vengeful thoughts with
“respectful, friendly intimacy,” Toyo invites Anne to his place to show her
the portrait of Kura San painted by Graham. When they are alone in Toyo’s
private room, Toyo “gazes passionately into her face” and “laughs savagely.”
Even though Anne becomes terrified by Toyo’s fiercely implacable look and
pleads for mercy, he attacks her, tears the clothes from her neck and shoul-
ders, and kisses them fiercely until she faints. Toyo appears to rape Anne, as
Tori does to Edith in The Cheat. A still photo used in a one-page ad of The Soul
of Kura San emphasizes the twofold image of Hayakawa’s character, refined
on the surface and threatening to a white woman underneath the surface (see
fig. 8). In the photo, Toyo in a tuxedo spreads his arms over an unconscious
Anne and approaches her from above.9 The scene depicted in the photo looks
similar to the one in The Cheat in which Tori steals a kiss from the uncon-
scious Edith. Toyo even looks like a vampire coming close to a white woman’s
naked shoulder, as Tori does in The Cheat. Two Japanese paintings, hung in
the background, which have been signs of refinement in different settings,
create an eerie atmosphere in the very low-key lighting.
Similarly, in The Call of the East, Takada is a villainous character with two
different faces. A scene of an “American club” in Tokyo emphasizes how
Americanized Takada is. In this scene, Takada is “in European evening dress,
seated with a small table at his elbow, taking his after dinner coffee.” In
Tokyo, “by sharpest possible contrast with Hakoshima,” where his house is
located, Takada is seen as “the modern Japanese, graduate of Yale, man of the
world, a veritable product of New Japan.”
However, in Hakoshima numerous Japanese objects surround Takada.
In a “room of a high caste Japanese of wealth, who keeps up the old cus-
toms,” Takada, “about 30, in Japanese dress” is “seated on floor, with a cup
of sake on low table before him.” This is “Takada’s main room: House com-

120  C h ap t e r E i gh t
8  An ad for The Soul of Kura San. Motion Picture News 14.19 (11 November 1916): 2909.

pletely Japanese in character and furnishings,” such as “shoji to veranda,” and

“bronze gong.” Later in the narrative, when Alan visits Takada, “white clothes
of Alan—[are] startlingly exotic in the completely Japanese environment.” A
still photo published in a trade journal shows the out-of-placeness of Alan’s
white shirt and pants in a dark Japanese-style room, with Takada in a black
Japanese kimono glaring fiercely at Alan. There is one Japanese-style lantern
in the room. The shot is in a very low-key and Alan’s white clothes stand
out in the dark.10 In Hakoshima, Takada is completely different from a white
American man and fits into “Oriental” surroundings.
In reality, there is no place called Hakoshima in Japan. It is an imaginary
space.11 The script emphasizes Hakoshima’s “wilderness and desolateness
of the place.” The melodramatic binary opposition is clear between a wild/
primitive Japanese space and a civilized/Americanized urban space. Takada

S y m p a t he t i c V i l l a in s and V i c t i m - H e ro e s   121
moves back and forth between these spaces. While Tokyo is a background for
the “boy-meets-girl” style romance between Takada and Sheila, Hakoshima
becomes a place where Takada’s primitive and savage character is revealed.
From the beginning, Sheila, the heroine of The Call of the East, is attracted
to and anxious about Takada’s twofold nature: his refined and Americanized
appearance and his racial difference. When Sheila looks into a mirror, Ta‑
kada’s eager and enkindled face appears in double exposure as her point-of-
view shot. The script describes Sheila’s ambivalent reaction to the image of
Takada, from which she “gets delight” first. “Sheila lets herself dream happily
forgetting that she is ‘American.’ ” “Sheila is yielding to his spell, trying to
remember that she is Caucasian and must not fall in love with this alien.”
Then, she feels “terror.” Sheila takes off the kimono that she wears and orders
her maid, “Put it away—out of sight! I’m American—and I mustn’t forget
it!” The kimono here signifies the materialized attraction and threat of Japa-
nese Taste, which Takada embodies, for the middle-class American woman.
Sheila’s anxiety is clearly represented as the fear of miscegenation. An ad for
The Call of the East in a trade journal exploits this issue of miscegenation be-
tween the Japanese man and the white woman in order to emphasize Takada’s
twofold characteristic. The ad places a still photo of a serious-looking Haya-
kawa in a Japanese kimono facing and holding a white-looking woman in a
trench coat with a loving and dreamy expression on her face (see fig. 9).12
Takada’s threatening demeanor is revealed when he hears that Alan is play-
ing around with Takada’s sister, Omitsu, and is not promising anything for
their future. He becomes vengeful and decides to attack Alan and his sister.
The MPW emphasizes Takada’s Japanese nature here in its review of the film:
“[This is] a Japanese bent on revenge—a revenge fiendish in its cruelty. . . . It
is the revenge of the Oriental, not of the Caucasian. . . . We see the Japanese
of high position, of education molded by contact with men of other races sud-
denly revert to the primitive.”13 Takada takes Alan to Hakoshima and drops
him into quicksand. Takada says, “Tonight—your sister—she shall pay the
price.” No matter how Americanized and refined on the surface, Takada is
depicted as a villain of a different race who threatens a white woman.
However, unlike Tori in The Cheat, Hayakawa’s characters in The Soul of
Kura San and The Call of the East are not ultimately evil. Eventually, both of
them give up their villainous plots for white American families. Neither char-
acter’s vengeful thoughts come from their innate sexual desires, in contrast
to Tori, but only from the fact that white American men deceive Japanese
women. Tori attacks a white woman because she betrays her contract with

122  C h ap t e r E i gh t
9  An ad for The Call of the East. Motion Picture News 16.18 (3 November 1917): 2992.

him, but Tori’s sexual desire for the white woman is indicated clearly from
the beginning. In the cases of Toyo and Takada, their vengeful acts are only
generated from white American men’s racist and imperialist behaviors.
White American men victimize Japanese women in these films. In The
Soul of Kura San, Graham betrays Kura San because he has his fiancée wait-
ing for him in America. Similarly, in The Call of the East, Alan treats Takada’s
sister, Omitsu, not as a “legal wife” but merely as his mistress. Both Toyo’s
and Takada’s acts of revenge are against the white men. Even though their
methods of revenge are savage and cruel, the reasons for their acts are moral-
istic in terms of a discourse on family. They try not to allow Graham and Alan
to victimize Japanese women. They also attempt to defend monogamy.
Nevertheless, in the end, the Japanese characters in The Soul of Kura San
and The Call of the East give up their vengeful plots and accept their victim-

S y m p a t he t i c V i l l a in s and V i c t i m - H e ro e s   123
ized positions in favor of the white American characters. In The Soul of Kura
San, Toyo eventually decides to give up his revenge plot in favor of preserving
a white American couple, no matter how racist and imperialistic Graham’s
behavior was. Similarly, in The Call of the East, Takada forgives Alan for the
sake of a white American family (a brother and a sister).
As a result, the white male characters are not blamed for their immoral
and contemptible conduct within these narratives. The main issue of the nar-
ratives moves away from accusing them of racist and imperialist behaviors
and turns to questioning whether the nonwhite protagonists can give up their
vengeful thoughts and accept their victimized positions. By focusing on the
process in which the Japanese characters accept their victimized positions
for the good of white American families, these narratives allow the Japanese
men to be more sympathetic and, simultaneously, let the racism of the white
male characters escape from being problematized. As a result, white male
supremacy, the status quo of American society and international relations, is
safely maintained within these narratives.
Takada is characterized as the one who strictly tries to maintain the racial
boundary in America. From the beginning, Takada has no intention of at-
tracting a white woman, no matter how the promotion (and presupposi-
tion) of this film exploited the anxiety of miscegenation. Takada falls in love
with Sheila and approaches her only because, and only as long as, he thinks
she is Japanese. Takada thinks of Sheila as Japanese because Sheila wears a
kimono when they first meet at the Boy’s Festival in Japan. Unlike Tori in
The Cheat, Takada is excused from any intention of miscegenation within
the narrative of The Call of the East. He does not know that he is attracted
to a white woman. When Takada learns that Sheila is Alan’s sister and sup-
posedly a white American, Takada instantly gives up his desire for Sheila,
acknowledging that she is untouchable to him because their union would
cause miscegenation. In spite of Sheila’s affection for him, Takada declares,
“You forget. East is East—and West is West!” Takada’s self-consciousness and
self-restraint about miscegenation and his self-sacrifice for the maintenance
of a racial boundary make him moralistic and sympathetic.
The Call of the East, however, presents a twisted device to provide a happy
ending. As the moral center of the film who defends the white American
family and the status quo of the racial boundary between the white and the
nonwhite, Takada is rewarded a status that goes beyond a mere victim-hero.
The Call of the East is the first Hayakawa star vehicle in which Hayakawa’s
character happily unites with a white-looking heroine in the end.

124  C h ap t e r E i gh t
 In order to unite Hayakawa’s nonwhite character with a white woman
without breaking the taboo of miscegenation, the white-looking woman in
The Call of the East is explicitly explained to the viewers as half-white and
half-Japanese. From the beginning, an intertitle clearly notes, “In reality her
[Sheila’s] mother was a Japanese.” Therefore, the viewers know that within
the narrative Sheila is half-Japanese no matter how white she looks (she is
played by Margaret Loomis, a white actress). Thus, The Call of the East is a
meta-fantasy whose audience can safely enjoy the interracial romance.
Hayakawa once claimed, “I have never done a part where the ‘bad guy’ is
stupid, crude or vicious. . . . I try to give him reasons, to make him under-
standable. The men I play are intelligent and, in their way, honorable—but
on the wrong side of life.”14 Even when Hayakawa plays villainous nonwhite
roles, his star vehicles characterize him as sympathetic with the motif of self-
sacrifice. Accepting their victimized positions, Hayakawa’s nonwhite villains
become virtuous and heroic because they consequently serve to maintain the
ethical and structural status quo of white American patriarchy, no matter
how racist and imperialistic it is.

By the time The Honor of His House (William C. DeMille, 1 April 1918), in
which Hayakawa played another Americanized but ultimately inassimilable
Japanese character who sacrifices himself for the maintenance of white su-
premacy, was released, Hayakawa’s star vehicles had become standardized in
their content and publicity.15 By the late 1910s, the Hollywood film industry
was operating on a mass-production basis. Eager to maximize profits, film-
makers had seized upon the concept of standardization as the key to indus-
trial efficiency.16 After The Honor of His House, in all three Lasky films in
which Hayakawa appeared, The White Man’s Law (James Young, 6 May 1918),
The Bravest Way (George H. Melford, 16 June 1918), and The City of Dim Faces
(Melford, 15 July 1918), he played nonwhite (not always Japanese) victim-
heroes in melodramatic binary structures with the motif of self-sacrifice.17
Standardization of star vehicles was a regular strategy adopted by Hollywood
film producers in this period.18
The standardization of Hayakawa’s star vehicles is clearly indicated in re-
views in trade journals. The motif of self-sacrifice was unanimously pointed
out in the reviews of The Bravest Way. The MPN claimed,

The Lasky company has been generally wise in its selection of stories for Sessue
Hayakawa, the Japanese star, and “The Bravest Way” might have ranked with

S y m p a t he t i c V i l l a in s and V i c t i m - H e ro e s   125
 the best of these had it not been developed so artificially. Tamura, Hayakawa’s
latest characterization, is as usual the soul of honor. He makes a sacrifice to
protect the wife of his dead friend that paints him very black in the eyes of
the girl he loves. Every one appreciates noble self-sacrifice, it is true, but when
a few words would clear the whole situation and prevent the sorrow without
injuring a single character, the situation becomes plainly artificial while the
bid for sympathy quite collapses. . . . And it seems to the writer that the self-
sacrifice of Tamura could have been made a real self-sacrifice by the use of a
little imagination.19

Variety also noted on the same film, “Like all the Hayakawa features, the
story is built on heroic self-sacrifice, along which lines it seems to be neces-
sary to lead all the stories for the Jap.”20 The MPW clearly called The Bravest
Way “a Drama of Sacrifice . . . Hayakawa, in the role of sacrifice,” and ETR
pointed out that “Hayakawa in typical role . . . Hayakawa plays the lead and
succeeds in making the self-sacrificing but somewhat impractical Tamura a
very appealing youth.”21 These reviews demonstrate that by 1918 Lasky and
Paramount had standardized Hayakawa’s star image.
Hayakawa himself promoted this image. He said in one interview, “In
my coming picture, ‘The Honor of His House,’ I take the part of a Japanese
nobleman who marries an American girl who brings disgrace upon him. . . .
My latest part calls for the supreme sacrifice and I decide to kill myself.”22
Hayakawa’s recognition of his standardized image at Lasky-Paramount and
its popularity among American audiences became his dilemma, especially
when he established his own production company in 1918 and tried to appeal
to Japanese spectators in addition to American ones.

126  C h ap t e r E i gh t
 « 9 »

S e l f- S ac r i f i c e i n t h e
F i r s t W o r l d Wa r

The Secret Game

​I ​ April 1917, the U.S. government decided to participate in World War I

n
and Japan became an allied country. In the U.S. diplomatic discourse on
Japan during World War I, the U.S. trusted, or at least desired to trust,
Japan’s policy in Asia and the Pacific. The Nation insisted that the United
States should confide in “Japan’s sincerity rather than pursuing Machiavel-
lian conspiracy.”1 Outlook also declared its “faith that Japanese leadership in
the East is not the origin of danger to America as well as to the world.”2 The
U.S. government accepted Japan’s expansion in China with the Ishii-Lansing
Agreement in November 1917.3
As a part of its war efforts, the Hollywood film industry began to resort
to the U.S.-Japanese alliance in the promotion of Hayakawa’s star vehicles.
Even regarding films in which Hayakawa did not play Japanese roles, such
as The White Man’s Law—Hayakawa played a Sudanese man—trade journals
suggested they be advertised with reference to the U.S.-Japanese alliance:
“Advertising Suggestions: With Japan an ally in the war there is opportunity
to strengthen the bonds. Show the Japanese flag, decorate the lobby with lan-
terns and paper flowers to lend an Oriental atmosphere.”4
The threatening image of Japan that had existed in the past was rewrit-
ten in favor of the Japanese people. When The Cheat was re-released on 24
November 1918, Tori was no longer a Japanese art dealer, but a Burmese ivory
king, in order not to offend the audiences of the allied country.5 In Japan, it
was reported that even the title of The Cheat would be changed to “I Owe
You,” and the Japanese character would be changed to an “East Indian.”6
The U.S.-Japanese allied conditions came to work as a safety valve for Haya‑
kawa’s star image. An article on Hayakawa in a fan magazine noted, “The
Allies need not fear for Japan’s part. Honor is a sacred thing in Japan, and
we are bound in honor by our treaty with England. Japan is prepared to send
millions of Japanese troops to Europe and to turn over her whole merchant
marine. Japan is willing to take charge of transporting the American troops
to Europe on either ocean and to furnish the warships to convoy the trans-
ports as well.”7 Thanks to these historical conditions, no matter how im-
movably Hayakawa’s persona might contain unique Japanese traits, it was
not supposed to generate anxiety about the inassimilability of the Japanese
people in American society or to cause fear of a Japanese political and eco-
nomic invasion.
The Japanese actor was also provided a star image as a “mediator” in the
war. In May 1917, right after the United States began to participate in the war,
the Los Angeles Times published a photo of Hayakawa serving as a “mediator,
in a threatened war at the Lasky studio” between a dog and a cat. The caption
of the photo notes, “Wouldn’t Mr. Boston Bull just like to drop a bomb on
the other fellow, who seems to have adopted the policy of defensive prepared-
ness.”8
Hayakawa’s tenth star vehicle, The Secret Game (William C. DeMille, 3 De‑
cember 1917), took advantage of such historical conditions. The Secret Game
was in accordance with the diplomatic discourse that desired Japan to be
trustworthy in Asia and the Pacific and to be helpful in American society.
Variety claimed, “The interest that attaches to anything in the nature of a
picture or story dealing with the present war situation naturally accentuates
the value of ‘The Secret Game.’ ”9 Similarly, ETR noted, “At a time when the
war is almost the sole topic of conversation, when eyes are turned on Japan,
and when the secret service is kept busy with the plots and counterplots of
the traitors to our country, this story is one of most timely interest.”10 The
MPW also noted, “Finely exemplifying the change in international relations
as regards Japan and the United States. . . . In this story the representatives
of the two countries are not at odds, they are working hand in hand against a
common enemy—Germany. . . . Mr. Hayakawa as Nara-Nara has a role that
wins the sympathy.”11
In The Secret Game, Hayakawa plays Nara-Nara (again an improper Japa-
nese name), a Japanese secret service agent in the United States. Nara-Nara is
sent to Los Angeles to see that no information about the sailing of Japanese
transports, which carry American soldiers across the Pacific to surprise the
Russian front, leaks out of the U.S. quartermaster’s office. Major Northfield
is in charge of the office and Kitty Little (Florence Vidor) is a stenographer

128  C h ap t e r N in e
there. Kitty is actually a member of the German secret service, who takes
orders from Dr. Ebell Smith. Nara-Nara, disguising himself as an art dealer,
takes the office next to the quartermaster’s. He learns of Kitty’s mission to
get the sailing information into the hands of the Germans. Northfield, who is
in love with Kitty, also discovers her taking orders from Dr. Smith. He gives
her a blank paper instead of the sailing orders. Nara-Nara pursues Kitty, who
brings the paper to Dr. Smith. Nara-Nara kills Dr. Smith and attacks Kitty.
Kitty’s plea awakens his honor and loyalty to his country. He helps Northfield
and Kitty and is stabbed by one of Dr. Smith’s aides. Northfield forgives Kitty
in the end.
In disguise in the United States, Nara-Nara works for his duty to Japan,
like many Japanese characters in early spy films, including Tokoramo in
The Typhoon. While Tokoramo embodied the discourse of the yellow peril,
Nara-Nara is depicted as if his existence in American society would cause
no threat. Nara-Nara’s ultra-nationalistic behaviors of espionage follow To-
koramo’s in The Typhoon. Yet, they are not depicted as being as threatening
as those in The Typhoon. This is simply because Nara-Nara does not kill and
die only for Japan, but also for the United States. Even though Nara-Nara’s
behavior symbolizes his ultimate bond with Japan, he helps a white Ger-
man American woman assimilate herself into American society. In the end,
Nara-Nara sacrifices himself for the good of the German American woman
and for a white American family. Under the U.S.-Japanese allied conditions,
Hayakawa’s Japanese character could be heroic, not necessarily because of his
Americanization but because of his loyalty to Japan and the alliance.
The introductory shots of Nara-Nara clearly indicate his innate Japanese-
ness and his loyalty to the United States, “A patriot of Japan and sincere
friend to America,” as the intertitle declares. Wearing a tuxedo, Nara-Nara
enters a shop to purchase a cigar. He looks at a small object on the counter
and smiles. The following close-up shows a small stand on the counter, on
which a lot of little silk flags of the United States, Japan, and France are
pinned. Smiling, Nara-Nara first takes a pin of the Japanese flag and then that
of the United States and puts both of them on the lapel of his tuxedo. These
introductory shots are not necessarily located in the linear temporality of the
narrative. They function to visually signify the presupposed characterization
of Nara-Nara. His formal costume and cigar signify his status as an Ameri-
canized gentleman, and his gesture of putting on two flag pins indicates his
loyalty to the U.S.-Japanese alliance.
The melodramatic binary structure is used again in The Secret Game to

S e l f - S a c r i f i c e in t he F ir s t Wor ld Wa r   129
distinguish Japanese spies from German ones. The boundary line is drawn
according to the level of their loyalty to the United States. While the Japanese
spies are depicted as good because they devote themselves to supporting the
U.S.-Japanese alliance and to maintaining peace in American society, the
German spies are evil because they conspire to subvert American society.
A parallel editing sequence that opens The Secret Game, after the intro-
ductory shots of Nara-Nara, establishes the contrast between the Japanese
and the German spies in the United States. In the Japanese embassy in Wash-
ington, D.C., Nara-Nara and the Japanese ambassador, in correct morning
dress—Nara-Nara has transferred the little flags that he bought in the intro-
ductory scene to this coat—talk about America sending troops to the Russian
front to surprise the German army. The ambassador says, “I have sent for
you because Japan has offered to convoy the American transports,” but “New
German raiders are known to be in the Pacific. This means there has been a
‘leak’. . . . Find the traitor behind that ‘leak’ before he divulges the transports’
sailing date and route. Japan’s honor is staked upon their safety.”12 Nara-Nara
bows to the ambassador in a dignified manner. The words of the ambassador
and the final bow of Nara-Nara emphasize Japanese nationalism and loyalty.
There still are possibly threatening Japanese images here, such as the high
value placed on honor, the highly developed espionage system, and the super-
ficial Westernized appearance. However, the characters’ eloquent statement
that Japan works to serve America and the success of American military
strategy prevents the viewers from easily associating these possibly threat-
ening images with the Japanese characters in this film. Instead, the calm
conversation style of the characters and the furniture of the room, which has
no particular emphasis on Japanese objects, are displayed as appropriate to
a modernized nation and reinforce the safely loyal image of Japan to the alli-
ance.
Contrary to these Japanese spies, two German spies in Los Angeles are
visually emphasized as evil. One is the middle-aged Dr. Ebell (implying Evil?)
Smith. His attempt to hide his German origins using an American name
is emphasized by an intertitle: “Schmidt, in Germany.” Smith, with dark
circles under his eyes, watches American children with “a slow sneer, the
look of traitor, slowly into his eyes contemptuous and sinister,” according to
the script. The other spy is the young and white Kitty Little. According to the
intertitle, she is “Katrinka Littlehaus in Germany,” “with a deeply concealed
hyphen in her name, and, in her heart a romantic love for the ‘Fatherland.’ ”
Smith and Kitty are in Smith’s laboratory, where a lot of test tubes, skeletons,

130  C h ap t e r N in e
and an anatomical chart create a horrifying atmosphere that reminds viewers
of a room of a mad scientist. The lighting of this laboratory is much darker
and more ominous than that of the Japanese embassy. Kitty’s facial expres-
sion and behavior in front of Smith are not willful. She keeps looking away
from Smith with a reluctant expression. The scene looks as if a despotic man
is forcing an innocent white woman to do a dirty job. Later in the narrative,
Smith kidnaps Northfield’s secretary, Miss Loring, and threatens her with a
needle and syringe to obtain information. Thus, Smith clearly embodies a
threat to white women in America.
The compositions of settings of these two rooms are exactly the same, in
spite of the completely opposite use of lighting techniques and props. Both
pairs—Nara-Nara and the Ambassador, and Kitty and Smith—sit at desks in
consecutive medium shots. The mise-en-scène of the opening scenes en-
hances a clear contrast between these spies from two different nations.
While both Nara-Nara and Kitty are bound up with their national duties as
secret agents in disguise, this opening parallel editing clearly contrasts them.
Nara-Nara, a nonwhite who is not considered to be eligible for American citi-
zenship, is depicted as working for maintaining peace and order in American
society. Kitty, who is a white immigrant from Germany who is eligible for
citizenship, is on the verge of betraying the American people, no matter how
reluctantly. The contrast between these two “aliens” in American society, in
terms of their loyalty to the United States, is the driving narrative force of The
Secret Game. Eventually, the Japanese spy helps the German woman to trans-
form herself into a patriotic American and to create a white American family.
The continuous use of parallel editing throughout the narrative emphasizes
the similarities and differences between the two.
The Secret Game is an antithesis to The Cheat, which also depicts the simi-
larities and differences between a Japanese man in the United States and a
New Woman. (At one point, Kitty even says, “I feel like a cheat.”) Exactly like
Tori, Nara-Nara, with his Americanized appearance in costumes and man-
ners, seduces a white woman with luxurious Japanesque consumer products.
He invites Kitty into his office, which is filled with objets d’art of Japanese
Taste. Kitty exclaims over the brocade, silk, a small box, a Japanese sword,
and so forth, just as Edith does in The Cheat.
However, contrary to The Cheat, this scene, in which Kitty is attracted to
Japanese objects, is not meant to emphasize Nara-Nara’s threat to the white
woman in The Secret Game. Nara-Nara is depicted as an inassimilable Japa-
nese man who lives a double life and uses deceptive methods as a spy, but not

S e l f - S a c r i f i c e in t he F ir s t Wor ld Wa r   131
as a dangerously sexualized one, as opposed to Tori. In the script, Nara-Nara
studies the vivacious Kitty and says to her temptingly in improper English,
“American girl have beeg round eye instead of the beautiful slant—but some
of her have beauty.” In the film, Nara-Nara’s obsession with a white woman
is minimized. He does not say these words to Kitty but to his servant with an
innocent smile and a playful big gesture. The threateningly sensual implica-
tion of the line is therefore reduced.
Also in the film, Nara-Nara touches Kitty’s hand when he shows her a
small pot. He even shows her a Japanese sword, which can be read both as a
phallic symbol and as an embodiment of a Japanese samurai warrior’s ultra-
nationalistic oath of honor. However, at this point, Nara-Nara does not say
any words that could be seductive to a white woman or subversive to the
order of American society, but only ones patriotic to America: “You’re a loyal
little American—eh? Will you help me to protect the soldiers of your coun-
try—and the honor of mine?” Nara-Nara points his right finger at Kitty, and
his pose exactly follows the famous pose of Uncle Sam. In this sense, Nara-
Nara is not a Japanese man full of sexual desire toward white women; rather,
he functions as an educator of immigrants for loyal Americans.
Moreover, in the script, there is another scene in The Secret Game that
exactly follows one in The Cheat. When Nara-Nara secretly searches Kitty’s
room, the Lasky lighting creates a high contrast between the light and shadow
of the scene and emphasizes Nara-Nara’s double identity as it did Tori’s. Then,
on his way back, he sees Kitty in the corridor. Remembering Smith’s threat-
ening order to steal important documents from Northfield, Kitty faints in
front of Nara-Nara, as Edith does in front of Tori when she knows that she has
lost money from the Red Cross Fund. Kitty falls helplessly against Nara-Nara,
as Edith does against Tori in The Cheat. In The Cheat, this scene enhances the
eminent fear of miscegenation. According to the script of The Secret Game,
Nara-Nara looks ardently at the fainted Kitty in a close-up. However, this
close-up, which could emphasize Nara-Nara’s threateningly sensual charac-
teristic, is entirely omitted in the film.
At the climax of the film, when Nara-Nara climbs up the wall outside of
Smith’s house and kills him, he looks much like an American action film
star, such as Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Right after that, when Nara-Nara finds
out that Kitty has deceived Northfield and has stolen secret documents, he
tries to take advantage of Kitty’s crime, as Tori does. This is the only scene in
The Secret Game in which Nara-Nara’s sexual desire for a white woman is in-

132  C h ap t e r N in e
dicated. Nara-Nara grabs Kitty and swings a knife in his right hand up toward
Kitty’s naked shoulder. Then, Nara-Nara embraces her and insists, “You are
too beautiful to die! I will take you to Japan with me.” Kitty frantically tries
to free herself from Nara-Nara. Nara-Nara threatens her, “You need not fear
Northfield. I will never tell him you are a traitor if you come with me. If you
won’t come with me you’ll never see Northfield again.” Wid’s Independent
Reviews of Feature Films noted, “Hayakawa’s Nara-Nara, the Japanese spy who
works in behalf of the United States, is an admired figure until he turns
around [and] attacks the girl. This action instead of thrilling, mystifies un-
pleasantly.”13
However, the Japanese man’s sexual desire for the white woman in this
scene is not visually emphasized as much as in The Cheat. Nara-Nara’s pose
when he threatens Kitty with a knife exactly follows that of Tori when he
brands Edith. But in The Secret Game, this shot is not a close-up. A long shot
reduces the brutality of the image. In the script, Kitty’s expression is “full of
horror and loathing,” and she cries out, “No! I loathe you!” In the film, she
does not show such an expression or say such words.
Eventually, Nara-Nara stops assaulting Kitty when Kitty reminds him of
his duty to Japan. He suddenly stops his threatening action toward Kitty.
Then he chooses to sacrifice himself to “protect” Kitty and Northfield. He
points Northfield in a safe direction, provides him with all the useful spy-
related intelligence that he has obtained from deliberate privacy infringe-
ment, and waits alone in Smith’s room to be assassinated by Smith’s man
(Raymond Hatton, who played the villainous Japanese Kayosho in The Hon-
orable Friend). In this sense, even though Hayakawa is credited as the star of
The Secret Game, he plays more of a “supporting” role for the good of a white
American couple.
Nara-Nara’s self-sacrifice is absolutely unnecessary in a narratological
sense. He does not have to be killed by Smith’s man, who is not even attack-
ing Kitty and Northfield and is about to be arrested by the police. Nara-Nara
does not have any reason to commit suicide, either. He has killed Smith, but
that is justifiable because he has to protect a secret document of the U.S. gov-
ernment. The only possible “cheat” that Nara-Nara has attempted is to cover
Kitty’s crime and threaten her. He has told Kitty that he will not report her
crime to the police if she stays with him. Yet, this is exactly what Northfield
does to protect and obtain Kitty in the end. Northfield shuts his mouth to
cover up Kitty’s crime only for his personal reason: his desire for Kitty. For

S e l f - S a c r i f i c e in t he F ir s t Wor ld Wa r   133
conducting the same “cheat,” Northfield does not die, but Nara-Nara has to.
The only difference between them is that Northfield’s possession of Kitty will
not cause any racial fear of miscegenation, but Nara-Nara’s would.
Mixed feelings in a contemporary review revealed this contradiction in
the characterization of Nara-Nara and Northfield at the climax. A reviewer in
Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films pointed out,

Since the Jap had been the central figure all the way, I can’t in any way see the
advisability of having this character practically commit suicide in order that the
hero and shero [heroine] might get together—because it would certainly have
been just as reasonable to have allowed the clutch with the Jap devoting his life
to the Secret Service work and still retaining a certain element of sympathy.
This unhappy ending is going to disappoint a great many people in this film.
It is absolutely illogical to figure that a successful Secret Service man, a Jap,
should permit himself to be shot just because a white girl wanted to marry an
American officer. That was certainly a bad break.14

Nara-Nara’s death in The Secret Game is ultimately necessary, only because it

emphasizes the thematic motif of self-sacrifice of a nonwhite man for a white
American woman. It ends the triangular relationship among Nara-Nara, Kitty,
and Northfield, and opens a way for the white woman’s appropriate assimi-
lation into American society. As a result, it helps to create a patriotic white
American couple and family. In the final scene, Northfield completes Nara-
Nara’s work: to Americanize the white German woman. He salutes the U.S.
flag, takes Kitty’s hand, lets her salute the flag, and then he kisses her hand.
In this manner white male supremacy and patriarchy is maintained.
Simultaneously, Nara-Nara’s unnecessary death emphasizes his embodi-
ment of a mysterious Japanese code of honor. Flashbacks are used effectively
in The Secret Game to connect Nara-Nara’s self-sacrificial act and his ultimate
bond to Japan. In a scene at his office with Kitty, Nara-Nara explains about
his Japanese swords. After Nara-Nara’s spoken title, “When I left Japan, my
father, like a Samurai of old, sent me forth sworn to the service of my Em-
peror,” the following shot shows a room of a Japanese house. Many paper lan-
terns and a shoji screen emphasize the Japanese atmosphere. In front of the
room, Nara-Nara, in a Western suit, bids his father farewell. The old father,
in a Japanese kimono, takes a sword from the servant. Nara-Nara takes the
sword and bows with profound filial respect. Nara-Nara’s spoken title con-
cludes the flashback, “And he bade me return, at the end of my service, and

134  C h ap t e r N in e
lay my sword—unstained—at his feet.” At the end of the film, another flash-
back reunites Nara-Nara to his past in Japan. Nara-Nara’s spirit, in a double-
exposure, goes back home to return the sword to his father.
In this sense, contrary to Hayakawa’s characters in his many other star
vehicles, Nara-Nara does not necessarily show his process of Americanizing
himself, despite his demands for Kitty to be loyal to the United States.15 His
unnecessary self-sacrificial death functions only as a consequence to help an-
other immigrant to become a loyal American. Nara-Nara’s ultimate bond to
Japan is emphasized in the finale, which stereotypically depicts Nara-Nara’s
self-sacrificial death for honor. Only because Japan was in alliance with the
United States is Nara-Nara’s ultimate inassimilable Japaneseness construed
as favorable. Under the allied situation, Lasky was allowed to freely empha-
size the image of Japanese traits in Hayakawa’s star persona, mainly for prod-
uct differentiation. Despite Hayakawa’s character’s ultimate inassimilability
to the United States, audiences favorably received The Secret Game. The MPN
reported a response from an exhibitor: “[The Secret Game is] Great—one of
the Jap’s best yet.”16

S e l f - S a c r i f i c e in t he F ir s t Wor ld Wa r   135
 « 10 »

Th e C o sm o p o l i ta n
Way o f L i f e
The Americanization of
Sessue Hayakawa in Magazines

​S i​nce the emergence of the star system, publicizing actors’ private lives
​in the film trade press (MPW, MPN, NYDM, and so forth), film fan
​magazines (Photoplay, Motion Picture Classic, Picture-Play, and so on),
periodicals on art, politics, and religion (Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Outlook,
Nation, and so on), mass-circulated magazines (Saturday Evening Post, and
so forth), and newspapers has been the Hollywood film industry’s typical
strategy to construct its stars’ images.1 Hayakawa’s emergence in extra-filmic
sites was as important as his star vehicles in constructing his star image. The
major purpose of the publicity of stars’ private lives in early Hollywood was
to distinguish the moral healthiness of work in the cinema as opposed to life
in the theater. The moral healthiness of cinema was considered proven effec-
tively through reference to the stars’ family lives.2
Under the industrial conditions of the time, Hayakawa’s star image was no
exception. Lasky and Paramount employed the strategy of Americanization
and gentrification of Hayakawa’s star image and established his screen per-
sona as a heroic and moralistic defender of white American families. At the
same time, they started publicizing Hayakawa’s private life in many maga-
zines, particularly in fan magazines, most of which began to be published in
the early 1910s. Since the extra-filmic identity tended to reproduce the rep-
resentations of personality already produced in the films of the 1910s, Haya‑
kawa’s home and lifestyle were displayed in the magazine articles as overly
Americanized in accordance with his star vehicles.
The most prominent image of Hayakawa in magazine articles was his
Americanized family life with his wife. Even when the unique Japanese traits
of Hayakawa were emphasized for product differentiation, such articles in-
corporated them into the popular discourse of Japanese Taste, a signification
of cultural refinement among middle-class American families. The empha-
sis was not on Japaneseness per se, but on how Hayakawa was using Japa-
nese Taste in his Americanized domestic sphere. Both filmic and extra-filmic
images of Hayakawa valued the down-to-earth pleasures of American family
life.
The fairly thorough articulation of Hayakawa’s private life in magazines
began after the release of Alien Souls. One of the first articles that referred to
Hayakawa’s private life appeared in Photoplay, arguably the most popular fan
magazine of the time, in March 1916.3 Grace Kingsley’s article, suggestively
titled “That Splash of Saffron: Sessue Hayakawa, a Cosmopolitan Actor, Who
for Reasons of Nativity, Happens to Peer from Our White Screens with Tilted
Eyes,” effectively incorporates Hayakawa’s “native” background with his
“cosmopolitan” star image. A still photo accompanying the article, in which
a grinning Hayakawa, dressed in a three-piece suit, is seated on a cushion
while wiping a Japanese sword, supports her argument: the Americanization
of Hayakawa’s innate Japaneseness.
Even though Kingsley exoticizes Hayakawa’s Japanese national and cul-
tural origin by referring to Japanese religion, she puts more emphasis on
Hayakawa’s Americanized lifestyle. Kingsley writes, “No, Sessue Hayakawa,
the world’s most noted Japanese photoplay actor, does not dwell in a papier-
mâché house amid tea-cup scenery. He is working in pictures in Los Angeles,
and he lives in a ‘regular’ bungalow, furnished in mission oak, and dresses
very modishly according to American standards. Even his gods are forsaken,
for he owns an English bull-pup, named Shoki, which means ‘destruction,’
and is the name of a Japanese god.”4
In the paragraphs that follow, Kingsley fictionalizes Hayakawa’s biogra-
phy and emphasizes his Americanized career. She writes, “He has played
American and English roles in Japan, having the distinction, indeed, of
having introduced American and English drama in his native land. He played
‘The Typhoon’ there; also Ibsen and Shakespeare, making an especial hit as
‘Othello.’ ” According to Kingsley, Hayakawa came to the United States on an
international tour with Otto Kawakami, “his uncle,” and Madame Yacco, “the
aunt of Sessue’s wife,” because he had been in the company of Kawakami
since he had been a child. Hayakawa “studied English drama and literature
at the Chicago University for a year, and translated a number of the English
classics into Japanese.” Kingsley’s source on Hayakawa’s stage career was
the actor’s profile, which was published in many trade journals and news-

T he C o s mopo l i t an Wa y o f L i f e   137
papers and undoubtedly followed studio publicity department releases.5 A
trade journal claimed, “Sessue Hayakawa is a good type of the educated Japa-
nese. He studied drama at the University of Chicago and then returned to his
native country with Japanese translations of the English classics. He was the
first Japanese to appear in Shakespearean productions in that country.”6 The
studios, which had control over actors’ biographies, emphasized that Haya‑
kawa’s acting skill was “good,” because it came from a Westernized acting
career and lifestyle, in spite of his different cultural origin.7
Even Hayakawa’s own words are quoted in Kingsley’s article and reinforce
the authenticity of the article’s content, even though we do not know to what
extent Kingsley edited, or even fabricated, Hayakawa’s comments. Hayakawa
is quoted as saying, “When playing an American or English character, even in
Japan, I find it necessary to use the English language. I find it impossible to
get the proper facial expression or the right action when I translate the words
of an American or English character into Japanese. Most of the Japanese
understand English nowadays, and they did not really like your drama until
I gave it to them in English.”8 In this comment, Hayakawa insists upon the
importance of differentiating between the English and Japanese languages.
This bilingual attitude with more emphasis on the superiority of English in
dramatic use makes Hayakawa’s Americanized position stand out.
In real life, there is no official record that Hayakawa had an acting career
in Japan before he arrived in the United States, except that he appeared in
several stage dramas for Japanese American audiences at Little Tokyo in Los
Angeles just before he signed a contract with Ince. He never went back to
Japan to play in adaptations of Ibsen and Shakespeare after graduating from
the University of Chicago. Also, Hayakawa did not enter the University of
Chicago to study drama but rather political economy in order to help his
family business later. Furthermore, Kawakami was not Hayakawa’s uncle but
rather that of his wife, Tsuru Aoki. Thus, Hayakawa’s career was fabricated by
the publicity departments of the NYMPC and Lasky and functioned to empha-
size his legitimate acting capability by Western standards and his American-
ized image.
Similarly, an article by Pearl Gaddis in Motion Picture Classic fictionalizes
Hayakawa’s Americanization process in the manner of an old romance and
articulates Hayakawa’s star image within the genteel tradition. Gaddis begins
her article as if it were an old fairytale: “Once upon a time, in faraway Nip-
ponland, where the moon hangs heavy o’nights; where the lazy breeze brings
odors of indefinable sweetness; where the cherry-blossoms sway gently,

138  C h ap t e r T e n
casting fantastic, witching shadows, the God-of-Things-as They-Ought-to-
Be planned a romance.” Gaddis continues: One day, during a tour of Otto
Kawakami and Madame Yacco, Hayakawa was shown a photograph of Aoki
by Madame Yacco and instantly fell in love with her. Two years later, when
Hayakawa played the leading role in The Typhoon, he finally met his dream
girl. They fell in love right away. During the filming of a love scene in The Ty-
phoon, Aoki got jealous and cried stormily, saying, “You say you love me—yet
all the time you kiss her.” To ease her feelings, Hayakawa made love to her
that night; and the next day, they got married. It was “an American wedding,
in an American church, with bridesmaids, orange-blossoms, Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March, and all the lovely, useless finery so dear guests [sic] who
thronged the church and crowded the house for the reception were all Ameri-
can.”9
This love affair between Hayakawa and Aoki that Gaddis reports is meant
to enhance the American readers’ psychological identification with the Japa-
nese star couple. The more banal the story sounds, the more Americanized
the couple looks. The structure of Western style romance turns the actual life
of Hayakawa into that of a genteel romantic hero.
Gaddis also mixes Hayakawa’s screen persona and his biography and fic-
tionalizes Hayakawa’s actual life story in accordance with his “Americanized
Japanese” image in his star vehicles. According to Gaddis, Hayakawa’s father
recommended that Hayakawa should be Americanized in order to enlighten
other Japanese people. He said to Hayakawa, “Go to America, to an American
college. Learn the American ways—the American plays—all that is best in
American drama. Then bring it back to your countrymen.” This was almost
exactly the same plot that was used in such Hayakawa star vehicles as Hashi-
mura Togo and The Secret Game to emphasize Hayakawa’s characters’ Ameri-
canization.
An article by Warren Reed in Picture-Play, with its suggestive title, “The
Tradition Wreckers: Two People Who Became Famous, Though Few People
without Almond Eyes Can Pronounce Their Names,” presupposes the Euro-
centric notion of racial hierarchy. Reed emphasizes that Hayakawa and Aoki
became successful in American films because they came out of their closed
shells of Japaneseness and learned to become Americanized. Reed argues,

We consider the Mongolian as uncannily intelligent and shrewd, and as a rice-

eating athlete of endurance and prowess. Beyond that we scarcely consider him
at all. But the Hayakawas contradict the common belief about the Easterner.

T he C o s mopo l i t an Wa y o f L i f e   139
 Their success is all the more splendid in contrast to their fellow countrymen
who have from time to time played in America without gaining much popu-
larity. . . . Hayakawa and his wife have pluckily overcome many obstacles. . . .
By long and untiring effort they mastered the English language, . . . step by step
[Hayakawa] has advanced in the art of dramatic interpretation, . . . his ability
to register emotion by facial expression and gesture—something that could
hardly be expected of a Jap.10

Reed thus claims that the Hayakawas ascended the steps of the racial hier-
archy in the process of their Americanization.
The photos attached to the article emphasize the Hayakawas’ American-
ized lifestyle using Japanese Taste (see figs. 10, 11, and 12). In these photos,
Hayakawa and Aoki wear Western clothes and dance a Western-style dance
in front of Japanese-style furniture; Hayakawa reads English literature sur-
rounded by Japanese objets d’art; Hayakawa and Aoki have tea while seated
at a dining table; and the Hayakawas appear in Western clothes in front of
the American-style bungalow with their dog. In these photos, the Hayakawas’
Japanese traits symbolize their refined taste, a product of their own choice
rather than a meaningful state of being in its specific cultural and historical
context. It is a visual display of consumer culture that allows the middle-class
readers to imitate them through the purchase of furniture of Japanese Taste.
Moreover, the third photo, because Hayakawa is wearing a Western suit
and lighting a cigarette while being served tea by Aoki, who is wearing a
kimono, also functions as a reminder of the race and gender relations of
Madame Butterfly, in which a Japanese woman faithfully serves her Ameri-
can lover.11 In a somewhat twisted manner, this photograph emphasizes the
image of a patriarchal Victorian family.
The Cheat and Lasky’s star-making strategy for Hayakawa changed not
only the status of Hayakawa in the Hollywood film industry and among mo-
tion picture fans, but also that of Aoki. Aoki had started working in films
earlier than Hayakawa did.12 Aoki was the one who had introduced Haya-
kawa to Ince. The leading characters of Thomas Ince’s “Japanese film” series,
which started with O Mimi San, were originally played by Aoki.13 The title
role of O Mimi San was played by Aoki and the heroine of The Wrath of the
Gods was Aoki.14 Hayakawa merely played a supporting role in the latter as
the heroine’s elderly father. The Reel Life, the promotional magazine for films
distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation, placed a still photo of Aoki, not
Hayakawa, in O Mimi San on its cover on 7 February and on 20 June 1914.15

140  C h ap t e r T e n
10 The cover page of an article about Sessue
Hayakawa and his wife. Picture-Play
Magazine 4.1 (March 1917): 61.

11 & 12  Interior photos of the Hayakawas from

the same article. Picture-Play Magazine
4.1 (March 1917): 63 and 64.
The Reel Life had placed Aoki in The Oath of O’Tsuru San on its cover as early
as 1 November 1913.16 A NYMPC ad for O Mimi San in MPW and in MPN also
used Aoki’s photo, not Hayakawa’s.17 At the release of O Mimi San, MPW re-
ported, “Lovers of motion pictures may soon see a most interesting actress in
the Mutual ‘movies,’ Miss Tsura Aoki, a Japanese star of recognized ability in
her own country, is competing for film honors.”18 Despite misspelling Aoki’s
first name, the MPW report featured Aoki, not Hayakawa. The MPN reported
Aoki and Hayakawa’s marriage in May 1914, but the report only included
Aoki’s portrait, not Hayakawa’s.19 At least during their careers at the NYMPC,
Aoki had a more prestigious position than Hayakawa. As proof, the Reel Life
published a one-page special article on Aoki in May 1914, but it never had an
article specifically on Hayakawa until he left the company.20
However, the sensational success of The Cheat led Lasky to create a star
image around Hayakawa that consequently drastically changed Aoki’s public
image. Aoki, who had married Hayakawa in 1914 after the shooting of The
Wrath of the Gods, came to embody the image of ideal American middle-class
domesticity. Aoki’s image of a faithful wife in the domestic sphere enhanced
that of Hayakawa’s as a patriarchal husband in the United States, which func-
tioned as a safety valve to reduce the threatening image of an alien of a dif-
ferent race. After The Beckoning Flame (Charles Swickard, 16 January 1916)
at the NYMPC, Aoki eventually stopped playing leading roles. After 1916, in
addition to fan magazine articles featuring Hayakawa, she only occasionally
appeared as supporting characters in Hayakawa’s star vehicles, such as Alien
Souls and The Honorable Friend. In these films, her characters often served
as ideal female immigrant bodies that are open to Americanization with the
support of Hayakawa’s characters. As a helping hand for Americanizing the
newly arrived female Japanese immigrants, Hayakawa’s characters functioned
as an American regulatory agency. As a result, Aoki’s characters functioned
to enhance the heroic and successfully Americanized status of Hayakawa’s
characters.
Aoki thus played an important subordinate role in the formation of Haya‑
kawa’s stardom. Politics of gender were clearly observable in this formation,
which placed certain constraints upon Aoki in defining her role in domestic
settings. In fan magazine articles, Aoki mainly served as an ideal wife who
would stay at home and create a refined domestic space with consumer prod-
ucts. Possibly, the image of Madame Butterfly, a devoted self-sacrificial Asian
woman, was so strongly inscribed upon the Asian actress’s on-screen image
that it was difficult to distinguish Aoki’s individual image as a star in early-

142  C h ap t e r T e n
twentieth-century America. Even a Chinese American actress, Anna May
Wong, played a Madame Butterfly type of role in her early career in The Toll of
the Sea in 1922. Compared to this persistent Asian female image based on an
extremely popular narrative that was in accordance with the U.S. imperialist
policy, an Asian male such as Hayakawa had relatively more flexibility to
form his own star image.
An article in Photoplay titled “How to Hold a Husband: Mr. and Mrs. Haya-
kawa, in an Oriental Lesson in Four Chapters” more boldly places the Haya-
kawas as the model of an ideal Victorian family. This article first declares,
“One may turn to Tsuru and Sessue with a considerable belief that they can
really show a way to keep papa in nights. The divorce courts will now be
watched for dwindling business, and more lessons will be published if nec-
essary in this great cause.” Even though part of the title of this article is “An
Oriental Lesson,” the captions for four photos of the couple are consistent
with suggestions and “don’ts” from patriarchal Victorian family life, espe-
cially targeting wives, such as “Silence when he reads the paper at breakfast”
or “Be artistic everywhere. Few men would chase a roof garden if they had a
garden like this in the backyard.”21
In Reed’s article in Picture-Play, the Hayakawas are described as “cosmo-
politan in their tastes.”22 Reed claims that there is “still another nationality
represented—by the English bulldog.” In Gaddis’s article, the bulldog was
publicized as American.23 In 1916 the social philosopher Randolph Bourne
proposed the notion of “cosmopolitanism” in American society, declaring
“the failure of the ‘melting-pot’ ” by the “discovery of diverse nationalistic
feelings among our great alien population” at the advent of World War I. For
the first time it was seen that the specific ethnic components did not neces-
sarily disappear and assimilate. Bourne wrote,

Whatever American nationalism turns out to be, it is certain to become some-

thing utterly different from the nationalism of twentieth-century Europe. . . .
What we have achieved has been rather a cosmopolitan federation of national
colonies, of foreign cultures, from whom the sting of devastating competition
has been removed. America is already the world-federation in miniature, the
continent where for the first time in history has been achieved that miracle of
hope, the peaceful living side by side, with character substantially preserved,
of the most heterogeneous peoples under the sun. . . . It is for the American of
the younger generation to accept this cosmopolitanism, and carry it along with
self-conscious and fruitful purpose.24

T he C o s mopo l i t an Wa y o f L i f e   143
Bourne insisted, “Immigrants do not simply assimilate themselves to WASP
culture, nor the reversal of that, but their dynamic mutual interference cre-
ates a brand new image of Americans.” It was true that the majority of Ameri-
cans still believed in the Anglo-conformity of immigrants and Bourne’s cos-
mopolitanism was limited in its scope to a European multiculturalism. Yet,
such cultural pluralists as Bourne formed a middle-class sociopolitical dis-
course toward cosmopolitanism at that time.
Lasky’s strategy in forming Hayakawa’s star image in magazine articles
and Hayakawa’s willingness to Americanize himself despite his Japanese
cultural origins were mainly in accordance with Anglo-conformity. The Los
Angeles Times, for instance, noted in December 1917, “Hayakawa still con-
siders the land of the cherry blossoms as his home, but has lived and learned
so much in the United States that he looks upon it as the land of his adop-
tion.”25
However, to a certain degree, Lasky and Paramount promoted the Japa-
nese aspect of Hayakawa’s star image along with the cosmopolitanism dis-
course, an image of transnational America, in addition to his Americanized
image. Specifically, they emphasized Hayakawa’s unique acting skill within
the discourse of Japanese Taste and its cultural refinement and legitimacy.
As Richard deCordova points out, the discourse on acting was “an important
part of a larger strategy which asserted the respectability of the cinema and
worked to guarantee the expansion of the audience.”26 The NYDM insisted
that Hayakawa’s way of performance would make motion pictures more
legitimate. The report noted,

Once again he [Hayakawa] has proved the enormous effect that can be gained
by repression. He seems to have applied the Japanese system of jiu jitsu to his
acting, for nearly all of his effects are gained by yielding rather than by strenu-
ous forcefulness. The expression of his face changes very little, yet that slight
change is more than what he means but what he is thinking as well. He has the
art of transmitting thought by means of facial expression down to an exact sci-
ence, with the result that his acting never appears forced, and is for that reason
all the more forceful and effective. We believe that he will advance very far on
the motion picture stage if he is given the right opportunity.27

Lasky’s and Paramount’s strategy to attribute Japanese Taste to Hayakawa’s

star image was extensively exploited in articles in general magazines for
middle-class readers. Charles K. Field’s article in Sunset was one of these.28

144  C h ap t e r T e n
Following Kingsley, Field first describes Hayakawa’s Americanized family
life: With a “bundle French bull” whose name is “Puppy” and “as Western
as any Los Angeles bungalow-building,” Hayakawa’s lifestyle was, according
to Field, “as far from Japan as possible,” and apparently “nothing Japanese is
left.”
Field then moves on to locate Hayakawa’s acting style in the line of Japa-
nese theatrical arts, instead of Shakespeare and Ibsen, and to connect it to
a renowned Japanese kabuki actor, Danjuro, in particular. Kabuki had been
performed in the United States since 1904 and was considered a refined the-
atrical art form in the trend of Japanese Taste. Field concludes his article
by emphasizing Hayakawa’s Japaneseness, which was hidden behind his
Westernized persona. He writes, “Watch Hayakawa on the screen some day;
note how that subjective tension gets over to you, across the stage, across the
ocean, indeed; observe how the corners of his handsome mouth, drawn sud-
denly down under emotional stress, or some swift posture of his body, albeit
Western-clothed, will recall whatever you may have known of the tragic note
in Japanese art. . . . Or, it may be Danjuro, come back in the ultra modern
vehicle of the movies.”29
Similarly, an article in the Literary Digest in November 1917, which was
based on a report in the Los Angeles Times, articulates Hayakawa’s star per-
sona, based on his Japanese cultural background.30 It describes how Haya-
kawa explains jiu-jitsu, his Japanese styles of acting, the meaning of death
in Japan, the drama of Japan, and life in Japan. According to Hayakawa’s ex-
planation, “An old Samurai who had really studied ju-jutsu [sic]” can make
someone who points his revolver at him put it down just by his “mysterious
force.” Hayakawa claims that the Japanese people “are all trained from child-
hood never to betray emotion with” their faces. This article regards Hayakawa
as if he were a Japanese philosopher and a specialist of Japanese culture and
assumes his unique performance was completely based on his Japanese phi-
losophy. Hayakawa says, “To a Japanese death is nothing and is welcomed
joyously,” and “the favorite native Japanese plays are still full of sorrow and
tears.” According to Hayakawa, even though “the conditions of life are not
soft in Japan,” life is “more pleasant there,” because “the amenities of life are
more harmonious.”31
The conversation between the interviewer and Hayakawa in this article
is as if it were between a master of Japanese arts, culture, and religion, and
a disciple. Despite his position of mastery, Hayakawa shows modesty to the
American interviewer by wondering whether his opinion would hurt his feel-

T he C o s mopo l i t an Wa y o f L i f e   145
ings. Emphasizing Hayakawa’s modesty and his sincere attempts to explain
his cultural origin to middle-class readers and to adapt his cultural back-
ground to American filmmaking, this article provides Hayakawa with an
image of an Americanized star, in spite of his mysterious different national
background.
An article in Current Opinion properly locates the Japanese traits in Haya‑
kawa’s acting style and star persona in the middle-class discourse on Japa-
nese Taste, cultural refinement, and morality.32 Significantly, this article em-
phasizes that Hayakawa and Japanese filmmaking embody moral codes that
are appropriate to middle-class American audiences. According to Hayakawa
in this article, Japanese filmmakers have a “code of movie ethics” and avoid
such motifs as “the sex triangle,” “divorce, domestic infelicity, and belliger-
ency between husband and wife,” “murder, burglary, arson, crime of nearly
every sort, treason or disloyalty to country,” and ridiculing “persons in au-
thority.”
In fact, jun’eigageki undo, or the Pure Film Movement, sought to modern-
ize and nationalize the film culture in Japan, especially in the Taisho period
(1912–26). The movement, as I will discuss in more detail in a later chapter,
corresponded to the “high-minded cultural aspiration of Taisho intellectu-
als” to “defend bunka [culture] before the onslaught of debasement which
the masses promised to bring in their wake.”33 In the first two decades of
the twentieth century, Japan was forming a culturally and politically active
urban working class. The historian Carol Gluck argues that on a nationwide
scale, with the rise of the urban lower class and worker agitation, “the great-
est threat to the nation appeared . . . to come from within.”34 The Tokyo Nichi-
nichi Shinbun stated, “As a result of motion picture theaters’ showing sensa-
tional films competitively, they endanger public safety, throw social behavior
into disorder, provide too much sensation to human minds, damage young
people’s character, make them sensual, and spoil their whole lives.”35 One of
the major goals of the movement was to raise the status of motion pictures,
which had been considered to be entertainment for the working class, up to
high culture that would properly express middle-class culture as the national
culture.
Simultaneously, the movement emphasized the social mission of cinema
to enlighten the working class and stressed cinema’s educational applica-
tions. As early as 1910, the film magazine Katsudo Shashin Kai insisted that
motion pictures had to work to improve the taste of Japanese people, and the
development of the motion picture would have an influence upon the Japa-

146  C h ap t e r T e n
nese national character.36 The sociologist Gonda Yasunosuke claimed that
Japanese-made films had “educational merit” in terms of “national morals.”37
The Ministry of Education started recommending particular films to Japa-
nese audiences in 1916.38 It is symbolic that Katsudo no Sekai, an educational
magazine that originally started with the intention of advising Japanese
young people on how to obtain success in their lives, turned in its third issue
into a magazine devoted to cinema. The first essay of the inaugural issue,
“Sokan ni nozomite” [For the first issue], announced that the magazine’s goal
was to “activate Japanese people’s energy and spirit, to accompany their vig-
orous activities, and to move toward progress together with them,” because
“the development of a nation depends on its people’s spirit, and its people’s
energy comes from their activities,” and because “a nation will die out if its
people do not act vigorously.”39 In the same magazine, Kamata Eikichi, the
president of Keio University, proposed an application of the motion picture
for education and “for the national interests.”40
With these middle-class-oriented, education-oriented, and nationalist
viewpoints on cinema’s role in Japanese society, the movement even admitted
governmental intervention into film culture. A film-journal editor wrote, “I
would like to force the improvement of cinema in this regard by borrow-
ing the power of the authorities.”41 In response, Numata Yuzuru, the chief
of motion picture censorship at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department,
insisted, “[motion pictures] have become a national and social enterprise.
. . . It is necessary by any means to improve it. . . . No art form will progress
without a true protector, and [the protector for motion pictures is] a nation,
. . . and the Police Department is the direct force of the nation.”42 Then, the
Tokyo Metropolitan Police established and enforced Katsudo shashin kogyo to-
rishimari kisoku (Regulations on the motion picture exhibition) in 1917. The
Tokyo Metropolitan Police started regulating films in the name of “public
safety” and “public education.”43 In fact, the examples that Hayakawa gave of
taboo subjects for Japanese filmmakers followed the Tokyo Metropolitan Po-
lice’s list of prohibited subjects in “films,” which was established along with
the regulations and included such topics as “treason to the imperial or royal
family,” “opposition of the rebel against authority, or the defeat of authority,”
“criticism of and disloyal thoughts on the state and the government,” “de-
structive thoughts on the current social system,” “subversive thoughts on
international relations,” “slander of heroic historical figures and sacred fig-
ures,” “display of criminal acts in such a way as to inspire imitation,” “cruel
torture or brutal penalty for good men, otherwise even for bad men,” “ob-

T he C o s mopo l i t an Wa y o f L i f e   147
scenity,” “adultery,” “arousing low passions,” “comic sarcasm or violation of
domestic privacy,” “any possibility that induces children to do various ways
and sorts of mischief,” and “any possibility that prevents education of chil-
dren.”44
It is significant that Hayakawa’s examples of taboo subjects, most of which
were in fact observed in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s regulations, were
very similar to those regulated by the National Board of Censorship (Re-
views) of Motion Pictures in the United States. Generally, in 1917, the Na-
tional Board would condemn or not permit,

[1] suggestive comedy;45 [2] the details of uses of habit-forming drugs; [3] sex-
suggestiveness;46 [4] tampering with the mails and the equipment of railroads;
[5] pernicious reflections on the army and navy; [6] emphasized brutality; [7]
situations [that] tend to cause race hatred; [8] adulation of criminals in such a
way as to inspire imitation;47 [9] the details of suicides and murders; [10] the
brutal treatment of women, children, and animals; [11] misrepresentations of
ecclesiastics and criticism of the churches which might be considered slander-
ous; [and 12] detailed exposition of criminal incidents of such character as to be
considered instructive in crime.48

In fact, the National Board already knew of the existence of the regulations
in Japan in September 1916, even before the regulations were enforced. In
a press release dated 1 September 1916, the National Board introduced Ja-
pan’s “official pre-publicity censorship of motion pictures” with translations
of some of the regulations.49 From January 1918 until at least 1923, T. Tachi-
bana, an officer of the Censor Section of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, and
the secretaries of the National Board corresponded with numerous letters
and exchanged their opinions and information about motion picture censor-
ship.50
The National Board of Censorship, which was established in 1909 by the
People’s Institute of New York as a voluntary extra-legal organization, started
as an advisory committee for the New York exhibitors of motion pictures to
evaluate and preview films prior to their public release. The National Board,
with its continual correspondence with city officials and numerous social
organizations (mayors, license bureaus, police departments, and boards of
public welfare), attempted to improve the quality of popular motion pictures
and to quell the wave of protests and attacks by social and religious groups
against motion pictures. The National Board advised “regarding morally

148  C h ap t e r T e n
objectionable elements” in motion pictures and tried to codify films into
workable middle-class standards, “morally, educationally and artistically,” to
guide the production and exhibition of motion pictures.51 The major film pro-
ducers later came to agree to submit their films to the committee and comply
with any recommended changes.52 Even though the National Board had no
legal powers, there was very little indication that the producers deliberately
ignored their suggestions. Moreover, for “the improvement of the public’s
taste in motion pictures,” another prime aim of the board, the National Board
held special programs, such as “family nights” or “children’s matinees.” Even
though the National Board had a “compromise status” between the film in-
dustry and local or state censorship and its ability to effect any real changes in
production and exhibition was questionable, according to the film historian
Garth Jowett, it was “a prominent organization in the motion picture world
before 1922,” and its standards and policies were reported in many periodical
and newspaper articles.53
Hayakawa certainly knew about the regulations in Tokyo, because some of
his films, including Alien Souls and The Wrath of the Gods, were banned from
exhibition by the regulations, even though his citation of the regulations was
not necessarily exact. Hayakawa must have been familiar with the standards
and policies of the National Board of Censorship, too, because his star ve-
hicle The Bottle Imp (Marshall Neilan, 26 March 1917), a fantasy drama set in
Hawaii based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, was exhibited at the Strand
Theatre in New York in April 1917 and chosen as the first demonstration of
the Better Films Movement initiated by the National Board, in cooperation
with the New York Teachers’ Association.54 The National Board of Review
thus had an influential role in regarding Hayakawa’s star vehicles at Lasky
as “better” films. The board codified Hayakawa as a master of refined culture
using his image of the embodiment of Japanese Taste.
By referring to Hayakawa’s version of the Japanese reform movement
toward cinema and by implicitly locating his choice of words within the con-
text of the National Board’s “moral reform,” articles in U.S. general maga-
zines tried to fit Hayakawa’s star image safely into the American middle-class
sense of value.

T he C o s mopo l i t an Wa y o f L i f e   149
 Three

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B a l a n c i n g J a pa n e s e n e ss
a n d Am e r i c a n i z at i o n
Authenticity and Patriotism in
His Birthright and Banzai

​A ​fter two years of stardom at the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Com‑
​pany, Sessue Hayakawa established his own film production com‑
​pany, Haworth Pictures Corporation, in March 1918.1 Already in
1916, before the release of Alien Souls, Hayakawa told a fan magazine that
he was not satisfied with his roles in the films in which he had already ap-
peared. He said, “Such roles [in The Wrath of the Gods, The Typhoon, and The
Cheat] are not true to our Japanese nature. . . . They are false and give people
a wrong idea of us. I wish to make a characterization which shall reveal us as
we really are.”2 During the shooting of The Cheat, Hayakawa was said to have
requested that Cecil B. DeMille correct the details of costume and behavior of
Tori, but DeMille did not do it and simply calmed Hayakawa down by prais-
ing his performance in The Typhoon and The Wrath of the Gods.3 Also in 1916,
a newspaper reported Hayakawa’s desire to portray a Japanese person “as he
really is and not the way fiction paints him.”4
Hayakawa’s dissatisfaction with his roles in films by the NYMPC and Lasky
was partly caused by the Japanese American communities’ unfavorable re-
actions to them. Right after the release of The Cheat, the Rafu Shimpo severely
criticized Hayakawa’s character in the film and Hayakawa had to publish an
apology immediately.5 When The Honorable Friend was similarly criticized,
Hayakawa quickly made an excuse that the film was not an anti-Japanese
film.6
After these incidents, Hayakawa became anxious about his reputation
among Japanese people in the United States and tried to get along with Japa-
nese American communities, particularly in California. Hayakawa appeared
in stage plays for Japanese audiences in Los Angeles to keep in touch with
the Japanese community.7 One article reported, “Hayakawa is continuing his
daily work at the Lasky studios, aided by a big company of Japanese players,
and at night these same actor folk appear in stock dramas at the newly opened
Japanese theater. One wonders when Sessue is going to find time to sleep,
but perhaps he, like Edison, is tireless and works on and on, with no need for
sleep.”8 Hayakawa was also planning to open “a Japanese style theater,” after
the filming of The Soul of Kura San.9
Hayakawa became an associate member of Rafu Nihonjin-kai (Japanese
association of Los Angeles) in April 1917.10 When Nihonjin Katsudo Shashin
Haiyu Kumiai (Union of Japanese motion picture actors) was established on
4 September 1917 for mutual communication and benefit and for prevention
of anti-Japanese films, Hayakawa became the director.11 On 4 July 1918, many
ethnic communities, including the Japanese community in Los Angeles,
paraded in their cultural costumes and dances to celebrate the Independence
Day of America. Hayakawa coordinated with Rafu Nihonjin-kai to present a
Japanese float at the patriotic fair. Ince asked Hayakawa to ask the Japanese
people to participate in his twenty-four-foot float with eight horses, which
cost about eight hundred dollars and was intended as a representation of
Japanese warriors, past and present. It was meant to publicize Japan’s co-
operation with its ally.12 Thus, Hayakawa actively worked as a connection
between the U.S. and Japanese American communities.13
Under these conditions, what Hayakawa could have done at his company
was to replace his star image created at Lasky with a more authentic image of
a Japanese man that would not offend Japanese spectators. It could have been
a nationalistic attempt to satisfy Japanese communities in the United States,
which had been frustrated by the stereotypical images of Japan constructed
in mainstream media. A declaration of independence from Lasky could have
led Hayakawa to pursue this nationalistic goal, because Hayakawa had ob-
tained enough power to control his films at Haworth. Hayakawa told trade
journals that the first several films at Haworth were selected by himself.14
According to Hayakawa, “300 people were working for me at the [Haworth]
studio. . . . [The films made at the Haworth studio were] Mine. Just mine.
. . . Nights I had to work, on cutting and writing scenarios. I had a scenario
writer, but I had to go over it with him. All those things.”15
In fact, at the launching of Haworth, Hayakawa declared that he would
introduce authentic Japanese characters in realistic surroundings in his
films. He announced that he would “produce eight films each year, and all

154  C h ap t e r E l e v e n
of them would have plots dealing with Japanese subject matters.”16 The MPW
reported,

In these first productions and others which are to follow, he [Hayakawa] said a
few days ago while discussing his work, ‘I am happy to say I will have splendid
opportunity for the kind of acting which most appeals to me and, I am sure,
makes the most profound impression upon the audience—the repressive, natu-
ral kind, devoid of gesticulation and heroics. Danjuro, idol of the Japanese stage,
was this sort of an actor. My aim is to be like him, and if I succeed I shall feel
that I have not labored in vain before the camera.’ . . . Hayakawa sent several
of his company to Japan . . . to film scenes for the initial production. They have
just returned, bringing with them about four thousand feet of film taken in To-
kio and Yokohama and in the wonderfully beautiful Mt. Fujiyama region.17

Here, Hayakawa explained his aim to show more realistic Japanese character-
istics, using Danjuro as an authentic model of the Japanese people. He also
mentioned the departure of his production group to shoot actual images of
Japan. According to Tsuru Aoki, Hayakawa was even planning to go back to
Japan to make a film about Japan.18
Nevertheless, it is doubtful that Hayakawa seriously wanted to make films
that would portray more authentic Japanese people and their characteristics.
The method that Hayakawa took was hardly original. Many early travelogue
filmmakers had been sent to Japan to obtain images that would look authen-
tic to foreign audiences, such as Mount Fuji or geisha dances. Moreover,
reference to Danjuro was the strategy that Lasky repeatedly took in fan maga-
zines to construct Hayakawa’s refined star image.
While admitting the fact that “the bias of those days against Orientals was
a great help to me [and] we underscored it in our story-lines,”19 Hayakawa
confessed later, “[At Haworth] I was not about to change away from the type
of picture which had earned me my fame and following.” Hayakawa wrote,

In these pictures and others [at Lasky] I was able to dispel the deep-stained con-
ception of the Orient[al] as a man of mystery and a traditionally sinister figure.
. . . Public acceptance of me in romantic roles was a blow of sorts against racial
intolerance, even though I lost the girl in the last reel. . . . In my picture I often
played a Japanese or a Chinese; but, thankfully for artistic reasons, not all of the
time. In The Jaguar’s Claws, for instance, I performed the role of a Mexican—a

B a l anc in g J ap an e s e n e ss and A m e r i c an i z a t i o n   155

 man with a character like Juarez, subtle in his general conduct, rational, but
stern, and when pressed, vicious. I liked the part very much.20

Hayakawa pragmatically realized that too faithful an adherence to Japanese

realities might not be pleasingly exotic to American audiences. In order to
make profits at his company, it was by all means necessary for Hayakawa to
maintain, or enhance, his star image, which had been made for middle-class
American audiences. Hayakawa’s strategy at Haworth was a simultaneous
campaign of winning the hearts of American audiences by clinging to his
already established star image and convincing Japanese American communi-
ties of his more authentic depiction of Japanese characters.
A report in MPN implies that Hayakawa regarded it as more important
to maintain his popularity among American audiences. “Hayakawa . . . has
refused an offer to appear personally in the theaters of Japan. This would
require at least three months, it is said, and the star does not wish to dis-
continue his motion picture work for that length of time.”21 While Haya-
kawa proudly announced that Alien Souls had a Japanese role “who shall do
justice to the real Japanese characteristics,” in reality, the film was banned
from exhibition in Japan because the Japanese censors believed that “the film
would insult Japanese people and enhance anti-American thought.”22 After
Alien Souls, Hayakawa kept playing stereotypical characters for more than
two years at Lasky. Therefore, Hayakawa’s claim in 1916 to make films that
would do justice to the Japanese national character sounded like a temporary
excuse to Japanese American spectators who severely criticized The Cheat.
Before anything else, the name of Hayakawa’s company, Haworth, sym-
bolizes the careful mediation between his Americanized star image and his
Japanese national identity to reestablish his popularity, which cut across
racial lines. No record is left concerning the details of naming his company,
but Haworth seems to be the combination of “Ha” from Hayakawa and
“worth” from William Worthington, who was Hayakawa’s right-hand man
and directed twelve out of the first thirteen Hayakawa vehicles at Haworth.
Hayakawa wrote in his autobiography, “Bill Worthington, and Jim Young [the
director of the one other film out of the first thirteen Hayakawa films] di-
rected all scenes except the ones in which I appeared. I preferred to direct
those myself.”23 If Hayakawa had total control and intended to produce films
targeting Japanese American audiences as he said, the name could have been
“Hayakawa Pictures Corporation,” because Worthington was just a director

156  C h ap t e r E l e v e n
of the company. By adopting the Anglo-Saxon name Haworth Hayakawa paid
particular attention to the Americanized aspect of his star image.
As for his own name, Hayakawa’s real name was Hayakawa Kintaro. Ses-
sue Hayakawa was a stage name. Moreover, Hayakawa Sesshu is the correct
way to write and pronounce his stage name, according to the Chinese char-
acters. Yet, it was written and pronounced Sessue Hayakawa and Hayakawa
never changed it. Hayakawa’s name itself is thus doubly fictionalized, target-
ing American audiences.
Even at his company, Hayakawa reconfirmed his biographical legend,
especially the details about his career prior to making motion pictures, de-
tails that were created at the publicity departments of the NYMPC and the
Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.24 In 1919, Hayakawa said, “I had been
acting for several years in Japan before taking up motion picture work in this
country.”25 Later, in his autobiography, Hayakawa finally confessed that he
did not have any experience of acting before entering the film business.26
Thus, at his company, Hayakawa strategically chose to represent stereo-
typical Japanese traits for American spectators while at least verbally stressing
authenticity in them to appeal to Japanese American audiences. There was a
war of images that Hayakawa had to deal with in his stardom, at least among
three elements, after the establishment of Haworth: the cultural stereotypes
of Japanese people versus Hayakawa’s star image made at Paramount-Lasky
versus the identity politics that Hayakawa took on as Japanese at his company.
Hayakawa’s star image at Haworth can be called a product of Hayakawa’s
“triple-consciousness.” W. E. B. Du Bois theorizes “double consciousness” as
a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”27 Haya-
kawa, as a star and the center of the creative force, always looked at himself
through the eyes of two different others: American audiences and Japanese
spectators both in Japan and in the United States. As an American star, he
had to think about adjusting his made-in-the-U.S.A. star image to Japanese
spectators. As a Japanese actor, he needed to be conscious about his image of
“otherness” for American audiences. And as himself, Hayakawa Kintaro, he
was conscious of his alter ego’s stardom. For Hayakawa both American and
Japanese fit into Du Bois’s sense of “others.” In other words, Hayakawa stood
in a “trans-position,” distancing himself from American audiences and Japa-
nese spectators in order to satisfy them both.28
He had to display Japaneseness that looked authentic to several differ-
ent audience groups. He had to negotiate between his star image, created

B a l anc in g J ap an e s e n e ss and A m e r i c an i z a t i o n   157

at Lasky to appeal to American audiences, and a more realistic image of
Japanese people, an alternative to the stereotypical image in the dominant
medium, which would please the Japanese spectators. Between 1910 and
1922, many audiences in the United States believed that, through their own
initiative and action, they could directly influence the content and presenta-
tion of motion pictures. Moviegoers and exhibitors interacted on a regular
basis until at least the end of 1922, when Paramount Studios came to acquire
nearly six hundred theaters around the country in a process of vertical inte-
gration. As other studios followed Paramount, the relationship between the
exhibitors and spectators became increasingly impersonal.29 Yet, in 1918, the
direct influence of the audiences’ demands should have had significant influ-
ence on the newly established studio, Haworth.
Therefore, there was a performative nature in Hayakawa’s re-creation of
his star image. As Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick claim, “per-
formativity” is an act of constructing “identities . . . through [a] complex cita-
tional process.”30 Judith Butler insists, “Gender is an ‘act,’ as it were, that
is open to splittings, self-parody, self-criticism.”31 In the case of Hayakawa’s
star image, his racial, cultural, or national identity somewhat appeared as an
“act” “through [a] complex citational process.” No matter how stereotypical,
or authentic, the Japaneseness Hayakawa represented in his films made at
Haworth was chosen strategically by Hayakawa himself. It was role-playing
of an imagined self for others and left a certain degree of authority to Haya-
kawa over his star image and his portrayal of his nationality. In other words,
when he had an opportunity to obtain authority over his star image for the
first time, Hayakawa needed to “mimic” the stereotypical Japanese image
in American popular discourse.32 The self-reconstruction of Hayakawa’s star
image thus appeared at the dialogic focal point of three different groups:
himself, Japanese communities (and eventually Japan, across the Pacific),33
and American spectators.
Advertisements of Haworth that appeared in trade journals indicate Haya‑
kawa’s well-balanced strategy to reconstruct his star image. The emphasis of
an ad of Haworth that appeared in MPW on 9 March 1918 was on Hayakawa’s
Americanized image; the ad featured a large portrait photo of Hayakawa in a
tuxedo (see fig. 13).34 In contrast, an ad that appeared in the next issue of MPW
emphasized Hayakawa’s Japanese characteristics. A small photo of Hayakawa
in a kimono was displayed together with his signature in Japanese and a cap-
tion that said, “Watch for Hayakawa Productions made by most unique of
all screen stars: son of Japan now heading his own company.” These images

158  C h ap t e r E l e v e n
were surrounded by drawings of stereotypical Japanese objects, such as a
torii, a shrine gate, and a stone lantern (see fig. 14).35 Then, a third ad, which
appeared in MPW two months later, provided an eclectic image of Hayakawa
that emphasized both his Japanese traits and his Americanized image by
using a photo of him in a suit surrounded by drawings of stereotypical Japa-
nese images: a torii and Mount Fuji (see fig. 15).36
Hayakawa’s attempt to balance his Americanized star image and a more
realistic representation of Japanese characteristics is also indicated in an
article in a fan magazine. Truman B. Handy, in his article titled “Kipling Was
Wrong!: West Isn’t West, nor Is East East, as Far as the Hayakawas Are Con-
cerned,” emphasizes Hayakawa’s conscious struggle to reconcile or compro-
mise between East and West. Even though “Hayakawa’s great ambition is to
epitomize the history of his country in films,” according to Handy, Hayakawa
admitted “how extremely difficult it is for him to get vehicles that are Orien-
tal, and yet have an Occidental appeal. Japanese legends aren’t at all satisfac-
tory. They’re not dramatic enough, and they’re . . . too strictly local, without
enough universal appeal.”37
Hayakawa’s strategy for reconstructing his star image at Haworth is typi-
cally observed in His Birthright (William Worthington, 1 or 8 September
1918), the first film released by Haworth. Hayakawa was one of the authors of
the original story and therefore had full control over the plot material.38
In His Birthright, Hayakawa plays Yukio, a young Japanese man born of a
Japanese mother and an American father, Lieutenant John Milton of the U.S.
Navy. Yukio has been raised in a Japanese fishing village by a servant of his
mother. When he turns twenty-one, he learns that his mother, who had been
brokenhearted at the desertion of her husband, had stabbed herself to death
while he was still a baby. He goes to America as a cabin boy to take revenge on
his father. He confides his intention to Edna, a German spy. She persuades
Yukio to steal important documents from his father, in return for which she
promises her love. When he learns that her professed love is false, Yukio’s
sense of honor leads him to fight the German spies. Realizing that his father
has always loved his mother, Yukio abandons his ideas of revenge and deter-
mines to enlist in the service of America.
The only surviving print of His Birthright opens with a shot on the deck of
a boat.39 Yukio, in the white uniform of a cabin boy, walks toward the camera,
with a tray of cocktails in his left hand. Since there is no explanation about
the character and the situation, the original opening sequences, supposedly
set in Japan, are clearly missing in this print. The MPW noted, “A Japanese

B a l anc in g J ap an e s e n e ss and A m e r i c an i z a t i o n   159

 13 An ad for Sessue Hayakawa and Haworth
Pictures Corporation. Moving Picture
World 35.9 (9 March 1918): 1332.

14 An ad for Hayakawa Productions spon‑

sored by Haworth Pictures Corporation.
Moving Picture World 35.10 (16 March
1918): 1467.

15 An ad for Hayakawa Productions spon-

sored by Haworth Pictures Corporation.
Moving Picture World 36.8 (18 May
1918): 960.
atmosphere has been cleverly contrived as a background for the opening of
the story.”40 According to a Japanese film trade journal, Kinema Junpo, the
first shot of His Birthright is Mount Fuji and the story starts at Port Uraga,
where Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in the 1850s. The journal notes, “It
is clear from its opening shot of Mt. Fuji and its opening scene at Uraga port
that this film was made to make foreigners understand our country’s culture
and custom.”41 According to the review in ETR, “The scenes in Japan are ex-
quisite with the Japanese gardens, wisteria bowers, tea houses, geisha girls
and cunning Japanese children.”42 The MPW and EH also stated in reviews
of Hayakawa’s next film, The Temple of Dusk (James Young, 13 or 20 October
1918): “As in ‘His Birthright,’ the first production, many of the scenes are laid
in Japan. The settings and locations show with wonderful fidelity the exqui-
site beauty of the Kingdom of Flowers and the quaint and picturesque life of
the Nipponese.”43
In this extant print there are only three shots that are supposedly set in
Japan, all of which appear in flashbacks. Probably, these three remaining
shots were not shot in Japan but in Los Angeles, because Tsuru Aoki appears
in these shots and there is no record that Aoki went back to Japan for the film-
ing of His Birthright. It is a pity that we cannot thoroughly examine how au-
thentically His Birthright presented Japanese landscapes and characters in its
opening scenes, which were supposedly shot in Japan. Yet, it is noteworthy
that the re-created Japanese landscape in the remaining three shots does not
particularly emphasize exoticism or theatrical Japaneseness as did some of
Hayakawa’s films at the NYMPC and at Lasky.
The first of these three shots is Milton’s flashback. Milton, in his naval
uniform, flirts with a Japanese woman in a kimono. The location is a Japanese
garden. There is a temple-like building and a balustrade of a Japanese bridge
in the background. Other than these objects and the two people, we only see
trees in this long shot. The garden is not filled with strange Japanesque ob-
jects. It does not look as theatrical as the Japanese sequences in O Mimi San
and The Typhoon.
The second shot, which is also Milton’s flashback, is a long shot of the
Japanese woman who flirted with Milton in the first shot holding a baby. The
third shot, Yukio’s flashback, is a frontal medium shot of the Japanese woman
in a white kimono. She looks up and raises both of her arms. She has a small
Japanese sword in her left hand. Even though the third shot looks more the-
atrical because of her ritualistic action, there is almost no strange exoticiza-
tion with her kimono and Japanese-style hair in any of the shots. The sleeves

B a l anc in g J ap an e s e n e ss and A m e r i c an i z a t i o n   161

of her kimono in the second and third shots are short and are appropriate for
a married woman, while those in the first shot are long and are only for un-
married women. Her hair in the second and third shots looks like marumage,
a hairstyle for a married woman, while in the first flashback her hair looks
like shimada, a more garish hairstyle usually for a young woman. Also, there
is no forced emphasis on Japanese traits in these shots, except for a stone
lantern. If we presume from these shots with their more precise details in
the sets, costumes, and makeup, Japanese landscape and characters in His
Birthright look much more authentic than those in Hayakawa’s films made at
the NYMPC and at Lasky.
The name of Hayakawa’s Japanese character, Yukio, is authentically Japa-
nese. While Hayakawa had earlier played stereotypical Japanese characters
with strange Japanesque names, such as Nitobe Tokoramo (The Typhoon) or
Hishuru Tori (The Cheat), at Haworth Hayakawa played six Japanese charac-
ters with correct Japanese names in a row before he returned to playing other
Asian roles in The Man Beneath (Worthington, 6 July 1919): Yukio, Akira,
Sasamoto, Sakurai, Toyama, and Goro Moriyama. As Hayakawa declared, the
first film made at Haworth looked more authentic on its surface than his pre-
vious films.44
However, beneath its surface, His Birthright exploits the same motifs as
Hayakawa’s star vehicles at Lasky. The plot of His Birthright utilizes the arche-
typal narrative of Madame Butterfly, which Lasky often referred to in Haya‑
kawa’s star vehicles. Variety points out that the film “followed the lines of John
Luther Long’s story.”45 In fact, His Birthright was originally entitled “Butter-
fly’s Son,” something “like a sequel of Madame Butterfly.”46 As the flashbacks
set in Japan suggest, a U.S. naval officer falls in love with a Japanese woman
but leaves her in Japan. After giving birth to her son, she takes her own life
with a dagger, like Cio-Cio-San.
Moreover, the plot of His Birthright follows that of The Soul of Kura San,
in which a Japanese man travels to America to avenge a Japanese woman’s
death. Frances Guihan, the writer of The Soul of Kura San, wrote the scenario
of His Birthright. His Birthright is also a spy film like The Secret Game, as MPW
summarizes the plot, “How a Vengeful Heart Was Turned to Loyalty by Voice
of Conscience. . . . Thrilling Story of Vengeance and Retribution in Spy Plot.
The Strange Case of a Japanese Villain Who Reformed.”47
More than anything else, His Birthright uses one of the most prominent
devices that Lasky took to form Hayakawa’s star image: the motif of Ameri-
canization that positions Japanese people in the middle ground of a racial and

162  C h ap t e r E l e v e n
cultural hierarchy between white and nonwhite. In Hayakawa’s star vehicles
at Lasky, Hayakawa’s characters become sympathetic first and foremost be-
cause they aspire to Americanize their lifestyles. Similarly, His Birthright de-
picts how Yukio Americanizes himself.
In the beginning, Yukio is characterized as a culturally unrefined person.
In one scene, Yukio works as a valet at a party and watches an African Ameri-
can orchestra. He moves his hands exactly in rhythm with the orchestra.
Then, he turns to the guests dancing gracefully. In his point-of-view shot,
the guests do not look in harmony with the rhythm. Yukio frowns and tilts
his head. Here, the Japanese man and the African American people are juxta-
posed in terms of their way of appreciating music. They are clearly contrasted
to white people.
Yukio’s barbarous nature is most strikingly portrayed in a scene in which
he brutally attacks a white woman. When Yukio finds out that the female Ger-
man spy has cheated him, he jumps at her, grabs her by the neck, and pushes
her down on a sofa. He tries to strangle her. The medium shot of Yukio grab-
bing her naked shoulder exactly follows that of Tori, branding a white woman
in The Cheat. When her bodyguards enter the room, Yukio throws them away
one by one, using jiu-jitsu, a Japanese martial art, which could function as a
visual signifier of premodern culture.
However, in this scene it is very clear that Yukio shows this “primitive-
ness” only for the good of the American people. The white woman who
angers Hayakawa is a villainous character who attempts to subvert the order
of American society. In a sense, this visual reference to Tokoramo and Tori,
who try to avenge their tragic interracial romances, paradoxically functions
to express the Americanized characteristic of Yukio, who tries to defend the
peace of American society by attacking the villainous woman, as Hayakawa’s
character did in Forbidden Paths. In other words, by referring to those stereo-
typically villainous characters that he played, Hayakawa tried to overcome
or reverse the threatening image of an inassimilable Japanese man in those
films and transform it to that of an Americanized one.
In other scenes, Yukio is regarded as an illiterate child. Yukio shows his
unreadable handwritten memo to his mistress and is scolded by her. When
his female friend helps him remember what he wrote, he puts his hands
together in front of his chest and jumps for joy like a child. Then, when Yukio
wears a tuxedo and a top hat, a maid laughs at him and says, “What an enfant
terrible!”
According to the film historian Gaylyn Studlar, youth culture reformers

B a l anc in g J ap an e s e n e ss and A m e r i c an i z a t i o n   163

of the early twentieth century “agreed that the instincts of boys from nine to
fourteen were ‘savage.’ ”48 For instance, George Walter Fisk stated that, “the
whole process of child development like race development is a climb upward
from savagery through barbarism to civilization.”49 Douglas Fairbanks Sr.,
Hayakawa’s friend and another big star at the early period of the Hollywood
star system, represented an ideal model of primitive boys becoming civilized
American men. In the 1910s and into the 1920s, Fairbanks Sr. embodied
this “development” of “boys” with “instinctive behaviors of animal origin to
be modulated by morality and other qualities (such as sexual purity).” The
star image of Fairbanks Sr. was “a perfectly balanced, vigorous manhood that
combined the primitive and the genteel.”50
Similarly, His Birthright is a story of Yukio’s growing up from a boy to a
man, juxtaposed as his development from savagery to civilization. Yet, con-
trary to Fairbanks Sr., in the case of Hayakawa in His Birthright, a racial dis-
course was clearly woven into the child discourse. Both childlikeness and
racial difference were to be Americanized.
By the end of the narrative, Yukio becomes a loyal son of America. He is
actually half white American in the narrative. As ETR notes, “The birth of
patriotism in the heart of the young Japanese boy is graphically pictured” in
His Birthright.51 When Yukio attacks the female German spy at the climax,
he looks directly toward the camera in a medium close-up and points at the
camera with his right forefinger. Frowning a little, Yukio exactly copies the
famous pose of Uncle Sam in patriotic posters, saying “I Want You for U.S.
Army.” In this shot, the makeup, the lighting, and the performance style
function to emphasize Yukio’s Americanization. Yukio’s face looks white in
the strong key lighting and with the white makeup.
In the final scene, Yukio hears something, stands up from his working
desk, and walks to a window. He moves his hands in rhythm with the music
that he hears. This time, it is not a dance number played by an African Ameri-
can orchestra, but a march played by a U.S. Navy band. In the beginning,
Yukio identifies himself with an African American orchestra, but in this
final sequence, he comes to identify himself with a U.S. Navy band. As Yukio
climbs up the racial hierarchy, his music preference changes. Thus, in His
Birthright, music signifies a racial identification.
In the final spoken title, in which a picture of an American soldier and a
Japanese soldier saluting each other in front of their national flags is drawn,
Yukio states, “I am willing to give my life for the Stars and Stripes—your

164  C h ap t e r E l e v e n
country—OUR country.” Yukio’s white American father embraces his son at
this point as if he were blessing him as a completely Americanized man.
In the publicity for His Birthright, Hayakawa again followed Lasky’s
strategy, which mainly targeted American middle-class audiences: mixing
actuality and fiction. The fusion was achieved on two levels: between Haya‑
kawa’s biography and the story of His Birthright, and between an authentic
Japanese object and a stereotypical image of the object. Hayakawa was quoted
in a report in ETR :

“His Birthright,” in which the famous sword of the Samurai is involved, uses a
sword in the production which has been in the Hayakawa family for 400 years.
Hayakawa belongs to one of the oldest families in Japan, one whose traditions
involve the succession of the oldest son to the family troubles and guardianship
of the family honor. He is also custodian of the family sword—most precious
of family possessions.
“Time was—not so long ago either”—remarked the actor a few days ago,
“when a man’s honor consisted in his preservation of certain traditions that in
some instances were not worthy of preservation. Among these was a too ready
use of the sword to avenge insults, sometimes imaginary ones.”
“Now we take our troubles to the courts, just like Americans. The sword of
the Samurai is a noble tradition, but we don’t use it with old time indiscrimi-
nacy. It hangs on the wall in the place of honor among the portraits of our an-
cestors who were good old fighters of a different regime.”52

Here, Hayakawa fictionalized his biography and the origin of the sword in
accordance with the plot of His Birthright and the stereotypical images of
Japanese culture.
Hayakawa’s strategy to appeal to American audiences in His Birthright
was successful, according to the reviews in trade journals. A reviewer at ETR
claimed, “one of the best things he [Hayakawa] has done, and promises well
for future Hayakawa pictures under this management.”53 According to the
two-page ad for The Temple of Dusk, Hayakawa’s next film, His Birthright
“proved one of the big box office winners of the season.”54
After His Birthright, Hayakawa made a short film, Banzai, a promotional
film for the Liberty Loan Campaign. When the U.S. government announced
the third Liberty Loan Drive for April and May 1918, which aimed to raise
three billion dollars to support the war effort, Hayakawa joined a large group

B a l anc in g J ap an e s e n e ss and A m e r i c an i z a t i o n   165

of speakers, including such movie stars as Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fair-
banks Sr., and Mary Pickford. The MPW reported, “Sessue Hayakawa, the
Japanese star of the Haworth Pictures Corporation, was the first screen player
to appear at the tank, and in less than an hour disposed of bonds valued at
$6,500.”55 The Rafu Shimpo proudly reported that Hayakawa sold $25,000 in
bonds, which “surpasses that of Griffith and Fairbanks,” and “Sessue’s act to
sell bonds the other night contributed to promote Japan’s reputation.”56 The
purchase of the bonds was a visibly Americanized, or patriotic, activity. Thus,
while publicizing his loyalty to the United States to American fans, Haya-
kawa acted as an ideal representative of Japanese American communities in
California who would enhance the favorable national image of Japan among
Americans.
Not only his patriotic public performance but the film Banzai clearly indi-
cates Hayakawa’s intention to enhance his popularity among American audi-
ences, while being conscious about his reputation among Japanese American
communities. In Banzai, Hayakawa adopted two devices to emphasize his
and Japan’s loyalty to the United States. First, Banzai confirms a favorable
image of Japan in opposition to that of Germany. Banzai forces the image of
the yellow peril upon German soldiers. German soldiers are demonized with
the images of an ape, death, alcoholism, and a threat to white women. The
film opens with a theatrical set of German headquarters. The intertitle, with
pictures of an ape-like man with big ears and fangs wearing a helmet, reads,
“Swine! Filthy Yanks! Who produce money-mad weaklings to fight [the] U.S.
Their talk of billions is ‘Bluff.’ All ‘Bluff.’ ” A soldier with a bottle of cham-
pagne in his hand and two white women under his arms enters the room
and asks the general, “How about that champagne party in Paris, General?”
The general grabs a woman’s arm, forcefully embraces her, and says, “Next
month. Then in the Fall, a celebration in New York, and all American women
will belong to German Soldiers.” The intertitle has a picture of white people
captured by the hands of a huge black monkey.
Second, a racial masquerade positively blurs the difference between an
Americanized Japanese man and an American man in Banzai. The NYDM
notes, “Sessue Hayakawa as a Japanese soldier in the United States Army in
his Liberty Loan film ‘Banzai,’ ” while the synopsis that the Library of Con-
gress provides writes that he plays an American soldier who saves white
women from the Germans.57 Thus, Hayakawa’s character’s nationality was
conceived ambiguously in the film’s reviews.
In the film, an American soldier with a blonde mustache comes into

166  C h ap t e r E l e v e n
the German headquarters right after the German general attacks the white
woman. He shoots the German general and opens the door for other Ameri-
can soldiers. He tears down the German flag on the wall and replaces it with
an American flag. Then, he says, “The bluff called, Four Liberty loans over-
subscribed. Your dollars, turned into bullets, won the war. The Victory is ours.
The war is over.” The following extreme long shot reveals that the sequence
has been played on a stage. The shot/reverse shot structure shows American
audiences in the theater clapping at actors, who play American soldiers in
front of the American flag on the stage.
The American soldier takes off his helmet and peels off his fake mustache.
Hayakawa’s dark hair and his Japanese face are revealed. Hayakawa frowns
slightly, posing like Uncle Sam with his finger pointing at the camera, and
says, “Applause didn’t win the war. The boys backed by your Liberty bonds,
did. Applause will not bring them home or pay the war bills. Your dollars
in the victory Liberty Loan will. I am not talking to the man near you—
but to you—the real American.” In the following medium shot Hayakawa
raises his right fist and cries out, “Banzai!,” then raises both arms and repeats
“BANZAI!” Even though the Japanese word “Banzai” indicates Hayakawa’s
Japanese nationality, what Hayakawa represents is a completely American-
ized Japanese man. Hayakawa masquerades as a white American man and
makes the audience conscious of his racial difference as Japanese. However,
at the same time, by playing a patriotic white American role, he emphasizes
his appropriately Americanized self. Studlar suggests, “Americans had re-
garded the Great War as a moral crusade that, in the words of the Washington
Post, could turn any ‘slacking, dissipated, impudent lout’ into a[n American]
man.”58 Hayakawa does not intend to pass as white, but tries to display his
pseudo-white American status (again, a racial middle ground) in Banzai.
Thus, the first two Hayakawa films made at Haworth were, in fact, pro-
American war propaganda films. While “more realistic” Japanese landscapes
or characters certainly exist in both films, as proofs of Hayakawa’s concerns
about his reputation among Japanese American communities, the more sig-
nificant motifs in these films are the protagonists’ Americanization and their
loyalty to the United States. Hayakawa strategically followed these motifs,
which had been continuously exploited in his star vehicles at Lasky. There-
fore, Hayakawa’s first two films at Haworth can clearly be called the products
of “triple consciousness”: a result of Hayakawa’s negotiation among himself
as the head and the star of his own company, American audiences, and Japa-
nese American spectators.

B a l anc in g J ap an e s e n e ss and A m e r i c an i z a t i o n   167

 « 12 »

Return of the
Am e r i c a n i z e d O r i e n ta l s
Robertson-Cole’s Expansion and Standardization
of Sessue Hayakawa’s Star Vehicles

​T he structure of the film distribution system, which connects film

production and exhibition, was fully developed in the American film
industry in the 1910s. It was inevitable that the distributor, which
would directly know exhibitors’ demands, would eventually obtain a certain
degree of influence upon the independent studio’s policy and the contents
of its films. Since Haworth was an independent production company, it re-
quired a dependable distributor that would secure exhibitors to show its films.
Haworth contracted with the Robertson-Cole Distributing Corporation, a
new face in the film distributing business. Since Haworth did not enter the
distribution business, Hayakawa did not acquire complete autonomy regard-
ing his work. Sooner or later, this split between production and distribution
would come to have a serious influence upon Hayakawa’s star image.
The English-born Harry F. Robertson and the American Rufus Sidman
Cole formed Robertson-Cole as an import-export firm in 1918. For them,
the film business was originally a sideline to that of automobiles and tea.1
In the beginning, with its ample funds, Robertson-Cole functioned as the
connecting link between independent film production companies, including
Haworth, and the distributor, the Exhibitors’ Mutual Corporation, an out‑
growth of the Mutual Film Corporation, which had distributed films for many
years. Robertson-Cole purchased films from independent manufacturers and
sold them to Exhibitor’s Mutual, which then sold the films to exhibitors.
The MPW reported in December 1918, “The Robertson-Cole Company
buys the subjects purely on their merit, not permitting the influence of . . .
distributor to play any part in the transactions. This allows the manufacturer
to devote his entire time to the manufacture of good subjects.”2 Yet, the
“manufacture of good subjects” did not mean that Robertson-Cole allowed
filmmakers to have complete freedom. Robertson-Cole requested films that
would appeal to the popular audience. Percival M. Reynolds, a traveling spe-
cial representative of the Robertson-Cole Company in New York, suggested
that it is important “to learn the needs of the exhibitor and just the kind of
film subjects which [Robertson-Cole’s] patrons like best, and also the kind
they don’t like. . . . In this way the Robertson-Cole Company is aiming to
produce films which will make the widest possible appeal.”3
In October 1919, Robertson-Cole restructured its distributing system and
expanded its influence in the film distributing business.4 The MPW reported,
“There is no more pronounced evidence of the rapid growth of the Robertson-
Cole Company than the extremely large number of first run houses which
are booking its pictures. . . . Less than five months after its initial feature
had been distributed in the domestic field, Robertson-Cole is now placing its
output in many of the highest type of motion picture theatres in the United
States and Canada.”5 Robertson-Cole continued to distribute Haworth films
through 1920, when Haworth was integrated into Robertson-Cole, which by
then had also begun producing films. As Robertson-Cole rapidly expanded
its position in the film distribution and production businesses, it became
necessary for Hayakawa to negotiate more seriously with it regarding the
production of his star vehicles.
No official record is left that describes how the relationship between Haya-
kawa and Robertson-Cole changed after Robertson-Cole expanded its film
business. However, the reports and advertisements in trade journals and
the contents of Hayakawa’s films indicate that, throughout the year 1919,
Robertson-Cole began to take the initiative in its business relations and to
have a stronger influence on Haworth’s films, with a corresponding decrease
in Hayakawa’s control over his own company.
With Bonds of Honor (William Worthington, 19 January 1919), the third
feature film of Hayakawa at Haworth, the name of Robertson-Cole began
to appear in ads in trade journals. With A Heart in Pawn (Worthington, 10
March 1919), the following film, trade journals came to regard Robertson-
Cole, instead of Exhibitors Mutual, as the distributor of Hayakawa’s star ve-
hicles. As Mori Iwao, a Japanese film critic and screenwriter, reported, the
films made at Haworth were distributed by Mutual in the beginning, but as
Mutual became stagnant, Robertson-Cole took over.6 With His Debt (Wor-
thington, 25 May 1919), trade journals started calling Haworth one of “the
Robertson-Cole Company’s various units.”7 In June 1919, Robertson-Cole,

R e t u r n o f t he A m e r i c an i z e d O r i e nt a l s   169
instead of Haworth, started publicizing Hayakawa’s films in trade journals.
With The Man Beneath (Worthington, 6 July 1919), reviews in trade jour-
nals stopped calling Hayakawa’s vehicles “Mutual-Haworth Productions” and
identified them as a “Robertson-Cole feature” or as the films “released by
Robertson-Cole.”8
In August 1919, Robertson-Cole made a new contract with Haworth. After
that, in the ads for Hayakawa’s films, the words “Robertson-Cole Productions”
were printed at the top of the page and the size of the letters were larger than
“Produced by Haworth” at the bottom of the page (see fig. 16).9
In September, Robertson-Cole announced that it would start a new series
called “Hayakawa Superior Pictures.”10 Robertson-Cole made an arrange-
ment to distribute this series on an expanded scale. It announced, “The series
of eight Hayakawa productions will start in over 4,000 houses. . . . When the
first Hayakawa picture was released just a few years ago it was shown in a few
first run houses.”11 The EH noted, “Almost five thousand theaters will show
the new Hayakawa pictures and this number will without doubt be greatly
increased before the first is released.”12 Robertson-Cole even started issuing
extensive press books of the Hayakawa Superior Pictures brand. According
to MPW, they were “the most elaborate” press books, which included advance
notices, reviews, stills, lobby display photos, catchlines for ads, projectionists’
cues, musical settings, and so forth, and they were extended to exhibitors as
“a complete guide and advertising aid.”13
Right before Robertson-Cole and Hayakawa signed their new contract,
Robertson-Cole placed a two-page ad for Hayakawa in EH and a four-page
one in MPN. Both ads clearly stated that Hayakawa was “a Robertson-Cole
star.” These ads did not emphasize Hayakawa’s Japanese traits, as Haworth
had done. Instead, Robertson-Cole’s ads underscored that Hayakawa had an
“Oriental” characteristic, stating, for instance, “He [Hayakawa] adds the dis-
tinction of being alone in his chosen sphere, the interpretation of those parts
which only an Oriental can successfully portray for an audience of the West-
ern World. Sensational or unpleasant subjects are always avoided and Haya-
kawa carries with him the full support of those who love the mystery and
beauty of the Oriental World as well as the superb finish of a great actor.”14
Apart from Haworth’s limited but purposeful emphasis on the “authentic”
Japaneseness in Hayakawa’s films, Robertson-Cole’s promotional campaign
for Hayakawa more intensely targeted the reception by American audiences.
Robertson-Cole deviated from a specific representation of Japan and the
Japanese people in its films and ads and decided to revitalize Hayakawa’s

170  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
16  An ad for The Gray Horizon. Moving Picture World 41.9 (30 August 1919): 1234.

popularity by emphasizing his more inclusive and stereotypical “Oriental”

images.
In December 1919, Robertson-Cole published a one-page ad in trade jour-
nals that thanked Thomas Ince for discovering Hayakawa. The ad noted,
“Thank you Mr. Ince. We noticed with extreme pleasure in the trade papers
of November 15th that you took pride in announcing Sessue Hayakawa . . .
as [a star] of your discovery.”15 This ad indicated Robertson-Cole’s intention
to follow Ince’s stereotypical portrayal of Japan and the Japanese people in its
films with Hayakawa.
In the beginning, Hayakawa did not seriously oppose Robertson-Cole’s
intervention because Hayakawa himself had been desirous of enhancing
his popularity among American audiences when he established Haworth.
There were even some mixed reviews of Hayakawa’s first several films at

R e t u r n o f t he A m e r i c an i z e d O r i e nt a l s   171
Haworth in trade journals, in spite of their overall critical successes. In April
1919, MPW reported, “Beyond question, he [Hayakawa] is one of the most
popular players on the screen today, and a glance at the Exhibitors Mutual
booking records is sufficient to prove this assertion.”16 Yet, in September
1918, a reviewer at Wid’s Daily had criticized His Birthright by noting that
the film was “carefully produced as to characterizations and atmosphere but
is held down by much unnecessary detail and painfully slow tempo.”17 The
“unnecessary detail and painfully slow tempo” were possibly caused by the
film’s too serious attempt to “do justice to real Japanese character.” Too much
emphasis on detailed Japanese traits might not have an appeal to the main-
stream American audiences. This was why trade journals suggested to ex-
hibitors regarding Hayakawa’s films at Haworth: “Fix your ad copy up with
Japanese trimmings, always, however, making sure to mention the fact that
an American drama is presented.”18 In a fan magazine, it was even reported
in 1919 that “The Great Sessue Hayakawa Has Not Been So Successful Since
He Left Lasky.”19
By 1919, some trade journals began to problematize Hayakawa’s stardom
in terms of his nationality. On Bonds of Honor, Wid’s Daily commented, “Ses-
sue Hayakawa is a difficult star to fit with screen material. So many things
are of necessity eliminated, for social or political reasons, that he is fortunate
when a story of good quality and free from anything likely to give offense
comes his way.”20 Some fans in early 1919 worried about Hayakawa’s possible
decline in popularity because of his nationality. A magazine editor responded
to a fan’s question about Hayakawa:

Sanatorium Intern: I have not seen Sessue Hayakawa featured very much lately,
and as he is a great favorite of mine, would you kindly give me a few facts con-
cerning him, if space will permit? Is his popularity decreasing or is it because
of his nationality that he is held back?

A: While Sessue Hayakawa is not shown as much as heretofore it does not re-
flect upon his talent or ability, and being a Japanese does not handicap him in
his film work, for he has shown that he is equally as capable in the histrionic art
as some of the more widely exploited artists. Personally, he is a man of many
and varied accomplishments, and being an expert linguist, he is thoroughly
conversant with American and Oriental customs.21

These views that questioned the popularity of Hayakawa’s films and his star
image made Hayakawa more anxious about his appeal to American audi-

172  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
ences. Under such conditions, Hayakawa was willing to fully utilize the mo-
tifs and characterizations that popularized him at Lasky.
The film historian Richard Koszarski writes, “More conservative busi-
ness practices adopted during the twenties acted to freeze many stars into
repeated variations of familiar routines. Performers who a decade earlier had
constantly developed and expanded their roles were now content to exploit
their audience-tested images.”22 This was what Hayakawa did after 1919.
Especially after The Courageous Coward (Worthington, 14 April 1919), using
standardized plots, motifs, and characterizations, Hayakawa’s films and his
star image began to “repeat” his “audience-tested images,” which had been
successfully made at Lasky. Symbolically, for the first time at Haworth, in The
Courageous Coward, Hayakawa accepted a character’s name, Suki, which is
not appropriately Japanese.
Then, the most prominent thematic motif of Hayakawa’s star vehicles at
Lasky returned in full. Hayakawa had already used the motif of self-sacrifice
in the second film at Haworth, The Temple of Dusk, which MPW called a “Story
of Great Love and Final Sacrifice in Living True to Ideal Devotion. . . . Photo-
play of Deep Interest Typifying Oriental Ideals and Devotion.”23 Hayakawa
hired Frances Marion, who wrote The City of Dim Faces, a self-sacrificial
melodrama made at Lasky, as a writer of the scenario of The Temple of Dusk.
Hayakawa declared confidently, “The Temple of Dusk will be received well
among Americans.”24 In The Temple of Dusk, Hayakawa plays Akira, a young
Japanese poet “of the Samurai clan.” Akira falls in love with a young Ameri-
can woman who is under his father’s care in Tokyo after her father has died.
To be faithful to her father’s will, she marries an American millionaire. After
the woman dies three or four years later, her child is left in the care of Akira.
The American man marries a new wife, but he shoots her former lover out of
jealousy. Akira takes the blame for the crime for the child’s sake. When the
child writes to him that she is lonesome, he escapes from prison to see the
child. He is shot to death. At the Temple of Dusk, his loved one welcomes
Akira and he and the white woman unite in heaven.
Reviewers welcomed Hayakawa’s self-sacrificial Japanese role in the film.
The EH noted, “We see Sessue Hayakawa in a role that best becomes this
favorite of the silver screen. The love and devotion of a Japanese youth for a
child . . . and his final sacrifice to save the baby’s name from disgrace, forms
the basis of the story.”25
Yet, it was after The Courageous Coward that the motif of self-sacrifice
for a white woman was used more obviously and continuously.26 The MPW

R e t u r n o f t he A m e r i c an i z e d O r i e nt a l s   173
called His Debt, the film that followed The Courageous Coward, a story “of Self-
sacrifice by a Japanese for the Sake of the Woman He Loves.”27 The MPW re-
garded the following film, The Gray Horizon (Worthington, 18 August 1919),
as an “Absorbing Story of a Japanese Who Sacrificed His Own Happiness for
the Sake of the Woman he Loved,” and “Powerful Tragedy of Thrilling Ven-
geance and Self-Sacrificing Love with Sessue Hayakawa in Leading Role.”28
As a result of the constant play of this theme of self-sacrifice, one Japanese fan
pointed out, in a bored tone, the “worn out thematic motif of self-sacrifice” in
His Debt.29
Robertson-Cole’s promotional materials exploited the motif of miscegena-
tion in Hayakawa’s films. A one-page ad of Bonds of Honor in trade journals
uses a drawing of Hayakawa and a white woman that implies an indulgent
interracial love scene. Hayakawa lies on a sofa with a glass of wine in his right
hand. A wine bottle is lying on a table and Hayakawa looks drunk. He draws
the white woman close to him with his left arm. The white woman has put
her right hand on his head, left hand on his left arm, and bends over Haya-
kawa, as if she is about to kiss him. Clearly, this ad campaign was meant to
appeal to American spectators’ curiosity concerning the racial taboo, but not
exceedingly.30
Finally, Hayakawa decided to play non-Japanese roles again. At Lasky,
Hayakawa played seven non-Japanese leading roles: two Indians, two Hawai-
ians, a Mexican, an Arab, and a Chinese. At Haworth, he did not play any non-
Japanese role until The Man Beneath, the eighth Hayakawa film at Haworth.
A one-page ad for The Man Beneath in trade journals emphasized the strange
Oriental atmosphere of the film, which is a mixture of Japan and India. In
the ad a close-up drawing shows Hayakawa, playing a young Indian doctor,
wearing an Indian-looking turban in front of a drawing of Mount Fuji, the
moon, the sea, and a plum tree (see fig. 17).31 Even so, Wid’s Daily praised
this role of Hayakawa as “the best in his recent film” and “the sort of stuff the
women like to see the Japanese star do.”32 The MPN also stated, “Hayakawa is
far too versatile to confine his work to the portrayal of Japanese roles only.”33
George T. Pardy of ETR even insisted, “The versatile Hayakawa is never seen
to better advantage than as a film adventurer of the Orient.”34
After The Tong Man (Worthington, 14 December 1919), the third of the
“Hayakawa Superior Pictures” initiated by Robertson-Cole, Hayakawa played
eleven more non-Japanese roles until he left Hollywood in 1922, while play-
ing only one Japanese role.35 In this manner, Hayakawa followed Robertson-
Cole’s strategy of standardizing his star vehicles based on a stereotypically

174  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
17  An ad for The Man Beneath. Moving Picture World 41.4 (26 July 1919): 463.

Orientalist imagination of Japan and Asia, but not on a more realistic depic-
tion of Japanese people.
Hayakawa may have chosen not to play Japanese roles in order to avoid
playing stereotypical Japanese roles, thinking about his reputation in Japanese
communities especially in the postwar revival of the anti-Japanese movement
in California. Photoplay noted, “So long as it must be a ‘heavy’ part, Sessue
Hayakawa prefers that his villainy be consummated in the guise of a Chi-
nese. As is generally known, the relations between the Celestials and those
of the Flowery Kingdom are not unlike those existing between the Teutons
and the Sons of Albion.”36 This claim juxtaposed Britain versus Germany and
Japan versus China to indicate Hayakawa’s intention of differentiating Japan
from the rest of Asia. By masquerading as other Asians, Hayakawa tried not
to enhance stereotypical views of Japan among American audiences.
No matter what Hayakawa’s intention was, ironically, Hayakawa’s choice
resulted in the blurring of national boundaries and cultural differences

R e t u r n o f t he A m e r i c an i z e d O r i e nt a l s   175
among Asian countries. It helped to form a collective and imaginary space
called “the Orient” or “Asia” and strengthened the Orientalist mode of rep-
resenting Asian people in the 1920s. In fact, after this point, reviewers often
confused the nationalities of Hayakawa’s characters. For example, Akbar
Khan, a Hindu novelist in The Devil’s Claim (Charles Swickard, 2 May 1920),
was mistakenly identified as “a Persian author” by Matthew A. Taylor of
MPN.37
Robertson-Cole’s strategy to revitalize Hayakawa’s popularity was success-
ful. The EH reported that His Debt, The Man Beneath, The Gray Horizon, and
The Dragon Painter (Worthington, 28 September or 4 October 1919) “were all
accorded splendid receptions by the press and public.”38 The MPW noted that
in the course of the year 1919 Hayakawa “steadily advanced in popularity.”39
In the beginning of 1920, MPW reported, “So overwhelmingly [sic] has been
his success that Hayakawa’s name is used in lights at almost every first-run
house in the United States. On account of this enviable record, many of the
best known exhibitors have contracted for every picture turned out by Haya-
kawa for Robertson-Cole.”40 It was reported that Haworth earned more than
two million dollars by early 1920 and Hayakawa was able to pay back the one
million that he had borrowed for the initial establishment of Haworth.41

The Dragon Painter was the first of Robertson-Cole’s new series of “Haya-
kawa Superior Pictures.” Despite Robertson-Cole’s overall strategy, which
treated Hayakawa not as specifically Japanese but as ambiguously Oriental,
The Dragon Painter was publicized as if it showed authentic Japanese land-
scapes and characters. In a one-page ad in MPW, all eight still photos show
Hayakawa in a Japanese kimono amid Japanese scenery. One photo was even
framed in the shape of a Japanese lantern (see fig. 18).42 A two-page ad in EH
displays a drawing of dragons and Hayakawa’s name written vertically on one
page and Hayakawa and Aoki in kimonos holding each other in a Japanese-
looking garden on the other.43
Trade journals reported that The Dragon Painter successfully reproduced
“authentic” Japanese atmosphere. Margaret I. MacDonald of MPW wrote,
“One of the especially fine features of the production is the laboratory work,
mountain locations of extreme beauty, chosen for the purpose of imitating
Japanese scenery, and supplying Japanese atmosphere, are enhanced by the
splendid results accomplished, in the work of developing and toning.”44 The
MPW also reported, “In this setting the village of Hakone, Japan, was dupli-
cated even to its famous Shintu [sic] gates. Each setting is so naturally beau-

176  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
18  An ad for The Dragon Painter. Moving Picture World 41.13 (27 September 1919): 1943.

tiful that it is hard to realize the perfection of the interior detail. The pictur-
esqueness of ‘The Land of the Rising Sun’ has been fully retained in ‘The
Dragon Painter.’ ”45
However, contrary to these reports, the Japanese landscapes and charac-
ters that The Dragon Painter represented were the careful result of Robertson-
Cole’s high standardization, which stressed an Orientalist recreation of Haya‑
kawa’s star image. In fact, Kinema Junpo, a Japanese film magazine, pointed
out, “[The Dragon Painter] did not show either contemporary or actual Japan.”46
The Dragon Painter displayed the imaginary, exotic, and picturesque Japan
that many American audiences had been accustomed to seeing in films and
travelogues about Japan since the late nineteenth century. Robertson-Cole
and Hayakawa fully exploited this expectation of American audiences.
The Dragon Painter was based on a story written by Mary McNeil Fenol-
losa.47 Her husband, Ernest, was a famous Japanologist, whose collection

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became the basis of the Japanese art collection of the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts. Ernest Fenollosa had an influential role in forming Japanese Taste
among middle-class Americans. His wife’s novel was written in this trend.
Robertson-Cole relocated the Japanese aspect of Hayakawa’s star image not
in its cultural authenticity but in the context of Japanese Taste.
In The Dragon Painter, Hayakawa plays Tatsu, a young Japanese painter
who madly seeks a dragon princess, who, he believes, is hiding under the
surface of a mountain lake. Undobuchida, a friend of Kano Indara, the aging
master of Japanese painting, is impressed by Tatsu’s paintings and his talent
and invites him to Tokyo. Undobuchida convinces Tatsu to learn the art of
Kano. In Tokyo, Umeko (Aoki), the daughter of the artist, poses as the dragon
princess for Tatsu. Tatsu is impressed by Umeko’s refined beauty. Umeko
is fascinated by Tatsu’s talent. Yet, after Tatsu marries Umeko, he becomes
unable to paint. She decides to sacrifice herself and so leaves Tatsu in order
to save his talent. Tatsu leaps into the pool in which he believes his wife
has drowned herself. He is rescued, and afterward, he succeeds with his art.
After his successful exhibition, Umeko, who has actually been hiding at a
temple, comes back to him.
The imaginary Orientalist aspect of The Dragon Painter is indicated, first,
by its choice of strange Japanesque names: Undobuchida; Kano Indara, which
may be a mixture based on a Japanese painter named Kano and a fourteenth-
century Chinese painter named Indara;48 and Hanake for the place where
the hero lives. In the only surviving print, restored at the George Eastman
House, the hero’s name is not Tatsu, which is more suitable for a Japanese
name, but Ten-Tsuou. Katsudo Kurabu, a Japanese film magazine, pointed
out, “Even though Mr. Sessue Hayakawa took subject matter from Japan,
Japanese names and styles in The Dragon Painter are very inappropriate. . . . A
film about Japan that does not properly depict Japanese customs is very hard
to watch for us Japanese.”49
Second, The Dragon Painter utilizes the archetypal dichotomy between
wilderness and civilization, the concurrent notion extensively used in Haya‑
kawa’s films at the NYMPC and at Lasky. The Eurocentric notion of a racial
and cultural hierarchy in the representation of Japan and its people functions
within this dichotomy. The opening shot, an extreme long shot of Hanake,
artificially combines the actual location of Yosemite Valley and Japanesque
objects, such as a torii and a straw-thatched hut, and establishes Japan as
a wild, premodern, and picturesque place. The mountains, waterfalls, and
rocks of Yosemite are displayed in the background, signifying nature and

178  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
wilderness. Clouds move fast, as if they were shown in fast motion, and thus
enhance the fantastic atmosphere. A Japanese critic described the landscape
of Hanake as “the mysterious region of the age of the Gods.”50
Throughout the film, Tatsu, a painter madly obsessed with completing a
masterpiece of a legendary dragon princess, moves back and forth between
savagery/wilderness and refinement/civilization and embodies the movable
middle-ground position of Japan in the racial and cultural hierarchy, in accor-
dance with the popular American discourse of the time.51 Tatsu is introduced
literally as a savage in his appearance, with his untidy hair and worn-out
kimono. The second shot of the film shows Tatsu painting. He tears the piece
that he has just painted and tries to summon a dragon from the mountains.
Then, a high angle shot shows Tatsu lying on the ground and emphasizes
that Tatsu is in the middle of nature and wilderness. Even when Tatsu arrives
in Tokyo, he cannot stay in a house at night and sleeps by the stream in the
garden. The original novel begins in Tokyo, and there is no opening scene
that describes Tatsu in the wilderness. In the film, instead, a scene at Kano’s
refined house in Tokyo is inserted into the opening scene at Hanake. This
cross-cutting between Hanake and Tokyo emphasizes the image of Japan
positioned in the middle ground between wilderness and civilization.
Despite his uncivilized behavior, Tatsu is characterized as a creator of
sophisticated art, Japanese paintings. Especially after his wedding to Umeko,
Tatsu shows his gentle, civilized, and refined aspect. He wears an authentic
black Japanese kimono with family crests on the chest. His hair is neatly set
as he speaks of love with a flute in his hand, kneeling down before Umeko
under a pine tree. He paints at a table sitting neatly on a tatami floor.
Umeko embodies Japanese Taste more clearly. Umeko’s room is filled with
typical signifiers of Japanese Taste: a Japanese garden with a gate, a stream,
a small bridge, stone lanterns, and a peacock in front of a small shrine; a
room with tatami mats, fusuma, Japanese sliding doors, and shoji; paintings
of Mount Fuji and a dragon; paper lanterns. She wears a luxurious kimono
and the beautiful hairstyle of an unmarried woman, shimada. After apply-
ing her makeup in front of a Japanese-style mirror table, she dances a Japa-
nese dance with a silver fan in front of flowers arranged in a Japanese style,
while her housemaid plays the samisen, a Japanese banjo-like musical in-
strument, and Japanese drums. She sits beside a shoji window under the
beautiful moon. Even after the wedding, possibly to exaggerate her showy
display of Japanese Taste, Umeko keeps wearing her long-sleeved kimono,
which married women traditionally do not wear, and her shimada hairstyle,

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which should have changed to the less showy marumage of married women.
Umeko even shows her extremely obedient and self-sacrificial nature as a
stereotypical Japanese woman by committing suicide as Cio-Cio-San does in
Madame Butterfly.
However, too much gentrification makes Tatsu lose his talent. To regain
his artistic inspiration, Tatsu has to go back to the wilderness and savagery
once again. The final shot of the film is symbolic. Tatsu, even though neatly
dressed and accompanied by Umeko in a kimono, sits and paints in the
wilderness. Tatsu and his embodiment of Japaneseness are kept on the edge
of savagery/primitiveness and refinement/civilization.
Thus, The Dragon Painter rearticulated the Japanese aspect of Haya‑
kawa’s star image in the context of Japanese Taste, the archetypal dichotomy
between primitive and civilized, and the motif of self-sacrifice in the style
of Madame Butterfly. The result was very favorable. A reviewer in EH even
claimed, “Optically this is one of Sessue Hayakawa’s best offerings. In picto-
rial appeal it is the strongest thing the Haworth Company has ever done.”52
The EH also noted, “Hayakawa’s recent pictures, produced by Haworth, have
been triumphs in the art of production and it is generally agreed that ‘The
Dragon Painter,’ the latest picture, will take its place among the few best
pictures produced this season. The critics who reviewed it were enthusiastic
and some of them said it was the best picture play shown in years.”53 Helen
Rockwell of ETR wrote, “By far the best thing he [Hayakawa] has done since
his well remembered performance in ‘The Cheat.’ ”54 The New York Times
even selected this film as one of “The Year’s Best.”55
In the same year of 1919, Thomas C. Kennedy of ETR praised The Tong
Man, another “Hayakawa Superior Picture,” because it was “produced with
such realism.”56 The MPW also pointed out the film’s “authentic” depiction of
the Chinese people and stated, “It is so typically Chinese that it carries with it
all the mystery of the Orient.”57 However, when The Tong Man was released,
it caused an uproar in Chinese communities in the United States.58 Chinese
residents in Rochester, N.Y., and in San Francisco tried to ban the film, in-
sisting that the film misrepresented the lives and customs of the Chinese
people.59 However, according to the film historian Stephen Gong, the presid-
ing judge in the case had the film screened in court and denied the protes-
tors’ request for an injunction. The judge said, “This is a picture that shows
action of real life. There is nothing misleading about it. It is entertaining,
gripping and instructive.”60 This controversy over The Tong Man reveals the
film’s Orientalist traits that looked “realistic” only to American audiences.

180  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
In fact, EH reviewed the film, using the term “Orient” over and over again:
“The transplanted Orient which is San Francisco’s Chinatown is the perfect
setting against which Sessue Hayakawa portrays the sort of role that Sessue
Hayakawa should portray in this his latest and most fitting production. . . .
Oriental drama, along with the host of other things from the dimly appre-
hended East, has a peculiar charm for American audiences.”61
In The Tong Man, Hayakawa plays Luk Chan, a Chinese hatchet man in
San Francisco’s Chinatown. Luk Chan falls in love with Sen Chee, the daugh-
ter of Louie Toy, a wealthy merchant of the opium trade. Ming Tai, who rules
the powerful secret society Bo Sing Tong, desires Sen Chee and Louie Toy’s
fortune. When Louie Toy refuses to pay protection money, Ming Tai orders
Luk Chan to kill Louie Toy. When Luk Chan refuses, Ming Tai kills Louie
Toy, kidnaps Sen Chee, and informs the police that Luk Chan is responsible.
Eventually, Luk Chan and his friend Lucero rescue Sen Chee from Ming Tai
and the three get on a ship to China.
Not realistic but sensationally and stereotypically negative images of
Chinatown are clearly established in the opening scenes of The Tong Man.
The opening shot, which follows the intertitle with its photos of an altar and
paper lanterns saying, “In the heart of Chinatown,” shows a dark street in
Chinatown at night. A man is suddenly shot and a policeman runs up to him.
An intertitle, “The Bo Sing Tong[,] the most powerful and dreaded of China-
town’s secret societies; dealing in blackmail and assassination” is followed by
a shot that shows the meeting of the Bo Sing Tong. In the dark room where
an altar and a poster with Chinese characters that spell “sacred” dominate the
space, most of the men hold long pipes and smoke opium. The Bo Sing Tong
worships the “great Joss,” the big statue of a dragon, whose eyes glow when it
shows “a divine token,” which appears in later shots. These images of China-
town, dominated by the members of a superstitious and violent cult group,
follow those of anti-Chinese discriminatory cartoons in popular American
magazines in the late nineteenth century. One illustrated image of a Chi-
nese gambling place in New York in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper published in
1887, for example, shows a dark room filled with smoke and many Chinese
people in Chinese caps and black Chinese dress playing a board game.62
Hayakawa’s character, Luk Chan, “the Bo Sing Tong’s most feared hatchet
man,” is certainly characterized as one of these stereotypical Chinese people.
When he first appears on the screen, smoking a cigarette, he throws a hatchet
to surprise a sleeping old Chinese man and laughs at him savagely. However,
at the same time, Luk Chan is clearly distinguished from other Chinese char-

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19  An ad for The Tong Man. Moving Picture World 42.8 (20 December 1919): 929.

acters. Luk Chan wears a European dress hat while other Chinese characters
wear Chinese caps (see fig. 19). After Luk Chan pulls out his hatchet from
the pillar, a Chinese man with a Chinese cap lights Luk Chan’s cigarette ex-
tremely respectfully. Luk Chan’s white made-up facial skin makes him stand
out in the scene because other Chinese characters, mostly played by white
actors, wear dark makeup and catfish-like whiskers. Moreover, even though
Luk Chan is a hatchet man for a barbarous Chinese tong, he rarely actually
kills people on the screen. In most cases Lucero, “a Lascar” (Indian) sailor,
who has been saved by the heroine from policemen, kills villainous men for
Luk Chan. Lucero, who is called “this poor creature” by the heroine, looks
more like a Chinese teenager than an Indian, especially when he wears a
Chinese cap.
The Tong Man characterizes Luk Chan as a genteel hero, referring to the
narrative of Romeo and Juliet, which portrays an innocent and melodramatic
love affair between the hero and the heroine. The motif of self-sacrificial devo-

182  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
tion of a genteel hero for a white woman functions in the process. Herbert J.
Hoose of MPW claimed that The Tong Man was a “Very attractive . . . ‘Romeo
and Juliet’ episode in Chinatown.”63 Sen Chee, “A Juliet of Chinatown,” ac-
cording to an intertitle, falls in love at first sight with Luk Chan, a hatchet
man of the enemy group. Luk Chan promises Sen Chee to quit the Bo Sing
Tong and to become “a merchant prince.” He betrays the tong and tries to
protect Sen Chee and her father. When the villains assault Sen Chee, Luk
Chan desperately runs to her. Parallel editing enhances the melodramatic
tension until “the last minute rescue.”
Even though a white actress, Helen Jerome Eddy, plays the Chinese
woman and always wears a Chinese dress, she does not look Chinese at all
with her blonde hair and makeup. She simply looks like a Caucasian girl in
Chinese dress, as Vivian Martin in Forbidden Paths does not look Japanese
when she puts on a Japanese kimono. Thus, both the hero and the heroine of
this film are visually distinguished from other Chinese characters, with their
costumes, makeup, and their innocent and romantic love affair. They are, in
this sense, treated as an Americanized genteel couple. Tom Hamlin of MPN
correctly pointed out, “[The Tong Man] does not portray the usual finale of
so many of his [Hayakawa’s] pictures that showed that ‘East is East and West
is West and the twain shall never meet.’ . . . This picture does not have the
sad ending most Hayakawa pictures have with romance blasted at the end
because of race.”64
The nonwhite hero played by Hayakawa and the nonwhite villain played
by a white actor, Marc Robbins, are the two melodramatically opposite types
of Chinese immigrants in the United States, like the two Japanese immigrant
characters in The Honorable Friend. In both films, stereotypical Asianness
is exaggerated by racial masquerade, with characters played by white actors
with their makeup, costumes, facial expressions, and gestures. The goodness
of Hayakawa’s nonwhite characters is emphasized in comparison to their
opponents.
Regarding this issue of racial masquerade in their characters’ represen-
tations of Chinese traits, The Tong Man stands in marked contrast to Broken
Blossoms, D. W. Griffith’s interracial melodrama set in a Chinatown, which
was released several months earlier in May 1919. In The Tong Man, Ming
Tai, who always wears a Chinese cap, is frowning all the time and imitates
Chinese posture with a slight stoop, placing his hands in front of his chest.
This posture is exactly what the white actor Richard Barthelmess displays
in Broken Blossoms. Barthelmess always wears a Chinese cap, is always half-

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closing his eyes or frowning because of his makeup, has a slight stoop, and
walks slowly with his hands in front of his chest.
Yet, the Chinese character in Broken Blossoms, played by Barthelmess, is
divided into two Chinese characters in The Tong Man. First, the implicitly
threatening sexuality of Barthelmess’s Chinese man becomes more obvious
in the character of Ming Tai, who kidnaps a white heroine. In Broken Blossoms,
Griffith transformed the Chinese protagonist from a vengeful schemer of
the original short story, Thomas Burke’s “The Chink and the Girl” (1916), to
“a disillusioned romantic, brutalized by a callous urban environment” with
his passive and protective gesture.65 Barthelmess’s Chinese character does
not kidnap the white heroine, played by Lillian Gish, but cares for her after
she wanders into his store and collapses, dazed from a beating given by her
father. Yet, the Chinese character in Broken Blossoms is still threatening to
white womanhood in terms of the anxiety of miscegenation. The white her-
oine’s father interprets the Chinese man’s act as an illicit love affair. More-
over, there is an extreme close-up of Barthelmess’s face with half-closed eyes
approaching the heroine in bed. This shot appears as a point-of-view shot of
the horrified heroine. Barthelmess ends up kissing the sleeve of the heroine’s
Chinese dress, but the heroine’s horrified facial expression clearly indicates
the implicit fear of miscegenation with the Chinese man. “The Chink and
the Girl” existed within the late-nineteenth-century genealogy of a popular
Victorian imagination of Chinese kidnapping white women to make them
“white slaves.” Within this popular discourse, no matter how sympathetically
the Barthelmess character is depicted in the film version, he signifies a sexual
threat to white womanhood to a certain degree.66 He treats the white heroine
as an object of worship: in other words, he fetishizes her.
Ming Tai is much more aggressive and obviously threatening to the white
heroine than Barthelmess’s character. From the beginning, Ming Tai spies on
the heroine from behind a curtain, playing with her bird on a balcony, grin-
ning and wiping his mouth with his hand. The deep space composition em-
phasizes Ming Tai’s voyeuristic act, which treats the heroine as an object of
his gaze. In contrast, the first meeting of Sen Chee and Luk Chan is shown in
shots/reverse shots that indicate their relatively equal relationship as a man
and a woman. After Ming Tai murders Sen Chee’s father, he approaches Sen
Chee with an obviously lustful expression, emphasized in a close-up. Even
though both Ming Tai and Sen Chee are Chinese characters and played by
white actors, the different tactical uses of their makeup, costumes, and ges-
tures function to cause anxiety of miscegenation in this scene.

184  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
 In contrast, the good aspect shown in Barthelmess’s character—rescuing
the white heroine from a brutal villain—is displayed in a more gentle and
heroic manner in the character of Luk Chan. Luk Chan, in spite of being
played by Hayakawa, an Asian actor, always stands straight, walks actively,
and never places his hands in front of his chest. He deviates from the “Orien-
tal” postures and facial expressions represented by Barthelmess and Robbins.
Luk Chan’s black silk dress shines and even looks white in the lighting effects
in night scenes, while Robbins and Barthelmess wear dull black clothes.
Most strikingly, any sexual implication is excluded from the love affair be-
tween Luk Chan and Sen Chee. The most significant device to eliminate the
anxiety of miscegenation between the characters played by the Japanese actor
and the white actress is the persistent avoidance of a kiss between them. Even
after exchanging affectionate words, they just press their cheeks together.
Many films of this period often fade out or cut to other scenes when couples
in the films start kissing and so hide their actual kisses. However, in The Tong
Man, a kiss between Hayakawa’s character and the white actress’s character is
not even suggested or hidden. They do not start kissing at all. They repeatedly
press their cheeks, even in Luk Chan’s flashback, his supposedly subjective
memory. Even in the finale, on the deck of a boat to China, they merely em-
brace each other in silhouette.
This no-kiss policy was adopted in other Hayakawa films at Haworth in
order not to cause a fear of miscegenation between Hayakawa’s nonwhite
characters and the heroines played by white actresses. In fact, the Rafu Shimpo
reported about A Heart in Pawn (Worthington, 10 March 1919): “This can be
called a ‘kiss-less picture,’ and there is no kiss scene between a man and a
woman. It is a rare case in contemporary cinema.”67 The French impression-
ist filmmaker Jean Epstein, in his article that praised the silent language of
cinema, described Hayakawa’s kissless performance in a more poetic but Ori-
entalist manner, “The glance of Hayakawa, clean, grave as an oath, crushes
those who do not know the honor of the Orient, nor love without kissing, fire
without ash, engagements that last 15 years.”68
In The Swamp (Colin Campbell, 30 October 1921), which was written and
edited by Hayakawa himself for the first time since he produced His Birth-
right, Banzai, and The Temple of Dusk, this no-kiss policy for Hayakawa was
observable in an extremely twisted manner.69 The Swamp is a story about
Wang (Hayakawa), a Chinese vegetable peddler in the slums, who loves a
white woman, Mary. Wang devotes himself to encouraging Mary to divorce
her unfaithful husband. After helping her to form a new relationship with her

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old friend, Wang leaves her. Even though The Swamp is basically a tragic story
of interracial love that concludes with Wang’s self-sacrifice, in many scenes
the film imitates Charlie Chaplin’s film of the same year, The Kid (1921), a
sentimental comedy set in the slums. One shot, in which Mary’s child and
Wang, both wearing berets, sneak behind a building away from a masculine
boxer who has just hit Wang in the face, directly refers to a shot in The Kid, in
which Chaplin and the kid hide behind a building from a policeman. In other
scenes, Wang’s behaviors follow those of the silent clown Chaplin: giving
too many cabbages to the kid; being hit by the boxer and falling hard on the
street; hopping and dancing with his Chinese guitar; playing around with his
horse; or pretending to be a Chinese-style fortuneteller wearing a Chinese
gown, a Chinese hat, and glasses in the style of Harold Lloyd’s, and banging
a tiny Chinese drum with a serious expression.
For Wang, this comical but affectionate relationship with Mary’s son is
in fact a substitute for his devoted love for Mary. Wang’s fascination with
Mary is clearly displayed in a very expressive and excessive manner in one
scene when Wang looks at Mary lying sick in bed. Shots/reverse shots be-
tween close-ups of Wang’s face with his seriously affectionate expression and
Mary’s face with her vulnerable expression are repeated five times, with very
subtle or almost no change of their facial expressions. When Wang witnesses
Mary kissing her old friend and decides to leave her, a medium close-up of
Wang shows him touching the sleeping child’s head, kissing his forehead,
pressing his cheek against the child’s, and kissing him probably on the lips.
In the print of the film extant at Gosfilmofond in Moscow, the actual kissing
on the child’s lips is done barely off the screen and does not completely ap-
pear on the screen. After the off-screen kiss, a medium close-up of the kid’s
face shows Wang’s right hand touching his head affectionately for a couple
of seconds as if it did not want to leave him. Then, in the next medium shot
Wong faces Mary with a calm expression, free from lust and sorrow. After all,
Wang never touches Mary throughout the entire film: only in one scene does
Mary touch his cheek when she treats his injury on his eye. Thus, Wang’s
desire to touch Mary and kiss her is completely replaced by his extremely
affectionate behavior toward her son, but even his kiss to him is not repre-
sented on the screen.
It is ironic that in a lecture that Hayakawa gave at the Nippon Club in
New York in 1921 he discussed actual kissing in motion pictures. Hayakawa
said, “When I act in a film, I speak the lines in the film all the time and try
my best to become a character in the film. In an emotional love scene, in

186  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
which a couple embraces and kisses each other, each actor has to really think
that the opposite one is his or her sweetheart. Otherwise, we cannot make
a film that impresses viewers. Therefore, when I have an actress who plays
my lover in a film, I go to eat with her, talk with her, and try to develop really
romantic feelings between us, at least on the day of shooting. So, there is a
danger, too.”70 In the last line, Hayakawa jokingly makes excuses for flirting
with the actresses, but simultaneously, the line underscores his awareness of
the anxiety of miscegenation between his nonwhite characters and the white
female characters.
Thus, The Tong Man used very complicated strategies of representing race
and sexuality to make Hayakawa’s character a romantic genteel hero. Haya-
kawa as a nonwhite Japanese actor portrayed a nonwhite non-Japanese char-
acter, in opposition to nonwhite characters played by white actors. As a non-
white star, Hayakawa was considered to be more appropriate, or “authentic,”
to play the Chinese hero than white actors. However, to become the hero of
the film, Hayakawa’s Chinese character had to be Americanized and detached
from the stereotypical images of savage Chinese people. The narrational
strategy in The Tong Man repeated that used by Lasky to form Hayakawa’s
star image. To establish Hayakawa’s stardom among middle-class American
audiences, Lasky provided Hayakawa with the motif of Americanization and
helped him move up to the middle ground in the racial and cultural hierarchy
between the civilized (that is, Americanized) and the uncivilized. However,
in order to avoid offending the taboo of miscegenation, Lasky did not create
ordinary couples between Hayakawa’s characters and white actresses, even
when these actresses played nonwhite roles. The no-kiss policy in The Tong
Man corresponded to the Lasky policy of careful avoidance of the fear of mis-
cegenation.
In 1920, Hayakawa played an Arab for the second time in his career in
An Arabian Knight, another Hayakawa vehicle at Haworth. In the film, Haya-
kawa plays Ahmed, a young donkey boy in Egypt, who is hired as a guide for
George Darwin, an American Egyptologist. Darwin’s elderly sister believes
that she is a reincarnation of an Egyptian princess and Ahmed is the prince
she loved two thousand years ago. When Aboul Pasha tries to abduct George’s
fiancée, Ahmed becomes the defender of the white American couple.
The story of An Arabian Knight is set in Egypt. It is filled with Ameri-
can Orientalist images, while the film was again publicized as “a produc-
tion of astonishing realism.”71 In the film, Egypt is depicted as a primitive
and mystical, but simultaneously culturally refined space, as Japan is in The

R e t u r n o f t he A m e r i c an i z e d O r i e nt a l s   187
Dragon Painter. As the site of a complex culture that built the pyramids and
established an advanced ancient civilization, Egypt was viewed and accepted
as part of Western civilization while its current inhabitants were viewed as
primitive. The film historian Antonia Lant suggests that Egypt’s status in the
Victorian period was ambiguous as “a point of interchange between Europe
and Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.”72 Richard White, whom Lant cites,
also notes that while Egypt was “indisputably part of the Orient, the Orient
being less a place in the East than part of a discourse in the West,” it was not
easily placed within Africa or Asia, or within the East or the West.73 Egypt and
Japan thus shared the image of a racial and cultural middle ground between
the white and the nonwhite.
The opening of the film emphasizes the mixture of religious primitiveness
and cultural refinement of Egypt. At the same time, the film connects imagi-
nary Egypt (drawings and studio sets) and the actual landscape of Egypt with
no interference. Following the initial title card with drawings of silhouettes
of a palm tree, a pyramid, and the River Nile, the first shot of the film shows
a palm tree, a pyramid, and the River Nile in reality. Nature and the old civili-
zation coexist in Egypt. A drawing of silhouettes of a mosque and buildings
in the following intertitle indicates the refined culture there, but, simulta-
neously, the words in the intertitle emphasize that Egypt is a land of a primi-
tive religion: “The plaintive call of the Meuzzin [sic] arouses the children of
Allah. There is but one God and Mohammed is his prophet.” All the people
in the following extreme long shots kneel down barefoot on the ground and
pray toward the sunlight. Other intertitles similarly juxtapose the primitive
characteristics and refined traits of Egypt with such drawings as mummies,
ruins, harps, and half-naked Egyptian women.
If, in the Victorian vision, Egypt was considered as a place that was located
in the cultural and racial middle ground between the East and the West,
and between the primitive and the civilized, it was a suitable space to nar-
rate a Hayakawa star vehicle. In An Arabian Knight, Hayakawa’s character
is clearly positioned in the middle ground in the racial hierarchy. Ahmed’s
father tells him, “Remember, the blood of Emperor runs through thy veins.
When Napoleon of the French conquered our land he smiled upon thy great-
grandmother.” The father’s words suggest that Ahmed is a descendant of
Napoleon’s encounter with an Egyptian woman.
Hayakawa again portrays a nonwhite hero, in opposition to a nonwhite
villain played by a white actor. He is a sexually unthreatening genteel hero in

188  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
20  An ad for An Arabian Knight. Moving Picture World 45.8 (21 August 1920): 968.

the film. At the same time, Hayakawa’s nonwhite character stays in an ulti-
mately inassimilable position to white culture, even though he plays a role of
the savior of a white woman. In a one-page ad for An Arabian Knight in trade
journals, the motif of self-sacrifice for a white woman is observable again.
The ad has a photo in which Hayakawa wears an oriental outfit and protects
a white girl, who is hiding behind him (see fig. 20).74
When Ahmed first appears in the film, his costume, a black T-shirt, white
scarf, and white short pants, does not emphasize his Egyptianness. Instead,
Hayakawa’s makeup emphasizes Ahmed’s white skin color and distinguishes
him from other sub-characters, who are allocated positions inferior to
Ahmed’s. Wassef, another Arabian servant of Darwin, has darker makeup
and wears a tarboosh. Ahmed contemptuously bribes a black guard who is
depicted as lazy, falling into sleep right after Ahmed leaves. Ahmed forces an

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Egyptian dancer, embodying the sensual image of the orient with her half-
naked costume and erotic dance of poses from ancient Egyptian paintings, to
light his cigarette and treats her like a child.
Moreover, Ahmed is clearly distinguished from the Arab villain, Pasha,
who is played by a white actor, Fred Jones. Jones’s racial masquerade exagger-
ates the stereotypically oriental characteristics of Pasha. He wears luxurious
oriental clothes, including a tarboosh, and has a dark beard. His room is
filled with oriental objects, such as Arabian tapestries. From a dark and dirty
hasheesh den, full of addicted Arabs and black guards who brutally harass
them, Pasha recruits drug addicts to assault white people. Pasha is, more
than anything else, a sexual threat to white women and an embodiment of
the anxiety of miscegenation. Pasha kidnaps Eleanor, Darwin’s fiancée, and
attacks her.
In contrast, Ahmed differentiates himself from Pasha in his relationship
to matrimony. Ahmed’s loyalty to his fiancée, Zinah, signifies his monoga-
mist morality, even when he is allowed four wives “by the Prophet” in Egypt.
In this sense, Ahmed is depicted as a Westernized (Americanized) and civi-
lized man who pursues the “normative” model of heterosexual romance.
Moreover, Ahmed’s physical strength, which is emphasized in this film,
links Hayakawa to such contemporary white American action heroes as
Douglas Fairbanks Sr. In fact, An Arabian Knight is a chivalry action film
similar to such Fairbanks Sr. star vehicles as His Majesty, the American (1919)
and The Mark of Zorro (1920).75 When pursuing an enemy, Ahmed jumps out
of a second-story window. He catches up with the enemy and shakes him vio-
lently to make him confess where he has hidden Eleanor. In another scene,
Ahmed reaches up to the second-story window from the back of his donkey.
In the climactic battle, he fights alone against many enemies on a staircase.
After murdering Pasha, Ahmed jumps out of the window, climbs up a wall,
jumps on a horse, and rides away. With his physical strength, Ahmed self-
sacrificially fights against his ethnic fellow Egyptians for the sake of a white
family.
Finally, Ahmed is depicted as a receptive person when it comes to his rela-
tionship with women, which emphasizes his sexually unthreatening nature.
George’s sister Cordelia believes that Ahmed is a reincarnation of her prince
of two thousand years ago and makes him look like it. Ahmed functions as
an oriental object to be consumed by a white middle-class woman.76 Cordelia
symbolizes New Women who actively engage in consumer culture. In her
introductory shot, she wears an oriental cape and ornaments and stands in

190  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
front of a tapestry with an Egyptian design. As if referring to the Oriental-
ization of Hayakawa’s star image by Robertson-Cole, Ahmed is Orientalized
in a luxurious Egyptian costume when Cordelia hires him as a “new butler.”
Ahmed, with an embarrassed facial expression and moving his eyes to the
lower right and left several times, has to turn around in front of Cordelia
and show his costume to her and to the middle-class audiences who adore
Hayakawa and his costume. Before Cordelia appears in this scene, there is
a shot in which Hayakawa, looking into a mirror and checking his costume,
suddenly turns to the camera, comes closer to a medium shot, smiles at the
camera, and moves his eyes left and right in a serious facial expression. This
shot looks as if he were modeling for the viewers of the film.
Right after Cordelia tells an Egyptian butler, “Hereafter you will take
orders from Ahmed,” Ahmed folds his arms in front of his chest and repeats
what she has said in a dignified manner as if he were pretending to be a king.
Thus, Ahmed masquerades and acts like a king to satisfy Cordelia’s desire. In
An Arabian Knight, Cordelia satisfies her—and the female film spectators’—
fantasies and desires, as consumers, by turning Ahmed into an Orientalized
object and commodity, like a mannequin in department store displays or a
model in fashion shows.
This emphasis on Hayakawa’s oriental costume and poses for the spec-
tator, including Cordelia, implicitly acknowledges the gazes from the spec-
tators, white female fans, in particular, as part of the scenario. A one-page
ad for The Brand of Lopez (Joseph De Grasse, April 1920), another Hayakawa
star vehicle, placed a framed photo of Hayakawa in a Western suit with a
bullfighter cap. The ad adds a drawing of a white woman. She seems to be
suffering from the brand on her shoulder, but still admiringly looks up at
the photo. The ad regarded Hayakawa as the object of a female gaze (see fig.
21).77
The film historian Miriam Hansen claims that women’s increased signifi-
cance as consumers for the film industry was contradictory to the systematic
imposition, on the level of film style, representation, and address, of mascu-
line forms of subjectivity, of a patriarchal choreography of vision. The Valen-
tino cult is a typical example in which Hansen indicates this ambivalence.
Hansen argues that Valentino’s films “offer women an institutional oppor-
tunity to violate the taboo on female scopophilia” in order to cater to female
audiences.78
According to Gaylyn Studlar, by the 1920s, when An Arabian Knight was
released, public discourse posited women as the primary participants in

R e t u r n o f t he A m e r i c an i z e d O r i e nt a l s   191
21  An ad for The Brand of Lopez. Moving Picture World 43.13 (27 March 1920): 2058.

America’s new consumer culture, in which “the consumption of cultural

forms of masculinity” also emerged.79 Studlar claims that the fan magazines
of the postwar years began to cater more to women’s express demand to see
male stars. This visual objectification of the male in film and its surrounding
discourses, especially when Rudolph Valentino became a star with his image
of a “woman-made man” or a “creation of, for, and by women,” gained enor-
mous public attention as the act of women looking at men became symbolic
of the tumultuous changes believed to be taking place in the system govern-
ing American sexual relations.80 In An Arabian Knight, under such histori-
cal circumstances, Hayakawa was represented as a fascinating consumable
ethnic other for the white female spectators.
On its surface, An Arabian Knight has the structure of a male-centered
adventure comedy: kidnappings, escapes, chases on horseback, fights on
stairs, and slapstick action. Ahmed becomes a hero because of his actions
to save a white American couple. However, at its core, referring to romantic

192  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
and mythical legends of Egyptian kings, the film displays a commodified
male star “in ways associated with women’s interest in objectifying men.”81
Stephen Kern claims, “Victorian artists allowed female desire to burn hottest
when far away or long ago.”82 Post-Victorian theater and Hollywood films of
the 1920s, Studlar argues, “could more overtly appeal to female spectators’
libidinal passions when the male object of idolatry was allied to an exotic or
historically distant rendering of erotic thrills.”83 Ahmed in An Arabian Knight
is a passive oriental, a historically displaced consumer object and a “woman-
made” matinee idol, made by Cordelia and female fans’ interests in a man of
a far away land and long ago. In this sense, Hayakawa in An Arabian Knight
is a precursor of Valentino—a “Latin lover” who is not Caucasian but is obvi-
ously not Asian—and other white male stars in the 1920s adventure films set
in oriental lands. Preceding Valentino, Hayakawa in this film combines mas-
culine control of the gaze, as an adventurous hero, with the “feminine quality
of ‘to-be-looked-at-ness,’ ” as an Orientalized object.84
It is significant, however, that there is a distinct barrier between Ahmed
and the women. He is carefully prevented from having an erotic sexual re-
lationship with any white women in the film. This is one of the largest dif-
ferences between Hayakawa’s star vehicles and Valentino’s The Sheik, which
was released in 1921, one year after An Arabian Knight. There were similar
tensions and anxieties raised by the images of Hayakawa and Valentino in
the era of xenophobia and consumerism. Similar motifs, such as costum-
ing, feminization, Orientalism, and consumerism, appeared in both stars’
careers, but they did so in different cultural and racial contexts, which in-
form their meanings. In order not to enhance the fear of sexual arousal and
the anxiety of miscegenation, Ahmed, and Hayakawa as a nonwhite star, is
strictly kept at a certain distance only to be looked at, especially as a self-
sacrificial genteel victim hero, and to be read about in fan magazines, as an
Americanized model minority who embodies refined Japanese Taste but who
cannot be touched and can never be kissed. Valentino, in contrast, in the fi-
nale of The Sheik unites with the white heroine when it is revealed that he is
a son of European aristocrats.
Ahmed, “a playboy of the East,” according to the intertitle, is clearly char-
acterized as an object for white female gazes. When he appears in the film
for the first time, he rides on a donkey. Many women with veils, played by
white actresses, sit behind lattice windows, hailing him and throwing kisses
one after another. He answers and waves to everyone with a smile. However,
as is the case in The Tong Man, the actual kiss between the couple does not

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appear on the screen in An Arabian Knight. As soon as Ahmed and Zinah, his
girlfriend, embrace each other, the shot turns to the next. Or, in a long shot,
the kiss is hidden behind the woman’s face. In another one, it is behind Haya‑
kawa’s head. Later, when he thinks about Zinah, a flashback shows the two
embracing each other. When they are about to kiss, the shot dissolves back to
Hayakawa and all viewers can see is Hayakawa kissing a branch of a tree and
holding tightly to his hat. In the romantic final scene in the desert at night,
before Ahmed approaches Zinah, the film ends.

194  C h ap t e r T w e l v e
 « 13 »

Th e M a s k

Sessue Hayakawa’s Redefinition

of Silent Film Acting

​I ​ the introductory shot of The Honorable Friend, Hayakawa appears on

n
​the screen as an actor himself. The shot of Hayakawa as an actor dissolves
​into that of his role, Makino, according to the script of the film. In this
shot, “Sessue Hayakawa at desk, looking over script. He ponders—stoops
to make correction—the line. ‘As Makin [sic]’ fades in overhead—dissolve to
Makino in hot-house, working over plants. He mops brow—turns and looks.
. . . He smiles—calls dog—picks him up in his arms—(FADE OUT).” This
mode of presentation showing an actor first and his or her screen role next
was often taken in early feature films, but the actors in such introductory
shots were not usually reading scripts.
The shot that opens the second Hayakawa star vehicle indicates Lasky’s at-
tempt to emphasize legitimate acting as the essential element of Hayakawa’s
star image, becoming another unique element in Hayakawa’s stardom. The
Hollywood star system was very much associated with personification, with
the notion that the stars did not act but were themselves and that the pleasur-
ably recognizable repertoire of gestures, expressions, and movements were
the property of the star, not of any individual character.1 As Miriam Hansen
argues, stars and stardom in Hollywood cannot be reduced to the narrative
function of character.2 Actors’ on-screen personae and their real lives were
connected with the emergence of the star system. The New York Times in
1920 noted:

A “star” in the film firmament is a man or woman, who by reason of looks,

personality or eccentricity—and, always, advertising—is considered a good
 business asset by some promoter. Sometimes they can act and sometimes they
cannot, but even when they have genuine pantomimic ability they are usually
required by their stellar position to confine themselves to one role—that of
being themselves, as they have become known to the public. The art of acting
is the art of impersonation, and an actor really plays a part only when his own
individuality is absorbed by that of the character he impersonates, but screen
players who lose themselves in their roles are invariably catalogued as “charac-
ter” actors and rated as of secondary importance by those to whom the screen is
a matter of salaries, film rentals, box office receipts, electric lights, three-sheet
posters, &c. Stars, with some notable, and enjoyable exceptions, are always
themselves, each bringing the same appearance, mannerisms and expressions
to every part, so that the presumably undiscerning public may recognize the
well-advertised individual in every moment of his or her appearance and find
all of the old familiar attributes on which the star’s popularity is based.3

In contrast, Hayakawa was publicized and praised for his acting: his natural-
ism of “impersonation”—the gap between star and character—as the intro-
ductory shot of The Honorable Friend indicated. That is, Hayakawa was re-
garded as a character actor, as well as a star.
An article in Current Opinion in 1918 quotes Cecil B. DeMille’s comment
on Hayakawa’s performance in The Cheat and enhances the novelty of Haya‑
kawa’s acting styles. DeMille stated, “I don’t understand it [Hayakawa’s act-
ing style]; it is new and strange, but it is the greatest thing I ever saw.”4 Was
Hayakawa’s stardom based on his supreme quality as a character actor? Was
he a pioneer in an acting style of restraint, as trade journals and fan maga-
zines described? Was the reputation of his acting style simply an Orientalist
promotional device for product differentiation in the emerging star system?
Was his acting more restrained than his co-stars’ acting? What was the actual
quality of Hayakawa’s acting?
The film scholars Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs, Charlie Keil, Roberta Pearson,
and Janet Staiger, among others, argue that at every American film studio
in the period of 1908–13 there was a transition in acting styles from the one
heavily influenced by theatrical melodrama to the one allied to realist move-
ments in literature and theater.5 Most popular acting styles at the turn of
the century corresponded to the emphasis on the “pictorial” display of spec-
tacles in theatrical melodrama.6 Actors were charged with managing how
they looked within the stage picture and were not necessarily required to cre-
ate psychologically complex characters. Particularly, emotions and internal

196  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
states should be externalized in gestures.7 Actors were subject to a number
of conventions that de-emphasized any need for inner realism or depth of
character but displayed them in stereotyped postures. Pearson named this
type of acting “histrionic” style, in which “the actors selected their gestures
from a repertoire of standard, conventional gestures kept alive . . . through
descriptions and illustrations in acting manuals and handbooks.”8 In the be-
ginning, silent film acting followed this trend.
By 1913, following the emergence of internally coherent narratives cen-
tered on individuated characters and the emergence of feature film with its
greater character development and more effective use of close-ups, “modifi-
cation” of film performance occurred.9 Citing Louis Reeves Harrison’s 1911
comments in MPW, “the eyes and the lips are most effective in facial expres-
sion of any kind, whether the emotion be open or subdued,” Staiger describes
the change of the style of film acting as “from broad pantomimic gestures,
to the face in general and, eventually, to the eyes as ‘the focus on one’s per-
sonality.’ ”10 Pearson argues that in D. W. Griffith’s 1913 films, compared to
his 1908 films, the “gestural isolation and the elimination of little gestures
of the histrionic code gives way to a continuous flow of movement linked by
little gestures.”11 Griffith stated in NYDM in 1913, “Restraint in expression”
would raise “motion picture acting to the higher plane which has won for
it ­recognition as a genuine art.”12 Facial expressions were the replacement
for the highly stylized and physicalized pantomimic gestures. They were re-
garded as more suitable for close-ups in cinema. Pearson calls this “modi-
fied” acting style “verisimilarly” coded performance that “came to dominate
the classical Hollywood cinema and, by extension, world cinema.”13 She sug-
gests, “Verisimilarly coded acting does not rely upon a standardized gestural
repertory, which leaves room for greater individual interpretation of a part.
. . . In the verisimilar style, the arms remain closer to the center of the body
while the hands and face relay a good deal of information.”14 The transition
from the “histrionic” to the “verisimilar” was not abrupt. According to Brew-
ster and Jacobs, actors’ assumption of stereotyped poses and attitudes con-
tinued in European and American filmmaking long after 1912. Coexistence
of the histrionic and verisimilar codes within individual films or within indi-
vidual performers was not unusual well into the 1910s.15
Hayakawa recalled in 1963, “I tried to distinguish myself as a Japanese
actor from foreigners. . . . My facial expression was highly valued [in the
United States] as expressionless expression.”16 Hayakawa’s acting was pro-
moted in trade journals, fan magazines, and general magazines as an ideal

T he M a sk   197
deviation from the pictorial style to the restrained one. Charles K. Field’s
article in Sunset was one of those.17 Field locates Hayakawa’s acting style in
the line of Japanese theatrical arts and connects it to a renowned Japanese
kabuki actor, Danjuro, in particular. In the 1910s, Danjuro was considered
even in Japan to be the typical representative of the Japanese acting style that
lacked facial expressions.18 Field writes, “As he [Hayakawa] stands before the
camera his thought goes back to that mighty personality, to the intense, sub-
jective method of Danjuro’s portrayal of emotion. He remembers how Dan-
juro could hold his audience for long tense periods without moving a muscle,
with merely the power of his eloquent eyes, the potent set of his mouth.”19
Hayakawa did not have an acting career and did not have a particular inter-
est in kabuki when he was in Japan. Field’s argument was, therefore, based
on his imaginary comparison between Hayakawa and the Japanese kabuki
actor, or on Lasky’s promotional materials. Moreover, strategically or not,
Field’s article combines two different Danjuros as if they were one person.
Hayakawa’s static posing in The Typhoon and his facial expression with spe-
cial makeup in the branding scene of The Cheat look similar to the mie pose
in the aragoto genre, the violent act, in kabuki that Ichikawa Danjuro I estab-
lished in the late seventeenth-century Edo period.20 Danjuro I stylized mie,
or nirami, glaring, as a physical movement of an actor that should display
outwardly his inner emotions in a somewhat exaggerated manner.
However, the “Danjuro” whom Hayakawa was compared to in this article
must have been Danjuro IX, who was popular in the Meiji period in the late
nineteenth century. Danjuro IX “starred” in the oldest remaining Japanese
film, Momijigari [Maple viewing] (1899), the film that captured his perfor-
mance on the stage. Danjuro IX was famous for his rebellion against the per-
formance style from the Edo period that physicalized characters’ emotions on
the surface. Danjuro IX articulated his famous style, haragei, saying, “Once
on stage, I cannot show the real thing unless I forget myself and the stage and
turn into the character, the person. In order to do this, hara [literally speaking
the term translates as “stomach,” but it seems closer to “soul” or “mind”] is
important as well as the surface, because the real feeling must be transmitted
from heart to heart. Therefore, I know it is important to imitate some shapes
or styles on a certain occasion, but rather I try to show the heart. To show the
heart, the most important thing lies in hara.”21 Danjuro IX did not wear any
makeup in many cases, and other actors complained because he did not move
much on stage.
Hayakawa’s acting styles, particularly those in climactic scenes in The Ty-

198  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
phoon, in Death Mask, and in The Cheat, were much closer to the stylized
performance of Danjuro I than that of Danjuro IX. Yet, Field explains Haya‑
kawa’s performance in terms of Danjuro IX’s method. Even though Haya‑
kawa’s acting style was praised as “repressed” or “restrained,” the kabuki-
style performance that Hayakawa showed on the screen was not necessarily
based on the “restrained” performance but on the highly “stylized” one.
Similarly, an article in the Literary Digest in November 1917, which was
based on a report in the Los Angeles Times, praised Hayakawa’s restrained
acting style.22 The article emphasizes that Hayakawa’s performance is not
based on exaggerated pantomime (“expression”) but on nonverbal gesture
(“repression”) and explains it in terms of his Japanese cultural origin. The
article begins with the quotation of Hayakawa’s theory for gestures: “If I want
to show on the screen that I hate a man I do not shake my fist at him. I think
down deep in my heart how I hate him, and try not to move a muscle of my
face—just as I would in life.”23 The article then notes, quoting the Los Angeles
Times, “It would seem that Sessue Hayakawa injects something of the mysti-
cism of the East into the development of his work in motion picture. . . . His
fine patrician face gives a hint of a thousand years of aristocratic ancestry in
the proud old Samurai of Japan. In his own country he was a naval officer, in
America he is the most subtle motion picture actor the screen has produced.
Everything else about him is shrouded in mystery.” In reality, Hayakawa was
not a naval officer in Japan. He had wanted to become one but failed. This
article once again fictionalizes Hayakawa’s biography to enhance the mysti-
cally refined image of his acting styles.
The praise of Hayakawa’s restrained style of performance, referring to
Danjuro IX, appeared to go along with the trend toward the verisimilar style.
The film scholar Mary Ann Doane, in her essay on the close-up and the con-
cept of “photogenie” in cinema, also notes that Hayakawa had “relative re-
straint as an actor of the silent cinema, rejecting the histrionics usually asso-
ciated with the era. Given the stony immobility of his face, a slight twitch of
an eyebrow could convey extraordinary significance.”24
However, Hayakawa’s acting styles should not be located simply within
the historical transition from an emphasis on broad athletic and pantomimic
gestures (the “histrionic”) to an emphasis that values facial expression and
more restrained and individualized gestures (the “verisimilar”). Despite the
fact that trade journals, fan magazines, and general magazines praised Haya-
kawa for his restrained acting styles and connected them to Japanese cultural
and theatrical traditions, it seems difficult to articulate Hayakawa’s actual act-

T he M a sk   199
ing as simply contrasting exaggeration and restraint. Hayakawa’s face is not
simply expressionless, in spite of his own comment. Instead, it is like a mask.
The implication of the mask is twofold: first, it is static and therefore hard to
read since it does not change (but it cannot be called “expressionless”); sec-
ond, it seems to conceal something else. Both implications are applicable to
Hayakawa’s face. The second implication, in particular, is crucial to his ethnic
identity and stardom: stereotypically, the mask-like expression is easily con-
nected to the Oriental inscrutability, but also Hayakawa, as a Japanese actor,
needed to wear a mask in “triple consciousness.”
By the use of mask-like facial expressions (tightened mouth and unmov-
ing eyes) and his controlled pauses (stilled gestures), Hayakawa was able
to freeze an action in intense ambiguity and/or ambivalence. Therefore, in
Hayakawa’s acting, the moments of restraint—that is, repression of emo-
tions or motivations—were also those of being exaggerated and vice versa.
The uniqueness of Hayakawa’s acting styles lay in the specific fact that, con-
sciously or not, he uniquely employed the existing vocabulary in film acting,
such as restrained facial expressions suited for close-ups and pantomimic
gestures, and redefined them with inscrutable facial expressions and econ-
omy of gesture.
Further, in place of familiar pantomimic gestures Hayakawa inserted such
body language as mie-like stances, moments of stillness before a sudden
burst of violence, which were based on Japanese theater but which he used in
a completely different context. He could be said to still use the pictorial style,
but without its traditional meanings. In this sense, he also redefined Japa-
nese theatrical acting styles in early Hollywood cinema. His mask-like facial
expressions and stilled body language, which emphasized ambiguity of the
emotional, psychological, and physical states of the characters, impressed, or
offended, viewers with a sense of potential but not explicit cruelty and an odd
eroticism.
A reviewer of Photoplay points out Hayakawa’s momentary frozen pos-
ture in The Cheat: “His [Hayakawa’s] very lack of gesture emphasized the
ferocity of his sudden attack on the white woman.”25 French intellectuals of
the period also valued highly the impassive mask of Hayakawa. Jean Epstein,
a film critic who had worked for the Lumière brothers and would become a
film director in 1922, compared Hayakawa’s expression as “a revolver” and
described how the viewers were flabbergasted by the intense moments cre-
ated by Hayakawa’s acting style and his economical use of gesture: “Haya‑
kawa aims his incandescent mask like a revolver. Wrapped in darkness,

200  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
ranged in the cell-like seats, directed toward the source of emotion by their
softer side, the sensibilities of the entire auditorium converge, as if in a fun-
nel, toward the film. Everything else is barred, excluded, no longer valid.”26
Hayakawa’s acting is extraordinary precisely for his mask-like face and his
stilled pause: his intense ambiguity or ambiguous intensity.
At the beginning of his film career, at the NYMPC under Ince, Hayakawa
mostly appeared in films whose emphasis was on the theatrically melodra-
matic and pictorial display of Japanese people and landscapes, and he often
used pantomimic gestures in the surroundings. However, in some cases,
Hayakawa displayed his mask-like facial expressions and mie-like stilled pos-
tures to create intense but ambiguous moments in the films.
In his debut film, O Mimi San, Hayakawa resorts to pantomimic gestures
to clearly represent his emotional states in pictorial Japanese surroundings.
When Yorotomo (Hayakawa) receives a letter from the prime minister saying
that his father is dead and he has to go back to the court, he expresses his
grief with his body language. He drops the letter, covers his face with both
hands, faints, and is supported by an errand boy. Full of tears in his eyes, he
turns to his left and spreads both his arms, as if he longed for O Mimi San.
With his powerlessly extended arm Yorotomo asks the errand boy to leave
and wanders out of the frame. The following scene emphasizes the pictorial
quality of Japan and its people. Yorotomo and O Mimi San walk to a Japanese-
style wooden bridge under a willow tree in a Japanese garden and slowly and
affectionately embrace each other.
However, in the final scene, Hayakawa’s acting displays a more intensely
ambiguous quality. After the royal wedding between Yorotomo and Sadan
San, Yorotomo looks at the wisteria outside a shoji window in a medium shot.
Within the window frame, the shot of Yorotomo and O Mimi San embracing
each other at the Japanese-style wooden bridge under the willow tree appears
in double exposure. Framed in the window frame, the pictorial quality of
the scene in the Japanese garden is emphasized. When the double exposure
ends after a few seconds, Yorotomo turns toward the camera, opens his eyes
wide, keeps his mouth tightly shut, and pauses before slowly looking down.
While Hayakawa’s acting in O Mimi San is captured in a theatrical space
that emphasizes the pictorial display of an imaginary Japan and quite often
uses pantomimic gestures, this final image of the film is full of intensity and
looks rather horrific, despite the fact that Yorotomo’s emotional state is left
ambiguous.
In The Wrath of the Gods, as a supporting actor with the heavy makeup of

T he M a sk   201
the elderly father Yamaki, Hayakawa uses pantomimic gestures throughout
the film. However, Hayakawa’s movements of his body, such as the respectful
bows, were not necessarily typical pantomimic gestures in Western theatri-
cal melodrama. They surely function to display pictorial and stereotypical
images of Japan, but at the same time they provide unnamable tension in
the scenes. In the opening of the film, when Toya-San runs back home in
tears after the old prophet’s severe warning based on his superstitious belief,
Yamaki’s reaction is intense but his emotional state stays ambiguous. With
his eyes wide open and his mouth tightly closed, he pauses, slowly looks up,
ritualistically brings out an old scroll, and explains to Toya-San about the
Buddha’s curse. He does not clearly display his emotions in a typically panto-
mimic mode until the very end of the scene, when he makes two fists, raises
both of them to the sky, looks straight up, and cries out in fury, “I renounce
my faith.”
It is significant that Hayakawa constantly uses more straightforward panto-
mimic gestures after the scene in which Yamaki decides to convert to Chris-
tianity. In the melodramatic narrative of The Wrath of the Gods, pantomimic
gestures and clearly expressed emotional states are connected to Christianity
(Tom and Toya-San openly express their affection by embracing each other,
and so forth), while ambiguity in gestures and emotions is related to the
primitive and the superstitious. After the conversion, Yamaki makes a cross
with two pieces of wood and raises it high with his arms. He walks up to
the statue of the Buddha, violently throws it away, replaces it with the cross,
and pushes both arms to the sky in fury to renounce the Buddha, his arms
fully extended upward at about a forty-five degree angle. When the angry
crowd comes close to lynching Yamaki in front of the altar, he excitedly but
proudly raises the cross high in front of the crowd. Thus, in The Wrath of the
Gods, Hayakawa employs both nontraditional manners of body language and
typical pantomimic gestures to represent the different positionings of his
character in the archetypal dichotomy between the primitive and the civilized
religions and regions.
The introductory shots in The Typhoon are indicative of Hayakawa’s unique
acting styles. After an intertitle saying “Mr. Sessue Hayakawa as ‘Tokoramo,’ ”
a medium long shot shows Hayakawa as an actor appearing in a Japanese
kimono with a Japanese fan in his hands. When he turns right and left his
facial expression is so vacant and mask-like that it is impossible to read any
feelings or emotions. After he turns to the front, he grins a little toward the
camera. Then, he stops grinning and raises his right eyebrow. At this point,

202  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
his eyes are slightly wider open than before, which makes his facial expres-
sion more intense. Yet, still, it is difficult to interpret any specific meanings
in it. Finally, after a moment, he smiles and bows. The shot dissolves into
a shot of Hayakawa as Tokoramo, the character in the film, in a long black
coat reading a book with a clearly frowning expression. He looks up with a
noticeable movement and with an obviously embarrassed facial expression
and goes back to the book. Playing the character in the film, which has a
narrative about a melodramatic dichotomy between the primitive East and
the civilized West, Hayakawa resorts to the acting style with more explicitly
pantomimic gestures and obvious facial expressions.
However, his pantomimic acting in The Typhoon has moments of intense
ambiguity, which render nonspecific psychological or emotional meanings.
Right after Tokoramo hears Helene’s line, “I am going back to Bernisky and
laugh with him at you—you whining yellow rat—and at your Japan, a dirty
yellow blot upon the face of the earth,” he widens his locked lips and opens
his eyes wide. Quickly turning to her with his arms slightly widened, he stops
his movement for a while and simply gazes at Helene. His lips are tightly
closed and bent. Is he mad? Is he sad? Or, is he about to betray Japan for his
love? This is a moment of intense ambiguity. His pose and facial expression,
which create a moment of static time and bring all action onscreen to a halt,
look exactly like the mie style right before the abrupt violent acts in kabuki.
After this tense but emotionally ambiguous moment, Tori finally attacks
Helene.
The contract with Lasky brought more complicated issues into Haya‑
kawa’s acting. The ambiguous intensity in his acting became publicized and
promoted as his “restrained” style of acting. In trade journals and magazine
articles it was connected to Japan’s traditional theatrical acting with refer-
ence to the renowned kabuki actor Danjuro IX and thus was culturally au-
thenticized. The ambiguity was given a clear name: the traditional Japanese
method of acting. This was Lasky’s strategy of Orientalizing Hayakawa for
product differentiation. At the same time, Hayakawa began to use more
mainstream acting styles that were used by other contemporaneous actors:
using both pantomimic gestures and the “verisimilar” style in close-ups with
less emotional and psychological ambiguity. This might have been the result
of Lasky’s strategy of Americanizing Hayakawa and giving him the image of
a model minority, who adopts the American way of life, behavior, and acting,
in order to make Hayakawa a star for middle-class Americans. Thus, as a
result of the star system at Lasky, Hayakawa was placed in another movable

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middle-ground position with regard to his acting styles: ambiguity versus
clarity, that is, Orientalized versus Americanized.
In The Cheat, on the one hand, in the scenes in which Tori (Hayakawa) acts
like an Americanized gentleman, there is no big difference in acting styles
between Hayakawa and Jack Dean, for instance. Hayakawa smiles, salutes,
shakes hands, wonders, smokes cigarettes, and offers cigarettes, as other
white American characters and actors do.
On the other hand, Hayakawa’s acting displays intense ambiguity, which
can be interpreted as gentle, cruel, feminine, and masculine all at once. Even
though Tori turns into an obvious melodramatic villain toward the end of
the narrative, Hayakawa’s acting does not correspondingly transform into
something more pantomimic and expressive to clearly indicate his villainy.
Instead, on most occasions, Hayakawa’s stilled postures and mask-like facial
expressions leave room for ambiguity.
In Tori’s shoji room, when Tori demonstrates to Edith how to brand, Edith
looks obviously frightened because of Fannie Ward’s pantomimic gestures.
Tori remains at the table with a poker in his hands and does not change his
countenance, although he pauses as if he had something on his mind, even
though the viewers are not sure what it is. According to the script, after the
spoken title, Tori “points toward himself—comes very close to Edith—passion
and determination in his face indicates—almost whispering ‘As I want you to
be’—Tori takes her hand in one of his—He reaches with the other hand as if
to caress her hair which is just under a spray of cherry blossoms—He crushes
the petals of the cherry blossoms in his hand, letting them shower over her—
His hand sliding from her hair down to her shoulder—Edith watches him
half-fascinated with strange atmosphere and determination of the man.” On
the screen, however, Hayakawa does not resort to such pantomimic gestures
and the obvious facial expressions that express Tori’s desire. The change of
Tori’s facial expressions is so subtle, if there is any, that it is difficult for the
viewers to decide his emotional state.
In the following scene, when Edith is scared by her thought of a news-
paper headline, Tori grins and shows an “expression of sinister satisfaction,”
according to the script. After Edith has left, in the script Tori even shows a
face “full of relentless determination” when he picks up the chiffon scarf that
she has left behind and inhales a whiff of her perfume from it with “a slow
oriental smile.”27 However, on the screen, Hayakawa’s facial expression does
not change much. It is possible to say that Tori shows slightly surprised and
slightly conspiring expressions when he hears that Edith has lost the Red

204  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
Cross Fund, but overall he does not make provocative gestures and facial
expressions. Yet, simultaneously, Hayakawa’s mask-like face underscores
the heightening threat that pushes a white woman into a situation of white
slavery.
In the branding scene, when Tori is shot by Edith in the shoji room, Haya-
kawa does not display pantomimic gestures of pain and suffering but effec-
tively utilizes repressed movements and pauses to extend the moments of
violence. After being shot, he holds his chest with his left hand, pauses,
raises his right arm, pauses, looks up at the sky with wide open eyes, pauses,
staggers up front, pauses, and then slowly falls down on his back against the
shoji screen. He gradually moves toward his right when he displays these
physical actions. The camera slowly pans in accordance with his movement
until he falls down. Based on Lasky’s promotional device that connects Haya-
kawa and Danjuro, this dotted lingering movement could be related to ka‑
buki’s stylized act of dying, but it is used in a completely different context:
silent cinema that was based on both pantomimic and verisimilar acting.
At the climactic trial, Tori’s facial expressions are displayed in quite a few
close-ups. Staiger argues that these close-ups “convey interior thoughts and
feelings” of Tori.28 However, contrary to her claim, Hayakawa’s mask-like
facial expressions and his stilled body language create ambiguity about the
character’s inner emotions and extremely heighten the tension of the scenes.
The changes of his facial expressions are very slight compared to those of
Edith, whose emotional states are clearly displayed in her reactions to the tes-
timonies and the verdict. Edith’s emotions are conveyed through exaggerated
facial expressions, such as biting her lips and restlessly moving her eyes, and
gestures, such as making fists, moving her hands to her mouth, and shaking
her body. In the script, Tori was supposed to have more obvious facial expres-
sions that deliver his emotional states, such as smiling “with satisfaction”
when Richard testifies that he shot Tori and reacting with “surprise and dis-
satisfaction” when Edith starts to talk. On the screen, he smiles slightly or
worries, but he does not show exaggerated facial expressions or pantomimic
gestures, in opposition to Edith, who tells the courtroom audience what hap-
pened to her with overly extreme actions (jumping up, taking off her hat,
waving her arms, showing her naked shoulder, crying hard onto a desk, and
opening up her arms while begging for mercy) and emphasized facial expres-
sions of fury, sadness, and even insanity.
Consequently, Tori’s emotional state stays ambiguous in the scene (and
throughout the film), despite the fact that his role in the narrative of The

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Cheat is clearly the melodramatic villain as an inassimilable alien who threat-
ens the lives of the white American middle-class couple. Even though the
film historian James Card insightfully calls Hayakawa’s ambivalent acting
technique in The Cheat “eloquent restraint,” the close-ups in the courtroom
scene, for instance, are not “eloquent” at all but, instead, ambiguous and re-
pressive in terms of the expression of his emotional states.29
The film’s melodramatic inclination in the narrative eventually confines
Tori within the image of a stereotypical villain. However, the focalization on
the heroine and the deprivation of eloquent voices and facial and bodily lan-
guage from Tori in the courtroom scene caused an unprecedented result. The
close-ups of Hayakawa’s muteness (vocal, facial, and physical) become para-
doxical in meaning, coming closer to what Walter Benjamin calls cinema’s
“optical unconscious,” which opens up hitherto unperceived modes of sen-
sory perception and experience and suggests a different organization of the
daily world.30 According to Benjamin, photography inaugurated a mechani-
cally reproducible means to arrest and congeal life in a split second. Siegfried
Kracauer argued that the cinema was able to assemble these “still” images
and put them into motion, or back into the “flow of life.”31 Hayakawa’s act-
ing, particularly his mask-like facial expressions captured in the close-ups
here, comes to embody the tension between this stillness of photography
and the flowingness of cinema, or to problematize the innate contradiction
of cinema: stillness and motion; timeliness and timelessness.
Hayakawa’s body in this scene is a field of betrayal of meanings more than
a ground of communication.32 Despite the continuous close-ups that are nar-
ratologically meant to express Tori’s villainous characteristics, the evil of Tori
becomes shaded gray because of his noneloquent facial expressions and re-
pressed gestures. Even Hayakawa himself as an actor might not have realized
the uniqueness of his acting style. Probably, he did not have any intention to
redefine the vocabularies of acting in silent cinema. He was not trained as an
actor at all before he entered the film business. He did not study European
styles of stage acting. He might have seen Danjuro IX in Japan before he
came to the United States, but it is doubtful that he completely understood
the very stylized methods of acting in kabuki. He might have remembered
some impressive movements, such as an act of dying or the famous mie pose,
but he did not know how to use them structurally. Instead, it can be assumed
that Hayakawa was not really sure what he was doing in front of a movie
camera, at least when he was not routinely appearing in films. He might have
stopped moving his body and making obvious facial expressions at certain

206  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
points when he was playing characters in films. Yet, it was the camera that ex-
amined the expression of ambiguity and enhanced the moments of intensity
in Hayakawa’s acting.
In any case, Hayakawa’s acting in The Cheat, which left room for intense
ambiguity, made Hayakawa a more appealing screen presence than his white
co-stars, according to the reviews in film trade journals, even though these
reviews were struggling to find appropriate terms to describe Hayakawa’s
acting styles. Wid’s Films and Film Folk Independent Criticisms of Features cor-
rectly noticed Hayakawa’s effective use of pauses and subtle facial expres-
sions and claimed that Hayakawa “surely does some wonderful work. His
careful timing of his slow movements and the wonderful control he has over
his facial muscles, makes his work grip you in a truly effective manner.”33
The NYDM praised Hayakawa’s “thoroughly enjoyable piece of acting”: “he has
displayed a new method of portraying villainly [sic], a method that many of
our Western actors would do well to emulate. It was comprehensive, convinc-
ing and effective, and throughout his whole characterization, there was not
an unnecessary gesture or expression.”34
In Hayakawa’s star vehicles that followed The Cheat, in order to construct
Hayakawa’s star image for the mainstream middle-class audience, Lasky
strategically created a balance between the ambiguously intense acting style,
which was publicized as “restrained” with reference to Japanese traditional
culture, and the more expressive acting style that signified the image of an
Americanized star and a model minority.
In Forbidden Paths, Hayakawa’s intensely ambiguous acting style func-
tions to place his character in an awkward position in relation to the heroine.
On the one hand, he looks shy, but on the other hand, he also looks to be re-
straining himself from his deep desire to obtain the heroine by violating the
taboo of miscegenation.
The intertitles of the film explicitly state that Sato (Hayakawa) is in love
with the heroine, Mildred, but he rarely expresses his emotions in obvious
manners, even in the close-ups of his face. He keeps his mask-like coun-
tenance. In the script, in one scene, when Sato realizes that Mildred has
dropped a flower, he looks at it “with reverent affection.” There is no such
implication of Sato’s fetishistic behavior in the film. This change from the
script functions to desexualize Sato, while at the same time the omission
functions to emphasize ambivalence in Sato’s psychology. Even when Sato
looks at Mildred and Harry, whom she loves, he does not change his facial
expressions much. He simply pauses in a close-up when he sees Harry take

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Mildred’s hand. He looks a little stunned, but it is not clear from his facial ex-
pressions whether he is jealous, furious, sad, desperate, or conspiring. When
Mildred’s father dies, he looks at her with eyes wide open and tries to em-
brace her from behind her back—but he eventually pauses and decides not to
do it. After a stilled moment, he retains his mask-like face.
At the climax of the film, Hayakawa drastically changes his acting style.
In a scene in which Sato decides to sacrifice himself for the white American
heroine, Hayakawa starts to use more pantomimic gestures and more obvious
facial expressions. The close-ups in the climactic scenes in Forbidden Paths
begin with intensely ambiguous appearances of Hayakawa’s facial expres-
sions, but, contrary to those in The Cheat, they function to eloquently express
Hayakawa’s character’s psychological states and his emotions in the end.
The repeated close-ups of Sato when he listens to the conversation between
Mildred and Benita from behind the curtain display Sato’s gradual psycho-
logical development until he comes to a point of being clearly convinced
that “Love is Sacrifice.” In the close-up after Benita’s words to Mildred, “Love
him—till your heart breaks—you’ll never get him,” Sato opens his eyes wide,
clenches his teeth severely, and closes his mouth tightly. He grabs a curtain
strongly with his right hand. Yet, at this point, his face is still mask-like. He
pauses. This makes another stilled moment. Then, after Benita says, “Love
is sacrifice—if you want him, you’ll have to be—what I was [a mistress],” he
strongly frowns, severely clenches his teeth, and furiously squints. This close-
up of Sato clearly indicates his furious emotion against Benita, and then his
astonishment at the words “Love is sacrifice.” After Benita leaves, Sato comes
close to Mildred. At this point, he shows her a facial expression that he has
never shown to her: deep frowning. After Mildred leaves, he moves his eyes
right and left many times to show his embarrassment, makes a desperate
expression, frowns several times, and, finally, comes to his concrete decision.
Then, finally, he regains a calm face and leaves the room with dignity to face
Benita for a melodramatic showdown.
In a scene where Sato invites Benita out, Hayakawa uses more pantomimic
acting. Narratologically, the viewers already know that Hayakawa’s exagger-
ated style of acting emphasizes the fact that Sato is acting in this scene to
deceive Benita. He opens his arms wide, and, with a big smile, says to her, “It
is too beautiful a day to remain indoors, Señora. You like yachting—a motor
boat?” Sato looks at Benita ardently. Once she turns her back to him, Sato
shows a conspiring glance at her and grins. These expressions are exclusively

208  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
for the viewers. On the boat, he crosses his arms on his chest and looks ab-
sentmindedly far away in an obvious manner. Consciously and strategically
using the pantomimic gestures, Hayakawa (and Lasky) confirms the melo-
dramatically heroic image of Sato, a model minority who devotes himself to
the good of a white American couple.
The Secret Game takes a similar strategy. On one hand, when Nara-Nara
(Hayakawa) speaks to Kitty of patriotism toward the United States, saying,
“You’re a loyal little American—eh?,” he makes a pantomimic gesture that
signifies Uncle Sam in patriotic posters, saying “I Want You for the U.S.
Army”: he points his index finger at her with his eyes wide open. Then, say-
ing, “Will you help me to protect the soldiers of your country—and the honor
of mine?,” he raises his right fist high. Hayakawa repeats the same gesture
in other films. In Banzai, Hayakawa, in a role of an American soldier with a
blonde mustache, explicitly imitates the pose of Uncle Sam with his finger
pointing at the camera. In His Birthright, when Yukio (Hayakawa) attacks the
female German spy, he looks directly at the camera in a close-up and points
at the camera with his right forefinger and frowns a little.
On the other hand, Hayakawa (and Lasky) strategically uses his intensely
ambiguous acting, explicitly referring to The Cheat. In a scene in which Nara-
Nara attacks Kitty with a knife, Hayakawa’s facial expressions and gestures
imitate those in The Cheat. In a medium close-up, with white makeup on his
skin and dark makeup on his eyes and eyebrows that seem to imitate kuma-
dori, a special makeup for kabuki theater, Hayakawa appears to be taking the
mie pose, a stylized expression of kabuki: the frozen moment. Nara-Nara’s
death scene also refers to a scene in The Cheat. When the knife stabs Nara-
Nara’s back, he stops twice in the middle of his movement with his eyes wide
open until he falls down on the floor over Smith’s dead body.
Moreover, The Secret Game attempts to connect Hayakawa’s acting to
stereotypically Japanese cultural traits. When Nara-Nara explains to Kitty how
honorable his Japanese sword is, his eyes become intensely wide open and
his mouth becomes sealed tightly. He ritualistically raises the sword with
his both hands and bows to it. The shot dissolves to a scene in front of Nara-
Nara’s house in Japan with shoji screens, shadows of bamboo, paper lanterns,
and a willow tree—a flashback in which Nara-Nara receives a Japanese sword
from his father, also in a Japanese kimono, and bows with profound filial re-
spect. When the scene dissolves back to the shot at Nara-Nara’s office, he says
to Kitty, “And he [my father] bade me return, at the end of my service, and lay

T he M a sk   209
my sword—unstained—at his feet,” and he respectfully places the sword on
the shelf. In the final scene of the film, the spirit of Nara-Nara, who chooses
a self-sacrificial death to save his honor, brings the sword back to his father.
At Haworth, despite the fact that Hayakawa theoretically obtained free-
dom to choose his own films, he came to play more straightforward romantic
heroes. Hayakawa’s acting styles became closer to those of white male actors
in contemporaneous action and comic films.
In His Birthright, Hayakawa clearly uses his intensely ambiguous acting
style. When Yukio (Hayakawa) thinks of his mother committing suicide in a
flashback, in an extreme close-up Hayakawa compresses his lips and slowly
looks up into a mirror. The close-up only displays Hayakawa’s static mask-
like facial expressions with widely opened eyes and tightly closed mouth,
even though this is an emotionally loaded scene.
Yet, overall, in His Birthright, Hayakawa employs more pantomimic ges-
tures and obviously emotional facial expressions, which emphasize Ameri-
canized characteristics of Yukio but often make him look comical. Yukio’s
Americanization is physicalized by Hayakawa’s pantomimic performance. In
the opening scene (of the extant print), when Yukio finds a cheat in a card
game, he expresses his disappointment in obvious gestures and facial ex-
pressions. He looks at the card, moves his eyes to the upper left, bends his
neck a little, then shakes his head, and sighs. On the same boat, when Yukio
happens to pick up a name card, he tries hard to remember the name on the
card, blinking many times. When he remembers it, in a medium close-up,
he opens his mouth and expresses his astonishment in an unambiguously
emotional manner.
In action scenes, Hayakawa clearly imitates such white American male
stars as Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who was famous for his physical strength.
When Yukio sneaks out of the boat, extreme long shots capture Hayakawa’s
bodily actions—jumping off the deck, clinging to the rope to the dock, and
running away very fast on the shore.
In other scenes, Hayakawa often uses his hands to reflect his emotional
states. When Yukio’s female friend helps him decode his own handwriting,
he first places his left hand on his head to express his perplexity, and when he
finds out what is written on the paper, he puts his hands together in front of
his chest, jumps up for joy, and holds up his fist in triumph.
In The Tong Man, Luk Chan (Hayakawa) appears with the mask-like ex-
pression on his face. Without changing his countenance at all, he throws

210  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
a hatchet at a sleeping old Chinese man. Yet, when the old man is aston-
ished, he suddenly starts laughing at him, wildly moving his body and arms.
Thus, his ambiguous restrained-looking facial expression at the beginning is
quickly replaced by his pantomimic gestures.
Similarly, in a scene when Luk Chan follows the tong’s order and tries to
murder the heroine’s father, Hayakawa uses his ambiguously intense acting
style. With his eyes wide open he raises his hatchet and pauses momentarily.
Yet, despite the frozen movement and moment, Luk Chan’s emotional state
here is not ambiguous at all. A shot of his affair with the heroine is inserted
here as a flashback. His suffering is clearly displayed by the form of flashback
and leaves no ambiguity as to his psychological state.
Throughout the film Hayakawa uses pantomimic gestures, eloquent
words, and obvious facial expressions to express his affection to the heroine.
Like Romeo in Romeo and Juliet or like the characters played by Douglas Fair-
banks Sr. in his star vehicles, Luk Chan easily climbs up the wall and jumps
over the bamboo fence to see the heroine. He takes the heroine’s hands, say-
ing, “You are my love calling,” and embraces her shoulder. In another scene,
he even presses his cheek to hers.
It is significant that Hayakawa’s pantomimic acting in The Tong Man avoids
any stereotypically racialized characteristics. The white actor who plays Ming
Tai, the Chinese villain, displays racialized performances, such as standing
with a slight stoop and placing his hands in front of his chest. Resorting to
more pantomimic gestures and emotionally explicit facial expressions, Haya‑
kawa’s acting in The Tong Man comes closer to those of other American
heroes and stars.
In An Arabian Knight, Hayakawa’s gestures and facial expressions are the
most pantomimic of all his films made at Haworth. Hayakawa comes much
closer to a mixture of such white American action heroes as Douglas Fair-
banks Sr. and such white American comic stars as Harold Lloyd and Buster
Keaton. The difference in performance in An Arabian Knight likely also re-
flects ethnic stereotypes about Arabs.
When Ahmed (Hayakawa) appears, he speaks to his donkey with comical
gestures, with his arms stretched and his mouth wide open. When many
women with veils, sitting behind lattice windows, hail him and throw kisses
one after another, he waves his right hand widely to everyone and wears a big
smile on his face. In the middle of his secret meeting with his girlfriend he
is caught by her mother. Hayakawa shows an extremely surprised expression

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with his eyes and mouth, jumps out of the window, and runs away, insanely
whipping his donkey. Looking at the mother, who is angrily raising her fist,
he fully puffs out his cheeks contemptuously.
When Cordelia keeps treating Ahmed as her king, Hayakawa portrays
Ahmed’s embarrassment in comical gestures: bowing extremely respectfully
to Cordelia, sneaking away from her with stealthy steps and hiding behind a
tree, trying hard to avoid Cordelia’s embrace, spreading his hands and pray-
ing for mercy to escape from Cordelia’s fanatic thoughts. Moreover, when he
goes back to his girlfriend’s neighborhood in the Egyptian king’s costume,
he pretends to be a king, playfully using dignified gestures and facial expres-
sions. In medium close-ups, Ahmed, this time not on a donkey but in a car,
folds his arms in front of his chest and looks at the people in the neighbor-
hood with exaggeratedly cold-looking eyes. He taps the driver on the head,
makes him open the door for him, and gets out of the car in a dignified man-
ner. In front of his girlfriend, who has been sleeping, he once again folds his
arms. He stops her coming near him by raising his left hand and says with
emotionless expression, “I have royal blood in my veins.” She starts laughing
and so does Ahmed. As soon as her mother appears and gets angry again, a
surprised Ahmed runs away quickly to his car. As the car starts moving all of
a sudden, he falls down completely into the car as a silent clown often does.
In this manner, in An Arabian Knight, Hayakawa consciously imitates acting
styles of silent comedians.
At the same time, this film emphasizes Hayakawa’s physical strength as if
he were an action star. Tied up by an enemy to a table, Ahmed acrobatically
moves his body and frees himself. When pursuing an enemy, Ahmed runs
extremely fast and climbs up to a second-story window from the back of his
horse, as Fairbanks often does. During the climactic battles, after throwing
a villainous woman into a chest and locking her up, Hayakawa uses both of
his hands to make a pantomimic gesture of wiping sweat from his forehead.
Having the heroine back, he playfully throws a kiss to the villain. Ahmed
shows a triumphant smile, jumps out of the window, jumps on a horse, and
rides away. Hayakawa’s more pantomimic acting in An Arabian Knight thus
simultaneously places him among the group of action and comic stars of the
time.
Hayakawa’s pantomimic gestures and psychologically explicit facial ex-
pressions in the films made at Haworth moved Hayakawa’s stardom closer to
that of contemporaneous white American actors. In comparison, The Dragon
Painter placed Hayakawa in a supposedly Japanese landscape. However, even

212  C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
in this surrounding, Hayakawa resorted to more pantomimic gestures and
emotionally filled facial expressions.
Hayakawa used explicit facial expressions to clearly deliver Tatsu’s emo-
tional states. When Tastu (Hayakawa) learns that the heroine Umeko self-
sacrificially commits suicide, he shows his astonishment with his eyes and
mouth and then cries out in distress. When Umeko reappears after the suc-
cess of Tatsu’s exhibition and touches Tatsu’s hand, Tatsu, who has been em-
bracing her kimono to remember her, shows his astonishment by using his
extended arms and his wide-open mouth. Then, they affectionately embrace
each other. Astonishment, grief, and affection—these emotional states of
Tatsu are clearly represented by Hayakawa’s gestures and facial expressions.
In The Dragon Painter, Hayakawa also displays the physical strength of an
action star. Tatsu jumps off the rocks and runs in the wilderness. He raises
his fists and tries to summon a dragon. Despite its setting in a supposedly
Japanese space, The Dragon Painter exists along with a certain tendency of
Hayakawa’s star vehicles at Haworth: more pantomimic gestures and emo-
tionally filled facial expressions to emphasize Hayakawa’s Americanized star
image. However, ironically, Hayakawa’s attempt to imitate more mainstream
acting and to become more like other contemporaneous actors ended up with
him losing his uniqueness and even his fan base. By 1921, Hayakawa’s perfor-
mance was criticized for the first time in his career. Variety criticized Haya‑
kawa’s change of performance styles in Five Days to Live (Norman Dawn,
8 January 1922): “Dollars are going sadly to waste trying to make the Japanese
star into a washed-out imitation of an American screen hero. The man has
unlimited ability, particularly as a heavy. Why not let him loose on a lot of
sweet Americans who foil him in the end? Make him a George Arliss of the
screen. But perhaps Mr. Hayakawa objects.”35
Thus, Hayakawa’s acting had a fair degree of latitude, from the mask-like
intense ambiguity in facial expressions to the mainstream pantomimic ges-
tures, but in a strategically organized manner. The complex mixture of acting
styles in Hayakawa’s star vehicles indicates Hayakawa’s and the studios’ con-
tinuous efforts to strike a balance between Americanization and Japaneseness
in his star image. At the same time, it could be their attempt to pursue the
possibility of something new, whether it would be the uniquely Orientalized
“ambiguous” style for the American domestic market or the “universal” style
of acting that mixed pantomimic, “verisimilar,” and Japanese “traditional”
acting methods for foreign markets, within the context of Hollywood’s glob-
alization in the latter half of the 1910s.

T he M a sk   213
 « 14 »

Th e S ta r Fa l l s

Postwar Nativism and the Decline

of Sessue Hayakawa’s Stardom

​I ​ spite of Robertson-Cole’s strategic standardization of Hayakawa’s star

n
​vehicles and its extensive publicity for them, Hayakawa’s popularity
​started to decline in the early 1920s. According to a popular poll of film
stars conducted by the Motion Picture Story Magazine, Hayakawa was ranked
number 44 in December 1918, but in December 1920 his rank had dropped
to number 124.1 Then in 1921, a reviewer of Where Lights Are Low (Colin
Campbell, 4 September 1921), a Hayakawa vehicle, pointed out, “This Jap
star is either popular with your fans or he is unpopular.”2 It was the first
time that Hayakawa’s unpopularity was reported in trade journals. In 1924, a
Japanese film magazine noted, “Hayakawa knew his popularity in the United
States was gradually declining” by the early 1920s.3 Hayakawa’s American
stardom, which experienced “the best year” in 1919, thus came to a turning
point by 1921.
Behind the decline of Hayakawa’s popularity there was a change in the
sociopolitical discourse in the early 1920s. The period between 1918, when
Hayakawa established Haworth, and 1922, when he left Hollywood, wit-
nessed the rise of strong American nationalism, or nativism, in the after-
math of World War I. The film historian Diane Negra observes, “All of the
foregrounding social, economic, and political phenomena contributed to the
formation of a climate in which the American film industry self-consciously
structured itself to meet the requirements of American nationalism.”4 In-
deed, Frederick H. Elliot, the executive secretary of the National Associa-
tion of the Motion Picture Industry, stated on 19 December 1920, in a press
release, “The motion picture industry of this country has been mobilized
to make the fight for Americanism. The leading men of the industry have
pledged to Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, all the resources of their
organizations, the services of the stars and directors, and the co-operation of
the exhibitors in a country-wide screen campaign to combat Bolshevism, and
in the words of Vice President Marshall, to fight for ‘the winning of America
for Americans.’’5
More specifically, according to the historian Walter Benn Michaels, the
nativist discourse of the 1920s denied the possibility of Americanization for
immigrants and emphasized the ultimate difference between “American”
and “un-American.” In “progressive racism,” Michaels argues, “projects of
‘Americanization’ ” of immigrants always existed behind the racist discourse.
The “inferiority of ‘alien’ races” was emphasized in regard to new immigrants,
but eventually they were considered to be able to assimilate into American
society as Americans. However, in the nativist discourse of the 1920s, im-
migrants’ ultimate “difference” was emphasized. “American” came to be re-
garded not as “a set of social and economic conditions” but as “an identity
that exists prior to and independent of those conditions,” and “the qualities
that constituted the American could not be taught.”6 In fact, Frances Kellor,
who used to be the central figure of the Americanization movement in the
1910s, stated in 1921 that American people began to think it was wrong to
consider that all foreigners were future American citizens and that political,
economic, and educational opportunities should be equally provided.7
The notion of racial hierarchy, which left room for Americanization of
nonwhite races and was the keystone of the formation of Hayakawa’s star
image, was, thus, transformed into racial difference, which admitted the exis-
tence of races that were different from the Caucasian race and difficult to
Americanize. The image of the racial and cultural middle-ground position
in Hayakawa’s star persona, which had been attained by way of careful nego-
tiation between the image of Americanization and that of Japaneseness, sud-
denly lost its balance.
As the wider discourses on race and immigrants changed after World
War I, the more specific social and cultural discourses on Japan and Japanese
people, which formed the basis of Hayakawa’s stardom, also changed. Roger
Daniels writes, “In the years after the war, the real rather than the imagined
acts of the Japanese government were of growing concern to many Ameri-
cans.”8 More than ever, images of Japan became politically and economically
concrete to the American people, mainly because of Japan’s strengthened
imperialist policy after World War I.
At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Japan made European countries and

T he S t a r F a l l s   215
the United States accept the imperialistic Twenty-one Demands upon China.
Japan also continued its subjugation of Korea and obtained economic bases
in the Shantung Peninsula and the Pacific Islands formerly held by Germany.
When the Allies sent forces to Siberia to oppose the Russian Revolution in
1918, Japanese troops stayed in Siberia two years longer than other coun-
tries’ troops. It was even reported that Japanese troops came into direct con-
flict with American troops several times. Moreover, at the Paris Conference,
Japan requested the “Racial Equality Clause,” opposing “white supremacy”
in the world order under the rules of the League of Nations, which directly
went against the nativist racial discourse in the United States. All of these
postwar Japanese actions were regarded as directly opposing American eco-
nomic interests in Asia, such as the “open door” in China, maintenance of
territory in the Pacific, and safety of Americans in the Philippines. Especially
after 1918, both Japan and the United States turned from debtor to creditor
nations. Both governments began to recognize each other as economic and
military competitors in the Pacific and Asian regions.
These imperialist activities of Japan became more and more visible through
increasing media coverage. Fox Films, for instance, announced the release of
a news film series entitled “Face to Face with Japan,” which would question
“the so-called peril of Japanese expansion and territorial aggrandizement in
respect to the effect of these upon American interests” and reveal “the secrets
of Japan’s Army and Navy.”9
As Japan’s imperialist policy became more visible to the American people,
the anti-Japanese movement was resurrected in California. During the war,
anti-Japanese sentiment was quiescent because Japan was an allied nation.
Yet, right after the war, such groups as the California Oriental Exclusion
League and the Los Angeles County Anti-Asiatic Society were organized by
labor unions, farmers’ unions, and politicians who aimed at votes from those
unions in the election of 1920. In 1920 these groups were reorganized and
named the Japanese Exclusion League of California.
The league tried to spread its anti-Japanese message nationwide by sending
out lecturers to the East and the Midwest. One such lecturer, Valentine Stuart
McClatchy, the head of the league and the former publisher of the Sacramento
Bee, which had initiated the prewar anti-Japanese movement, insisted that
Japanese immigrants would become a military threat because they would
never lose their bonds with the Japanese government and never assimilate to
America.10 Wallace Irwin, who wrote the original stories of Hashimura Togo,
published an anti-Japanese novel, Seed of the Sun (1921) and warned that Japa-

216  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
nese immigrants could be spies for the Japanese government. Even though
these lectures and novelists were highly propagandistic, they linked Japan’s
postwar imperialistic expansion into China and the Pacific to the American
people’s more concrete concern about Japanese immigrants in the United
States. They effectively reformulated the decades-old ambiguous yellow peril
rhetoric with more specific images of Japan’s economic and military threat.
Because of the increasing media presentation of imperialistic images of
Japan, and because of the persistent anti-Japanese propaganda from Califor-
nia, the anti-Japanese movement rooted in the Pacific states started to have
an influence on nationwide public opinion for the first time. Even easterners
and midwesterners, who had barely supported anti-Japanese movements in
the Pacific states before the war, began to oppose Japanese immigration. A
renowned writer on the East Coast, Lothrop Stoddard, warned against Japan’s
economic expansion in racist terms in 1920: “There is a very immediate dan-
ger that white stocks may be swamped by Asiatic blood.”11 A writer for the
Nation’s special issue on Japan on 2 February 1921, admitted, “It is not as easy
to champion Japan before America as it was a few years ago,” even though the
writer “still believe[d] the attitude of California and her politicians to be all
wrong.”12 Another writer for the issue clearly stated, “Japanese immigration
should, in my judgement, be flatly prohibited,” even though he tried to differ-
entiate himself from politicians in California by admitting that those “Japa-
nese already in the United States should, however, be given all the privileges
which are accorded to other aliens in this country.”13 Thus, as the historians
Eleanor Tupper and George E. McReynolds insist, “the American public as a
whole” became “greatly excited and shocked” by Japan’s postwar imperialistic
acts and showed its “irritation” and “distrust” at Japan’s intentions in the Far
East.14
Under these conditions, federal judgment and policy came to embed anti-
Japanese sentiment into laws. The 1922 Ozawa case at the U.S. Supreme
Court and the Immigration Act of 1924 legally denied Japanese immigrants
the opportunity to become U.S. citizens. Ozawa Takao originally filed an ap-
plication for U.S. citizenship on 14 October 1914, after twenty years of study-
ing in an American university and working in an American company. After
his application was denied, Ozawa challenged the rejection in the Federal
District Court for the Territory of Hawaii in 1914, but the court ruled that
Ozawa was not eligible for naturalized citizenship.15 In 1922 Ozawa Takao
informed the Supreme Court that “at heart” he was “a true American.” Ozawa
insisted that he did not have any connection with the Japanese government or

T he S t a r F a l l s   217
with any Japanese churches, schools, or organizations. His family belonged
to an American church and his children attended an American school. He
spoke English at home so that his children could not speak Japanese. He even
chose for a wife a woman educated in American schools, instead of one edu-
cated in Japan. Ozawa thus Americanized himself as Hayakawa’s characters
in his star vehicles did. However, Ozawa lost his petition, because, according
to the verdict, he was “clearly not Caucasian.”16 No matter how Americanized
in his lifestyle, Ozawa was regarded as racially different and thus had no right
to be completely assimilated into America. According to this ruling, Haya‑
kawa’s stardom, which was mainly based on the balance between the image
of Americanization and the image of Japaneseness, was deprived of one of
its wings.
Then, in 1924, the new immigration act, passed by the U.S. Congress,
prohibited the entry of “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” This act crystallized
the quota system for immigration, which continued until 1965: there was no
quota for Japanese people, who were categorized as aliens “ineligible for citi-
zenship.”17 Roger Daniels argues that the “California position” regarding the
anti-Japanese movement, which “did not win national favor in either 1906–
1907 or 1913, was written into the statute book in 1924.”18
As the social and legal discourses on Japan changed after World War I, the
cultural discourses on Japan also altered. Japan’s safely exotic and artistically
sophisticated image, which had led middle-class American women to con-
sume and domesticate Japanese Taste as an emblem of cultural refinement,
gradually lost its appeal. The third volume (1910–14) of the Readers’ Guide to
Periodical Literature has forty-four entries of articles about “Art—Japan,” the
fourth volume (1915–18) has fifteen, and the fifth volume (1919–21) has only
eleven.19
The number of fiction films with Japanese subjects also decreased. Accord-
ing to the subject index of the AFI Catalog, in 1921 there were only two films
about “Japan,” the “Japanese,” and the “Japanese American,” in 1922 only
one, and from 1923 through the rest of the 1920s there were none. In con-
trast, the number was six in 1920, eight in 1919, nine in 1918, seven in 1917,
and many more in the early 1910s and before.20 As a result, in 1921, a Japa-
nese film magazine reported that in the United States “there is no film about
Japan this year, even though there were many last year.”21 Yamamoto Togo, a
Japanese journalist and actor in Los Angeles, reported in the same year that
films about Japanese subjects suddenly became “unwelcome” because they
“would need expensive costumes, props, and so forth,” and “because they

218  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
may offend the anti-Japanese problems and they are not popular.”22 In 1922,
the actor and journalist Aoyama Yukio wrote in the Rafu Shimpo, “Without
relaxation of Japanese exclusion, there won’t be any drama of Japan.”23 A Japa-
nese film magazine reported in the same year, “in these couple of years when
Japan and the U.S. had the most delicate problems in the world, there was no
drama, educational film, or even films with Japanese landscape.”24
At the same time, anti-Japanese films came into existence. Even Robertson-
Cole made one such film, Who’s Your Servant? (director uncredited, Febru-
ary 1920). In the film, villainous Japanese spies threaten American military
secrets and white American women.25 George T. Pardy of ETR clearly pointed
out the obvious anti-Japanese content of the film: “Whenever you see a soft-
footed Jap gliding unobtrusively around in the background of a picture whose
plot turns upon the theft of U. S. Navy official documents, it is a fairly safe bet
that the slant-eyed son of the Orient is the guilty party.”26 A reviewer of Wid’s
Daily compared the anti-Japanese content of the film to that in The Cheat:
“[There are] sequences of gripping power in the development of the business
between the girl and the Jap,” which can “bring in a climax to rival the time-
honored denouement in ‘The Cheat.’ ”27
Under such anti-Japanese conditions in Hollywood, Japanese actors, one
after another, went back to Japan.28 Remaining Japanese actors stopped play-
ing Japanese roles and decided to play mainly Chinese characters.29 In fact, in
spite of the unpopularity of Japanese subjects, Aoyama reported in the Rafu
Shimpo, “[1922] saw the peak of the dramas set in the East. Most of those
films were set in Turkey or China.”30 The Rafu Shimpo tried to explain this
popularity of films about non-Japanese Asia, especially China: “In California,
increase in fearing the Japanese, and decrease in abhorring the Chinese.”31
Before World War I, the popular image of Japan was the movable middle in
the racial and cultural hierarchy. When Japanese people were deprived of this
image, Chinese people replaced it. The Japanese actor Inoue Masao wrote,
“I cannot deny that in American people’s view Chinese people are closer to
Americans than Japanese people are.”32
Hayakawa’s willingness to continue playing Oriental roles, Chinese roles
in particular, corresponded to the decline in popularity of films set in Japan
and the increase in favorable views toward Chinese. After 1921 Hayakawa
played only one Japanese role and kept playing non-Japanese roles until he
left Hollywood in June 1922. A Japanese film magazine reported that “Haya-
kawa had not made films about Japan in order to avoid anti-Japanese senti-
ments” until Black Roses (Colin Campbell, 22 May 1921).33 It was Hayakawa’s

T he S t a r F a l l s   219
desperate attempt to maintain his stardom, clinging to the image of a racially
middle-ground position. Yet, ultimately that attempt was in vain.
The decline in popularity of films about Japan seriously influenced Haya‑
kawa’s popularity. In fact, after 1921, the number of films in which Hayakawa
appeared decreased. Exhibitors from all over the United States started report-
ing Hayakawa’s loss of appeal among audiences. In December 1921, an exhibi-
tor in Virginia reported that The First Born (Colin Campbell, 30 January 1921)
was a “very good drama, but Hayakawa [is] not popular with my patrons.” An
exhibitor in New Jersey said that Black Roses “did not seem to please as other
Jap pictures.”34 An exhibitor in Arkansas considered Five Days to Live to be
“a poor offering from an entertaining standpoint.”35 Another exhibitor called
Hayakawa a denigrating term: “Personally I thought this [Five Days to Live] a
beautiful picture, but my patrons were only 50 percent pleased. Didn’t pay
for the rental. The ‘Jap’ is no card here.—Harold F. Wendt, Rivoli theater, De-
fiance, O.—General patronage.”36
Gaylyn Studlar argues that in the 1920s “fan magazines increasingly en-
couraged a distanciation between screen persona and actor-identity.”37 If
so, even if extra-filmic anti-Japanese sentiment had influenced the image of
Hayakawa’s identity as a Japanese actor, his screen persona would have been
safely distanced from the outside world, especially when Hayakawa avoided
playing Japanese roles. However, in the case of Hayakawa, his screen persona
was not able to escape from the public knowledge of his actor-identity as a
Japanese man. Hayakawa’s actor-identity was too deeply rooted as a represen-
tative of Japanese art, culture, nation, and race, even when he stopped play-
ing Japanese characters, no matter how deliberately Lasky and Robertson-
Cole emphasized the Americanized aspect of his star image. Already in 1918,
MPW noted, “The essential character of Mr. Hayakawa is that of gentle manli-
ness, and, if it is representative of his race, it contributes to a more complete
understanding of his people.”38
The image of a representative of Japan was so strongly inscribed into
Hayakawa’s actor-identity that it subtended his fictional roles even when he
played non-Japanese characters. In the reviews in trade journals, Hayakawa’s
filmic characters in the 1920s were always regarded as Japanese, even when
he played other nationalities. The ETR confused Chinese and Japanese in Li
Ting Lang (Swickard, July 1920), in which Hayakawa played a Chinese stu-
dent: “Interesting photoplay woven around race prejudice with Hayakawa in
the role of Japanese college youth who falls in love with an American girl.”39
Even though the story of Where Lights Are Low is set in China, a reviewer

220  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
at Variety wrote, “The picture presents the Japanese star in almost entirely
native atmosphere and this is the background in which he is at his best. . . .
No one has yet been able to make him a romantic figure in American or any
other Occidental surroundings.”40 Reviews of The Swamp in EH and Variety
stated that Hayakawa plays a “Japanese vegetable vender,” even though the
story is set in the tenement district of New York where few Japanese people
lived and the names of the characters, such as Wang, are clearly Chinese.41
The EH called Hayakawa’s Chinese roles Japanese again in Five Days to Live
and The Vermilion Pencil (Dawn, 19 March 1922), both of which were set in
China: “Like his former vehicle, ‘Five Days to Live,’ the scene of ‘The Vermil-
ion Pencil’ is laid wholly in Japan.”42 These reviews indicate the reviewers’
Orientalist confusion of national boundaries in Asia, and, at the same time,
they demonstrate that Hayakawa’s extra-filmic actor-identity as Japanese was
strongly imprinted on the spectators’ consciousness and expectations.
Hayakawa’s status as a representative of Japan in American minds was
also the result of Hayakawa’s outstanding extra-filmic activities. By the early
1920s, Hayakawa came to regard himself as a representative of Japan. Yukio,
Hayakawa’s son, wrote later, “My father even made himself look more Japa-
nese than necessary.”43 Hayakawa declared that his “West Coast lifestyle,”
including the extravagant parties that he threw at his luxurious house, which
was called the Argyle Castle, and the gold-plated Pierce Arrow that he drove,
was meant to demonstrate that Japanese people were able to live just as lav-
ishly as American.44 Important Japanese political figures, such as Nitobe
Inazo, vice secretary of the League of Nations, visited Hayakawa’s studio
when they were in the United States.45 Parties for a famous Japanese opera
singer, Miura Tamaki, who played Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly at the
Metropolitan Opera House, were held at Hayakawa’s residence.46 Hayakawa
also cooperated with Japanese communities that protested an anti-Japanese
film, Shadow of the West.47 The Rafu Shimpo favorably reported, “Even though
Hayakawa is very busy shooting his new film, he is making every effort to
prevent the film from exhibition.”48
When Hayakawa visited Washington, D.C., on his way back to Los Ange-
les from his recuperative trip to the East Coast following an operation for ap-
pendicitis, President Warren G. Harding invited him to the White House on
27 June 1921.49 Harding needed to publicize his friendly relations with Japan
while he was taking a cautious diplomatic policy toward that country in inter-
national conferences, including one in Washington, D.C., in 1921. The Nyu
Yoku Shimpo, a Japanese newspaper in New York, reported Hayakawa’s East

T he S t a r F a l l s   221
Coast trip: “After The Cheat was severely criticized by the Japanese audience,
he [Hayakawa] realized the impact of his art upon the U.S.-Japan relations.
Hayakawa declared that he would contribute to the mutual understandings
between the two countries. . . . Hayakawa is Americanized, but as a Japanese
man, he insists that he would make every effort to the mutual understand-
ings between the Japanese and American people using motion pictures.”50
The Nyu Yoku Shimpo thus expected Hayakawa to play an active role in the
United States as a representative of the Japanese people. Its editorial note on
6 July 1921, read,

The motion picture industry has recently become one of the top industries
together with steel and automobile industries in the U.S. Motion pictures exist
as essential elements in the lives of American people. Therefore, his [Haya‑
kawa’s] role is undoubtedly significant. His decision, his creativity and his re-
sponsibility have become extremely important. . . . Now that he is the only
Japanese actor who has been actively engaged in the American film industry, we
strongly hope he will do his best and will not degrade his international fame.
. . . He should fully understand his responsibility as a Japanese and do his best
mastering his art. He must do good for Japan.51

Hayakawa’s personalization of the political as the representative of the Japa-

nese people had an inevitable influence on his status at Robertson-Cole and
eventually led to his declining popularity among American audiences under
postwar nativist conditions.
During his silent film stardom, Hayakawa’s persona maintained an effec-
tive tension between representing the popular images of Japanese culture
and embodying the American assimilationist narrative. However, in the
nationwide anti-Japanese nativist atmosphere and with the legalization of
Japanese inassimilability, it became difficult for the Japanese actor to main-
tain his stardom, which had been based on a well-balanced cross-cultural star
image. Symbolically, the year Hayakawa left Robertson-Cole and Hollywood
was the year in which the U.S. Supreme Court officially denied naturalization
to Japanese immigrants in the Ozawa case of 1922.
As a result, Robertson-Cole became inclined to use Hayakawa in films
that contained fairly anti-Japanese sentiments. The Vermilion Pencil, the last
film Hayakawa made with Robertson-Cole, was based on a story written by
Homer Lea, the author of an infamous anti-Japanese novel, The Valor of Igno-
rance (1909). The Vermilion Pencil was a rehash of The Wrath of the Gods.52

222  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
Both films depicted Asia as an uncivilized and premodern region controlled
by a religious cult, connected with a volcano eruption.53 Hayakawa had to re-
play a religiously primitive old man, a role very similar to the one that he had
played in The Wrath of the Gods when he was not yet considered a star.
Hayakawa later recalled the production of The Vermilion Pencil and said:

The last story was picked like the toss of a penny. I was given three stories to
choose from. I do not like any of them. Still they insist I must choose one of
these. . . . I was associated with certain men in motion picture enterprise. They
owe me $90,000. I never ask for this money. I think there is plenty of time to
pay. Perhaps it was that they think too much about this debt. They think it good
to goad and humiliate me—to pick a quarrel. . . . He called me by a name. It
is something should not come out of the mouth. Something that is unpardon-
able insult to me and an affront to my nationality. No man can help where he
is born—what is his blood. Only an ignorant coward throws up to a man that
he does not like his race. I come of a proud people—a man of my quality could
not endure such insult. . . . He say then: “People in this country have no use for
Chinks.” I am not Chink. I am Japanese gentleman, and the word Chink is not
fit to be spoke. . . . I take many little insult and humiliation—but no—nothing
so big as this.54

Hayakawa did not clearly state who “they” were, but it is obvious that “they”
were the executives of Robertson-Cole, who came to share the nativist and
anti-Japanese sentiment in American society in general.
The case of The Vermilion Pencil suggests that Hayakawa was seriously
losing control over his films and his star image. By 1921, Robertson-Cole had
started producing films with a rationalized and standardized basis and be-
came “foremost of the independent motion picture producers and distribu-
tors,” according to its own declaration in trade journals.55 Haworth was virtu-
ally integrated into Robertson-Cole when Hayakawa signed a new four-year
contract with Robertson-Cole on 28 March 1920.56
As for this new contract, both an American journalist, Grace Kingsley, and
a Japanese film critic, Mori Iwao, claimed that Hayakawa became indepen-
dent from Haworth, established his own company, the Sessue Hayakawa Fea-
ture Play Company, and made an exclusive contract with Robertson-Cole.57 It
is ironic to claim that Hayakawa had finished his contract with Haworth be-
cause Haworth was originally Hayakawa’s own company. This claim reveals
Hayakawa’s loss of control at Haworth by 1920. Probably, the truth was that

T he S t a r F a l l s   223
Hayakawa’s new company was merely nominal and was set up by Robertson-
Cole. In spite of its name, Hayakawa, his films, and his star image entered
under the total control of Robertson-Cole. In fact, after The First Born, the
first film under the new contract, the name “Hayakawa Feature Play Com-
pany” vanished from film ads in trade journals. Instead, there were only the
words “Produced by R-C [Robertson-Cole] Pictures.”58
In his autobiography, Hayakawa wrote, “The integration of the Haworth
Pictures Corporation into Robertson-Cole, begun in 1920 when we changed
studios, was almost complete” by the time The Swamp was made.59 In an
interview conducted in the 1950s, Hayakawa simply explained that the inte-
gration happened only because “the studio [of Haworth] was prohibited by
the Fire Department” because the studio did not “have [an] iron building.”
Therefore, he “moved into that unit, a huge studio, new, everything terrific,
proper conditions.” However, in the same interview, Hayakawa said, “I wasn’t
quite happy after that.”60 His confession indicates that the integration was
not what Hayakawa really wanted.
Under the new contract, Hayakawa’s loss of control over his production
was obvious. When Hayakawa’s new contract was announced, the NYDM and
the Los Angeles Times reported that Hayakawa’s own play, A Man’s Name, in
which Hayakawa had appeared on the stage for Japanese audiences, would
be the second production.61 However, a film version of A Man’s Name was
never made. Moreover, even though The First Born was Hayakawa’s “dream
project”—he had wanted to make the film version ever since he had seen
the stage play at the Alcazar Theater in San Francisco years earlier—he was
not satisfied with the completed film.62 The reception of the film was great.
The National Board of Review included The First Born in one of the nineteen
“exceptional pictures” of 1921.63 However, Hayakawa did not like the film
because, according to him, the producers did not let Hayakawa play the char-
acter as he wanted but made him “weep with glycerin tears.”64
In May 1920, Robertson-Cole published a multi-page ad for its “Super-
Special” series, including Hayakawa’s star vehicles, in trade journals. The ad
read, “Robertson-Cole makes the positive assertion that none of these pro-
ductions shall be released unless they pass the test which classes them as
‘Specials.’ Robertson-Cole is in a position to make this declaration because its
contracts with producers provide for the rejection of pictures until they are
of the highest standard of excellence.”65 According to this ad, Robertson-Cole
began to execute the ultimate authority to decide the content of films that it

224  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
would distribute. During his courtesy visit to the Robertson-Cole executives
in New York, Hayakawa had to promise them that he would be “selecting
the best stories which the market affords,” each of which would “be one of
great appeal to Americans, and at the same time of international appeal.”66
A Man’s Name did not “pass the test.” The First Born had a “great appeal to
Americans,” but not to Hayakawa.
At the end of 1921, Hayakawa published his view on film in the Rafu
Shimpo. What Hayakawa emphasized again was his intention to make films
with truthful and authentic Japanese characters. He wrote,

[After World War I] motion pictures started representing the world more truth-
fully. . . . See films about the East, for example. Screenwriters have to study
social problems more seriously. . . . It is noteworthy that racially discriminatory
films have not been made any longer and works that publicize authentic racial
characteristics have appeared. For instance, Humoresque was written and pro-
duced by the Jewish people. Also, there are works that depict beautiful human
nature observed in Chinatown. . . [Therefore,] I am willing to make films . . .
that will publicize authentic racial characteristics [of Japanese people].67

Hayakawa, then, announced through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that he

was seeking scripts of Japanese drama that dealt with Japanese protagonists
in Japan, with a prize of thirty thousand dollars.68 In reality, Hayakawa ap-
peared in one standardized Orientalist film after another. Hayakawa’s an-
nouncements functioned merely as an excuse to target Japanese spectators.
By 1921, however, standardization and Orientalization were no longer able
to support Hayakawa’s stardom. The New York Times criticized the standard-
ized quality of Where Lights Are Low: “It remains a movie melodrama, which
is to be regretted, because Mr. Hayakawa is worthy of something more genu-
ine. Apparently, however, he or his managers think that the public demands
this sort of stuff, and so they continue to turn it out. It’s a pity that they do not
feel equal to another ‘Bonds of Honor’ or ‘The Dragon Painter.’ . . . The story
becomes merely a fight between the hero and the villain for the possession of
the heroine, with the victory of the former certain from the start. . . .”69 The
MPW noted, “Sessue Hayakawa’s preference for the role of the self-sacrificing
hero is asserted in much his usual style in ‘Five Days to Live.’ To some who
have tired of his somewhat obvious art in impersonating the man who stands
alone, the man who is capable of supreme acts of altruism, his latest offers

T he S t a r F a l l s   225
little that is new or enterprising.”70 On The Vermilion Pencil, MPW stated, “His
[Hayakawa’s] addiction to self-sacrificing roles is once more evident. . . . Such
melodramatic touches occur frequently and unless one is an abandoned ad-
mirer of Hayakawa, the picture will not register where realism is sought, and
even where romanticism is preferred, there is scarcely enough novelty here
to make a decided appeal.”71
In accordance with the unfavorable tone in the reviews, Robertson-Cole
and its cost-conscious studio managers reduced their efforts to promote
Hayakawa as a star. As a result, when Five Days to Live was released, for the
first time for his star vehicles MPW did not mention Hayakawa’s name as “a
sales point” in its “Exploitation Angles” for exhibitors.72 The same thing hap-
pened when The Vermilion Pencil was released.73
After The Vermilion Pencil, Robertson-Cole originally planned to make
three more Hayakawa films, including one titled Thirteen Poppy Seeds.74 Haya-
kawa was expected to start shooting a film around 9 January 1922.75 How-
ever, it never happened. A Japanese film magazine reported that Robertson-
Cole fired Hayakawa to trim its wage bills.76 There is no official record that
Robertson-Cole fired Hayakawa, but in May 1922 Hayakawa sued Robertson-
Cole, charging breach of contract.77 In 1926, Hayakawa said that there was “a
series of unsatisfactory pictures” and “a series of unsatisfactory incidents in
dealing with the powers that be.”78 Hayakawa asserts in his autobiography
that Robertson-Cole added more life insurance on him before shooting The
Vermilion Pencil. Then, according to Hayakawa, during the production there
was an attempt to take his life for the insurance. A stone wall was rigged to
fall on him during an earthquake sequence.79 Whether true or not, this epi-
sode clearly indicates Hayakawa’s perception that Robertson-Cole had lost
interest in Hayakawa as a star. Hayakawa tried to fight back against his em-
ployer in the lawsuit, but, obviously, the odds were heavily stacked against
him.
Hayakawa’s decline in popularity and the Hollywood film industry’s loss
of interest in him were also the results of the emergence of many new stars
in the restructuring of the studio system in Hollywood. During the early
1920s, under the condition of political extremism, as a result of racial and
ethnic resentment, anti-radical paranoia, economic dislocation, and cultural
conservatism, the federal government, many states, and many cities estab-
lished film censorship boards.80 Hollywood film studios institutionally re-
sponded to such regulations by inviting Will H. Hays, the postmaster general
in Harding’s administration, to the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu-

226  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
tors of America (MPPDA) in 1922. The Hays Office, as the MPPDA came to be
called, initiated a self-regulatory, or self-disciplinary, policy.
Under these more conservative industrial conditions, the typical star
image of Hayakawa, the movable middle-ground position in the racial and
cultural hierarchy between white and nonwhite, between the Americanized
and the inassimilable, and between the refined and the primitive, was taken
over by other actors who were not as threatening as Hayakawa in terms of
race and sex. Rudolph Valentino was one of those stars who succeeded Haya‑
kawa’s star image.81 Hayakawa wrote, “Valentino was among those who had
applied for work when Haworth began production. I met him then, and liked
him; but I did not hire him. The atmosphere of his personality was too simi-
lar to mine. And although his acting ability was less than skin deep, I sensed
something of a rival in him. He once paid me the compliment of saying, ‘I’ve
always wanted to have something of the art you achieve in your performance
in mine, so I could reproduce the sort of action and behavior the public asso-
ciates with you.’ ”82
Valentino’s first major role was in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
(Rex Ingram, 1920). Valentino’s character had many things in common with
Hayakawa’s character in The Cheat. Both actors became overnight sensations
right after these films. Valentino plays Julio, an Argentine playboy living in
Paris. In the opening scene, Julio is characterized as a villainous and sensual
gigolo in the vicious surroundings of a Buenos Aires dance hall. Julio wears
a gaucho-style outfit, smokes cigarettes, stares at a woman with a sensual
gaze, and dances a tango with the woman. However, in the next scene, set in
Paris, Julio, in a European suit and with his hair neatly set, kisses a bunch
of roses and gives it to a married white woman, who is attracted to Julio’s
refined manner. Later, Julio invites her into his studio, lets her take off her
shoes, embraces her, and kisses her, whispering in her ear, “You are mine.”
When her husband appears on the scene, Julio is punished for his conduct.
The ambivalent presentation of Julio, as both a sensual/threatening and re-
fined/Westernized male, clearly followed that of Hayakawa in The Cheat.
In the end, Julio decides to become a soldier for the Allies and dies hero-
ically for his love. Showing his self-sacrificial loyalty to the Allies, Julio is
accepted into white American and European society for the first time, as was
Hayakawa repeatedly in his star vehicles.
After signing a hugely publicized contract with Paramount, Valentino
played the title role of The Sheik (George Melford, 1921), which helped to
inaugurate the “Valentino craze.”83 The motif of the racial and cultural

T he S t a r F a l l s   227
middle ground of the protagonist was used in The Sheik, as it was in many of
Hayakawa’s star vehicles.84 A Frenchman (Adolphe Menjou) enlightens and
Westernizes Valentino’s character, especially in terms of romantic love and
monogamy. When another Arabian tribe with its evil chief kidnaps a white
woman, the sheik turns into a heroic nonwhite man, who sacrifices himself
to protect the white heroine. The heroine prays to the Christian God for the
sheik’s recovery from his fatal wound, while the Arabian people pray to Allah.
Eventually, the sheik is revealed to be a son of an English gentleman and
his Spanish wife, who had been abandoned in the Sahara.85 Thus, the sheik
racially and religiously stands between European and Arab in the narrative.
The title role of The Sheik, a white European man raised by Arabian
people, was first offered to Hayakawa, but he declined it, according to
Hayakawa.86However, it was unlikely that Hayakawa was offered the role of
the European-born Arab. In early 1920, he was severely criticized for his role
as a Spanish matador in The Brand of Lopez, the “whitest” character in his
whole career.87 The unfavorable reviews of The Brand of Lopez confined Haya-
kawa and his star image to an Oriental milieu and regarded his Spanish role
as too European and unsuitable for him. Matthew Taylor from MPN claimed,
“The star hardly satisfies in his Spanish role. . . . Hayakawa is a typical Orien-
tal, and it is difficult for an Oriental to register the hot passions, especially the
diabolic revenge of a quick tempered Latin.”88 A reviewer from Variety wrote,
“Let’s hope he will confine himself to native roles and sidestep crude meller
of a type set forth above.”89
Moreover, the narrative device that identifies the sheik as a white male
was impossible for Hayakawa. Even though Valentino became popular as an
“ethnic” star (“Latin lover”), he was “white” enough, compared to the Asian
star, to portray an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat who was raised in the Middle East.
Valentino’s sensuality and eroticism were allowed to unfold more completely,
while Hayakawa’s eroticism was curtailed for racial reasons. Valentino was
“off white,” but still white. Hayakawa came close to being white, but still
was not white. Valentino was a “whiter” successor to Hayakawa’s star image.
Valentino was convincing enough to embody the middle-ground position of
a racial and cultural hierarchy.
However, even Valentino was not white, or American, enough for a full-
fledged star in the xenophobic and nativist culture and within the conserva-
tive tendency in the Hollywood film industry under the Hays Office. The film
historian Alexander Walker argues, “Women were already beginning to turn
away from the exotic foreign model and back to the staple American product

228  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
represented by a new star like John Gilbert” by the mid-1920s.90 By the mid-
1920s, Caucasian stars such as Douglas Fairbanks Sr., “the smiling, clean-
cut, genteel American hero,” started playing nonwhite foreign heroes, even
though they “rarely did, if ever—as a sexual being,” compared with Hayakawa
or Valentino.91 Robertson-Cole followed this trend and released the film The
Sheik of Araby in April 1922, which was a reedited version of The Man Who
Turned White, starring a Caucasian actor named H. B. Warner.92 As Gaylyn
Studlar argues, these Caucasian stars “could satisfy female desire for erotic
exoticism without threatening either American men or the nation’s Nordic/
Anglo-Saxon purity.”93
According to Studlar, fan magazine discourse of the 1920s began to foster
an appreciation of stars who were exemplars of “the fine, upstanding, typical
American.”94 In this trend, there was barely any room left for Hayakawa. In
the 1920s, the number of articles on Hayakawa in fan magazines decreased
drastically. Even in the few articles about Hayakawa, his ultimate difference
from American stars became emphasized, rather than his Americanized
way of life. This shift of fan magazine discourse surely served to destroy the
tense balance between Americanization and Japaneseness of Hayakawa’s star
image.
As early as 1919, Harry C. Carr from the Motion Picture Classic emphasized
Hayakawa’s cultural difference:

In all his [Hayakawa’s] customs and manners and conversation he is American

to the finger-tips, but one always feels that in Hayakawa there is the soul of
some stern old Samurai, who has returned to earth and got into the body of a
very up-to-date young man of fashion by mistake. One always feels that this
handsome, attractive young clubman is reaching back into dim mysteries of
an old philosophy that we wot [sic] not of. I see him in spiffy neckties and vest-
chains, with golf-sticks poking out of the tonneau of his car, but beyond I see
old Samurai temples and queer Samurai swords, strange aromas of Oriental
perfumes. Hayakawa is modern Japan. He is the proud old Samurai caste in
patent leather shoes and spats. The spirit of the old Japan which met death with
a contemptuous smile and killed any one who touched its sword. But the man-
ners and thoughts of modern America. We think we have taught them a lot, but
they call upon life forces of which we know nothing.95

Carr thus regarded Hayakawa as a descendent of the samurai class, no matter

how Americanized his surface was.

T he S t a r F a l l s   229
 The Motion Picture Classic published photos of Hayakawa wearing a
Japanese-style kimono over a Western suit, and looking at a Japanese mask
and a sword. One of the captions for these photos says, “Now and then he gets
down the tragic mask and the centuries-old Samurai sword of the Japanese
player. Then he forgets all about the Cooper-Hewitts and the fleeting fame
of celluloid success.”96 When Hayakawa was at Lasky, his Americanized sur-
face was regarded as the sign of his Americanization and assimilation to the
American way of life, no matter how many Japanese traits he showed. The
Japanese characteristics were viewed as his symbolical embodiment of Japa-
nese Taste. However, after World War I, the same Japanese objects came to be
used as examples of Hayakawa’s inassimilable cultural and racial difference.
Other articles on Hayakawa in the 1920s also rearticulated Hayakawa’s
star image from the notion of racial and cultural difference. Adele Whitely
Fletcher pointed out Hayakawa’s “essential” Japaneseness in her article in
Motion Picture Magazine in 1920. She wrote,

I asked him [Hayakawa] if he would ever return to Japan to make pictures and
he said he hoped to go there to make a great production, one which would have
great beauty in its scenes and, in a certain sense, be spectacular. . . . Like those
of the Far East he is essentially the fatalist. . . . And he is essentially a son of
his native land, for even in a business office in Manhattan-on-the-Subway he
suggested the far-away isle where he was born. Temple bells in a violet dusk;
peaceful nights and dawns fragrant with cherry blossoms, which wake in pale
rose to bird calls and the shuffle of sandaled footfalls along the quiet ways.97

In 1922 Leslie Bryers of Motion Picture Magazine also distinguished Haya-

kawa from American gentlemen, no matter how gently he behaves. Start-
ing her article in an exotic mode, “The perfumed censers, purple shadows,
solitudes and silences of your true Oriental fable were ostentatious in their
absence. Thus I offer you a Nipponese conte.” Bryers concludes, “One finds
in Hayakawa that consistent courtesy, that deference to another’s opinions
which yet in no way sets his own at a disadvantage, which characterizes the
majority of his race. It is impossible to observe whether his manner is con-
cealing boredom or interest. It is always impassive. Only in the brief, brilliant
flashes of his eyes does one catch the intense illumination within him. In his
American experience and his American clothes he yet remains a splendid
example of the Japanese gentleman.”98
In the wrecked balance between Americanization and Japaneseness, all

230  C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
that seemed left for Hayakawa was his reputation among Japanese specta-
tors. At a dinner held by Robertson-Cole to celebrate the completion of The
Vermilion Pencil on 17 March 1922, Hayakawa declared that he would leave
Hollywood because he was a patriot of Japan. According to his autobiography,
Hayakawa said,

The agitation against us [Japanese] was still prevalent, and those of small in-
come, engaged in farming and small business in California, were having a hard
time of it. . . . The other day, a public poll was taken concerning the current dis-
crimination against Japanese in this country and the passage of legislation that
will do them considerable harm. I have learned that this company has taken a
position in favor of discrimination against the Japanese. Moreover, an attempt
on my life was made during the filming of The Vermilion Pencil. Fortunately for
me it was unsuccessful. I was warned. . . . If things have reached such a state,
there is no longer any cause for me to remain in Hollywood. I am going to
leave. This is my last day.99

Only a week after Hayakawa resigned, Robertson-Cole signed a contract with

Harry Carey, an all-American type of star, and R. T. Thornby, who had di-
rected Carey’s films at Universal Pictures. Robertson-Cole’s contract with
Carey may not have had any direct relationship with Hayakawa’s resignation,
but it still indicated the move of Robertson-Cole, and the Hollywood film
industry, toward white Americanism.

T he S t a r F a l l s   231
 four

Stardom and Japanese Modernity

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Am e r i c a n i z at i o n a n d
N at i o n a l i sm

The Japanese Reception of Sessue Hayakawa

​T he stardom of Sessue Hayakawa allowed the Japanese actor to be re-

garded as the representative of Japanese people not only by Ameri-
can audiences but also by Japanese spectators. Inevitably, Hayakawa
came to be positioned in the sociopolitical terrain between Japan and the
United States.
The Japanese American press in California played an important role in
articulating Hayakawa’s stardom within broader sociopolitical discourses for
Japanese spectators in the United States. Right after The Cheat was released
in Los Angeles, the Rafu Shimpo started a strong campaign against Haya‑
kawa’s Japanese character. However, the Rafu Shimpo’s criticism of The Cheat
was contradictory. On the one hand, it criticized The Cheat “for the good of
the future of Japanese people in the U.S.,” who were making every effort to
assimilate into American society. On the other hand, as for assimilation, the
Rafu Shimpo adopted the idea of the middle-ground position of Japanese
people in the racial and cultural hierarchy.
A series titled “Are the Japanese Assimilable?” by Sidney Gulick, a former
missionary in Japan and a pro-Japanese professor, most typically represented
the basic tone of argument in the Rafu Shimpo. Gulick insisted that there
were two types of assimilation, “biological” and “social,” and Japanese im-
migrants were able to assimilate socially, but not biologically. Gulick wrote,
“Biological assimilation may touch upon the issue of miscegenation, but so-
cial assimilation is surely possible because it can be achieved by education
and surrounding conditions. The Japanese can learn our language, way of
thinking, and democracy.”1 Regarding miscegenation, Gulick argued, “The
result has not been well studied scientifically yet. Therefore, I do not recom-
mend it. Yet, at the same time, miscegenation must not be prohibited only
because of temporary emotion or racial prejudice until the scientific result
comes.”2
Gulick’s claim about miscegenation indicated his adherence to the idea of
a racial hierarchy between white and nonwhite, based on pseudo-scientific
social Darwinism, which was a part of the popular discourse of the period;
and his insistence upon accepting Japanese immigrants into American so-
ciety was a compromise. According to Gulick, if Japanese immigrants learned
American language, thought, and democracy, and so long as they avoided
causing anxiety over miscegenation, there could be a good chance for Japa-
nese immigrants to assimilate into American life.
While supporting the notions of a racial hierarchy and of assimilation that
located Japan in an inferior position, the Rafu Shimpo’s criticism of The Cheat
placed a greater emphasis on the film’s “insult of Japanese national pride.”
The Rafu Shimpo abhorred Hayakawa’s show of “misery” at the climactic
scene of the lynching as a “humiliation to Japanese people.”3 This national-
ist standpoint could have easily been transformed into a racist assertion of
inassimilability of the “Japanese race” and of the ultimate difference from
Americans.
Curiously, the Rafu Shimpo did not consider The Typhoon as problematic
as The Cheat, even though, in both films, Japanese characters played by Haya-
kawa brutally attack white women and participate in trials. When the film
Harakiri (1917) was criticized for its presumed anti-Japanese content, the
actor Aoyama Yukio, who appeared in the film, made an excuse in the Rafu
Shimpo that the film “was more like The Typhoon, and less anti-Japanese than
The Cheat.”4 Hayakawa’s character in The Typhoon shows his brutality only
when his nationality is insulted. He commits suicide for his honor and is
not lynched or attacked by American people. Later, when The Typhoon was
released in Japan, a Japanese film magazine called it “a superb film without
any anti-Japanese flavor that rather shows the Japanese spirit splendidly.”5
The fact that The Typhoon was excused from severe criticism underscores the
nationalist tone of argument of the Rafu Shimpo. The Rafu Shimpo did not
react harshly toward anti-Japanese films as long as Japan was treated as an
independent nation and the Japanese people were depicted with honor.
The Rafu Shimpo’s nationalistic inclination is observable in its reaction to
Hayakawa’s other star vehicles, The Honorable Friend and Hashimura Togo.
These two films depicted an idealized process of Americanization of Japanese

236  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
men, which seemed to be most suitable to Gulick’s idea of “social,” but not
“biological,” assimilation of Japanese immigrants. However, the Rafu Shimpo
criticized The Honorable Friend in nationalist terms: “Its content is said to be
about a Japanese merchant who forces a Japanese man to have a picture mar-
riage in order to bring his mistress to the U.S. and deceives the Gentlemen’s
Agreement. If this is true, . . . many Americans may think that the Japanese
people are immoral. . . . It must be a film that insults the Japanese race.”6 The
writer of this article had not even watched the film and did not pay attention
to the film’s successful assimilation narrative. He or she simply cared about
the respectability of the “Japanese race.”
The Rafu Shimpo also criticized Hashimura Togo from a nationalist stand-
point, neglecting the content of a Japanese immigrant’s Americanization pro-
cess: “Hayakawa appears as a comic protagonist, and he cannot present his
[acting] ability. Many people will surely insist that Hayakawa cannot show his
unique technique unless he plays an abhorrent villain. Consequently, there is
no doubt that the motion picture company will use him in roles that will do
harm to the Japanese people. Probably other Japanese actors will no longer
have roles that will do good to the Japanese people.”7
The establishment of Haworth, which symbolized a Japanese man’s suc-
cess in the United States, satisfied the Rafu Shimpo’s nationalist inclination.
About the first four productions at Haworth, the Rafu Shimpo noted favor-
ably, “Four films so far have been well received among both the Japanese and
the Americans.”8 Another article stated, “All four films in which Hayakawa
appeared [at his own production company] are propaganda films that intro-
duce unique Japanese bushido. They are valuable attempts.”9 About His Birth-
right, a reviewer claimed, “The plot seems like a sequel to Madame Butterfly.
. . . To me it was more delightful than any other recent films by Hayakawa.
. . . The main issue here is that the Japanese people have appreciated myste-
rious beauty in revenge since ancient times, and it looks sarcastic compared
with the white hypocrisy hidden behind the discourse of ‘Love your enemy.’
. . . Sessue should explore more about showing the essence of the Japanese
people and making films with delightful acts.”10 While admitting the stereo-
typical content of His Birthright that referred to Madame Butterfly, the re-
viewer praised Hayakawa’s characterization of the hero, who preserves his
Japanese background and attains justice in the United States.
Contrary to American fan magazines, the Rafu Shimpo interpreted Haya‑
kawa’s display of Japanese traits in his lifestyle not as an embodiment of Japa-

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   237
nese Taste but as a nationalist attitude. One report stated, “Motion picture
actor Sessue Hayakawa is known to both American and Japanese people as
one of the most Americanized Japanese people in the U.S. [Yet,] he appears
to be an ultra-nationalist. This is obvious if we read what he has said to En-
glish magazine reporters. According to Sessue, it is very good for Japanese
people to import Western culture, but it is completely wrong to change their
clothes to American ones. He insists that Japanese clothes are most suitable
for Japanese people.”11 The Rafu Shimpo also praised Aoki, especially for her
“Japanese” way of playing the role of the faithful wife: “While Mrs. Tsuruko
can speak fluent English to get along with the Americans, she can also be-
come a faithful wife as a pure Japanese lady who does not speak English at
all. In this sense, Mrs. Tsuruko is superior to the Japanese ladies who prefer
to speak only in English.”12
There were some Japanese intellectuals who were cautious of the na‑
tionalistic viewpoint of the Rafu Shimpo. Okina Kyuin criticized the Rafu
Shimpo’s campaign against The Cheat for its “narrow-minded nationalism.”
Okina wrote in the Nichibei Shinbun, a Japanese newspaper published in San
Francisco,

Since the Kotoku Shusui incident, a strange tendency had risen in the Japanese
community in the U.S.: narrow-minded nationalism.13 Such a thought was not
suitable to the New World where freedom and democracy were its ideal. . . .
Vulgar journalists followed the trend and cried out, “Japanese men should do
like this,” or “ God’s People should do like that,” etc. I did want to have pride as
Japanese, but I hated such a vulgar tendency. . . . After watching [The Cheat], I
thought that the performance of Sessue, who played a brilliant role with other
white actors, was worth praising. The criticism that regarded this film as anti-
Japanese considered the scene in which the Japanese man takes advantage of
a white woman as humiliating to the Japanese. It is not bad to think that Japa-
nese people should not behave rudely to white people, but The Cheat was only
a movie. The author did not write the script with an intention of anti-Japanese
propaganda, but just referred to the Japanese custom of stamping on every-
thing. If that behavior enhances anti-Japanese sentiment, what about the cruel
and brutal scenes in films with white actors? . . . Sessue’s acting was realistic.
He obtained a status of a star because of his acting skill. If he had been used
only as a tool to enhance anti-Japanese sentiment, he would have been thrown
away right after The Cheat. . . . The Japanese people were only suffering from
and excited about a self-delusion. . . .14

238  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
In response, Yamaguchi Hikotaro of the Rafu Shimpo severely criticized
Okina, even questioning Okina’s Japanese nationality. Yamaguchi wrote, “If
Okina is Japanese, he must support the Rafu Shimpo’s opinion that worries
about The Cheat’s bad influence. . . . Since Okina scorns the action of the
Japanese Association [against the exhibition of The Cheat] with his immature
artistic point of view, he must not be Japanese but Chinese.”15 Yamaguchi’s
claim reveals the conspicuously nationalist tone of the Rafu Shimpo, which
simultaneously and in a contradictory manner admitted the notion of racial
hierarchy that distinguished Japanese from other Asians as well as from Cau-
casians.
The Rafu Shimpo’s vehement nationalist reaction against The Cheat and
Hayakawa was not universally shared. There were calm and less political
views like Okina’s. In addition to Okina, the Nyu Yoku Shimpo, a Japanese
newspaper published in New York that shared a certain nationalist tendency
with the Rafu Shimpo, praised Hayakawa’s and Aoki’s efforts of American-
ization in its review of The Honorable Friend. The report noted, “[In The Hon-
orable Friend,] when the bride looks at a car on her way home from the Im-
migration Office, she thinks that a dog will pull it because she does not see
any horse. If any Japanese women today look at such a scene in the film,
they should be offended and furiously jump on the stage and tear down the
screen. However, the two leading actors [Hayakawa and Aoki] are impressive.
They are trained in America and completely Americanized in their facial ex-
pressions. Their expressions will never be mistaken whether they are happy
or sad as other actors in films made in Japan have been. Moreover, their hand-
some and beautiful appearances enhance their abilities.”16 Nevertheless, the
nationalist inclination of the Rafu Shimpo had a certain degree of influence
on the emerging public discourse in the Japanese American community in
Los Angeles, where Hayakawa resided and made his films.

Sessue Hayakawa’s name first arrived in Japan in film magazines, but not as
a matinee idol. No female fan attached an enthusiastic poem for Hayakawa
in her letter to the editors. Nobody even thought about sending a fan letter
to Hayakawa in the first place. Most of the Japanese film magazines, many of
which were established in the mid- to late 1910s and whose primary readers
in the beginning were intellectuals of the middle and upper middle classes,
at first treated Hayakawa and his films using an unfavorable tone.17 The Japa-
nese government was making every effort to reach equal status with Euro-
pean countries and the United States in international relations and, along

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   239
with this, supported Japanese communities in the United States in the at-
tempt to abolish the legal inequality of Japanese immigrants.18 Under these
political conditions, Hayakawa was introduced to Japanese spectators as a
“traitor” for appearing in films “insulting” Japan and enhancing anti-Japanese
sentiment in the United States.
The film magazine Katsudo Shashin Zasshi reported that Hayakawa was
“famous because he often causes problems.”19 Katsudo no Sekai provided an
unfavorable caption to Hayakawa’s photo, “Sessue Hayakawa, who aroused
a heated discussion when he appeared in The Cheat, and his extremely ugly
Japanese sword,” despite the fact that the same photo was used in an Ameri-
can film fan magazine in a favorable tone.20 The magazine also reported that
Hayakawa and Aoki were thinking of retirement from the film industry very
soon because of the severe criticism of their films from Japanese communi-
ties in the United States.21 Sometimes, in Japanese film magazines, Haya‑
kawa’s name was intentionally spelled with a series of dashes for conceal-
ment, as if it had been too shameful to print his name.
The Cheat was not released in Japan. The Wrath of the Gods was released at
the Fujikan Theater in Asakusa on 15 September 1918, but after several weeks
it was banned from exhibition “because of its too primitive and disgraceful
depiction of Japanese people.”22 Alien Souls was imported to Japan and the
release date at Fujikan Theater in Asakusa was already set (1 August 1918);
however it was eventually banned from exhibition because “the film would
insult Japanese people and enhance anti-American thought.”23 The notorious
rumors about The Cheat and other early Hayakawa films could not be sub-
stantiated or disproved without the release of the films themselves.
As a result, other than the infamous rumors, the name and face of Haya-
kawa was not well known until the end of the 1910s in Japan. The film maga-
zine Katsudo Kurabu used photos of Hayakawa several times for “Who’s this?”
questions for a prize competition in 1919–20, which means that Hayakawa’s
face was not very familiar to Japanese audiences even then.24 The famous
kabuki actor Nakamura Utaemon had not heard of Hayakawa in 1920 despite
the fact that Hayakawa often mentioned in American film fan magazines the
influence on him of the kabuki actor Danjuro.25
After Hayakawa established his own company, the reception of Hayakawa
and his films changed drastically in Japan, as it did in the Japanese communi-
ties in the United States. As all of Hayakawa’s star vehicles at Haworth were
widely advertised and released in Japan, the previous negative tone that had
regarded Hayakawa as a national shame almost completely disappeared.26

240  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
Hayakawa became favorably introduced in some newspaper reports as if he
had been “a Japanese national hero” in the United States.27 A 1921 article by
a female film critic, Saiki Junko, even reads like an open love letter to Haya-
kawa. Saiki writes:

Sessue devotes himself to the Japanese people and he is not such a bad person
as some newspaper[s] had reported. It’s all misunderstanding. . . . The name of
Sessue, a Japanese man, is brightly and clearly shining in the U.S., even during
the anti-Japanese movements. . . . In such recent films as The Temple of Dusk,
His Debt, and The Gray Horizon, Sessue always loves justice and is the ideal
representative of Eastern morality who is generous to his enemy. His character,
who is always brokenhearted and lonely in the end, is so unique in American
films that I cannot help feeling sympathy with him all the time. . . . We must
celebrate 10 June 1889 [sic], the birthday of the greatest person in the world,
Sessue Hayakawa. . . . A person with Dustin Farnum’s dignity, Warren Kerri‑
gan’s beauty, Francis X. Bushman’s grace, and Charles Ray’s beautiful youth
still cannot match Sessue. . . . Mr. Sessue Hayakawa, Miss Jun Saiki will bless
you with the earth that gave birth to you. . . . Mr. Hayakawa, please do not give
up motion pictures until I become a great director. . . .28

Hayakawa thus finally became a matinee idol for some female fans in Japan.
Yet, in Japan, Hayakawa was not so much a matinee idol as a national hero.
The establishment of Haworth was interpreted by the Japanese media as
Hayakawa’s effort “to make pro-Japanese films in order to dispel his shame-
ful reputation” and as his display of a nationalistic attitude toward his native
country.29 Hayakawa came to be considered as a favorable representative of
Japan. Hayakawa’s success in a foreign country thus turned into a matter of
national pride. As Hayakawa’s early films were criticized in a nationalistic
tone, the establishment of Haworth was praised nationalistically as “an honor
for the Japanese people.”30 From then on, such characterizations as “Haya-
kawa always fights alone for Japanese people in California, the region which
is filled with anti-Japanese sentiment” appeared in many film magazines
and newspapers. In this sense, one aim of Hayakawa when he established
Haworth, to appeal to Japanese spectators, was successfully accomplished.
However, even after 1918, Japanese reception of Hayakawa’s stardom was
not unanimously favorable but was ambivalent. Hayakawa was nationalis-
tically praised as a representative of Japan, but, at the same time, he was
regarded positively and negatively as a foreign star, or as an imported star

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   241
from the United States. This twofold reception of Hayakawa’s stardom had to
do with the contradictory conditions of Japanese film culture in this period
of modernity. Throughout the Taisho era (1912–26), the social definition of
cinema was transforming in accordance with the transformation of Japanese
society. Domestically, mass culture developed with the emergence of the
working class in urban areas. Americanization was a keyword in the newly
developed mass culture. Internationally, as one of the modernizing nation-
states, Japan was imperialistically trying to obtain colonies. Both Hayakawa’s
star image and cinema itself obtained ambivalent statuses under these condi-
tions of Americanization, modernization, and nationalism.
In the Taisho period, some Japanese intellectuals, ranging from film crit-
ics and filmmakers to government officials, attempted to modernize the pro-
duction and exhibition practices of motion pictures in Japan. Their writings
and subsequent experimental filmmaking are often noted as jun’eigageki
undo, the Pure Film Movement. Even though the Pure Film Movement was
not a coherent and monolithic movement, the advocates of the movement
shared their desires to renovate film culture in Japan. The movement had
ambivalent goals: Westernization and nationalization of cinema. According
to the historian Takemura Tamio, in the Taisho era, “ordinary Japanese people
were neurotically and madly trying to incorporate Americanism with their
traditional lifestyles. . . . The essence of popular culture of the period was, in
short, the attempted unity of American popular culture and the morality of
traditional [Japanese] society.”31 The Pure Film Movement’s ambivalent goals
typically embodied the transitional conditions of Japanese popular culture of
the period.
Hayakawa’s career in American silent cinema from around 1914 until
1922 coincided with the period when the Pure Film Movement was most
active in Japan both in theory and in practice. The ambivalent reception of
Hayakawa’s stardom in Japan was closely related to the Pure Film advocates’
ambivalent goals toward modernizing cinema in Japan.
In the early 1910s, in such film journals as Kinema Record, primarily young
intellectual figures began to criticize the production, exhibition, and recep-
tion of mainstream commercial films in Japan. According to Joanne Bernardi,
the Pure Film Movement was “a loosely defined discourse-based ‘movement’
comprised of diverse paths leading to a single destination . . . . or common
cause, [which] was the realization of culturally respectable film, endowed
with both aesthetic legitimacy and contemporary realism, that theoretically
would challenge a mainstream commercial product that had theatrical ori-

242  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
gins.”32 One of the goals of the Pure Film advocates was “the attainment of an
internationally viable level of narrational clarity for films also endowed with a
comprehensible and distinct national and cultural identity.”33 They criticized
mainstream commercial Japanese motion pictures, which had appealed to
“mass” audiences because, for the most part, they were merely reproducing
stage repertories of kyugeki (period drama of kabuki style) and shinpa (new
school or modern drama influenced by traditional kabuki styles). They found
inspiration in imported films, American and European film magazines and
instructional books on cinema, and news of the latest production techniques
brought back by a number of filmmakers and producers who toured the
Hollywood studios during the American film industry’s sudden boom in
production after World War I. They insisted on modernizing Japanese-made
films with formal and narrative techniques, such as spoken titles (dialogue
intertitles), more varied and complex camera work (in particular, close-up
shots and moving camera techniques), artificial lighting, continuity editing,
and a more natural style of acting.
There were various and contradictory standpoints in the Pure Film Move-
ment, but there was a shared ideological and economic concern. There were
nationalist (or historically teleological) discourses on cinema in the period
that tried to distinguish the “cinematic” entity from other “uncinematic”
forms of entertainment and spectacle, which were often connected to lower-
class and juvenile spectators. The major goals of the Pure Film advocates
included exporting Japanese-made films to foreign markets and affirming
Japanese national identity internationally and domestically. In this sense,
the major goals of the Pure Film Movement were motivated not so much
artistically as politically, economically, and strategically. Such a technique as
continuity editing was not necessarily perceived by the Pure Film advocates
as simply the most “efficient” way of telling a story, but as part of the Ameri-
canism that they tried to incorporate with their political and economic con-
cerns.34
The Pure Film advocates were well aware of the international popularity
of films that depicted such stereotypical Japanese culture and landscape as
dances of geisha girls, hara-kiri, cherry blossoms, and Mount Fuji in “tales
of honor, revenge, self-sacrifice, and unrequited love” in the style of Madame
Butterfly.35 These intellectuals felt not only uncomfortable with the “inaccu-
rate” depiction of Japan in these films, but also offended by the fact that Japa-
nese landscape and culture, about which Japanese filmmakers should be
making films and making profits, were “stolen” by foreign filmmakers.36

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   243
 The Kinema Record criticized The Wrath of the Gods for its representation
of Japanese people who “look very ugly,” and stated, “We feel sick when we
see [that] this kind of film is being made in foreign countries. We want to
export films made purely by Japanese people as soon as possible.”37 Katsudo
Shashin Zasshi similarly criticized The Wrath of the Gods and noted, “Even
though the major characters are Japanese, it is a Japanese drama made out
of Western people’s minds and it has an extremely Westernized view. . . . It
is a pity that this film introduces Japan without telling the truth of Japan.”38
Kaeriyama Norimasa, who was the leading theorist of the Pure Film Move-
ment, also referred to The Wrath of the Gods and claimed, “Isn’t it a huge loss
that Japanese producers do not make any films for export and have all the
greatly unique landscape of Japan stolen by foreigners?”39 The critic Okura
Kihachiro expressed his regret that no Japanese-made film had ever been
exported to foreign markets, despite such attractions and artistic heritage as
Mount Fuji and the Giant Buddha in Nara, which would surely capture the
interest of foreign audiences. Okura thus requested of Japanese filmmakers
that they “dedicate themselves to producing original Japanese films for ex-
port, films that would introduce Japanese landscape and culture, and export
them” in order to develop cinema at once “nationally and internationally.”40
The Pure Film advocates insisted on making Japanese-made films export-
able right away not only to fight back against the pressure that the Hollywood
market put on the home front, but also to regain the profits in international
markets. An editorial in Katsudo Shashin Zasshi claimed, “Even scenic films
of [Japanese] landscape were made by foreigners and introduced as ‘authentic’
Japan,” and insisted that “the Monroe Doctrine should be applied to motion
pictures” and “Japanese films must be made by Japanese people” and “expand
its [Japan’s] market share in the world.”41 In this sense, the Pure Film advo-
cates were conscious about the idea of the market and recognized that Japa-
nese images, tactically evocative and stereotypical ones, could be profitable
and exportable. They were well aware of foreign audiences’ expectations and
the necessity of exoticization of their films. The Kinema Record insisted in its
editorial that even though “the Japanese people imagined by foreign people”
were misrepresented, “it is indispensable to play characters in an appropriate
way for foreign audiences.”42
The Pure Film advocates claimed that the only way Japanese-made film
would become exportable to foreign markets was to imitate the forms and
styles of foreign films. They believed that only the “unique characteristics
of motion pictures distinguished from theatrical dramas or dances” would

244  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
make films made in Japan become understandable to foreign audiences.43
This is nothing but the posing of Japan’s cinematic identity in Western terms,
which in turn, strategically or not, presupposes and establishes the centrality
of Western cinema as the universal point of reference.
Yet, the Pure Film advocates were not satisfied with slavishly imitating
foreign products. Mukai Shunko of Katsudo Gaho insisted on making films
that would use Western techniques but express yamato damashii, the pure
Japanese spirit that he, and others, considered to represent Japan’s power
and strength as a nation.44 Muromachi Kyoji, an editor-in-chief of Katsudo
Gaho, emphasized the importance of imitating the techniques of foreign
films “without losing the essence of Japanese cinema.”45 They insisted that
the proper mixture of imitation of cinematic and technical innovations in the
West and unique Japanese content would lead the Japanese cinema to attain
an internationally viable level of narrational clarity and become an exportable
and marketable product.
The issue was about the mutual development of Japanese cinema (nation-
alization of film culture) and Japanese national identity. In fact, the Pure
Film advocates insisted that cinema was a national project and should serve
the nation.46 As of the 1910s, Japanese popular entertainment culture was not
rendered nationally. Some reformist critics as well as governmental and edu-
cational elites who supported the Pure Film Movement desired to establish a
national culture and stressed cinema’s major role in it.47 They also desired to
lift cinema from its status as a working-class diversion to something worthy
of respect. One way of promoting cinema’s claims to legitimacy was to tie its
fortunes to those of the nation, to articulate its value in nationalist and patri-
otic terms.48 Kaeriyama stated in 1916 that the motion pictures “should work
for the social education of Japan, serve the mental and intellectual progress
of every single citizen, and contribute to individual improvement and to the
people’s awareness of their national ideals.”49 Kaeriyama tried to rearticu-
late the motion picture, which had been considered lower-class entertain-
ment, as an art form that would be useful “not only for the edification of
the individual, but also as a means of awakening the Japanese to a sense of
national identity.”50 Notable intellectuals wrote articles that highly evaluated
cinema’s cultural, artistic, social, and pedagogical legitimacy for Japan’s “na-
tional development.” After visiting the United States and observing the de-
gree of rationalization of its film industry, Baron Shibusawa Eiichi insisted
that “cinema is not only entertainment but also has an important national
and social mission . . . to boost the morals of the Japanese people.”51

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   245
 The nationalist attitude of the Pure Film Movement was in accordance
with the governmental discourses of modernization in Japan, even though
the movement was not directly under the control of the Japanese govern-
ment. In order to obtain recognition as a nation in international relations,
since the late nineteenth century the Japanese government had implemented
policies showing Japan’s achievement toward modernization in a European
sense. The Japanese government tried to use Western standards and ideas
and to Westernize the state in order to construct Japan’s own national iden-
tity and to escape from being colonized by Western imperialism.52 This
contradictory attitude of the Japanese government between modernization
and nationalism was indicated by its slogan, “Japanese Spirit and Western
Culture” (wakon yosai). Using American and European styles of cinema, the
Pure Film advocates insisted on the mutual development of Japanese cinema
and Japanese national identity. This is the innate ambivalence of the Pure
Film Movement: between Westernization and nationalism.
With regard to these notions of Westernization and nationalism, the Pure
Film advocates responded ambivalently to Hayakawa’s films from the outset.
They criticized the stereotypical depiction of Japanese people in such films as
The Wrath of the Gods, but they also highly valued Hayakawa’s films. To them
Hayakawa’s films effectively used “cinematic” forms and techniques under-
standable to foreign audiences and exoticized, or Orientalized, the images of
Japan to satisfy American audiences’ expectations.
Kinema Junpo noted that Hayakawa’s films were “international” and “pos-
sible to exhibit anywhere in the world” because they used “purely cinematic
techniques.”53 The film critic Mori Iwao, who would later become a producer,
argued that if The Cheat was “seen from an artistic point of view, it is not so
problematic. . . . It is a pity that an artistically great piece was rejected only
because of a trivial ethnic bias.” Mori insisted in his book on Hayakawa that
Hayakawa “satisfactorily introduced the true Japanese spirit worldwide using
motion pictures” that “have a strong power to impress people” with their
“international language.”54 Katsudo Gaho noted, “We cannot stop appreciat-
ing Hayakawa’s efforts for the U.S.-Japan goodwill. He is doing his best to
make them [foreign people] understand Japanese characteristics.”55 Even a
member of the Diet, Mochizuki Kotaro, insisted that motion pictures would
be useful to correct foreign people’s misunderstanding of Japanese people
with “the most understandable method,” and he praised Hayakawa for his
efforts of doing this in the United States.56
Even if Hayakawa’s films were too stereotypical forms of representing

246  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
Japanese culture and people, the Pure Film advocates highly valued the
fact that they became successful in the American market. Numata Yuzuru
praised Bonds of Honor for its appeal to foreign audiences: “The plot seems
hackneyed for Japanese audiences, but Western audiences may be interested
in its depiction of Japanese people’s self-control.”57 Kinema Junpo positively
reviewed the use of stereotypical Japanese landscape in His Birthright: “It is
clear from its opening shot of Mt. Fuji that this film was made to make for-
eigners understand our country’s culture and custom.”58 The film critic Koda
Honami regarded The Dragon Painter as the ideal film that Japanese film-
makers “should definitely refer to” because of “its utilizing Japanese dance,
landscape, and so forth,” despite the film’s use of strange Japaneseque names
and landscapes.59
When the Pure Film advocates praised the international understandability
of Hayakawa’s films, what they appreciated most was Hayakawa’s expressive
and natural acting style. Mori claimed that Hayakawa’s “technique of facial
expression is known as the most understandable international method,” and
it was “even praised by renowned American stage actors.” Mori praised Haya‑
kawa’s “extremely subtle and fluent” facial expression in An Arabian Knight
and the “marvelous . . . clarity with which Hayakawa expresses the pro-
tagonist’s psychology” in The First Born.60 Kinema Junpo noted Hayakawa’s
“humorous expression and very good command of body movement” in An
Arabian Knight.61 Katsudo Gaho praised The Swamp for Hayakawa’s “perfect
technique of delicate expression and calm action.”62 Consequently, general
film audiences came to appreciate Hayakawa’s acting capability. A fan praised
Five Days to Live for Hayakawa’s “matured technique.”63 When Hayakawa
returned to Japan in 1922, Tokyo Asahi Shinbun reported with a headline,
“Mr. and Mrs. Sessue return full of facial expression.”64
From the beginning, the Pure Film Movement put emphasis on “pan-
tomime” as “the crux of the motion pictures.”65 Kaeriyama insisted in 1915
that the “photoplay” should consist of three elements, “pantomime,” “natural
background,” and “(inter)titles.”66 Osanai Kaoru of the Shochiku Kinema In-
stitute, another central figure of the Pure Film Movement, insisted that “the
essence of motion picture drama is pantomime and facial expressions.”67 An
editorial of the Kinema Record emphasized, “Since the motion picture is pan-
tomime, actors have to focus on showing their feelings only with their appar-
ent expressions. They have to express their feelings such as anger, sorrow, joy,
and surprise, clearly by moving their faces or their hands. However, Japanese
actors are not interested in these things at all.”68 Another editorial of the

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   247
Kinema Record criticized the popular acting style in Japanese cinema that
was “directly taken from the Japanese stage,” which did not have “any expres-
sion and gesture.”69 The writer Matsumoto Ryukotsu also claimed, “Japanese
cinema looks as if it is just a longer version of a stage play . . . with Japanese
actors’ empty way of expression and gesture.”70 Ide Tessho, the editor-in-chief
of Katsudo no Sekai, even insisted, “Japanese actors do not have facial expres-
sions . . . which is because Asian people do not tend to express outwardly
their inner feelings.”71 Having these criticisms in mind, even stage actors,
who were criticized by the Pure Film advocates for their “uncinematic” facial
expressions when they appeared in motion pictures, came to admit what the
Pure Film advocates problematized. Inoue Masao, who was one of the first
shinpa actors to act in Japanese motion pictures, wrote that it would be indis-
pensable for motion picture actors to study abroad.72 The kabuki actor Ichi-
kawa Sadanji said that one “cannot become a motion picture actor without
practicing abroad.”73
The Pure Film advocates praised Hayakawa’s “naturalistic” acting style in
gestures and facial expressions in particular. To them, Hayakawa’s expres-
sivity and naturalness were an embodiment of the successful deviation from
Japanese people’s lack of facial expressions and Japanese theatrical actors’
stylized performances. They valued highly Hayakawa’s conception of acting,
which was described in articles in American film magazines. In these articles,
Hayakawa claimed, “Japanese people are trained not to show their emotions
in their expressions” and “it is a racial characteristic that they lack facial ex-
pressions.” Hayakawa continued, “To act [in motion pictures] is not to act. . . .
[Actors] have to think about their roles very carefully, study them closely, and
get into their roles.” Hayakawa then emphasized the importance of “subtle
gestures” and “extreme use of eyes and lips” as the results of “careful ob-
servation and thinking of the roles” in motion pictures more than explicit
words, dialogue, and stylized theatrical performance.74 Following Hayakawa’s
opinions, Kaeriyama insisted on the importance of presenting “pure expres-
sions and behaviors of actual lives” in motion pictures. Kaeriyama referred to
Thomas Ince’s words: “Motion picture actors’ behavior should be natural.”75
For Kaeriyama, “purity” of motion picture acting meant its “naturalness.”76
Katsudo Shashin Zasshi also published Ince’s idea on motion picture actors,
which emphasized “natural expressions.”77
Strategically or not, the Pure Film advocates did not question the validity
of Hayakawa’s opinion in the context of Japanese history and culture. They

248  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
simply accepted Hayakawa’s words. Consequently, Hayakawa’s rather stereo-
typical view on Japanese people was translated back into Japanese and en-
hanced the monolithic view on Japanese culture and people. Here, Japanese-
ness was articulated through Hayakawa’s star image, which was shaped in
America. That is, what American media reported about the successful Japa-
nese figure outside of Japan became internalized as the standard of what
Japanese people should be, no matter how stereotypical these reports were.
In addition to his acting style, the Pure Film advocates regarded Haya‑
kawa’s body itself as more “cinematic” than those of other Japanese actors.78
The Pure Film advocates considered that American stars’ “cinematic” charac-
teristics stemmed from their highlighted bodily features, expressions, sexu-
ality, and/or the sense of everydayness.79 Hayakawa was reportedly bigger
than average in Japan and much closer to American actors in stature.80 It was
reported that Hayakawa was not only practicing facial expressions, but also
training his body every day like other American actors.81 Hanayagi Tamio of
Katsudo Zasshi examined Hayakawa’s face based on “phrenology” and stated
that “his power” comes from “his cool eyes that could even make villains
shrink.” Hanayagi even wrote that Hayakawa’s nose looked like that of a pros-
perous Jewish man.82
In early twentieth-century Japan, “Caucasian complex” was observable in
the discourse of physical appearances. Japanese bodies were considered to be
“shameful,” compared with well-built and well-balanced Western bodies.83
The terms nikutai-bi (the beauty of the body) and hyojo-bi (the beauty of ex-
pressions) gained wide currency as words in vogue. According to the film
historian Fujiki Hideaki, from the late 1910s onward, general magazines and
women’s magazines in Japan began to recurrently feature essays about what
beauty was and how one could become beautiful, and the commentators
presupposed that Western white women were the ideal models for this
matter.84
The preference of Western bodies was based on a colonialist idea that sus-
tained Eurocentric worldviews that assumed “Western” and “Japanese” racial
and cultural characteristics were visibly and physically separable. It corre-
sponded to pseudo-scientific thoughts typified by social Darwinism, which
had been influential in Japan since the 1880s.85 At least thirty-two transla-
tions of the works of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), which explained the
progress of human society, culture, and civilization in terms of Darwinism,
were published in Japan between 1877 and 1890.86 Social Darwinist thought

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   249
was used to justify the Westernization policy of the Japanese government for
“progress toward a good society” because Japan was placed on the evolution-
ary ladder below the more “advanced races” in Darwinist thought.
The “Racial Equality Clause” in the principles of the League of Nations
that Japan requested in 1919 at the Paris Conference was based on Japan’s
“Caucasian complex.” Japan requested the inclusion of a sentence, “Equality
of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contract-
ing Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states,
members of the League, equal and just treatment in every respect making no
distinction either in law or in fact, on account of their race and nationality.”
When Japan’s request was not accepted at the conference, Makino Nobuaki,
the ambassador plenipotentiary, openly expressed his “tremendous disap-
pointment” at the fact that “the Japanese government’s and Japanese people’s
lingering dissatisfaction” with racial inequality in international relations was
not resolved.87
With the trashing of the Racial Equality Clause, Hayakawa’s image of an
Americanized body perceived as being detached from Japaneseness gave
hope that the Japanese people could become physically equal to the perceived
beauty of Western bodies. Hayakawa’s body and acting style displayed a
promising future for Japanese cinema that an American audience would also
appreciate. Hayakawa’s popularity in the United States became the symbol
of Japanese men’s successful social achievement of the Western standard.
Hayakawa’s body could even overcome Darwinism, or the presumption of
naturally determined Western racial and social hegemony. Hayakawa was
thus conceived as the ideal physical embodiment of modernization. Kinema
Junpo noted, “It is really difficult for Japanese people, who are said to lack
facial expressions, to depict psychology mainly by facial expressions. It is
encouraging that Sessue does that perfectly.”88 Y. K. Kasagi wrote, “We are
proud of Hayakawa, because Japanese people are considered to be poor at
expressing feelings but Hayakawa is famous in the motion picture that re-
quires expressing feelings at its core” for using his bodily language. Kasagi
praised Hayakawa because he showed the “capability of progress” of Japanese
people toward the foreign standard in terms of their ability to express their
feelings.89 Kaeriyama also insisted that the “beauty of the body” paralleled the
progression of civilization, and that Hayakawa was favorably received in the
United States because he embodied the universal standard of “male beauty,”
beyond the Japanese as an inferior race.90
Thus, Japanese spectators positively considered Hayakawa to be an Ameri-

250  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
can import to a certain degree. Hayakawa was even chosen as the most popu-
lar “foreign actor” in a popularity contest conducted by Katsudo Shashin
Zasshi in 1921.91 Both Katsudo no Sekai and Katsudo Gaho placed Hayakawa
in the category of “popular American actors.”92 A fan praised Hayakawa by
juxtaposing him with Chaplin and Fairbanks Sr. in 1919.93 Another fan, in a
more negative and ultra-nationalistic tone, claimed that Hayakawa’s acting
was good in an “Americanized” sense, but “not as Japanese.”94 However, in
the same magazine, yet another fan criticized this negative view on Haya‑
kawa’s Americanization and positively appreciated his deviation from Japa-
nese actors’ lack of expression.95
In this sense, there was a clear gap in the reception of Hayakawa’s stardom
in Japan and in the United States. In Japan, where, according to Betty Willis
of Motion Picture Magazine, he “smashed a national tradition,” Hayakawa was
a symbol of Americanization, no matter how much his success was praised
in a nationalistic tone.96 However, in the United States, Hayakawa was a rep-
resentative of Japan no matter how Americanized his star image was. In the
1930s, Betty Willis wrote that in the United States, “The only things West-
ern about Sessue Hayakawa that I could discover were the black-and-white
American sport shoes emerging from beneath his two kimonos. He smokes
Japanese cigarettes, has Japanese people around him, talks with a completely
bewildering Japanese accent, looks Oriental, and above all, thinks with the
Oriental’s attitude.”97 Hayakawa himself was aware of the ambivalent recep-
tion of his stardom in Japan and in the United States. He confessed his dis-
tress in an interview for a Japanese film magazine, “Some Japanese people
talk about me as if I were not Japanese, but white people regard me as Japa-
nese.”98
Even Hayakawa’s acting style was praised for contrasting reasons in Japan
and in the United States. In both countries, Hayakawa’s acting style was re-
ceived as “foreign.” In Japan, Hayakawa was praised for his American act-
ing style, which was detached from Japanese theatrical acting. In contrast, in
the United States, Hayakawa’s acting was praised for its deviation from the
Western style of acting, no matter how much he had learned of the Western
theatrical arts. It was explained as having come from Japaneseness, such as
Danjuro’s haragei, or “restrained” style.
As a result, two completely different manners of appreciating Hayakawa’s
body and his acting style came to coexist in Japanese film magazines, which
often translated articles from American film magazines. As mentioned in
the introduction of this book, in one case, the same Japanese film magazine

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   251
that highly valued Hayakawa’s Americanized acting style, which was full of
gestures and facial expressions, simultaneously praised his expressionless
face and restrained acting style, which American film magazines particularly
noted.
This contradictory reception of Hayakawa’s stardom in the United States
and in Japan made the Pure Film advocates realize their own ambivalent posi-
tion between Westernization and nationalism. As a result, they consciously
articulated Hayakawa’s acting as “Americanized Japaneseness” to justify
their contradiction. They argued that the ambivalent reception of Hayakawa
proved the need for Hayakawa’s efforts to articulate Japaneseness for Ameri-
can spectators. Kondo Iyokichi claimed that Hayakawa had to accomplish a
double-bound duty “to show Japanese characteristics vividly as a Japanese
actor,” and, at the same time, “he must be based on a worldly common, cos-
mopolitan acting style” that would be “understandable to any foreign audi-
ence.” Kondo insisted that Hayakawa “extremely emphasized the local color,
geisha, Japanese swords, and lack of facial expression that were known as
Japanese characteristics at the same time as he was based on naturalistic act-
ing that was the worldly common standard for motion pictures.”99
While the Pure Film advocates highly valued Hayakawa’s Americanized
body and acting style, they simultaneously praised Hayakawa’s patriotic and
nationalistic attitude and tried to connect the two within the star image of
Hayakawa. They called Hayakawa “the pride and honor of Japan because of
his international fame as a great motion picture actor.”100 Oda Suezo, an ex-
ecutive of Teikoku Engei Kinema Company (Teikine), called Hayakawa “a
patriot” because of his success in the American motion picture industry.101
Katsudo Kurabu reported that Hayakawa proudly said that he recovered from
his illness quickly not only because of his daily physical training but also “be-
cause of his Japanese spirit.”102
In his book on Hayakawa, Mori wrote that despite Hayakawa’s interna-
tional fame as a Hollywood star “Sessue has a very profound relationship with
Japan. Like Japanese cherry blossoms, Utamaro, and Mt. Fuji, Sessue is the
representative of Japan.” Mori even called Hayakawa “a unofficial diplomat”
to the United States and insisted that “therefore, we have a responsibility to
support him nationally.” Mori intentionally picked up Truman B. Handy’s
article in Photoplay Magazine, which referred to Hayakawa’s nationalist “am-
bition to epitomize the history of his country in films” that would show the
entire history of Japan’s foreign relations.103 Mori concluded his book by ask-
ing Hayakawa “to express thoughts and emotions that are essential to Japa-

252  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
nese people by his unique international performance” and demanding that
the audience of Hayakawa’s films “support him nationally.”104
Taguchi Oson, a producer at Shochiku Kinema Company, who toured
American film studios in 1920, claimed, “It is ignorant and anachronistic
that the Japanese police are still misunderstanding Hayakawa’s films despite
the fact that Hayakawa is making every effort for Japanese people in Southern
California, where anti-Japanese sentiment is very strong.”105 Katsudo Gaho,
in a favorable tone, quoted Hayakawa saying, “I will never do such an im-
moral thing [as appearing in anti-Japanese films] because I am Japanese.”106
Seki Misao, a Japanese actor, praised Hayakawa for his “spirit of bushido as a
Japanese man . . . . and his practice of purely Japanese sword fighting [even in
America].”107
The Pure Film advocates praised Hayakawa’s films, especially those made
at Haworth, for their nationalistic attitudes. Mori regarded His Birthright, His
Debt, and The Gray Horizon as Hayakawa’s attempts to show “the Japanese
spirit” and insisted that The Temple of Dusk was “a masterpiece that depicts
the Japanese spirit, and it is a great pleasure to have this film for Sessue, for
Japan, and for cinema.”108 Kinema Junpo stated that The Temple of Dusk would
“regain Sessue’s honor and credit” because the protagonist “completely has
the unique Japanese spirit.”109 Katsudo Gaho praised Black Roses because
Hayakawa, “who had been concentrated on making films of Chinese subject
matters,” finally played a Japanese role and “expressed the Japanese spirit
against anti-Japanese sentiments.”110 Hayakawa’s “calm attitudes” in The
Illustrious Prince (Worthington, 2 November 1919) and Black Roses were noted
as “the expression of the essence of Japanese people, the Japanese spirit.”111
Even Hayakawa’s performance as a Mexican in The Jaguar’s Claws, which was
made at Lasky but released in Japan after the establishment of Haworth, was
praised because “in his expression and behavior, there is Japanese unique-
ness that is difficult to hide.”112 The Tokyo Asahi Shinbun even reported that
Hayakawa said he was planning to make an expensive film about the Mongol
invasion in the thirteenth century, in which a typhoon blew away the Mongo-
lian army and protected Japan, a symbolic historical event of Japanese nation-
alism known as kamikaze, or the God’s wind.113
The ambivalent reception of Hayakawa’s stardom in Japan, torn between
Americanization and nationalism, coincided with Japanese audiences’ adora-
tion of the “white race” and their hope of overcoming their “Caucasian com-
plex.” When Japan started expanding imperialistically in Asia during and after
World War I, Japanese intellectuals began to praise the Japanese people as “a

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   253
blessed race.” They imagined “Japan” as “an alternative time and place out-
side of the ‘logic of civilization’ and the progressive history of modernity.”114
By the time the war in the Pacific started, such an argument had spread
widely as a “myth” with the slogan “overcoming modernity” and had become
the basis of Japan’s own imperialism toward other Asian countries.115 “Moder-
nity” here was synonymous with Westernization. As the historian Yumiko
Iida argues, in the notion of “overcoming modernity,” “ ‘Japan’ was located
in an ambiguous position between the West and Asia, both assuming itself
to be a part of the spiritual virtue of Asia while equally playing the role of an
imperial power attempting to put Asia under its control by reducing ‘Asia’
to a rhetorical site grounding Japan’s counter hegemonic revolt against the
modern West.” This discourse on the uniqueness of Japanese civilization was
an attempt to overcome Japan’s complex toward the “superiority” of Europe
and the United States, despite the fact that Japan had “continuing difficulties
in coming to terms with the modernly configured world” but simultaneously
adored the “white race.”116
Under these conditions, Hayakawa was once again located in the middle-
ground position with the reception of his stardom in Japan. Hayakawa was
a perfect symbol of Americanization, but, simultaneously, Hayakawa’s star-
dom was an ideal object to enhance the nationalist consciousness. In addition
to Hayakawa’s image of Americanization, Japanese spectators attributed his
star image to a Japaneseness that was clearly understandable even to Ameri-
can audiences. This foreign version of Japaneseness in Hayakawa’s star image
became a catalyst for Japanese audiences to articulate the meaning of being
Japanese, or to problematize what Japan was.117
The ambivalent reception of Hayakawa’s stardom in Japan even fore-
shadowed the problematic transition of Japanese social discourses from the
1920s to the 1930s, from the Taisho era to the Showa (1926–89). In the 1920s,
with the influential trend of Americanization in the field of urban consumer
culture that flourished in Tokyo after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923,
the display of Japaneseness tended to be suppressed in various media, such
as numerous newly published magazines, popular songs, radio, and movie
theaters. In the 1930s, in accordance with the advancement of imperialism,
a nationalist tendency, “recurrence of tradition” or “invention of tradition,”
that revalued Japaneseness became observable.
However, in reality, there was no discontinuity between the 1920s and the
1930s. A binary view, with the 1920s as the decade of Americanization and

254  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
the 1930s as that of Japanization, is likely to overlook the actual continuity
of popular imagination and social discourses on race and nation between
the two decades. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Japanese intellectuals
continuously discussed the concept of Americanism in relation to Japanese
nationalism.118 The praise of Hayakawa’s body and acting for their embodi-
ment of Americanism was based on strong Japanese nationalism.
Under these conditions, Hayakawa’s return to Japan in 1922, for the first
time since he had become a star in the United States, became a symbolic
event that indicated Japanese audiences’ ambivalent reception of his star-
dom. Hayakawa as an actual person suffered due to his twofold star images in
Japan: the embodiment of Americanization and the representative of Japan.
The Japanese reaction to Hayakawa’s visit revealed the inherent contradiction
in popular culture and social discourses in Japan in the 1910s to the 1920s.
On Hayakawa’s arrival, the Pure Film advocates, Japanese film compa-
nies, and fans unanimously and nationalistically expressed their welcome for
Hayakawa for his continuous efforts to introduce Japanese culture to Ameri-
can audiences and for “impressing them with his Japanese art for the U.S.-
Japan goodwill.”119 Mori Tomita, the president of Katsudo Kurabu, wrote, “We
cannot stop thanking Mr. Hayakawa for making [the] Japanese race under-
stood by Americans.”120 Kokusai Katsuei Company (Kokkatsu), which dis-
tributed Robertson-Cole’s films, widely publicized Hayakawa’s visit to Japan.
On 14 April 1922, the central figures of the Pure Film Movement, including
Kaeriyama, Mori, Shibusawa, Osanai, Thomas Kurihara, and Henry Kotani
formed a group to support Hayakawa.121 Several biographical books of Haya-
kawa appeared and praised Hayakawa’s success in the United States, in spite
of anti-Japanese sentiments, as “the representative of Japanese people.”122 In
these books, Hayakawa’s innocence during the filming of the controversial
film The Cheat, his high salary, and his popularity among American women
were particularly emphasized.123 Kinema Junpo reported that “on every face
of those who welcomed Hayakawa at Yokohama port there was pride as Japa-
nese.”124 Many fan letters were published in newspapers almost every day
during Hayakawa’s visit.125
At the same time, there were some people who did not welcome Haya‑
kawa’s return for the same nationalistic reasons. The “Hayakawa assassination
group” or “unwelcoming Sesshu group” was formed right after Hayakawa left
San Francisco for Japan.126 This group and another nationalist group, Yamato
Minro Kai, insisted that Hayakawa’s appearance in anti-Japanese films was a

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   255
“national disgrace” and he had to apologize at Meiji Jingu Shrine and Ise Jingu
Shrine before he entered Japan.127 (In fact, Katsudo Zasshi reported that Haya-
kawa and Aoki went to Meji Jingu Shrine and Nijubashi to pay their respects
to the emperor.)128 Contrary to the report in Kinema Junpo, some newspapers
reported that Hayakawa landed at Yokohama and was guarded by the police
because there was a demonstration against his return.129 Even during the wel-
come party for Hayakawa on 4 July 1922, some men from the “assassination
group” caused some problems.130 These incidents indicate that Hayakawa
was still received unfavorably among some Japanese audiences, even after
the Pure Film advocates’ positive reactions toward his films became widely
shared by popular film audiences and readers of film magazines.
For the Pure Film advocates, Hayakawa’s return was a grave opportunity to
develop their nationalistically oriented activities to modernize cinema. They
wanted Hayakawa to contribute to “the progress and improvement of Japa-
nese cinema” with his skill and experiences in American-style filmmaking.131
They expected Hayakawa to play an active role of “Americanizing” Japanese
cinema.132 Some film fans also suggested that Hayakawa make films “that
introduce Japan to the world.”133
Indirectly but certainly, Hayakawa played important roles in the Pure Film
Movement, even before he arrived in Japan. Thomas Kurihara, a film director
at Taisho Katsudo Shashin Company (Taikatsu), a film studio established in
1920, and Henry Kotani, a cinematographer at Shochiku’s Kamata Studio,
had been working with Hayakawa at Lasky and Haworth. Ushiyama Kiyo-
hito, who introduced an American-style makeup technique into Japan in the
1920s, started his career in the United States thanks to Hayakawa’s advice.134
A Japanese film, Reiko no chimata ni [At the top of sacred light] (Hosoyama
Kiyomatsu, 1922), was reported to have imitated Hayakawa’s The First Born
for its plot and editing style, and Where Lights Are Low for its choreography
of the climactic fighting scene. Film critics praised Reiko no chimata ni for its
deviation from the theatrical style of filmmaking.135
As for the industrial discourse, Hayakawa’s stardom had a profound influ-
ence on the development of the star system in the Japanese film industry. A
new star system had been developed in Japan with an increasing prevalence of
American stars’ images.136 Before Hayakawa, the only stars that the Japanese
film industry had were arguably the ones from kabuki. Yet, after Hayakawa,
it was a different story. Suzuki Denmei, the first Japanese star in modern
dramas, for instance, started his acting career in the Pure Film Movement
and its experimental works, such as Murata Minoru’s Rojo no reikon (Souls

256  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
on the Road, 1921), an adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths in the
style of Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), but he became a star after he was hired
by Shochiku. In addition to his big salary, Suzuki had a specific star persona,
Americanized and athletic. Shochiku’s star-making strategy toward Suzuki
seemed to follow Hayakawa’s star image.
Moreover, in Japan, there were not many motion picture actresses until
arguably as late as 1918, when Hanayagi Harumi starred in Sei no kagayaki
[Radiance of life], a product of the film modernization movement. Before
this film, there were onnagata, female impersonators in kabuki, and only a
few female actresses, including Morita Suzuko, Hanamura Nobuko, Miho
Matsuko, and Hashimoto Yaeko, appeared in motion pictures in Japan. There-
fore, Tsuru Aoki, Hayakawa’s wife, was arguably one of the first female Japa-
nese motion picture stars and became the template for actresses and stars in
Japan.
A reporter emphasized Aoki’s Americanized star image, noting that Aoki
preferred playing golf and riding horses and she had difficulty in sitting
on a Japanese tatami mat because she was so used to sitting on a chair.137
Simultaneously, Aoki was an important element for the Pure Film advocates’
nationalist goal. She was praised as an ideal Japanese housewife in spite of
her Americanized appearance. Those who visited the Hayakawas in Holly-
wood praised the Hayakawas for entertaining them in a Japanese-style room
with Japanese food prepared by Aoki.138 Many articles in Japanese magazines
were devoted to Aoki and her role as a wife, contrary to the U.S. film maga-
zines, which mainly wrote about Hayakawa after 1916. The editor-in-chief of
Katsudo Kurabu claimed, “Hayakawa’s fame is not accidental but owes a lot to
his wife Tsuruko. . . . She is a faithful wife who devotes herself to improving
her husband’s position.”139 In this sense, American film fan magazines and
their Japanese counterparts played similar roles in the formation of Aoki’s
public image within different contexts. In the United States, Aoki was re-
garded as an ideal Victorian middle-class wife who created a refined domestic
space with consumer goods, while in Japan she was an ideal housewife who
devotedly supported her husband.
When Hayakawa and Aoki arrived in Yokohama, according to a newspaper
report, Hayakawa said, “I came back to Japan to learn Japanese culture and
customs, especially not to forget about bushido. . . . [Since The Cheat] I never
appeared in films that would insult Japanese honor, . . . and I am planning to
study and collect materials about Japanese unique fairy tales filled with philo-
sophical thoughts [for his future films].”140 Katsudo Zasshi also reported that

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   257
Hayakawa told the audience at the welcome party that he was “one of the re-
spectable Yamato [Japanese] race” and started crying with joy over his return
to his own country.141 These words of Hayakawa corresponded to the ideal of
the Pure Film Movement, and the Pure Film advocates expected Hayakawa
to advance their movement substantially.
However, in reality, neither Hayakawa nor Aoki played active roles in the
movement during their stay, partly because of some “unwelcome” activities.
The Pure Film advocates criticized Japanese audiences “who did not under-
stand the art of motion pictures” and formed the “Hayakawa assassination
group” only because of The Cheat; consequently they did not provide Haya-
kawa with any opportunity to work for improving Japanese cinema. Kinema
Junpo stated, “It is a pity that newspapers have jokingly written annoying
articles on Hayakawa.”142 Katsudo Gaho reported that Hayakawa had to go
back to the United States because he was called “a national traitor” again in
Japan.143 The Tokyo Asahi Shinbun also reported that Hayakawa and Aoki had
to go back to America “sadly by themselves, . . . as if they had to run away,” be-
cause of the unwelcome atmosphere.144 In 1937, the Los Angeles Times recalled
that fifteen years earlier, Hayakawa was “accused of being ‘anti-Japanese,’
[and] fled Tokio.”145
The disappointment of the Pure Film advocates was great when Hayakawa
was not able to fulfill their expectations. The favorable view of Hayakawa’s
Americanized stardom quickly turned into abhorrence from a nationalist
standpoint. Even during Hayakawa’s stay in Japan, the society for supporting
Hayakawa held a meeting and condemned Hayakawa for not doing anything
for it.146 Sakamoto Shigetaro criticized Hayakawa for “behaving like an ordi-
nary American actor” who “faked Japanese characters on screen based just on
his rough childhood memories of Japan” and never acted like the Japanese in
his “expression and attitude.”147 Ichikawa Sai wrote that they “tried to obtain
a method that would enable the export of Japanese films” through Hayakawa
and planned “to promote Japanese cinema to Japanese general audiences”
with Hayakawa. According to Ichikawa, the Pure Film advocates made a list
of propositions for Hayakawa:

1 Hayakawa should give a lecture to explain what he had done thus far.
2 Hayakawa should talk with people in the motion picture business, such as
scenario writers, directors, actors, and technicians, about present conditions
in Japan and in the United States.
3 Hayakawa should demonstrate how to direct films.148

258  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
 4 Hayakawa should instruct the group in the appropriate methods with which
to export Japanese films.
5 Hayakawa should donate a certain amount of money to Tokyo if possible.

Ichikawa insisted that these plans were never realized, even though Haya-
kawa listened to the requests of the Pure Film advocates. Ichikawa national-
istically condemned Hayakawa: “What he [Hayakawa] said and did were not
suitable to Japanese customs.”149 Kinema Junpo published a fan’s letter with
similar requests to Hayakawa. The fan wanted Hayakawa to

1 talk with major governmental officials and the “Unwelcome Group” to clear
up misunderstandings;
2 give a lecture for his audiences;
3 make a film as a demonstration in front of Japanese film actors; and
4 show how to direct a film in front of Japanese film directors.150

In the same article, Ichikawa angrily reported that when Hayakawa arrived in
San Francisco, he “arrogantly” declared that “he would never go back to Japan
because it was very uncomfortable.” Katsudo Zasshi also reported on Haya‑
kawa’s public speech in San Francisco and noted that Hayakawa even said,
“The very members of the society for supporting me were actually mem-
bers of [the] anti-Hayakawa group” and “threatened me for money.”151 The
same magazine also called him an “American nouveau riche” and unfavor-
ably noted that “after spending as long as fifteen years in a foreign country,”
Hayakawa’s speech sounded like “a non-eloquent foreigner who speaks Japa-
nese a little.”152 If these reports were correct, the public speech that Haya-
kawa delivered in San Francisco was completely contradictory to what he had
said when he left Japan. In Japan Hayakawa declared, according to the Miyako
Shinbun, “When I come back to Japan again, I will work toward making a big
film that will publicize Japan to the world. I want to make a film with a splen-
did international dramatic plot that will introduce Japan not by rickshaws or
thatched cottages but by its culture and customs, industries, political system,
unique landscape, huge buildings, and so forth.”153
Even fans came to criticize Hayakawa’s “Americanized attitude” from their
nationalist perspectives. Yamauchi Uichi sent a letter to Katsudo Kurabu,
criticizing Hayakawa’s words, “Japanese do not understand art,” and called
Hayakawa a “Japanese-Westerner.”154 Noguchi Yonejiro, the father of the re-
nowned sculptor Isamu Noguchi, published a poem that criticized Hayakawa

A m e r i c an i z a t i o n and N a t i o n a l i s m   259
in Chuo Koron, one of the most popular magazines in Japan. Noguchi insisted
that Hayakawa should have learned “the true human nature” in Japan, which
was not in Hollywood studios.155
In 1924, following the passage of the Immigration Act, which limited im-
migration to the United States, some intellectuals in Japan initiated a move-
ment that insisted on rejecting the importation of American films. They re-
garded the “anti-Japanese” immigration act in the United States as “a good
opportunity” to “produce Japanese cinema as good as American films,” and
to “develop our film enterprise safely.”156 Tsutsumi Tomojiro of Shochiku in-
sisted that Japanese cinema was developing and “it is possible to exclude
American films.”157 Under such conditions, Hayakawa’s privileged middle-
ground position during the height of the Pure Film Movement disappeared.
In fact, anti-American sentiments caused by the 1924 Immigration Act
easily turned to anti-Hayakawa, opposing the Americanized star. In the anti-
American film movement that started in June 1924, Hayakawa’s image in
Japan went back to that of the Japanese actor who was “simply used by Ameri-
cans to make The Cheat to enhance anti-Japanese fever.”158
The anti-American film movement and the boycott of American films
by some Japanese film companies lasted only about a month because, with
the trend of Americanism in popular culture, many film audiences realized
that they wanted to see American films. Kinema Junpo published fans’ let-
ters that opposed the anti-American film movement, saying that the move-
ment ignored the demand from film fans.159 By mid-July the four companies
that had organized the boycott attempt returned to distributing and showing
American films.160
However, Hayakawa never regained his popularity in Japan. He became
regarded as too Japanese in the Japanese adoration for American culture in
the mid- to late 1920s and too Americanized for the nationalist trend that
followed. According to a report in Katsudo Zasshi, the books, trading cards,
and postcards of Hayakawa, which were published in the summer of 1922,
had not sold very well.161 Consequently, Hayakawa became an exile because
of his ambivalent middle-ground position between Japanese and American.
The Nyu Yoku Shimpo reported in 1922 that Hayakawa left Japan “as if he had
been running away.”162 Even when Hayakawa tried to open his own produc-
tion company in Japan in 1925, supported by Teikoku Engei Kinema Com-
pany, very few people wanted to buy the stock. His nomadic life continued
until the 1950s.

260  C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
 Epilogue

​L e​ aving Hollywood in 1922, Sessue Hayakawa became an actor in exile.

​After his short visit to Japan, Hayakawa went to back to the United
​States and appeared in a stage play, Tiger Lily, a drama by Fred de
Greasac, in January 1923.1 Tiger Lily was not received well. It was cancelled
after three weeks’ performance in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Atlantic
City, and did not play in New York.2 Hayakawa did not regain his popularity
even on the East Coast, where anti-Japanese sentiment was less than on the
West Coast. After his appearance in Tiger Lily, it was reported that Hayakawa
had signed a new contract with the “True Art” company to make twelve films
in three years, but that did not happen.3 Instead, Hayakawa received an offer
from France to appear in a film called La Bataille (The Danger Line, E. E. Vio-
let, 1923).4
Hayakawa decided to go to Europe, where audiences were still enthusiastic
about him. Katsudo Zasshi claimed in 1924 that Hayakawa was “more popular
than Chaplin in Europe.”5 A British producer, who visited Robertson-Cole in
1922, stated that Hayakawa was “the actors’ actor” in England, and his “his-
trionic technique, and ability to ‘put over’ things in a subtle way are studied
by those anxious to improve their own work upon the screen.” He also said
that Hayakawa’s films were “great box office attractions with the masses” in
Europe.6
La Bataille followed many devices in Hayakawa’s star vehicles at Lasky,
Haworth, and Robertson-Cole. The MPW noted that Hayakawa “once again”
appeared in a “picturesque Japanese” film.7 Stereotypical images of Japan are
emphasized from the very beginning of the film. The opening title and cred-
its use drawings of Mount Fuji, a Japanese lady in a kimono, a samurai with
a large sword, the rising sun, cherry blossoms, and chrysanthemums, the
symbol of the Japanese emperor. The opening scene of a night festival in
Japan emphatically displays Japanese objects, including lines of paper lan-
terns, torii, and Japanese flags. In the following scene, Tsuru Aoki appears in
a kimono, plays the koto (a Japanese harp), and dances a Japanese dance in a
tatami room with fusuma, shoji, and Japanese flowers. There is even a charac-
ter who commits hara-kiri at the end of the film.
The motif of racial hierarchy is also repeated. Japanese people in the film
are clearly differentiated from Chinese people, who have darker skins and are
mostly depicted as opium smokers. As in The Soul of Kura San, a white male
painter seduces Aoki but regards her merely as a pictorial object, and Haya‑
kawa’s character tries to revenge the white man. In fact, Margaret Turnbull,
who contributed to crystallizing Hayakawa’s star image at Lasky with her
screenplays, including Alien Souls and The Victoria Cross (William C. DeMille,
14 December 1916), wrote the screenplay of La Bataille.
La Bataille was a great opportunity for Hayakawa to revitalize his stardom,
even though it was not in the United States. Hayakawa used many of the mo-
tifs standardized at Lasky and Robertson-Cole in order to make another star
vehicle for himself. As a result, La Bataille became a critically and financially
successful film in Paris and Hayakawa proudly proclaimed this in his autobi-
ography.8
Hayakawa kept resorting to his existing star images after La Bataille.
After appearing in three more films in France and in the United Kingdom in
1924—Sen Yan’s Devotion (A. E. Coleby), J’ai tué! (I Have Killed, Roger Lion),
and The Great Prince Shan (Coleby)—Hayakawa received offers to appear in
the stage dramas Knee of the God in Paris and William Archer’s one-act play,
Samurai, in London. Again, both Knee of the God and Samurai were stereo-
typically about bushido, hara-kiri, and revenge.9
With these successes in Europe, Hayakawa returned to the United States
and appeared in a stage drama, The Love City. After several performances in
Pennsylvania, The Love City opened at the Little Theatre on Broadway on 25
January 1926. The Love City, set in China and London, was, according to its
program booklet, “a colorful, clashing drama of east and west.” Hayakawa
played Chang Lo, a rich opium dealer who “commits murder as calmly as he
drinks a cup of tea, . . . yet [he] has a tender appreciation of loveliness whether
it be in a simple flower or a beautiful woman such as Tze-shi whom he holds
caged in his house.”10 The exotic setting and the twofold characterization of
Hayakawa’s protagonist in The Love City imitate such Hayakawa star vehicles
as The Tong Man. The Chinese heroine, Tze-shi, was played by a white actress,
Margaret Mower.11
In the same year, Hayakawa went on a vaudeville tour with The Bandit
Prince, a one-act play, that was a dramatized fragment of his own novel.12 In
The Bandit Prince, a story set in China, a young Harvard graduate who is a

262  E p i l o g u e
Chinese prince turns out to be a bandit, a “Chinese Robin Hood,” with the
ambition to free his country from the tyranny of a despotic and monarchical
rule. He falls in love with a modern Manchurian princess and self-sacrificially
devotes himself to the good of the heroine and of his country.13 Such char-
acterization of the protagonist, a foreign educated high-class nonwhite with
a self-sacrificing motive, clearly imitates the narrative structure of many of
Hayakawa’s vehicles. The New York Times noted that it was “as excellently
tailored a role for Mr. Hayakawa as could be found anywhere.”14 Hayakawa
self-consciously used his standardized star image and attempted to revitalize
his popularity in the United States.
One fan magazine article reported, “Prejudices vanish like smoke. Today
I find a broader, friendlier feeling. There is even a marked desire for Ori-
ental pictures. . . . ‘The Bandit Prince,’ is the name of the story in which he
[Hayakawa] will make his reappearance in pictures. Hayakawa himself wrote
the novel.”15 However, the film version of The Bandit Prince was never pro-
duced. In spite of Hayakawa’s strong desire to make films about “subdued
romance” with “subtleties” that had made him a star a decade before, Haya-
kawa never had a chance to play leading roles in feature films in Hollywood.16
Even though Hayakawa proudly announced in December 1926 that he had
several offers from film companies and would decide soon, it took more than
two years for him to reappear in films.17
In 1928, Hayakawa appeared in another stage play, The Man Who Laughs
Last (aka The Man Who Laughed) at the Hillstreet Theater in Los Angeles (see
fig. 22).18 This vaudeville act by Hayakawa, which once again exploited the
miscegenation issue, was filmed as one of the two-reel Vitaphone projects
at Warner Bros. in 1929. However, this appearance in a short sound film did
not lead Hayakawa to a leading role in a feature film. In 1931, after appearing
in a few films in Japan, Hayakawa went back to Hollywood again but was
only able to appear in Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu story, Daughter of the Dragon
(Lloyd Corrigan, 1931), as a supporting character for the heroine, Anna May
Wong.19 Yet, Hayakawa’s role in the film was severely criticized. Variety noted
that Hayakawa “never gives [plays] the role plausibly.”20
In the same year, there was also an unfortunate incident in Hayakawa’s real
life. The incident seemed to imitate the theme of the anxiety of miscegena-
tion in his star vehicles. On 26 August 1931, the Los Angeles Times reported
that Hayakawa and his wife, Tsuru, legally adopted a two-year-old boy, Alex-
ander Hayes, and renamed him Yukio Hayakawa.21 Right after this report, a
white actress asserted that she was the mother and Hayakawa the father of

E p i l o g u e   263
22  A still from The Man Who Laughs Last.

the boy and filed a suit against Hayakawa to regain custody of her son. The
reports in the Los Angeles Times emphasized the racial differences between
the couple and were sympathetic to the white woman, “Miss Ruth Noble.”
One report stated: “She is of the Caucasian race. . . . Miss Noble said that after
the child was born she feared she could not give him the opportunities in life
he deserved and agreed to a pact with Hayakawa by which she surrender[ed]
the boy to the actor. . . . Miss Noble said she met and was engaged and played
with Hayakawa in a vaudeville act called ‘The Bandit Prince,’ prior to the
birth of the baby and before the actor’s return to Hollywood, during which
she says a romance existed between them. Hayakawa could not be located
yesterday.”22 Another report noted that Noble’s suit against Hayakawa was
simply “prompted by mother love and by the feeling the child will not receive
opportunities to which he is entitled in the event he is taken to Japan.”23
The Los Angeles Times kept reporting the “scandal” of the nonwhite star of
the silent period in a melodramatic manner and, according to those reports,

264  E p i l o g u e
Hayakawa did not play a heroic role in the melodrama.24 When Hayakawa
left for Japan to fulfill a contract with Shochiku, a film production company
in Tokyo, the Los Angeles Times reported in an article titled, “East and West
Part in Tears”: “In bidding Hayakawa bon voyage, the actress [Ruth Noble]
indicated she was saying farewell to love and to hopes of regaining custody of
her son. . . . ‘I just told him I was sorry if I had caused him any trouble,’ the
actress expressed.”25 In fact, Noble intended to follow Hayakawa to Japan and
was on the boat from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where she gave up after
reportedly receiving $7,000 in cash from Hayakawa, in addition to the $150 a
month he had previously agreed to pay her.26 Noble’s act could be regarded as
that of obsessed stalking and the Los Angeles Times reported that Noble’s act
surprised her attorneys.27 However, in general, Noble was given the position
of a sympathetic victim in this incident of miscegenation by the newspaper.
Tsuru had to defend her husband from the perspectives of a loyal wife and
a warm-hearted stepmother.28 This real life incident, especially when it was
scandalously reported in newspapers, hardened Hayakawa’s decision to leave
the United States once again.
In Japan, the Japanese audience’s ambivalent attitude toward Hayakawa
lingered on after his short visit in 1922. There was a certain gap between
the audience’s nationalist expectations toward Hayakawa as a representative
of Japan and Hayakawa’s Westernized image. An editorial in Katsudo Zasshi
claimed that “Hayakawa cleared out his past infamous reputation in Japan,
but his success [in La Bataille] was still based on the film’s depiction of West-
ernized Japanese characters compromising for foreign audiences.”29
When La Bataille was released in Japan, some praised the film for its “de-
piction of strong patriotism of Japanese people.”30 The Japanese Ministry of
Foreign Affairs praised Hayakawa as “a new pride of Japan,” for he was able
to freely use as many as eleven French battleships for the shooting of his film
and consequently received a French national award for the success of La Ba-
taille.31 The Ministry of the Navy also praised the film enthusiastically. It was
even reported that Togo Heihachiro, the hero of the Russo-Japanese War, was
very impressed by the film.32
Yet, at the same time, La Bataille was criticized for its story, which was
“opposed to Japanese women’s proper behavior and bushido,” and Hayakawa
and Aoki were called “national traitors” again.33 The Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun
noted, “Sessue really causes problems very often.”34 The Metropolitan Police
Department tried to ban the film from exhibition because it “would violate
public morals.”35 This ambivalent reaction to La Bataille indicated the eager-

E p i l o g u e   265
ness of Japanese policymakers to control visual images that would represent
Japanese national identity in international relations in the post–World War I
era. Hayakawa was not necessarily a perfect candidate for their goal.
Hayakawa’s return to Japan in the 1930s revealed the Japanese audience’s
lingering ambivalent attitude toward him. Some Japanese investors regarded
Hayakawa as the savior of Japanese cinema, as the Pure Film advocates did
in the 1910s and 1920s. They planned to establish a film company for Haya-
kawa, Hayakawa Sesshu Kokusai Eiga Company, “in order to make films for
export and to introduce our Japanese civilization.”36 The actor Kamiyama So-
jin insisted that Hayakawa achieved his success in the United States because
of his “deep, keen, and clever eyes of the Japanese race” and called Hayakawa
“a successful figure that Japanese people should be proud of.”37
Simultaneously, Hayakawa was still considered to be a foreign import.
Kinema Junpo noted that The Man Who Laughs Last was a film for Ameri-
can audiences with its use of stereotypical Japanese images like jiu-jitsu and
ninja.38 The same magazine criticized Hayakawa’s acting in Daughter of the
Dragon for looking like an “anachronistic period drama style.”39 Japanese
magazines sensationally reported Hayakawa’s popularity among foreign
women and his preference for American women.40
In fact, when Hayakawa appeared in films and stage dramas in Japan for
the first time in the 1930s, most of these films and plays were translations of
imported Western productions. Hayakawa played Westernized characters or
foreigners in them. The first such stage drama was Appare Wong (The Hon-
ourable Mr. Wong, a play written by Achmed Abdullah and David Belasco,
September 1930), which was performed at Teikoku Gekijo Theater.41 Haya-
kawa toured around Japan with this stage drama. Appare Wong, a story about
a Chinese American enforcer (Hayakawa) who marries the daughter of his
friend whom he executes, is set in San Francisco’s Chinatown and is filled
with exoticism: Chinese gangsters, Buddhism, self-sacrifice, and so on. Sub-
sequently, Hayakawa appeared in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (June 1933) and
Cyrano de Bergerac (January 1934).
The first Japanese film in which he appeared was Taiyo wa higashi yori
[The sun rises from the east] (Shochiku, 1932), a remake of Frank Borzage’s
Seventh Heaven (1927). Shochiku’s Kamata studio, where Taiyo wa higashi yori
was made, was the studio that was established to pursue the goals of the Pure
Film Movement: overcoming the theatrical tradition in Japanese-made films
and pursuing an American-style filmmaking method under the producer sys-
tem initiated by Kido Shiro. The films made at Shochiku Kamata aimed at

266  E p i l o g u e
depicting modernized urban lives in Japan. Hayakawa’s image as a foreign
import seemed a perfect fit to the Shochiku Kamata style (Kamata-cho). Sho-
chiku let Hayakawa direct Taiyo wa higashi yori. It was a fulfillment of the
Pure Film advocates’ original request to Hayakawa in 1922 to direct a film to
demonstrate American-style filmmaking, “the method that did not exist in
Japanese cinema.”42
However, once Taiyo wa higashi yori was released, both Hayakawa’s acting
and direction were severely criticized.43 A review in Kinema Junpo stated,
“Hayakawa’s acting is not impressive at all because it is an absolutely exagger-
ated American method.”44 Despite Shochiku Kamata’s modernization policy
of filmmaking, Hayakawa’s prefixed star image was too Americanized for
Japanese spectators in the 1930s. As militarism seized the political hegemony
and an ultra-nationalist atmosphere became intensified in Japan, American-
ization was questioned. The Manchurian incident in September 1931 marked
the escalation of nationalism and authoritarian imperialism. It was reported
that a Japanese railway in Manchuria was bombed by the Chinese army, and
the Japanese army declared the occupation of Manchuria in retaliation for the
attack.
Under such sociopolitical conditions, the Japanese film industry turned to
making films that praised militarism and imperialistic expansion to China.
Even the films made at Shochiku’s Kamata studio, with their Americanized
surface, came to incorporate pro-nationalist senses of value. Suzuki Denmei,
“the most Americanized star” of Shochiku, began to play stoic Japanese men
who punish flippant youngsters wearing Americanized clothes in such star
vehicles as Kare to denen [He and countryside] (Ushihara Kiyohiko, 1928).
After the failure of Taiyo wa higashi yori, Hayakawa consciously, or in-
evitably, began to play roles of national-hero types and challenged the for-
eign star image of himself. As early as 1928, when Hayakawa was still in
the United States, he said in a Japanese American newspaper interview, “I
will faithfully devote myself to the Japanese nation and do my best when I
start working [in Japan].”45 In 1933 Hayakawa appeared for the first time in a
jidaigeki, a period film, Nanko fushi [Father and son of Honorable Kusunoki]
(Ikeda Tomiyasu, 1933).46 Hayakawa played Kusunoki Masashige, one of the
most popular figures in Japanese history, who devoted his life to the emperor
in the fourteenth century. In the tendency toward ultra-nationalism, so-
called modern nationalistic jidaigeki put more emphasis on displaying Japa-
nese cultural heritage and samurai warriors’ loyalty to the Japanese emperor
than on the spectacle of speedily choreographed sword fighting, which was

E p i l o g u e   267
more influenced by the sensitivity of modernity and American action films.47
Nanko fushi was one such “modern nationalistic jidaigeki” film. Kishi Matsuo
of Kinema Junpo claimed that “nationalistically devoted Japanese people will
be deeply moved by this talkie.”48 It was even publicized that Nanko fushi was
also shown to the emperor, Hirohito.49
However, Nanko fushi did not succeed at the box office.50 Many audiences
still regarded Hayakawa as a foreign import. One newspaper report noted
that it might be “contradictory” for Hayakawa, “who had established his
fame as an actor in the U.S.,” to play such a heroic character in Japanese
history.51 Nanko fushi was released in theaters that usually showed foreign
films, together with an American horror-thriller, Murders in the Zoo (Edward
Sutherland, 1933).
Yet, Hayakawa’s attempt to transform his star image into a nationalistic
one continued. Following Nanko fushi, Hayakawa appeared in three nation-
alist propaganda films that were meant for the “formation of the Japanese
spirit”: Bakugeki hiko tai [Bomber pilots] (Saegusa Genjiro, 1934), a patriotic
war film about the pilots of the Japanese air force; Araki Mataemon: Tenka
no Iga goe [Araki Mataemon: Beyond the nationally famous Iga] (Katsumi
Yotaro, 1934), another “modern nationalistic jidaigeki”; and Kuni o mamoru
Nichiren [Nichiren, who protects Japan] (Sone Chiharu, 1935), a period film
about a Buddhist who devoted his life to protect Japan and its people.52
In the spring of 1935 Hayakawa also went on a vaudeville tour to enter-
tain the Japanese colonizers, playing Appare Wong, Seventh Heaven, and some
other dramas in Manchuria, Korea, and Shanghai. Later in the 1960s, articles
in Coronet and Newsweek depicted Hayakawa and his family as heroic vic-
tims of primitive and villainous Japanese militarism. Richard Hubler wrote
in Coronet, “In 1932, during the prewar tension between China and Japan,
he [Hayakawa] went on a lecture tour of the Orient, his speeches stressing
the need for peace in the Far East. This made him unpopular with Japan’s
hot-headed militarists.”53 Newsweek stated, “Many members of his [Haya­
kawa’s] family were executed in Tokyo by Premier Tojo for their opposition
to the war.”54 However, Hayakawa’s trip was not a lecture tour for peace but
one with a propagandistic purpose for Japanese nationalism. In 1935 Haya-
kawa even said that he wanted to make a film that would praise the efforts of
the Japanese army and Japanese colonizers in Manchuria and Korea.55 Haya‑
kawa’s cross-cultural star image seemed to fit the promotion of Japan’s
“cosmopolitan” imperialism in Asia, or pan-Asianism, which was based
on the idea of ethnic ambiguity in Asia.56 There is no record that “many

268  E p i l o g u e
of his friends and family were murdered by pro-war fanatics,” as Hubler
claimed.57
However, Hayakawa’s foreign star image was not easily displaced. For in-
stance, his sword fighting in Araki Mataemon: Tenka no Iga goe was criti-
cized as “fencing-like.”58 Ironically, when Hayakawa ended up playing Con-
sul Townsend Harris, an American in Japan who wanted “to know the true
character of Japan,” according to the script, in Tojin Okichi [Okichi the China
girl] (Fuyusima Taizo, 1935), his performance was praised as “appropriate”
and his English as “good and fluent.”59
When a diplomatic agreement was established between Japan and Ger-
many on 25 November 1936, a film that incorporated Hayakawa’s foreign
image with nationalist filmmaking appeared: Atarshiki tsuchi (Die Tochter des
Samurai, 1937), co-produced by Germany and Japan under the initiative of
Kawakita Nagamasa of Towa Shoji Company.60 Atarashiki tsuchi was called
the “film for export” and “the first international cultural film in Japan” with a
political goal to introduce Japanese culture to German audiences, in particu-
lar.61 In order to enhance the “international” quality of the film, internation-
ally renowned personnel were invited. The internationally known composer
Yamada Kosaku was announced as the composer of the score for the film.
The German director Arnold Fanck, who was famous for his mountain films,
co-directed the film with Itami Mansaku, a renowned Japanese director, even
though the two eventually split after severe conflicts and two different ver-
sions of the film were completed. Hayakawa, listed at the top of the film’s
cast, was appointed to play the father of the heroine (Hara Setsuko).
Atarashiki tsuchi turned out to be a catalogue of stereotypical Japanese
images. Fanck’s version, which begins with a subtitle, “The film is about
Japan seen by a foreigner,” especially emphasizes exotic Japanese objects,
landscapes, and culture, including Mount Fuji, a volcano, earthquakes, the
famous statue of the Buddha in Kamakura, a Japanese garden with torii and
stone lanterns, paper lanterns, shrines, temples, tea ceremonies, flower
ceremonies, a flower festival, sumo wrestling, kabuki, noh, and geisha in
kimono.62 The opening score is played by koto, Japanese harps, and drums.
The father of the heroine, played by Hayakawa, emphasizes that their family
descends from samurai and recommends that the heroine not wear a West-
ern dress to see her fiancé. Hayakawa and the heroine even demonstrate Japa-
nese archery and Japanese sword fighting. When the brokenhearted heroine
climbs up a volcano at the climax of the film, a shot of cherry blossoms over-
laps her face, and she hears a song “Sakura, sakura” [Cherry blossoms] sung

E p i l o g u e   269
by children. She sees an image of a statue of the Buddha at the edge of the
volcano and ritualistically changes her clothes to a wedding gown. At this
point, the volcano erupts. As in The Wrath of the Gods, the Japanese landscape
is connected to the images of ritualistic religion.
Atarashiki tsuchi became a huge hit when it was released in February 1937.
Despite the rather stereotypical images of Japanese landscape and cultural
objects, Japanese audiences highly valued Fanck’s film and favorably pointed
out the Japanese spirit represented by the protagonist, Yamato Teruo. His
name means “a shining Japanese man.” Teruo, who has studied in Europe
and has begun to despise his nationality, remembers his cultural back-
ground, national identity, and the “blood of ancestors in him” by revisiting
Japanese customs and culture, including his talk with a Buddhist monk at a
temple. The final sequence in the Japanese mountains, where the hero saves
the heroine, was considered to be the climactic moment of the manifestation
of “the Japanese spirit” and it was widely stated that “all the Japanese people
must watch it.”63 The film critic Uchida Kimio praised Fanck’s version for its
clarity in showing how the protagonist eventually “re-discovers Japan in him”
after experiencing Japanese arts and culture.64
Hayakawa’s stereotypical representation of Japaneseness in this film was
acceptable only because the film’s goal was to publicize Japanese culture to
foreign viewers in an understandable manner. Other than this exceptional
film, Hayakawa’s Americanized star image had very limited space in which to
fit into Japanese films of the mid- to late 1930s, whose major function was to
support the ultra-nationalistic state policy.65 In March 1934, the Home Minis-
try established the Committee for Film Regulation. The Japanese government
thus began to intervene directly in cinema. In 1935, Dainihon eiga kyokai
[Great Japanese association for cinema] was established by the government
and studio executives to “improve” Japanese cinema. In July 1937, when the
Japanese army invaded China with full force, the Japanese film industry in-
tensified, making pro-war films to promote Japanese national unity. In 1939,
Eiga ho (film law) was enacted to “contribute to the development of national
culture,” following the Nazi example, and placed production, distribution, and
exhibition of films under governmental regulation. The law recommended
making educational propaganda films that would “enhance the spirit and
intelligence of Japanese people,” and kokusaku eiga (national policy film) was
born as a result. Censorship under this law prohibited films in which Haya‑
kawa’s star image might fit: over-the-top American-style comedies, themes
with American-style individual happiness, films that used foreign language,

270  E p i l o g u e
and kissing scenes or scenes showing a man and a woman walking hand in
hand.66
Hayakawa left Japan once again and went to France. He stayed there until
1949. In France, Hayakawa appeared in Yoshiwara (Max Ophuls, 1937), a
tragic love story between a Japanese geisha and a French lieutenant.67 Haya-
kawa played a Japanese spy, who falls in love with the geisha. Obviously,
Yoshiwara exploits some popular traits in Hayakawa’s silent star vehicles: a
narrative of the type of Madame Butterfly and the spy motif with deceitful
Japanese men. Variety reported that both the Japanese government and film
industry criticized Yoshiwara for its “racial discriminatory views.”68 Japanese
media called Hayakawa an “insult to the nation” again.69 Since Japan became
allied with Germany in November 1937, Hayakawa’s appearances in French
films were not welcomed by Japanese spectators. Hayakawa stayed in Paris
during World War II and made nine films after Yoshiwara, including Forfai-
ture (Marcel L’Herbier, 1937), which was a remake of The Cheat, and Macao,
L’enfer du jeu (Gambling Hell aka Mask of Korea, Jean Delannoy, 1939) with
Erich von Stroheim, who was also exiled in France.70
Even when the war was over, Hayakawa did not go back to Japan, where his
wife Tsuru Aoki and his children were waiting for him. Begged by the inde-
pendent producer-actor Humphrey Bogart, Hayakawa went to Hollywood to
appear in Tokyo Joe (Stuart Heisler, 1949), a star vehicle for Bogart, who plays
“one of those bulletproof, slightly shady but golden-hearted American sol-
diers of misfortune,” and, then, in Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1949),
starring Claudette Colbert.71 In both films, Hayakawa played roles befitting
his popular image during the silent film period: a middle-ground position
between civilized and “Oriental menace.”72 Especially in the latter film, this
twofold characterization of Hayakawa is clear.
On the one hand, Hayakawa’s Japanese camp commandant in Three Came
Home, Colonel Michio Suga, is the representative of the Japanese army that
brutally invades a peaceful island. Japanese soldiers in this film are savages
who hit women, threaten children with their swords, laugh at corpses, wear
dirty kimonos, try to rape the heroine, and silence her by torture. When Suga
first appears in the film he strikes a white British man who says he is a civilian
unreasonably hard on the face.
On the other hand, Suga is clearly differentiated from other Japanese sol-
diers. He is a gentle, humane, and Americanized family man. In the scene
immediately following the one in which he strikes the British man, Suga,
with a gentle voice, offers a cigarette to the American heroine (Colbert), the

E p i l o g u e   271
wife of a British colonial officer in Borneo. He then talks about his four years
of education at the University of Washington, his experience on a football
team there, his admiration of the book that she wrote, and his two sons and a
daughter living in Japan. He gently but determinedly requests her autograph,
too. The heroine is scared, though, because she hears some gunshots outside
of the room while she is listening to Suga. Later, he humanely protects the
heroine, like a savior, when she is about to be tortured because she refuses
to retract the charges of an attack by a Japanese soldier. Suga apologizes to
her for what other soldiers have done. He then offers fruits and biscuits (not
Japanese sweets) to British children at his Westernized flowery garden ter-
race. Moreover, after Japan’s surrender, Suga is depicted as a victim of the
Japanese militarism that caused the war. He sadly tells the heroine about
the death of his wife and children in Hiroshima and wishes her the best for
her and her son. (His eight-year-old daughter’s name is Cho Cho.) The first
medium close-up of Suga in the film emphasizes his devastated expression
in front of a portrait of Tojo Hideki, the Japanese prime minister, on the
wall.73 The heroine imagines Suga’s revenge when she sees him taking her
son and other children into his car. However, all Suga does in the end is to
show his gently patriarchal but victimized characteristics. Suga thus repre-
sents an ideal patriarchal figure, by Western standards, who values families.
The reception of these films in the United States was ambivalent, again
with regard to Americanization and nationalism. Hayakawa’s return was wel-
comed by such critics as Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times, who noted,
“The Hayakawa performances, notably in ‘The Cheat’ with Fannie Ward are
a legend.”74 Schallert highly rated Hayakawa’s acting in Three Came Home:
“The performance by Sessue Hayakawa, as a strangely contrary Japanese offi-
cer, is bound to appeal to the discriminating. He probably more truly repre-
sents the jangled philosophy and theories that pervaded Nippon during the
war days than the crude villains so often seen.”75
In contrast, according to a report in a Japanese magazine, some Ameri-
cans criticized Hayakawa because “he did not obtain American citizenship
when he was an American star during the silent period, and brought Ameri-
can money to Japan.”76 In fact, the New York Times stated in its report of
Hayakawa’s return, “He [Hayakawa] is still a Japanese citizen. . . . His activity
during the German occupation of Paris came into question when Columbia
[Pictures] applied for a visa to bring him to the United States.” The report
even sarcastically described how Hayakawa obtained the role in Tokyo Joe,
implying his different cultural origin and his brutality:

272  E p i l o g u e
 The first question Robert Lord, producer of the picture [Tokyo Joe], wanted
answered was: “Is Hayakawa too old and feeble to stage a good fight with
Bogart?”
The Japanese actor says that Columbia’s French representative called on
him to ask the question.
“I said to him, ‘Attack me.’ At first he wouldn’t, but finally he swung at my
chin. I grabbed his arm and twisted his wrist until he cried, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ I know
jiu jitsu. We negotiated a salary and I signed the contract.”
Hayakawa didn’t explain whether he had stopped twisting the studio repre-
sentative’s wrist before or after the deal was concluded.77

Across the Pacific, Hayakawa’s ambivalent status as an American star and a

representative of Japan lingered on in the period of postwar reconstruction
of Japanese national identity. Persuaded by Nagata Masaichi, the president
of Daiei Company, Hayakawa returned to Japan in 1949 for the first time in
twelve years. Hayakawa was expected to become a representative of Japan, not
with his Japanese nationality but with his foreign-made star image, in order
to gain recognition of Japanese cinema by international audiences. Nagata
was planning to cast Hayakawa as the American consul Townsend Harris in
a film version of Tojin Okichi, a 1935 theatrical drama in which Hayakawa had
played the same role.78 Hayakawa himself declared in 1949 that he intended
to “make a Japanese film really targeting foreign audiences. . . . I want to
create a new style that would go beyond the framework of Japanese cinema
so far.”79 Hayakawa also said, “If I work in Japan, I am only working in films
with international perspectives.”80
Hollywood studios and American audiences were interested in films
with Japanese subjects at that time. The background of Tokyo Joe was shot
in Tokyo. It was the first time after World War II that an American company
cleared rights with army authorities for filming in Japan.81 It should have
been perfect timing to make films targeting American audiences with an
internationally renowned star.
Hayakawa’s international fame was also considered to be a safety valve for
the occupation government in Japan, which was trying to reestablish the Japa-
nese film industry.82 The goal of the occupation was to abolish the militar-
ism and ultra-nationalism that had prevailed in Japanese politics and culture
before and during the war and to educate Japanese people with American-
style liberalism and democracy. The occupation government tried to use
Japanese films to promote democratization. As early as September 1945, the

E p i l o g u e   273
occupation government met with the executives of Japanese film studios to
communicate the government’s interest in the film industry. The occupation
government highly valued Hayakawa’s role as a Japanese officer who defends
international laws, family values, and the white American heroine in Three
Came Home, even though it did not permit the release of the film in Japan
because it depicted “Australians, the U.S. ally, villainously.”83
After the war, Hayakawa’s international star image, which did not fit well
into wartime ultra-nationalist films, became the symbol of Japan’s deviation
from the militarist past and the transplantation of democracy from abroad.
Not only Hayakawa, but also actors from shingeki, which had attempted since
the 1920s to introduce modern foreign dramas, including those of Ibsen,
increasingly appeared in films.84 Hayakawa played a Japanese immigrant in
South America in Harukanari haha no kuni [Far away mother’s country] (Ito
Daisuke, 1950), and a Japanese Jean Valjean in Re Mizeraburu [Les Misérables]
(Part 1 “Kami to akuma [God and devil]” directed by Ito, and Part 2 “Ai to jiyu
no hata [Flag of love and liberty]” by Makino Masahiro, 1950).85 In both films,
Hayakawa’s characters come from outside of the communities and help
people victimized under feudalistic oppression.86 Such roles clearly empha-
sized Hayakawa’s foreign image as a feudalism-buster. In fact, studios pub-
licized Hayakawa as an international star. A one page leaflet of Harukanari
haha no kuni, a promotional piece published by Daiei, did not use Chinese
characters to spell “Sessue Hayakawa” but katakana, the characters usually
used for foreign names.87 A newspaper report on Re Mizeraburu emphasized
Hayakawa’s foreign image not only by suggesting his “Westernized” accent
but also by noting that Re Mizeraburu was able to use Eastman film stock,
instead of Japanese-made film stock, “because Sessue will bring a print when
he goes back to America.”88
In some interview articles in magazines, Hayakawa played the role of an
instructor of the American way of life. It is ironic because, in the past, in
American magazines, he had played the role of a master of Japanese thought.
In one article in a Japanese magazine, Hayakawa told a renowned actress,
Tanaka Kinuyo, Hayakawa’s co-star in Taiyo wa higashi yori, who was about
to go on a trip to the United States, how to behave there. He said, “You must
forget the Japanese way of thinking and behave confidently. . . . You might be
surprised how frankly American people speak and behave, but once you get
used to it, you will feel comfortable. . . . [In Hollywood,] all staff members
make their efforts to create the best atmosphere for the actors to perform as

274  E p i l o g u e
they want, and vice versa. This harmony, this morality is what you should
learn from them.”89
However, Hayakawa’s prestigious position in the postwar Japanese film
industry did not last long, once again because his star image was too West-
ernized. After the success of Rashomon (Kurosawa Akira, 1950) at the Venice
International Film Festival, international distribution of their films became
a prevalent aspiration of Japanese film studios. Yet, the strategy to appeal to
international audiences drastically changed from Westernization in style and
content to such cultural motifs as noh and kabuki drama, Zen Buddhism,
samurai, and geisha, which were self-consciously marked as “traditional
Japanese.” Thus, exotic Japaneseness became a commodity for foreign audi-
ences and a symbol of a national identity of Japan that would be approved
internationally.90
Under such conditions, Daiei, the studio that initiated the exoticization
of Japanese cinema under the producer Nagata, originally cast Hayakawa in
a period film, Shishi no za [An heir’s place] (Ito, 1953), that would depict the
world of noh theater.91 Eventually, Hayakawa’s role was taken over by Hase­‑
gawa Kazuo, a matinee idol in Japan since the 1930s, whose background was
kabuki. This replacement of stars indicates the inclination of the Japanese
industry toward Japanese traditionality. Even though Hasegawa had appeared
in modern-day dramas, the kabuki-influenced Japanese star was considered
to be more appropriate to play the character of a noh actor. Hayakawa’s inter-
national image was considered less fit for the period piece.
Hayakawa was aware of this trend. He said, “[Japanese cinema] will never
be successful by merely imitating American films. Without using the unique
Japanese tradition, such as haragei acting style, American audiences will not
welcome Japanese films.”92 In several interviews, Hayakawa strategically
started emphasizing how deeply his acting style and his way of thinking were
rooted in the philosophy of Zen Buddhism and kendo, Japanese sword fight-
ing.93 However, eventually, Hayakawa left Japan again. In the United States,
he began again to play roles that imitated his popularly remembered star
image: the racial and cultural middle ground between civilized and primitive,
or the “honorable bad guy.” The most famous role for Hayakawa during this
period was that in David Lean’s anti-war film, The Bridge on the River Kwai
(1957). In the story set in a Japanese prison camp in the jungles of Southeast
Asia during World War II, Hayakawa played a refined but merciless Japanese
commander, Colonel Saito.

E p i l o g u e   275
 The characterization of Saito amazingly imitates that of Tori in The Cheat:
gentle and refined but culturally different and often brutal. A long shot
shows Saito in a blue Japanese kimono sitting tight on the tatami floor of
an organized and clean room. Behind him, there are flowers arranged in a
Japanese style and a Japanese scroll painting. His language to his soldier who
knocks on his door is very gentle, “Haitte yoroshii. Gokuro.” [You may come
in. Thank you.] Saito is even characterized as Westernized. Eating English
corned beef, drinking Scotch whisky, and smoking a cigar later in the narra-
tive, he says, “I spent three years in London. I studied at London Polytech-
nic.” There is even a Playboy-style calendar with a glamorous blonde woman
on the wall of his office. He also gives away packets from the Red Cross to the
prisoners, insisting “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” as Tori gives
a party for the Red Cross Fund in The Cheat.
However, a skinny black man keeps fanning him, which implies a despo-
tism hidden behind his gentle surface. When he first appears in front of the
prisoners, his authoritative and foreign nature is emphasized: a low angle
shot shows his legs in his leather boots dominantly standing on the porch.
He comes out of a dark shadow to the front and speaks to them in a decisive
tone, “In the name of his Imperial Majesty, I welcome you. . . . The Japanese
army does not have idle mouths to feed. If you do not work hard, you will
be punished. . . . General Togo’s motto: Be happy in your work!” When Saito
goes back to his room, thunder roars (see fig. 23).
Saito brutally tortures Major Nicholson (Alec Guinness), locking him up
in a small cell under the sun, “an oven,” when Nicholson refuses his order to
do manual labor, insisting that the code of the Geneva Convention prohibits
officers from being forced to do it. Saito’s barbarous act is specifically con-
nected to Japanese militarism. He says to Nicholson, “What do you know of
the soldiers’ code, Bushido? Nothing! You are unworthy of command!” Saito
does have his own principle, in the form of bushido, but it is not understand-
able to British and American soldiers. In the end, a British doctor murmurs,
“Madness, madness, madness. . . .” Thus, despite his apparent gentleness, re-
finement, and Westernization, Saito is characterized as despotic, uncivilized,
and inassimilable, like Tori in The Cheat.
When Nicholson wins the silent battle against Saito and obtains permis-
sion to work not as a manual laborer but as a commander to build a bridge
over the River Kwai, a high angle long shot shows the back of Saito, who is
crying severely alone in his room. This is the last emotional outburst of Saito
that the viewers witness in the film. After this shot, Saito turns into a com-

276  E p i l o g u e
23  A still from The Bridge on the River Kwai.

pletely receptive, meek, and defeated character. In The Cheat, Tori is deprived
of his right to speak and to make facial expressions to convey his emotional
states after being shot by Edith. Like Tori, Saito, who has been very eloquent
and determined, becomes a passive man who is not even allowed to speak
out or make facial expressions, except slight frowning, after being defeated
by Nicholson.
During the meeting about reorganizing the plan for constructing the
bridge under the British command, all Saito can do is to accept all the re-
quests from Nicholson without questioning anything: afternoon tea, dinner,
change of schedules, change of construction sites, and regrouping of the
laborers. At the construction site, Saito looks at the progress without any
words. When Nicholson recruits British soldiers from a hospital ward against
regulations, a medium shot of Saito in a Japanese kimono, standing in his
room without any words or particular facial expressions, is inserted and em-
phasizes his impotent existence.

E p i l o g u e   277
 When the construction is completed, the two happen to meet up on the
bridge. Saito, observing the bridge and the sunset over the jungle, has only
two lines: “Beautiful,” and “Yes, a beautiful creation.” When Nicholson elo-
quently starts talking about the feat that he accomplished and about his
twenty-eight-year career with the British army, Saito merely stays silent and
expressionless, even in the two medium close-ups of him. He is a passive lis-
tener, particularly when his back is captured in the right edge of the frames
in the long shots that center on Nicholson talking.
That night, Nicholson makes his speech at a party that celebrates the com-
pletion of the bridge, stressing how “honorable” the British soldiers are who
“survived in wilderness and turned defeat into victory.” The shot of Nichol-
son is cross-cut to a high angle long shot that captures the back of Saito as he
completes a document in Japanese and ritualistically cuts a few of his hairs
with his knife. The scene does not clarify what the document is, but it looks
like his suicide note, because he says earlier in the narrative “I’ll have to kill
myself” if he fails to accomplish his mission.
Eventually, the next morning, when Nicholson finds a wire that is con-
nected to explosives, Saito simply follows him until a young Canadian soldier
stabs him in the back. When he argues with Nicholson earlier in the narrative,
Saito excitedly takes his knife out of his pocket, violently sticks it onto the
table, ands eloquently shouts, “I hate the British. You are defeated, but have
no shame. You are stubborn, but have no pride. You endure, but you have no
courage. I hate the British!” However, when he is murdered, he cannot say
a word and cannot even find his knife to fight back. Hayakawa’s character in
Kwai is eventually deprived of his right to speak and to fight. He turns into
an expressionless, powerless, receptive, and mute object, in opposition to the
white male characters.
Thus, Hayakawa’s role in Kwai brought him back into the decades-old
stereotypical image of twofold characteristics, such as those possessed by
Tori in The Cheat: the middle-ground image between civilized but primitive,
refined but brutal, authoritative but vulnerable, masculine and feminine,
Westernized and Japanese.
Kwai worked as The Cheat did in Hayakawa’s early career. Hayakawa’s per-
formance in the film was sensationally received and he was nominated for
Best Supporting Actor by the Motion Picture Academy. His role as Saito was
so impressive to the spectators that Hayakawa was offered similar roles over
and over again. Hayakawa was cast as a mute Japanese soldier, who is left
alone with an American pilot on a small Pacific island, in a television drama

278  E p i l o g u e
set during the period of World War II, The Sea Is Boiling Hot (1958). Hayakawa
played Kimura, a Japanese soldier with ambivalent characteristics in Kataki
(Alan Schneider, 1959), a stage drama at the Ambassador Theater on Broad-
way. He is menacing and violent toward an American GI in the first part, but
becomes friendly with the GI, cultivates a flower garden on the Pacific Island
on which they are marooned alone, and sheds a few tears in the second part.94
In The Geisha Boy (Frank Tashlin, 1958), Hayakawa even played a parodied
version of his role in Kwai. The Japanese character, played by Hayakawa, lives
in the United States and builds a bridge over his swimming pool. The march-
ing song from Kwai is used in the soundtrack of the film. In Hell to Eternity
(Phil Karlson, 1960), another World War II drama and Hayakawa’s last film
with his wife, Tsuru Aoki, Hayakawa played a commanding Japanese general
in Saipan who commits hara-kiri and made “a virtual career of his ‘Kwai’
type-casting.”95
The decades-old strategy to Americanize Hayakawa’s popular image also
returned. In the New York Times, Brooks Atkinson reported how American-
ized Hayakawa was even in a Japanese-style play, “Evening of Rare Pleasures,”
which opened at the Academy Theatre of the Seven Arts Center in New York,
and regarded Hayakawa as a representative of an American actor rather than
a Japanese one, despite his cultural origin. Atkinson argued, “He has been
too far away from Japan too long. Being by experience a Western actor, he is
vague, sluggish and heavy in the Oriental style. . . . As a despotic military
officer in ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai,’ Mr. Hayakawa is excellent. He is
unique in that sort of role. But Japanese birth is not enough to prepare him
for the pantomimes and portraits of an evening in the Japanese manner. The
elaborate style of Oriental acting is more than a drawing-room accomplish-
ment.”96
Some newspaper reports even started to repeat the structures of fan maga-
zine articles about Hayakawa in the 1910s in order to emphasize Hayakawa’s
cultural and racial middle-ground position. A report in the New York Post on
29 December 1957 began almost exactly like the fan magazine articles on
Hayakawa in the 1910s: “Sessue Hayakawa takes tea at cocktail time at the
Astor. But, in his streamlined, air-conditioned American home with tradi-
tional Japanese furnishings in Tokyo, he said (over tea at the Astor), ‘I have
hot cakes and coffee every morning for breakfast. I still keep to many of the
nice customs I picked during my years in the United States.’ . . . The Orien-
tal actor is bipartisan in food habits (he lived throughout the World War II
period in Paris, painting Japanese watercolors on silk), and is multilingual.”

E p i l o g u e   279
After indicating Hayakawa’s Americanized or cosmopolitan characteristics,
the report emphasizes his Japanese cultural traits: “He is a deeply religious
man, an ordained Bhuddist [sic] priest who does not preach from pulpit, but
makes the rounds, lecturing on the philosophy of religion. During his brief
stay in town, he attended Bhuddist [sic] meditation services.”97
A report in the New York Herald Tribune had the same tone:

“Sessue Hayakawa double character,” said Mr. Hayakawa tapping his head.
“Very, very complicated.” . . . He divides his time between two houses. One
is a Japanese-style eleven-room house where he sits on the floor when he eats
(with chop sticks, of course) and sleeps on a mattress on the floor. The other
is an American-style five-room house which has air-conditioning, oil heat, and
electric refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner and where he eats at a table with a
knife and fork and sleeps in a big bed. He has a Japanese cook for the one and
an American cook for the other. . . . In Tokyo on certain ceremonial occasions
Mr. Hayakawa puts on his red and purple robes with the yellow hat and con-
ducts a service at the Rinzai Temple [as a Zen Buddhist priest]. . . . For his night
club expedition Mr. Hayakawa was dressed sharply in American style: blue coat
with a white handerchief [sic] in the breast pocket, blue shirt with a maroon tie,
gray socks and black shoes with a high gloss.98

Similarly, the New Yorker started its article on Hayakawa: “In person, Haya-
kawa looks more like an off-duty samurai than a villain. His cheekbones are
every bit as aristocratic and his eyes just as penetrating as they appear on
the screen, but he himself proved to be easygoing and a cosmopolite whose
career has embraced American, Japanese, French, and German films, as well
as stages of London, Paris, Tokyo, and New York.”99
In Japan, Hayakawa became a celebrity again after Kwai. Yet, many maga-
zine articles emphasized Hayakawa’s twofold image once again. Shukan Asahi
[Weekly Asahi] used two photos in an article entitled, “Sessue Still in Good
Health,” one of which showed a half-naked Hayakawa sitting in Zen medita-
tion. In the other photo, Hayakawa sits on a sofa and reads a book written in
English with a cigar in his right hand.100 Another magazine, Shukan Yomiuri
[Weekly Yomiuri] noted, “For Hayakawa Japan is not a place to ‘come back’
but to ‘visit,’ ” and emphasized his foreign image. Simultaneously, the article
included Hayakawa’s own words, “American people think that there is some-
thing mysterious in me, and so I wrote a book on my spiritual journey for
an American publisher.”101 An article in the same magazine concludes with

280  E p i l o g u e
exactly the same hope expressed by the Pure Film advocates decades earlier:
“We hope he will appear in at least one film a year for the development of
Japanese cinema.”102
By that point, one aspect of Hayakawa’s star image, the strong emphasis
on his Japanese cultural or national identity, had become outdated. When
Hayakawa insisted that he had tried to be like a samurai when he had to dis-
play dignity in his films, an unconvinced interviewer asked, “Didn’t you feel
odd?” Moreover, the same article introduced an unfavorable comment from
a person in the Japanese film industry: “He [Hayakawa] requests too much
salary. As high as a Hollywood star. If he wants to live in Japan from now
on, he should sometimes appear in Japanese films without asking too much
salary. He talks about Zen or Buddhism, but he is like a money-seeking
kid.”103
Even after his stardom during the period of silent cinema, in transform-
ing global political relations, Hayakawa represented the ambivalent images
of Japan and Japanese people on and off the screen both in Japan and in the
United States. In the United States, Hayakawa embodied the century-long
contradictory but coexisting stereotypes of Japan and Japanese people: lov-
able and villainous, refined and threatening, civilized and primitive, Japanese
Taste and the yellow peril. In Japan, Hayakawa was an embodiment of Ameri-
canization, whether a symbol of modernization or that of deviation from the
imagined Japanese sense of values. Simultaneously, as one of a few interna-
tionally famous figures, Hayakawa was regarded as a representative of the
Japanese people for foreign and domestic audiences. Hayakawa’s star image,
then, caused ambivalent reactions in both countries on different levels.
On 23 November 1973, Hayakawa died in Tokyo. In his obituary, Paul L.
Montgomery wrote, “He [Hayakawa] starred as lover and villain in come [sic]
than 120 films.”104 A Japanese magazine, Shukan Bunshun [Weekly Bunshun],
published a brief article titled, “The ex-Hollywood actor, Sessue Hayakawa,
died with a big question: Was he really an international star?” This article
included comments about Hayakawa from various Japanese intellectuals,
who expressed their ambivalent feelings toward him. They highly valued
Hayakawa’s financial success in the United States and his popularity among
“beautiful blond women” in the middle of racial discrimination, while they
questioned the value of those films of Hayakawa in which Japan was depicted
with an image of “an evil, mysterious, and grotesque country.” The article
thus criticized the manner in which Hayakawa publicized Japan in his films.
The article also questioned Hayakawa’s acting ability. Despite Hayakawa’s

E p i l o g u e   281
international fame and his own claim that such actors as Charlie Chaplin,
Lawrence Olivier, and Jean Gabin were inferior to him, the article indicated,
based on the comments by the intellectuals, that Hayakawa was not a capable
actor and that all he could do was to stand still without any movement on his
face, which was like a noh mask.105
Sessue Hayakawa’s transnational stardom was a site of constant conflicts
and struggles over the ownership of the image of Japan (and America). It
casts light on the historical trajectory of American images of Japan and of
Japanese self-images in the world and on the volatile social and cultural inter-
actions between Japan and the United States.

282  E p i l o g u e
 N ot e s

I n t ro d u c t i o n
The epigraph is from Nogami, Seirin no o Hayakawa Sesshu [King of Hollywood, Ses-
sue Hayakawa], 14. All translations of Japanese books, leaflets, and newspaper and
magazine articles in this book are by the author unless otherwise noted.
1 “Star’s Large Female Following Will Like This,” Wid’s Daily 9.12 (13 July
1919): 5.
2 Hanayagi, “Katsukai enma cho” [Evaluation book of the motion picture world],
75.
3 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 91.
4 Ross, “Sessue Hayakawa Prefers the Wicked Oriental Roles,” 1, 4. Newspapers
and magazines sometimes rendered Hayakawa’s words as fluent English and
sometimes in dialect.
5 “A Tribute to Sessue Hayakawa,” Motion Picture (October 1917): n.p., in Sessue
Hayakawa: Locke Collection Envelope 659, the New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts, Robinson Locke Collection (SHE).
6 Bodeen, “Sessue Hayakawa,” 196.
7 Studlar, “Discourses of Gender and Ethnicity,” 19.
8 Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 287.
9 “Vote for the Picture of Your Favorite Player,” Chicago Tribune (14 May 1916):
n.p., in SHE.
10 “Hayakawa, Hart and Chaplin at the Madison,” Detroit Journal (29 October
1917): n.p., in SHE.
11 Goll, “Amerikanisches Kino,” 164–65 (translation by Don Reneau).
12 Yutkevich and Eisenstein, “The Eighth Art: On Expressionism, America and, of
course, Chaplin,” 3.
13 Delluc, “Beauty in the Cinema,” 138–39.
14 Delluc, “Beauty in the Cinema,” 138–39, original emphasis.
15 “Pretty French Actress Gives Sphinx Tribute,” Los Angeles Times (1 June 1924):
I-14.
16 Delluc, “Beauty in the Cinema,” 138–39.
17 Thompson and Bordwell, Film History, 89.
18 Clair, Cinema, 63.
19 Ad in Moving Picture World 32.11 (16 June 1917): 1712.
20 In the Ozawa case (260 U.S. 189), Ozawa Takao was denied naturalization on
the grounds that he was not a “white person.” Even though Ozawa was born in
 Japan, he was raised in Hawaii and California, studied at Berkeley High School
and the University of California, was fluent in English, and was a Christian. The
Supreme Court ruled that “the Japanese race is not Caucasian. The determina-
tion that the words ‘white persons’ are synonymous with the words ‘persons of
the Caucasian race’ simplifies the problem although it does not entirely dispose
of it. . . . But it establishes a ‘zone’ . . . outside of which (an applicant) is clearly
ineligible.” Conroy, “Concerning the Asian-American Experience,” 158–59.
21 Yoshihara, Embracing the East, 10.
22 “The Japanese Invasion,” Moving Picture World 6.21 (28 May 1910): 873.
23 “Japanese Actor Dies at 87,” New York Post (24 November 1973): 7.
24 Zhang, “ ‘An Amorous History of the Silver Screen,’ ” 22.
25 Dyer, Stars, 30, 95.
26 Hansen, “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons,” 13.
27 By the end of the nineteenth century, the term “middle class” became used by
American writers without definition or explanation. The historian Stuart M.
Blumin maintains that there was a sufficient convergence of personal and
social experience in at least five categories—work, consumption, residential
location, formal and informal voluntary association, and family organization—
to give credence to the idea of an emerging middle-class way of life and the
establishment of a significant degree of middle-class consciousness in early
nineteenth-century northeastern American cities. Blumin, “The Hypothesis of
Middle-Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century America,” 299–338.
28 Harris, Cultural Excursions, 29, 40.
29 Cook, “Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks-III,” 494.
30 Griffis, “Japan and the United States,” 721, 730.
31 Kano, Acting Like Woman in Modern Japan, 94.
32 Yoshihara, “Women’s Asia,” 59.
33 Kurtz, Official Illustrations from the Art Gallery of the World’s Columbian Exposi-
tion, 12.
34 Yoshihara, “Women’s Asia,” 68.
35 In other buildings at the Chicago fair, such as the Palace of Manufactures and
Liberal Arts and the Fine Arts Palace, Japan also made extensive exhibits that
focused more on its modernization, which was also Westernization, including
photographs of railroad lines, telegraph systems, and so forth. Harris, Cultural
Excursions, 41–44.
36 Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan, 14.
37 Yoshihara, “Women’s Asia,” 63.
38 Kano, Acting Like Woman in Modern Japan, 94.
39 According to Neil Harris, in the late nineteenth century, having anxiety about
the menacing character of modernization and the effects of industrialization,
the American people could identify with Japan’s national dilemma between
accepting Westernization and maintaining national customs. Harris, Cultural
Excursions, 34, 39–40, 55.
40 Lowe, Immigrant Acts, ix.

284  N o t e s t o I nt ro d u c t i o n
 41 Hanayagi, “Katsukai enma cho” [Evaluation book of the motion picture world],
74.
42 Katano, “Meiyu no shohyo” [Trademarks of famous actors], 107.
43 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 45.
44 Zhang, “ ‘An Amorous History of the Silver Screen,’ ” 30; Hansen, Babel and
Babylon, 76–89.

1. A S ta r Is B o r n
1 “Lasky and DeMille Enter Picture Field,” Motion Picture News (MPN) (20 Decem-
ber 1913): 15; “Fannie Ward to Star for Lasky,” Moving Picture World (MPW) 23.9
(6 March 1915): 1455; Holland, “Fannie Ward,” 590–95.
2 Wid’s Daily noted in 1918, “ ‘ The Cheat,’ in which this talented star [Hayakawa]
began to acquire an individual following, proved an unusual box-office attrac-
tion at that time.” Wid’s Daily 5.66 (14 July 1918): 29.
3 “Lasky May Releases,” MPW 28.6 (6 May 1916): 959.
4 “Fannie Ward as a Movie Tragedienne,” in The New York Times Film Reviews
1913–1968, vol. 1, 1913–1931 (New York: Arno, 1970), 8.
5 Variety (17 December 1915): 18.
6 “Sessue Hayakawa,” MPW 26.10 (4 December 1915): 1810.
7 Hayne, The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, 150.
8 New Orleans Times (26 February 1916): n.p., in SHE.
9 Wid’s Films and Film Folk Independent Criticisms of Features 1.17 (30 December
1915): 4.
10 Exhibitor’s Herald (EH) 1.4 (4 December 1915): 18; MPN 12.23 (11 December 1915):
76; Motography 14.24 (11 December 1915): 1223.
11 MPN 13.15 (15 April 1916): 2209. As early as January 1916, MPN published a list
of actors and actresses, and Hayakawa was listed under the category of “leads,”
not “supports.” MPN 13.4 (29 January 1916): 44.
12 Numerous articles and books on Hayakawa were published in Europe, includ-
ing “Sessue Hayakawa,” Invicta Cine (Portugal) 3 (1 June 1923): 4–5, and “Um
morto vivo: Sessue Hayakawa,” Cinefilo (Portugal) 24 (2 February 1929): 11,
22. Leaflet magazines entirely dedicated to Hayakawa were published in Spain
(Ferry and Moreno, “Sessue Hayakawa”) and Russia (Ovanesov, Sessue Haya-
kawa).
13 Hammond and Ford, “French End Games,” 330.
14 Colette, Colette at the Movies, 18.
15 Colette, Colette at the Movies, 19–20.
16 Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism, 110.
17 Doane, “The Close-Up,” 89.
18 Thompson and Bordwell, Film History, 89, 92.
19 Léon Moussinac, “Cinématographie,” 229–35. In 1932, Germaine Dullac em-
phasized the importance of The Cheat as the first American film that used the
editing style based on “a psychological, emotive, and rhythmical logic.” Before

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r O n e   285
 The Cheat, according to Dullac, “the pictures (tableaux) follow one after another
independently from each other, bundled by one subtitle.” Dullac, Écrits sur le
cinéma (1919–1937), 184, translation by Chika Kinoshita.
20 The Kawakami troupe started as “a purveyor of bitingly satirical antigovern-
ment burlesques,” which was called oppekepe. With his politically satirical dra-
mas (soshi shibai), Kawakami supported jiyu minken undo, the people’s rights
movement, which was aimed at prevailing Western-style liberalism in Japan.
The Kawakami troupe is often considered as a part of the shingeki movement,
Japan’s response to Ibsen and his contemporaries’ realist reforms in Europe.
Kawakami tried to modernize Japanese theaters with his original dramas that
depicted the everyday lives of ordinary people and with his adopted European
dramas, including Othello and Hamlet. In Kawakami’s theater, Sadayakko, an
actress, appeared on stage while female roles were played by an onnagata, a
male impersonator, in most of the theaters in Japan. Y. Hayakawa, “Tsuru
Aoki,” 3–5, 16–18; Downer, Madame Sadayakko, 94–96, 113–14; Muramatsu,
Kawakami Otojiro (Jo), 160–61, 251–347; Muramatsu, Kawakami Otojiro (Ge),
48–95; R. Yamaguchi, Joyu Sadayakko [The actress Sadayakko], 121–28.
21 In the United States, however, their tour was not financially successful. There
was a strict regulation that prohibited a child from appearing on stage. Conse-
quently, it became difficult for Kawakami to take Tsuru with them.
22 Fescourt and Bouquet, L’Idée et l’écran, 374.
23 Crisp, Genre, Myth, and Convention in the French Cinema, 1929–1939, 42. The
Cheat was also remade in America in 1923, starring Pola Negri, and in 1931,
starring Tallulah Bankhead. Hayakawa did not appear in either.
24 Stanley, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 68.
25 Colette, Colette at the Movies, 35–36. Later, Hayakawa produced his own play
based on The Cheat in France in 1944. He did not play the role as mute,
though.
26 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 136.
27 “Hainichi no tane o maku katsudo shashin” [Motion pictures that will cause
anti-Japanese sentiment], Rafu Shimpo 3694 (23 December 1915): 3.
28 “Kyo ka oroka hainichi haiyu Hayakawa Sesshu” [Crazy or stupid, anti-Japanese
actor Sessue Hayakawa], Rafu Shimpo 3695 (24 December 1915): 3.
29 “Nihon jin ashiki ka keisatsu muno ka” [Are the Japanese people bad, or the
police incapable?], Rafu Shimpo 3698 (28 December 1915): 3; “Akudo no hai-
nichi bodo” [Anti-Japanese riot by bad boys], Rafu Shimpo 3697 (26 December
1915): 1.
30 Rafu Shimpo 3699 (29 December 1915): 3.
31 Osaka Mainichi Shinbun, 23 February 1916, in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi,
1916, vol. 1, (1980): 346.
32 Katsudo no Sekai 1.4 (April 1916): 41; SZO, “Katsudo omochabako” [Toy box of
motion picture], 48.
33 Katsudo Zasshi 9.4 (April 1923): 147.
34 Aoyama, “Aren kun no Nihon kan” [Mr. Allen’s view on Japan], 88.

286  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r O n e
 35 Several Hayakawa films made at Lasky were released in Japan, including Each
to His Kind (Edward Le Saint, 5 February 1917), The Bottle Imp (Marshall Neilan,
26 March 1917), The Jaguar’s Claws (Neilan, 11 June 1917) in 1919, and Forbidden
Paths (Robert T. Thornby, 5 July 1917), The Victoria Cross (William C. DeMille,
14 December 1916), and The Hidden Pearls (George H. Melford, 18 February
1918) in 1920. Most of them were the films in which Hayakawa did not play
Japanese roles, except Forbidden Paths.
36 Okina, “Hayakawa Sesshu to Kamiyama Sojin” [Sessue Hayakawa and Sojin
Kamiyama], 225.
37 Barber, “The Roots of Travel Cinema,” 68–84.
38 Lee, Orientals, 88, 99–105.
39 “Shiro bijin Nihon jin koibito o jusatsu su” [A white beautiful woman shot a
Japanese lover to death], Rafu Shimpo 3564 (20 July 1915): 3.
40 “Shiro bijin doho jofu goroshi zokkou kohan 4” [A white beautiful woman who
killed her Japanese lover in court 4], Rafu Shimpo 3723 (28 January 1916): 3.
41 “Nihon jin no shufu gokan jiken shinso” [Truth about the rape of a housewife
by Japanese], Rafu Shimpo 3725 (30 January 1916): 3.
42 S. Higashi, “Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Film,” 130.
43 J. Brown, “The ‘Japanese Taste,’ ” 134.
44 See Noteheler, Japan through American Eyes.
45 J. Brown, “ ‘Fine Arts and Fine People,’ ” 123.
46 La Farge, “Bric-a-Brac,” 427–29.
47 J. Brown, “The ‘Japanese Taste,’ ” 1, 155; Lears, No Place of Grace, 42–43.
48 J. Brown, “The ‘Japanese Taste,’ ” 337; Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life,
224–36; Lee, Orientals, 86.
49 Mahan, The Problem of Asia and Its Effect upon International Policies, 108, 110.
50 Niiya, Japanese American History, 362. Beginning in 1900, the number of Japa-
nese immigrants to the United States rose to more than ten thousand a year.
Until 1906, the numbers were under 15,000 (except 1903), but in 1907 the
number increased to 30,226. Commissioner General of Immigration, Annual
Report, quoted in Iino, “Beikoku niokeru hainichi undo to 1924 nen iminho
seitei katei” [Anti-Japanese movement in the U.S. and the enactment process of
the 1924 immigration law], 32. In 1920, Japanese people owned approximately
16 percent of cultivated land for agriculture, which was obtained between 1910
and 1920. In 1910, the amount was only 0.4 percent, when the San Francisco
Chronicle criticized Japanese immigrants by insisting that they were “not earn-
est” and “buying lands.” State Board of Control of California, California and the
Oriental, 8; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Chinese and Japanese in the United States,
43–44; Tupper and McReynolds, Japan in American Public Opinion, 22.
51 The term “yellow peril” was originally used by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany
in 1898.
52 Quoted in Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 25. See also Daniels, Asian America,
109.
53 McClatchy, Four Anti-Japanese Pamphlets, 45.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r O n e   287
 54 Jacobs, “Belasco, DeMille and the Development of Lasky Lighting,” 416. These
lighting effects were marketed as “Lasky lighting” and associated with the work
of DeMille, his cameraman Alvin Wyckoff, and the art director Wilfred Buck-
land, in the trade press.
55 Script of The Cheat, University of Southern California, Cine-TV Library, Special
Collection.
56 According to Sumiko Higashi, this handwriting was DeMille’s. S. Higashi, Cecil
B. DeMille and American Culture, 108.
57 Staiger, Bad Women, 164, 179.
58 Yoshihara, Embracing the East, 15–43.
59 Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class; Mason, Conspicuous Consumption,
8–10.
60 Mason, Conspicuous Consumption, 12.
61 Trimberger, “The New Woman and the New Sexuality,” 98–115.
62 Staiger, Bad Women, 170.
63 Emphasis in the original.
64 Tori in a tuxedo looks like a vampire figure in a black coat that approaches the
white woman from the back. Diane Negra argues, “Dracula and other vampire
myths represent the vampire first and foremost as a liminal figure, caught be-
tween an old world and a new one, at first a welcomed visitor but ultimately a
new arrival who comes to be seen as a menace.” Negra, “Immigrant Stardom
in Imperial America,” 168. Tori as a “liminal figure” from Japan can be located
in this context of the vampire myths. In fact, the Canadian filmmaker Guy
Muddin’s film, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) depicts vampires
as “immigrants” from “the East” and an Asian dancer and actor, Zhang Wei-
Qiang, plays Count Dracula. Several “vampire” films had been released in the
United States by the time The Cheat was released. The Vampire (Kalem, 1910)
and The Vampire (Selig, 1913) were inspired by the “Vampire Dance” popular-
ized in the early teens by Alice Eis and Bert French. Staiger, Bad Women, 151.
In 1915, A Fool There Was, the film that made Theda Bara a sensational “vamp”
star, was released. The vamp’s iconography was characterized by her “pale skin
and heavily made-up lips and eyes.” Negra, “Immigrant Stardom in Imperial
America,” 183. Hayakawa’s character, with “heavily made-up” eyebrows and
pale skin, is similar to the vamp. The vampire image of Tori may enhance the
fear of mixing blood and the destructive influence that he brings into America
despite his superficially assimilated image.
65 For feminist film critics, these scenes in the shoji room “can be looked at as
a fulfillment of secret, forbidden desires for the pleasures and freedoms [of
women] promised by a love affair with a man of another race.” Marchetti, Ro-
mance and the “Yellow Peril,” 22; S. Higashi, Cecil B. DeMille and American Cul-
ture, 107.
66 The ambiguous sexuality of Tori refers to that of Dr. Fu Manchu, the universally
recognized early Oriental villain in pulp fiction created by Sax Rohmer (Arthur
Sarsfield Ward). The first three novels, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (1913), The

288  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r O n e
 Return of Fu Manchu (1916), and The Hand of Fu Manchu (1917), became popu-
lar in the United States in almost the same period when Hayakawa’s stardom
was being created. Fu Manchu’s threat comes partly from his ability to shift his
Chinese appearance to that of other nationalities. Also, Fu Manchu’s power to
incite the fevered imagination lies in his ambiguous sexuality, which combines
a masochistic vulnerability marked as feminine and a sadistic aggressiveness
marked as masculine.
67 S. Higashi, Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture, 104.
68 S. Higashi, Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture, 107.
69 Whissel, “The Gender of Empire,” 141–42.
70 The script indicates that after Richard confirms that he shot Tori, a close-up of
a group of three women in the audience, “who gossip pointing toward Edith,”
is to be inserted.
71 S. Higashi, Virgins, Vamps, and Flappers, 58.
72 Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 56–80.
73 Staiger, Bad Women, 173.
74 Cavell, “What Photography Calls Thinking,” 20–21.
75 Photoplay 9.4 (March 1916): n.p., in SHE.
76 MPN 22.10 (28 August 1920): 1755.
77 “Sessue Hayakawa to Support Ina Claire,” MPW 23.11 (20 March 1915): 1779.
78 S. Higashi, “Cecil B. DeMille and the Lasky Company,” 184–85. Cecil did not
have a spectacular stage career, but the DeMilles are a distinguished Broadway
family. S. Higashi, Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture, 1.
79 S. Higashi, “Touring the Orient with Lafcadio Hearn and Cecil B. DeMille,”
332.
80 S. Higashi, “Cecil B. DeMille and the Lasky Company,” 182–83.
81 MPN 9.22 (6 June 1914): 30.
82 MPW 23.3 (16 January 1915): 353.
83 “Japanese Customs in Motion Pictures,” Paramount Magazine (March 1915): 7.
84 The conditions under which The Typhoon was made were complicated and un-
clear. The Paramount ad in MPN noted that the producer of The Typhoon was
Paramount. MPN 10.13 (3 October 1914): 12. The review of The Typhoon in Variety
ignored NYMPC and wrote that this film was “released by the Paramount, with
no name of the manufacturing company given.” Variety 36.13 (28 November
1914): 24. Reel Life, the promotional magazine of the Mutual, did not mention
The Typhoon as its film at all. Yet, the NYMPC put an ad in MPW on 25 April 1914
announcing that the company would present the film “in the very near future,
under the direction of Thomas H. Ince, The Imperial Japanese Company in
Charles Swickard’s version of The Typhoon.” MPW 20.4 (25 April 1914): 549. Ac-
cording to Hayakawa, Paramount “bought” The Typhoon. “Popular Arts Project,”
Hayakawa-13. Paramount was adopting the Hodkinson system, which provided
cash advances for production costs and guaranteed a minimum return to the
producer. In exchange, Paramount received 35 percent of the proceeds for the
right to distribute.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r O n e   289
 85 “Celestial” is an outdated slang for a Chinese person. New York Dramatic Mirror
(NYDM) 73.1911 (21 July 1915): 27.
86 Variety 37.10 (6 February 1915): 23.
87 EH 1.4 (4 December 1915): 18; MPN 12.23 (11 December 1915): 76; Motography
14.24 (11 December 1915): 1223.
88 MPN 13.18 (6 May 1916): 2705. According to the dates written on the original
scripts, the filming of Temptation started on 27 July 1915 and finished on 10
August 1915. It was released on 2 January 1916. The filming of The Cheat started
on 20 October 1915 and finished on 10 November 1915, but it was released on
4 December 1915, earlier than Temptation. Script of Temptation, University of
Southern California, Cine-TV Library, Special Collection.
89 91 MPW 28.15 (15 July 1916): 357; MPN 14.9 (2 September 1916): 1349. Famous
Players and Lasky merged into Famous Players-Lasky Corporation in June
1916. Paramount Pictures Corporation had been a distributor of the produc-
tions of Lasky, the Famous Players Film Company, the Oliver Morosco Photo
Play Company, and Pallas Pictures since 1914.
90 Sixteen films starring Hayakawa were made at Lasky starting with Alien Souls,
but I do not consider The Victoria Cross (William C. DeMille, 14 December
1916) as a Hayakawa star vehicle. The Victoria Cross features Lou Telligan as the
star, and Hayakawa as an Indian conspirator in a supporting role.

2.  S c r e e n D e b u t
1 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 104–24.
2 Oba, “Kotani Fuku to Kariforunia no awabi gyogyo” [Fuku Kotani and abalone
fishing in California], 299–332; Oba, “Hayakawa Kintaro (Sesshu) no tobei kan-
kyo to ryoken nituite” [About the circumstances before Kintaro (Sessue) Haya-
kawa went to the U.S., and about Hayakawa’s passport], 57–58.
3 According to the biography of Hayakawa that was published in a Japanese maga-
zine, Fujin Gaho, in 1930, Mr. Ono, a bookstore owner, took care of Hayakawa
when he first arrived in San Francisco, his first stop in the United States. Then,
Hayakawa went to Los Angeles to join a theater group, Futabakai, and appeared
in some Japanese plays. T. Azuma (or Higashi), “Kaigai ni odoru hiro Sesshu
Hayakawa to Aoki Tsuruko” [International heroes, Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru
Aoki], 153.
4 Variety 33.2 (12 December 1913): 12. Fred Mace (1878–1917) was a stage come-
dian and worked for Mack Sennet. After appearing in the Keystone comedies
with Ford Sterling and Mabel Normand, he quit and opened his own company.
An editor of the Japanese film magazine Katsudo Zasshi noted in 1922 that
Hayakawa started his film career as a “part-time extra” for Fred Mace comedies,
earning five dollars a week, and met Aoki there. Katsudo Zasshi 8.8 (August
1922): 64. The MPW claimed that the character in The Oath of O’Tsuru San, in
which O’Tsuru San (Aoki) falls in love with a young American on whom she has

290  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T w o
 been ordered to spy, is as “dainty and attractive as Madame Butterfly.” MPW 18.6
(3 November 1913): 613.
5 “Tom Ince of Inceville,” NYDM 70.1827 (24 December 1913): 34.
6 Aoyama, Hariuddo eiga okoku no kaibo [Anatomy of Hollywood film kingdom],
279.
7 Oba, “Shokan kara mita Hayakawa Sesshu no kunan” [Sessue Hayakawa’s hard-
ship indicated in his letters], 50.
8 “Release Record,” Harry and Roy Aitken Papers, 1909–1940, box 45, vol. 33,
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Archives Division; T. Yamanaka, “Umi
no kanata yori” [From overseas], 91; Aoyama, Hariuddo eiga okoku no kaibo
[Anatomy of Hollywood film kingdom], 279.
9 Carl Wilmore, “Sessue Hayakawa—Himself,” Photoplay Journal 30 (August
1919): n.p., in SHE ; “Release Record,” Harry and Roy Aitken Papers, 1909–
1940, box 45, vol. 33, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Archives Division.
Hayakawa later said, “I entered pictures in 1913. . . The first pictures I made
were two-reelers and I sometimes played Indians.” “Hayakawa Reveals Film
Past in Letter,” Los Angeles Times (20 July 1960): A6.
10 MPW 19.6 (7 February 1914): 678.
11 Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India, 108. For a historical overview of the notion
of the picturesque, see Hussey, The Picturesque; Price, “The Picturesque Mo-
ment,” 259–92; Copley and Garside, The Politics of the Picturesque.
12 Orvell, The Real Thing, 155.
13 Lears, No Place of Grace, 5.
14 Savada, The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the
United States, 350; Hanson and Gevinson, The American Film Institute Catalog
of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, 338.
15 Waller, “Historicizing, a Test Case,” 13.
16 “The Japanese Invasion,” MPW 6.21 (28 May 1910): 873.
17 Dizikes, Opera in America, 205–6; Baily, The Gilbert and Sullivan Book, 281–
84.
18 The synopsis is in accordance with the print available at the George Eastman
House, Rochester, New York.
19 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, 225–26.
20 MPW 19.6 (7 February 1914): 722. Whereas the emperor comes from the royal
family in Japan, which is traditionally considered to have been founded in the
year 660 B.C., the shogun, an abbreviation of Seii-Tai-Shogun, is originally a title
conferred by the royal court upon the chief military commander, who should
defend the royal family. The shogun overpowered the emperor and started to
govern Japan for the first time in 1192. The shogun became a hereditary title,
and several governments under different shogun families ruled Japan until
1867.
21 The Mikado; or The Town of Titipu, in Sullivan, The Complete Plays of Gilbert and
Sullivan, 299–345.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T w o   291
 3.  C h r i s t i a n i t y v e r s u s B u d d h i sm
1 Toledo Blade, in the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, Robinson
Locke Collection, Scrapbook, vol. 255: 29; NYDM 71.1832 (28 January 1914): 30.
2 New York Clipper 59.51 (31 January 1914): 15.
3 MPW 20.7 (16 May 1914): 957.
4 Pratt, “ ‘See Mr. Ince . . . ,’ ” 108.
5 MPN 9.20 (23 May 1914): 57.
6 Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema 1907–1915, 251; Thompson and Bordwell,
Film History, 58.
7 MPW 19.5 (31 January 1914): 554. An article with exactly the same content ap-
peared in the above-mentioned Toledo Blade, the New York Clipper of the same
day, and in MPN 9.5 (7 February 1914): 20.
8 Oba, “Shokan kara mita Hayakawa Sesshu no kunan” [Sessue Hayakawa’s hard-
ship indicated in his letters], 50.
9 Reel Life 4.7 (2 May 1914): 21.
10 MPN 9.18 (9 May 1914): 48.
11 “Japanese Film Actress Marries,” New York Clipper 62.14 (9 May 1914): 16.
12 It is also recorded in a document in the Japanese community in Los Angeles
that Aoki had been a chorus girl in the Shornverg theater group in San Diego.
Nanka Nikkeijin shogyo kaigi sho, Nanka shu Nihonnjin shi [History of Japanese
in Southern California], 242. Cari Beauchamp writes that the popular screen-
writer Frances Marion “had known and liked” Aoki “at St. Margaret’s Hall”
according to Marion’s biographical writing, but Beauchamp does not clarify
whether St. Margaret’s Hall was a school or something else. Beauchamp, With-
out Lying Down, 31.
13 New York Clipper 62.1 (14 February 1914): 18.
14 MPW 20.9 (30 May 1914): 1216.
15 MPW 20.11 (13 June 1914): 1496.
16 MPW 20.7 (16 May 1914): 929; 20.12 (20 June 1914): 1643; MPN 9.19 (16 May
1914): 7.
17 MPN 9.18 (9 May 1914): 48.
18 The Strand, which opened at Forty-seventh Street on 11 April of the same
year, was a prestigious theater that was “devoted exclusively to the projection
of motion pictures.” In “the heart of the so-called ‘white light’ district, in the
home of the ‘legitimate’ drama, putting itself in actual daily competition with
the world’s greatest speaking stars, this theater is facing close competition.”
“Million-Dollar Theater Opens,” MPN 9.15 (18 April 1914): 23.
19 MPN 9.24 (20 June 1914): 53.
20 MPW 20.12 (20 June 1914): 1643.
21 MPW 21.6 (8 August 1914): 793. The Opera House at Cleveland also showed the
film for a week beginning 7 July 1914. The New York Public Library, Robinson
Locke Scrapbook, vol. 25: 31.
22 MPW 21.2 (11 July 1914): 156; MPN 10.1 (4 July 1914): 12.

292  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T h re e
 23 MPN 9.24 (20 June 1914): 53.
24 In 1862, when a Japanese mission visited London, the people in London re-
garded the kimonos worn by samurai as female clothes. In this sense, Japanese
men were considered as more feminine than European men because of their
clothes. Conte-Helme, Japan and the North East of England, 53–54.
25 It was popular in American motion pictures at that time to show a vengeful
Buddha, as we see in such films as The God of Vengeance (April 1914).
26 Ince later confessed that he had made a mistake in Hayakawa’s makeup and
the beard was not good. “Kebi monogatari” [A Kay-Bee story], Katsudo Shashin
Zasshi 5.5 (May 1919): 54.
27 K. McDonald, Japanese Classical Theater in Films, 43, 330.
28 Variety 35.2 (12 June 1914): 21. Since a prologue introducing the actors was a
frequent device in feature films from about 1914 to 1917, this does not in itself
indicate these films are theatrical. Yet, in the case of The Wrath of the Gods, the
black curtains that appear in the beginning and at the end are so obvious that
they create a sense of closure.

4. D o u b l e n e ss
1 Savada, The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the
United States, 439; Hanson and Gevinson, The American Film Institute Catalog
of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, 304, 406–7.
2 Savada, The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the
United States, 320.
3 Savada, The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the
United States, 350; Hanson and Gevinson, The American Film Institute Catalog
of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, 338.
4 Savada, The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the
United States, 152.
5 Kleine Optical Company Catalog (November 1905): 339.
6 MPW 7.13 (24 September 1910): 701.
7 Deacon, Kempei Tai, 84.
8 Lieut.-Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrapbook during the Russo-
Japanese War (London: Arnold, 1907), quoted in Deacon, Kempei Tai, 53.
9 Deacon, Kempei Tai, 60.
10 “Chinamen as Spies,” Harper’s Weekly 11.2637 (6 July 1907): 995.
11 Hayakawa played spy roles in at least five silent films. Before The Typhoon,
Hayakawa appeared as a Japanese spy in a two-reeler, The Ambassador’s Envoy
(Ince?, 28 May 1914).
12 “The Typhoon,” Milwaukee News, no date available, in SHE.
13 Reel Life 4.11 (30 May 1914): 23.
14 San Diego Union, 24 October 1914: n.p., in Sessue Hayakawa Scrapbook, Hira-
saki National Resource Center, Japanese American National Museum.
15 “Popular Arts Project,” Hayakawa-11.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F ou r   293
 16 The Typhoon was based on a stage drama, Taifun, which was written in 1909
by a Hungarian, Menyhert (or Melchior) Lengyel, and had been successful in
Berlin (1910), Paris (1911), London (1913), and in the United States. The Ber-
lin version appeared at the Irving Place Theater in New York on 4 December
1911, and the American adaptation by Emil Nyitray and Byron Ongley, Typhoon,
opened at the Fulton Theater in New York on 11 March 1912. The latter ran for
ninety-six performances. Gergely, “Hungarian Drama in New York,” 76, 186.
Hayakawa said that he saw the play “20 or 30 times” in Chicago when he was
at the University of Chicago and that he could “remember even the lines.” Ac-
cording to Hayakawa, he performed in Typhoon in theaters in Los Angeles for
a Japanese audience. “Popular Arts Project,” Hayakawa-10. There is no official
record that confirms his appearance in it. Rafu Shimpo reported that Taifun
(Berlin version) was popular at the Court Theater in Los Angeles but did not
mention Hayakawa. Rafu Shimpo 3688 (16 December 1915): 2.
17 Translation by the author.
18 Deacon, Kempei Tai, 55, 79.
19 McConaughy, The Typhoon, 168.
20 Probably, Hayakawa saw Danjuro IX, not Danjuro I.
21 H. C. Carr, “Sessue of the Samurai,” 68.
22 The motif of a Japanese man murdering a white woman was presented in an
earlier short film in which Hayakawa appeared. A Relic of Old Japan (Barker,
11 June 1914) depicts another tragedy of interracial love, and in it the Japanese
man kills a white woman for revenge. MPW 20.11 (13 June 1914): 1600.

5. N o b l e S ava g e a n d Va n i sh i n g R a c e
1 Quoted in Staiger, “Dividing Labor for Production Control,” 22.
2 Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema 1907–1915, 175. According to Gregory S.
Jay, about fifty one-reelers with Native American topics were released in 1909
and between one hundred and two hundred such films in each subsequent year
through 1914. Jay, “ ‘White Man’s Book No Good,’ ” 5–6.
3 Steven Higgins, personal interview, 9 November 2000. Ince’s films, especially
his films under the trademark of Bison Films, were advertised as “the most
spectacular and beautiful re-creations of the Old West yet seen.” MPW 7.15
(8 October 1910): 843.
4 Higgins, personal interview, 9 November 2000.
5 Elliot, “Hollywood’s Yellow Streak,” 76.
6 Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 4–5, 15.
7 Jay, “ ‘White Man’s Book No Good,’ ” 6–7.
8 Jay, “ ‘White Man’s Book No Good,’ ” 7–8.
9 The MPN noted, “Several realistic knife fights are staged which materially
heighten the interest of this tale of Indians.” MPN 10.12 (26 September 1914):
65.
10 MPW 22.13 (26 December 1914): 1842.

294  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i v e
 11 Hearne, “ ‘ The Cross-Heart People,’ ” 181–97.
12 Higgins, personal interview, 9 November 2000.
13 Ince was making three two-reelers a week at the end of 1913. Higgins, “The
Wrath of the Gods,” 1.
14 Reel Life 5.20 (30 January 1915): 16; MPW 23.7 (13 February 1915): 1048.
15 Higgins, personal interview, 9 November 2000. Hayakawa never played a
Native American after 1914. The Indian genre itself was losing its popularity
after 1914.

6. Th e M a k i n g o f a n Am e r i c a n i z e d
J a pa n e s e G e n t l e m a n
1 DeCordova, “The Emergence of the Star System in America,” 28.
2 Field, “A Japanese Idol on the American Screen,” 23.
3 P. McDonald, The Star System, 33.
4 Ross, “Sessue Hayakawa Prefers the Wicked Oriental Roles,” 4.
5 Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, 299. Even Douglas Fairbanks Sr., whose
skin was far darker than that of the conventional leading men of the period,
was using makeup to lighten his skin, in order to embody white Americanness.
Cohen, Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth, 146.
6 Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization,” 34–37.
7 Abramson, “Assimilation and Pluralism,” 150–53.
8 Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization,” 38–39.
9 Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 20.
10 Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization,” 40.
11 Y. Matsumoto, “Amerika jin de arukoto, Amerika jin ni suru koto” [Being
American, making American], 52–75.
12 Winokur, “Improbable Ethnic Hero,” 7.
13 Motography 15.21 (20 May 1916): 1168.
14 Philadelphia Telegraph (16 May 1916): n.p., in SHE.
15 Motography 1521 (20 May 1916): 1168; The Bioscope 516.32 (31 August 1916):
806.
16 Negra, Off-White Hollywood, 13.
17 Motion Picture (October 1916): n.p., in SHE.
18 MPN 13.20 (20 May 1916): 3091.
19 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 139.
20 Variety 43.13 (25 August 1916): 25.
21 MPN 14.4 (29 July 1916): 623.
22 MPN 14.10 (9 September 1916): 1549.
23 In 1917 the Literary Digest published a cartoon that depicts a man named “Japan”
villainously observing a woman named “Europe” who is skiing and in danger of
falling off a cliff. “Japan” has Fu Manchu’s signature appearance, a catfish-like
mustache, in the cartoon. Literary Digest 54.13 (31 March 1917): 803.
24 All of the original scripts of Hayakawa’s films at Lasky used in this book, except

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r S i x   295
 those of The Cheat and Temptation, are at Paramount Script Collection, Center
for Motion Picture Study, Margaret Herrick Library.
25 Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled, 177.
26 Neu, An Uncertain Friendship, 163–80; Nihon Gaimusho, Nihon gaiko bunsho
[Japanese diplomatic documents], Taisho era, vol. 24, 243–334.
27 U.S. Congress, House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Hear-
ings on Japanese Immigration, 66th Congr., 2nd sess. (Washington: 1921): pt. 2,
p. 717, quoted in Ichioka, “Amerika Nadeshiko,” 343; Kato Shinichi, Beikoku nik-
keijin hyakunen shi [Hundred-year history of the Japanese in the U.S.], 16.
28 Nihon Gaimusho, Nihon gaiko bunsho, 1917, vol. 1, 79. See also Masubuchi,
“1910 nendai no hainichi to ‘shashin kekkon’ ” [Anti-Japanese and “picture
bride” in the 1910s], 300.
29 Modell, The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation, 6. In 1910, 719
Japanese babies were born in California, equaling only 2.24 percent of all the
births in the state, but in 1919 the number rose to 4,378, or 7.82 percent. In
the same period, Chinese births accounted for only 0.86 percent in 1910 and
0.77 percent in 1919 and African American births only 0.72 percent in 1910
and 0.46 percent in 1919. E. G. Mears, Resident Orientals on the American Pacific
Coast (1978): 35, quoted in Masubuchi, “1910 nendai no hainichi to ‘shashin
kekkon’ ” [Anti-Japanese and “picture bride” in the 1910s], 303.
30 In 1920, according to the historian Ronald Takaki, the agricultural production
of Japanese farms was valued at $67,000,000, approximately 10 percent of the
total value of California’s crops. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 270.
31 Ichioka, “Amerika Nadeshiko,” 347.
32 Motography 16.11 (9 September 1916): 612.
33 MPW 29.11 (9 September 1916): 1685.
34 “The Japanese Immigrant Appraised,” Nation 101.26 (9 September 1915):
316.
35 Jordan, “Japan and the United States,” 63.
36 “Can We Assimilate the Japanese?” Literary Digest 47.5 (2 August 1913): 166.
37 Griffis, “Our Honor and Shame with Japan,” 569, 571.
38 Tully C. Knoles, “What Is Nationality?” Annual Publications of Historical Society
of Southern California 10 (1917), quoted in Y. Matsumoto, “Amerika jin de aru-
koto, Amerika jin ni suru koto” [Being American, making American], 54.
39 Irwin, Hashimura Togo, Domestic Scientist, 105–12.
40 Irwin, Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy, 352–53, 357–58, 362.
41 Irwin, Hashimura Togo, Domestic Scientist, 158, 161–62.
42 Irwin, Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy, 7. Togo’s inassimilable Japaneseness and
his ignorance of customs in middle-class white American homes, however,
often function as a social criticism of the extreme cult of domesticity in the
genteel tradition. Most housewives who hire Togo are depicted as unreasonable
figures who stick to the cult of domesticity too much. For instance, Mrs. Fill-
ups, who spends “all day long cleaning up,” tells her husband “Don’t” all the
time. “Don’t track snow on rug,” “Don’t leave hat and coat on sofa,” “Don’t lay

296  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r S i x
 cigars on mahogany table,” “Don’t dry your thumbs on clean towels,” “Don’t eat
salad with oyster fork,” “Don’t spill ash on fine velvet furniture,” and so forth.
Togo says to her, “If you would be less careful of his comfort, maybe he would
be more comfortable. Many husbands quit home because it is too beautiful. . . .
Husbands should not be furniture for the home—Home should be furniture
for the Husband.” Mrs. Fillups fires him immediately. Irwin, Mr. Togo, Maid of
All Work, 39–48.
43 MPW 33.8 (25 August 1917): 1152. See also MPN 16.9 (1 September 1917): 1349;
Exhibitor’s Trade Review (ETR) 2.12 (25 August 1917): 885.
44 MPN 16.9 (1 September 1917): 1349.
45 MPN 16.9 (1 September 1917): 1491.
46 MPN 16.9 (1 September 1917): 1459.
47 MPW 33.9 (1 September 1917): 1386.
48 The Bioscope 37.582 (6 December 1917): 32; ETR 2.12 (25 August 1917): 885.
49 Easterfield, “The Japanese Point of View,” 34–35.
50 Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, 176.
51 Albert McLean, American Vaudeville as Ritual, 121–22.

7.  M o r e Am e r i c a n i z e d t h a n
the Mexican
1 Italics original. Williams, Playing the Race Card, xiv, xv; Williams, “Melodrama
Revised,” 58.
2 Williams, Playing the Race Card, xiv, 6, 8, 9, 26.
3 Sklar, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 20.
4 Sklar, The Plastic Age (1917–1930), 3.
5 Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1911),” 37–64.
6 Sklar, “A Leap into the Void,” 45.
7 K. McDonald, Japanese Classical Theater in Films, 72.
8 “Japanese Customs in Motion Pictures,” Paramount Magazine (March 1915): 7.
9 Lears, No Place of Grace, 149.
10 MPW 33.1 (7 July 1917): 78.
11 Psychoanalytically, the Japanese brush could be read as a phallic symbol.
12 Gérard Genette defines focalization as the “angle of vision, from which the
life or the action is looked at.” Genette, Narrative Discourse, 161–211. Shlomith
Rimmon-Kenan expands Genette’s definition of focalization in a “purely visual
sense” to include “cognitive, emotive and ideological orientation,” in addition
to the optical one. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, 71.
13 Griffis, “Our Honor and Shame with Japan,” 574.
14 NYDM 77.2010 (30 June 1917): 30.
15 MPN 16.1 (7 July 1917): 118. Forbidden Paths was not favorably reviewed unani-
mously. Those who wanted Hayakawa to play more villains criticized the film.
Variety noted, “One does not expect to see him in a role that calls for sympa-
thy after the heavies he has been in the habit of playing.” Variety 47.8 (20 July

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r S e v e n   297
 1917): 31. The film obtained only “34%” of “pleased patrons” out of five reports.
Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films 3.38 (20 September 1917): 608.

8.  S y m pat h e t i c V i l l a i n s
and Victim-Heroes
1 These reports continued until Wid’s Daily 5.143 (29 September 1918).
2 Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films 3.5 (1 February 1917): 65.
3 Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films 3.20 (17 May 1917): 306; Wid’s Inde-
pendent Reviews of Feature Films 3.27 (5 July 1917): 427.
4 Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films 2.51 (21 December 1916): 1178.
5 New York Times (15 May 1916): 7.
6 NYDM 76.1976 (4 November 1916): 27.
7 Since the prints of these films are no longer extant, the following discussion on
the films is primarily based on their original scripts.
8 The MPN noted that The Call of the East had a strong similarity to The Cheat. MPN
16.16 (20 October 1917): n.p.
9 MPN 14.19 (11 November 1916): 2909.
10 MPW 34.5 (3 November 1917): 707.
11 No matter how imaginary the overall configuration of the Japanese space, Lasky
tried to make the Japanese sets as authentic as possible. Even though there is no
constructional instruction for the sets of Hakoshima in the original script of The
Call of the East, there is one for a set of a Japanese store in the original script of The
Bravest Way (George H. Melford, 16 June 1918). The instruction is practical, and
its intention to make the set as realistically Japanese looking as possible is clear.
The instruction suggests following the furnishings of actual Japanese stores:
“Small Japanese store, catering to Japs only—selling candy, tea, notions, ‘kalu‑
lus’ (rice cakes) put up in round cartons, ‘Most Dainty’ wafers, manufactured by
‘Ojama & Co. Tokyo,’ Jap books with Jap title—candy featured, candy images of
fish, balls on vines, etc.—original parcel of tea and matches—Jap ads. Formed
of small beans of rice. (See stores of Mikaway, 365 E. 1st St.; Ishimitsu, 336 E. 1st
St.; Hattori & Co., 123 North San Pedro St.; Matsunoya, 129 N. San Pedro.)”
12 MPN 16.18 (3 November 1917): 2992.
13 MPW 34.5 (3 November 1917): 707.
14 Hubler, “Honorable ‘Bad Guy,’ ” 148.
15 In The Honor of His House, Count Ito Onato (Hayakawa), a famed Japanese sci-
entist, attracts white women with his refined appearance. After marrying a half-
Japanese, half-white heroine, Onato begins to show his inassimilable aspect of
Japaneseness. Out of jealousy, Onato poisons his wife. Eventually, his murder-
ous thought is offset by his repentant and self-sacrificial act. Onato transplants
his blood to his wife. After Onato’s death, the heroine gives birth to Onato’s son
and marries an American man. The American husband, who has been intro-
duced in the film as a drunken racist, learns to become an appropriate Ameri-
can father, being moved by Onato’s self-sacrificial act.

298  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r E i gh t
 16 Holmes, “The Hollywood Star System and the Regulations of Actors’ Labour,
1916–1934,” 98.
17 The Honor of His House, The Bravest Way, and The City of Dim Faces use the de-
vice of mixed blood in order to unite Hayakawa’s character with white-looking
women without causing serious fear of miscegenation.
18 In 1922 an article in Photoplay stated, “Will Pola [Negri] escape the standardiza-
tion process?” Howe, “The Real Pola Negri,” 19.
19 MPN 17.24 (15 June 1918): 3599.
20 Variety 51.2 (7 June 1918): 32.
21 MPW 36.12 (15 June 1918): 1615; ETR 4.2 (17 May 1918): 126.
22 Easterfield, “The Japanese Point of View,” 34–35.

9.  S e l f - S a c r i f i c e i n t h e
F i r s t W o r l d Wa r
1 Nation 105.2733 (15 November 1917): 528.
2 Outlook 117 (10 October 1917): 200.
3 What the United States wanted to prevent was a German-Japanese alliance.
Germany would have only to abandon its relatively minor ambitions in the Far
East and to give Japan a free hand there; then Japan would support Germany’s
expansion in Latin America in return. There was an incident known as “the
Zimmermann telegram of 1917,” which became one reason for the U.S. entry
into World War I in April 1917. The German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmer-
mann, suggested an alliance between Germany, Mexico, and Japan in order to
deflect the attention of the United States southward and westward and to pre-
vent a U.S. military commitment in Europe. Part of the German plot involved a
Japanese invasion of the United States via Mexico. “Germany Flirting with the
Orient,” Literary Digest 54.12 (24 March 1917): 808. See also, Mehnert, “Ger-
man Weltpolitik and the American Two-Front Dilemma,” 1476.
4 MPW 36.7 (11 May 1918): 898.
5 The credit published in MPW still noted Hayakawa as “Tori (one of Long Island’s
Smart Set).” MPW 38.9 (30 November 1918): 990.
6 Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 5.4 (April 1919): 65.
7 Easterfield, “The Japanese Point of View,” 119.
8 “Sessue Hayakawa as Mediator,” Los Angeles Times (30 May 1917): II3.
9 Variety 49.2 (7 December 1917): 50.
10 ETR 2.22 (3 November 1917): 1753.
11 MPW 34.11 (15 December 1917): 1643.
12 The emphasis is original in the intertitles.
13 Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films 3.49 (6 December 1917): 775.
14 Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films 3.49 (6 December 1917): 775.
15 There is an African American janitor in this film. Nara-Nara, in a three-piece
suit, treats him as a lower-class character. When Nara-Nara gives him a tip, the
janitor smiles ridiculously, showing his white teeth, and bows to Nara-Nara over

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r N in e   299
 and over again. A racial hierarchy is observable between the Japanese spy and
the African American janitor. This racial and class hierarchy positions Haya‑
kawa’s character as “whiter” and more Americanized than the African Ameri-
can character.
16 “Exhibitors’ Box Office Reports,” MPN 17.3 (19 January 1918): 395.

10. Th e C o sm o p o l i ta n Way o f L i f e
1 DeCordova, Picture Personalities, 12; Studlar, “The Perils of Pleasure?” 264;
Lounsbury, Origins of American Film Criticism, 1909–1939, xvi.
2 P. McDonald, The Star System, 32; deCordova, Picture Personalities, 28.
3 Two million copies of Photoplay circulated nationally by 1922. Slide, The Idols of
Silence, 109.
4 Kingsley, “That Splash of Saffron,” 139–41. “Shoki” does not mean “destruc-
tion,” but it is a name in Japanese myths.
5 For example, see MPN 13.4 (29 January 1916): 44; New York Times (6 February
1916): 18; Los Angeles Times (19 August 1917): III-3.
6 EH 3.10 (2 September 1916): 25, emphasis by the author. Even in the late 1920s,
when Hayakawa appeared in several stage plays, this fictional biography of
Hayakawa playing Shakespeare, and so forth, was used to enhance the authen-
ticity of his stage appearances in the United States and in Europe. See, for in-
stance, “Former Japanese Film Star Credited with Introduction of Shakespeare
to Orient,” Los Angeles Times (19 December 1926): C27; “Hayakawa on Bill in
Stage Play,” Los Angeles Times (16 January 1927): C13.
7 Kingsley’s emphasis on Hayakawa’s Americanized star image set the tone
of future articles on Hayakawa in magazines and newspapers. See “Japanese
Stars Like Americans,” Toledo Times (13 August 1916): n.p., in SHE ; “Mixture of
Nations,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (19 August 1916): n.p., in SHE ; “Japanese Actor
and Bride Have California Bungalow,” Brooklyn Eagle (29 April 1917): n.p., in
SHE ; “Mr. and Mrs. Hayakawa and Their New Shoji,” Photoplay (November
1917): n.p., in SHS : 153–54.
8 Kingsley, “That Splash of Saffron,” 140. Even before Kingsley’s article was pub-
lished, the New York Times reported, “Hayakawa has discovered that in speaking
Japanese he cannot get the proper facial expression, so even in his Japanese
company he speaks broken English in dramatic scenes.” New York Times (6 Feb-
ruary 1916): 18. Most Japanese people learn English, but only a limited number
of them have full command of it even now.
9 Gaddis, “The Romance of Nippon Land,” 18–20.
10 Reed, “The Tradition Wreckers,” 62–65.
11 Madame Butterfly became widely popular among middle-class Americans after
January 1898, when a Japanophile lawyer named John Luther Long published
the novella, based on the French writer Pierre Loti’s 1887 novella Madame
Chrysanthème, in the Century magazine. The renowned dramatist David Belasco
adapted Long’s story as a single-set one-act stage production, which opened at

300  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T e n
 the Herald Square Theater in New York in March 1900. Then, this American
version of Japonisme was re-imported to Europe. Giacomo Puccini created his
opera version, Madama Butterfly, in 1904. This opera made the hardly origi-
nal story of a victimized Japanese woman the most popular one among other
similar works. It was first performed in the United States in 1906 in Washing-
ton, D.C. At New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, Madama Butterfly, with
Geraldine Farrar as Cio-Cio-San, was performed 106 times in sixteen seasons
after 1906. The Savage English Grand Opera Company took Madama Butterfly
on a national tour in 1907–8. This Madama Butterfly tour was the most com-
prehensive, for one opera, of any in the history of American touring up to that
time. As a result, Madama Butterfly had become one of the most popular operas
and one of the most popular narratives about Japan in the United States by the
mid-1910s. Dizikes, Opera in America, 317. Madame Butterfly, a story between a
U.S. naval officer named Pinkerton and a Japanese geisha named Cio-Cio-San,
not only depicts Japan as a premodern space but also functions as an archetypal
morality tale between West and East, civilized and primitive, masculine and
feminine, and good and evil. Cio-Cio-San, who is faithful to her husband and
gives birth to a child, is an ideal embodiment of the latter. Madame Butterfly pro-
vided a basic narrative structure for many films with Japanese subjects. Haya-
kawa and Aoki had appeared in short films with the Madame Butterfly narrative,
including The Geisha (10 April 1914), even though the one who commits suicide
is not the Japanese woman (Aoki) but the American man when he realizes his
mistake in marrying “outside of his race.” MPN 9.14 (11 April 1914): 50.
12 According to Yukio Hayakawa, Hayakawa’s son, Aoki made her debut in Holly-
wood in 1912 in a film directed by George Osbourne, in which she portrayed a
Native American. Hayakawa, “Tsuru Aoki,” 3.
13 Variety 33.2 (12 December 1913): 12.
14 “Japanese Actress in This Film,” Variety 34.10 (8 May 1914): 19.
15 Reel Life 3.21 (7 February 1914); Reel Life 4.14 (20 June 1914).
16 Reel Life 3.7 (1 November 1913).
17 MPW 19.6 (7 February 1914): 701; MPN 9.5 (7 February 1914): 5.
18 “Miss Tsura Aoki, Japanese Actress,” MPW 19.7 (14 February 1914): 825.
19 MPN 9.18 (9 May 1914): 48.
20 “Tsuru Aoki,” Reel Life 4.7 (2 May 1914): 21.
21 “How to Hold a Husband: Mr. and Mrs. Hayakawa, in an Oriental Lesson in
Four Chapters,” Photoplay (November 1918): n.p., in SHS : 165.
22 Reed, “The Tradition Wreckers,” 65.
23 Ibid.; Gaddis, “The Romance of Nippon Land,” 20.
24 Bourne, The Radical Will, 248, 256, 258.
25 “Sessue Hayakawa: Japanese Film Star Decided to Become a Great Actor Even
as a Boy,” Los Angeles Times (2 December 1917): III-15.
26 DeCordova, Picture Personalities, 22.
27 NYDM 75.1951 (13 May 1916): 29.
28 Field, “A Japanese Idol on the American Screen,” 22–25, 72–73.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T e n  301
 29 Field, “A Japanese Idol on the American Screen,” 72–73.
30 “Hayakawa, Japanese Screen Star,” 70.
31 Exactly the same quote is in Easterfield, “The Japanese Point of View,” 34–35;
and in “His Best Work Is Seen in Repression,” San Antonio Light (4 November
1917): n.p., in SHE.
32 “Is the Higher Art of the Movies to Come from Japan?” 30–31.
33 Harootunian, “Introduction,” 17.
34 Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, 273.
35 Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun (20 May 1917), in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi,
1917, vol. 1, 736.
36 “Katsudo shashin to shumi no kojo (Jou)” [Motion picture and the improve-
ment of taste (1)], Katsudo Shashin Kai 4 (January 1910): 2–3.
37 Gonda, “Minshu goraku mondai” [Issues of mass entertainment] (1921), Gonda
Yasunosuke Chosaku shu dai 1 kan, 69–70.
38 Gerow, “Writing a Pure Cinema,” 203.
39 “Sokan ni nozomite,” Katsudo no Sekai 1.1 (January 1916): 2–3.
40 Kamata, “Zento tabo naru katsudo shashin kai” [Promising motion picture
world], 96–99.
41 Quoted in Gerow, “Writing a Pure Cinema,” 170.
42 Numata, “Posuta no machi ni tachite” [Standing in a city filled with posters],
112–15.
43 Yorozu Choho (25 May 1917), in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi, 1917, vol. 1,
764. There was an argument that dramas played by Japanese people were more
influential on Japanese audiences than dramas played by foreigners. As a re-
sult, Hayakawa’s films were censored more strictly than any other foreign
films. Rafu Shimpo 5401 (8 March 1921): 3. It was also reported that Haya‑
kawa’s films drew close attention by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department
because Hayakawa once criticized Japanese censorship, saying “the Japanese
people who censor motion pictures are all idiots without any knowledge about
them, and films should not be censored by such people.” Tokyo Asahi Shinbun
(4 February 1921), in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi 1921, vol. 1, 342–43.
44 Makino, Nihon eiga kenetsu shi [History of motion picture censorship in Japan],
78–80.
45 The National Board noted more specifically in 1916, “No comedy which in
effect holds up to ridicule any religious sect, religion generally, or the popular
characteristics of any race of people should be shown.” The National Board of
Review of Motion Pictures, The Standards and Policy of the National Board of
Review of Motion Pictures, 8, 14.
46 The National Board stated more specifically in 1916, “Marital infidelity, degen-
eracy, and sex irregularities are notable examples. . . . [The National Board]
should not and will not pass any pictures containing incidentally or extensively the
female nude, dating from January 1, 1917,” italics original. The National Board
of Review of Motion Pictures, The Standards and Policy of the National Board of
Review of Motion Pictures, 8, 17.

302  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T e n
 47 The National Board also noted in 1916, “Arson is a difficult crime to present in
photoplays in such a manner that the suggestion be not a menace to the pub-
lic.” The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, The Standards and Policy
of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, 10–11.
48 The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, Report Regarding Pictures Re-
viewed and a Financial Statement, New York, 1 January 1917, quoted in Feldman,
The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures, 1909–1922, 122.
49 “National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Records, 1906–1971,” Box 140:
Publicity Articles 1916–17, the New York Public Library.
50 “National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Records, 1906–1971,” Box 84:
Foreign Correspondence Japan, the New York Public Library.
51 The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, The Standards and Policy of
the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, 5; Barrett, “The Work of the Na-
tional Board of Review,” 178.
52 Feldman, The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures, 1909–
1922, 5–6, 211–12.
53 Jowett, Film, 127–29.
54 “National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Records, 1906–1971,” Box 9:
Correspondence with Film Companies, Paramount Pictures, 1914–22, the New
York Public Library. The National Board also chose Hayakawa’s 1921 vehicle,
The First Born (Colin Campbell, 30 January 1921), a love story set in San Fran-
cisco’s Chinatown, as one of the “Exceptional Photoplays during 1921.” “Na-
tional Board of Review of Motion Pictures Records, 1906–1971,” Box 140: Press
Releases 1921–34, the New York Public Library.

11.  B a l a n c i n g J a pa n e s e n e ss a n d
Am e r i c a n i z at i o n
1 The financial background of the establishment of Haworth Pictures Corpora-
tion is not clear. According to Hayakawa’s autobiography, William Connery,
Hayakawa’s college friend, introduced Hayakawa to the president of A. B. C.
Dohrman, a china and glassware company in San Francisco, who was willing
to pay one million dollars to establish Hayakawa’s own company. Also, a new
distribution company, Robertson-Cole, was planning to distribute films of in-
dependent productions. Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 141–42.
Hayakawa also said that Connery himself was “the son of a multimillionaire
here, owns the coal mine,” and his parents provided the one million dollars.
“Popular Arts Project,” Hayakawa, 27.
2 Kingsley, “That Splash of Saffron,” 139.
3 Higham, Cecil B. DeMille, 45.
4 Cleveland Daily, 12 May 1916: n.p., in SHE.
5 Rafu Shimpo 3699 (29 December 1915): 3.
6 Rafu Shimpo 3970 (16 July 1916): 3.
7 Already in December 1915 the Rafu Shimpo reported that Hayakawa had tried

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r E l e v e n  303
 to introduce kyugeki, a period stage drama influenced by kabuki, to film pro-
ducers. Rafu Shimpo 3683 (10 December 1915): 3.
8 Picture-Play (January 1917): n.p., in SHE.
9 MPN 14.15 (14 October 1916): 2359; “Foreign Film World,” Kinema Record 42 (10
December 1916): 556. According to a report in the EH, a “wealthy Japanese of
Los Angeles presented Hayakawa with a theater where he appears from time to
time.” EH 3.10 (2 September 1916): 25.
10 Rafu Shimpo 4203 (19 April 1917): 3.
11 St. Louis Democrat (11 December 1917): n.p., in SHE ; Aoyama, Hariuddo eiga
okoku no kaibo, 281–82; Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 3.3 (March 1917): 59. As early
as 2 December 1914, the Japanese Photoplayers’ Club had been organized and
headed by Hayakawa. Nanka nikkeijin shogyo kaigi sho, Nanka shu nihonnjin
shi, 291.
12 Yoneyama, “Rafu Nihonjin kai kiroku” [Record of Rafu Nihonjin kai], n.p.; “Senji
kibun no beikoku kinema kai” [U.S. cinema world in a war mood], Katsudo no
Sekai 3.11 (November 1918): 66–67.
13 Hayakawa also invited many famous Japanese people who visited Los Angeles,
including Dr. Nitobe Inazo and the opera singer Miura Tamaki, to his house “to
recover his reputation.” Miyako Shinbun 12322 (22 April 1922): 10.
14 “Haworth Pictures Signs Hayakawa,” MPW 35.10 (16 March 1918): 1497; “Haya-
kawa Names First Two Productions,” MPW 36.15 (6 July 1918): 76; Aoyama,
“Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako yori (12)” [From the capital of the Ameri-
can motion picture], 35.
15 “Popular Arts Project,” Hayakawa-28–29; Aokusasho, “Kamome tobu Korea-
maru no kanpan de” [On the deck of the Korea where seagulls fly], 50.
16 Aoyama, “Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako yori (12),” 35.
17 “Hayakawa Names First Two Productions,” MPW 36.15 (6 July 1918): 76.
18 “Kamome tobu Korea-maru no kanpan de” [On the deck of the Korea where
seagulls fly], 51.
19 Watkins, “Sessue Hayakawa Today,” 391.
20 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 138–39, 143.
21 MPN 17.14 (6 April 1918): 2061.
22 Katsudo Gaho 3.1 (January 1919): 14.
23 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 143. William Worthington studied
stage technique with an opera company in Germany.
24 Bowser and Spence, Writing Himself into History, xix.
25 “How Sessue Hayakawa Leaned to Smile,” Photoplay Journal (June 1919): n.p.,
in SHS : 176.
26 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 105.
27 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 45.
28 The idea of “trans-position” is borrowed from Ota, Toransupojishon no shiso
[Thoughts of trans-position].
29 Barbas, “The Political Spectator,” 217–30.
30 Parker and Sedgwick, Performativity and Performance, 2.

304  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r E l e v e n
 31 Butler, Gender Trouble, 146–47.
32 Regarding this twisted, contradictory relationship between mimicry and au-
thority, see Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 85–92.
33 Japanese people in the United States and in Japan certainly had different
thoughts on their national identities. The former had to balance themselves
between assimilation to the United States and association with Japan. Some
people in Japan criticized Japanese immigrants who stuck to their Japanese
customs and did not adapt to the new environments. Yanaihara, “Jinko mondai
to imin” [Problems of population and immigration], 75–112.
34 MPW 35.9 (9 March 1918): 1332.
35 MPW 35.10 (16 March 1918): 1467.
36 MPW 36.8 (18 May 1918): 960.
37 Handy, “Kipling Was Wrong!” 51, 124.
38 Katsudo no Sekai [Active world, or Motion picture world] 3.6 (June 1918): 168.
39 The print of His Birthright has been preserved by Nederlands Filmmuseum.
40 MPW 37.8 (24 August 1918): 1153.
41 Kinema Junpo 51 (21 December 1920): 7. See also Koda, Sesshu, 65.
42 ETR 4.19 (12 October 1918): 1615.
43 MPW 38.2 (12 October 1918): 254. Exactly the same sentences are found in EH
7.16 (12 October 1918): 54.
44 Authentic Japanese atmosphere was emphasized in the following films at
Haworth. According to the reviews in trade journals, the opening scenes of
The Temple of Dusk are set in Japan. MPN 18.14 (5 October 1918): 2259. Variety
noted about Bonds of Honor (Worthington, 19 January 1919), “The locale is laid
in Japan, and picturesque scenery from that country has been reproduced.”
Variety 53.11 (7 February 1919): 53. A one-page ad of A Heart in Pawn (Wor-
thington, 10 March 1919) in MPW displays a photo, cropped in the shape of a
Japanese shrine, in which Hayakawa and Aoki, both in appropriate Japanese
kimono, look at each other under cherry blossoms. MPW 39.13 (22 March 1919):
1596. According to Japanese film magazines, A Heart in Pawn was a screen ver-
sion of Nakamura Shunu’s Ichijiku [A fig] and Hayakawa appeared in the stage
version of it (“Shadows”) before. Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 4.12 (December 1918):
42–43; “Kamome tobu Korea-maru no kanpan de” [On the deck of the Korea
where seagulls fly], Katsudo Gaho 4.6 (June 1920): 50.
45 Variety 52.4 (20 September 1918): 45.
46 Aoyama, “Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako yori (13)” [From the capital of the
American motion picture], 59, 63.
47 MPW 37.8 (14 September 1918): 1612.
48 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 33.
49 Quoted in Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 34.
50 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 34.
51 ETR 4.12 (24 August 1918): 1006.
52 “Hayakawa Holds Samurai Sword of His Ancestors,” ETR 4.12 (24 August 1918):
1004.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r E l e v e n  305
 53 ETR 4.12 (24 August 1918): 1018.
54 MPW 38.3 (19 October 1918): 340–41.
55 “Screen Players in Loan Drive,” MPW 36.7 (18 May 1918): 985; “Hayakawa Makes
Film for Next Loan Drive in Thirty-six Hours,” EH 7.11 (7 September 1918): 39.
56 Popular Art (April 1918): n.p., in SHE ; “Sesshu naito seiko” [Sessue night suc-
cessful], Rafu Shimpo 4823 (26 April 1919): 3.
57 NYDM 79.2076 (5 October 1918): 519.
58 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 176.

12. R e t u r n o f t h e Am e r i c a n i z e d
O r i e n ta l s
1 Slide, The American Film Industry, 291–92; Fernett, American Film Studios, 193;
Beauchamp, Without Lying Down, 157.
2 “Robertson-Cole Buying Productions on Merit,” MPW 38.13 (28 December
1918): 1546.
3 “Robertson-Cole Company Gets Close to Exhibitor,” MPW 39.5 (1 February
1919): 612.
4 EH 9.18 (25 October 1919): 57. Robertson-Cole not only developed rapidly in the
domestic market but also expanded to “every civilized country in the world.”
“Robertson-Cole Sells Universally,” MPW 41.5 (2 August 1919): 693. In Japan,
the Nippon Katsudo Shashin Company (Nikkatsu) obtained the rights to dis-
tribute Robertson-Cole films after 1918. After that time, Hayakawa’s films were
released regularly in Japan.
5 “Robertson-Cole Films in Big Houses,” MPW 40.7 (17 May 1919): 1036.
6 I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 35.
7 “Robertson-Cole Units Start Big Production Drive,” MPW 40.6 (10 May 1919):
927.
8 MPW 41.1 (5 July 1919): 118. According to AFI Catalog, Exhibitors Mutual dis-
tributed Hayakawa’s films produced at Haworth until The Tong Man (Worthing-
ton, 14 December 1919). Hanson and Gevinson, The American Film Institute
Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, 55, 940. Robertson-Cole
attempted to cancel its contract with Mutual in July 1919, but the U.S. District
Court decided against the cancellation, and Robertson-Cole had to continue
its cooperation with Mutual until The Tong Man. “Robertson-Cole and Mutual
Agree,” MPW 41.6 (9 August 1919): 789.
9 MPN 18.13 (28 September 1918): 1946–47; MPW 41.9 (30 August 1919): 1234.
10 MPW 41.12 (20 September 1919): 1963; “In a Class by Himself Hayakawa,” EH
9.13 (20 September 1919): 41.
11 “Superior Pictures Show Hayakawa: Robertson-Cole Will Present Japanese Star
Solely in Series of Exacting Standards by Way of Production,” MPW 41.11 (13
September 1919): 1660.
12 “Robertson-Cole to Add Three Stars,” EH 9.12 (13 September 1919): 54.
13 Robertson-Cole published these press books at least for Li Ting Lang (Charles

306  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T w e l v e
 Swickard, July 1920) and An Arabian Knight (Swickard, 22 August 1920).
“Robertson-Cole Prepares Elaborate Press Book on Sessue Hayakawa’s ‘Li Ting
Lang,’ ” MPW 45.3 (17 July 1920): 364; “Robertson-Cole Issues Elaborate and
Helpful Press Book on Hayakawa Film,” MPW 45.7 (14 August 1920): 928.
14 EH 8.26 (21 June 1919): 7–8; MPN 40.11 (14 June 1919): 3916.
15 MPW 42.7 (6 December 1919): 652.
16 “ ‘ The Courageous Coward’ Goes Big in Washington,” MPW 40.4 (26 April 1919):
559.
17 Wid’s Daily 5.128 (15 September 1918): 23.
18 MPN 19.17 (26 April 1919): 2711.
19 McKelvie, “Playing with Fire in Hawaii,” 14, 46.
20 Wid’s Daily 7.19 (26 January 1919): 23.
21 Photoplay Journal (July 1919): n.p., in SHE.
22 Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, 261.
23 MPW 38.3 (19 October 1918): 452.
24 Rafu Shimpo 4655 (6 October 1918): 2. Hayakawa liked The Temple of Dusk very
much. In 1957, when he was nominated for an Academy Award as best support-
ing actor in The Bridge on the River Kwai, he said in an interview, “I should very
much like . . . to do a new version of the picture which was my first for my own
company in 1919, after I had finished a Paramount contract. It is called ‘The
Temple of Dusk.’ ” Thirer, “Sessue Hayakawa—Then and Now,” n.p.
25 EH 7.15 (5 October 1918): 36.
26 In The Courageous Coward, Suki (Hayakawa), a young Japanese American law
student, succeeds in American sports. His girlfriend Rei decides to convert
herself into an up-to-date American girl to please Suki. Suki, who still worships
the customs of his country, is disappointed in Rei’s change and in her being
escorted by Tom Kirby, the son of a rich politician. Later, Tom kills one of the
servants who works in his father’s gambling house. Suki, now a district attor-
ney, finds himself confronted with the confession of Tom while he is prose-
cuting the wrong man. To keep Tom’s secret for Rei’s sake and not to execute
the wrong man, Suki allows himself to be displaced as district attorney and
branded a coward. Finally, Tom makes a confession in public, and Suki is saved
from his bad name.
27 MPW 40.9 (31 May 1919): 1391. In His Debt, Hayakawa plays Goro Moriyama,
a young Japanese gambling house owner in an American city. Moriyama gives
poor people the money that is collected from the rich. Whitcomb, a drunk
American, shoots Moriyama in rage because he has lost all of his money. Whit-
comb’s girlfriend is a nurse and takes care of Moriyama without knowing what
has happened. Moriyama falls in love with her. When Moriyama avenges him-
self on Whitcomb by giving him up to the police, the girl pleads to Moriyama.
He gives up his vengeful thought and his love for her.
28 MPW 41.6 (16 August 1919): 1019. In The Gray Horizon, Hayakawa plays Yano
Masata, a young Japanese artist in the United States. An art expert praises
Yano’s paintings and asks him to tint some bonds, which are counterfeits.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T w e l v e   307
 Yano’s sister arrives from Japan and recognizes the counterfeiter as her faithless
American husband. Yano’s sister is shot dead during the fight between Yano
and the counterfeiter. Yano kills the counterfeiter. Later, Yano falls in love with
a woman who was kind to his sister. When she asks him to paint a portrait of
her late husband, he realizes that she was the counterfeiter’s wife. She does not
know that her husband was a criminal. Rather than destroying her memory of
her husband, Yano burns all the evidence of the man’s crimes and leaves her.
29 Miyake, “Insho eiga tanpyo” [Short impressions on films], 161.
30 EH 8.5 (25 January 1919): 14. The New York Times chose Bonds of Honor as one of
“The Year’s Best,” New York Times (11 January 1920): VIII-3.
31 EH 9.4 (19 July 1919): 13; MPW 41.4 (26 July 1919): 463.
32 Wid’s Daily 9.12 (13 July 1919): 5; MPW 41.1 (5 July 1919): 391. In The Man Be-
neath, Hayakawa plays Dr. Chindi Ashutor, a young Hindu scientist. Ashutor
loves a white woman. He tries to prove his love by rescuing her sister’s fiancé
from gangsters, but she refuses his love because of their racial differences. It
is a story of “the tragic situation created by a race barrier blocking the gates
of love.” Margaret I. MacDonald, review of The Man Beneath, MPW 41.1 (5 July
1919): 111.
33 MPN 21.22 (22 May 1920): 4404.
34 George T. Pardy, review of The Man Beneath, ETR 7.9 (31 January 1920): 905.
35 The only exception was Black Roses (Colin Campbell, 22 May 1921).
36 Photoplay 9.5 (April 1916): n.p., in SHE.
37 MPN 21.22 (22 May 1920): 4404.
38 EH 9.18 (25 October 1919): 57–58.
39 “Robertson-Cole Celebrates Its First Birthday; Resume of Year’s Activities,”
MPW 42.7 (13 December 1919): 818.
40 MPW 43.5 (31 January 1920): 770.
41 Current Biography, 195.
42 MPW 41.13 (27 September 1919): 1943.
43 EH 9.15 (4 October 1919): 33–34.
44 Margaret I. MacDonald, review of The Dragon Painter, MPW 42.1 (4 October
1919): 161.
45 “ ‘ The Dragon Painter’ Is a New Hayakawa Picture,” MPW 41.13 (27 September
1919): 1975.
46 Kinema Junpo 59 (1 April 1922): 12.
47 Fenollosa, The Dragon Painter.
48 The name of Fenollosa’s son was also Kano.
49 Katsudo Kurabu 5.5 (May 1922): 61, 125. The Japanese critic Kasumi Ura Jin
claims that the passionate embrace between a husband and a wife and their
kissing in a public space in The Dragon Painter follow American customs be-
cause they are not usually seen in Japan. Kasumi Ura Jin, Hayakawa Sesshu,
208.
50 Kasumi Ura Jin, Hayakawa Sesshu, 208.

308  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T w e l v e
 51 This motif of a dream maiden was used in Death Mask.
52 EH 9.17 (18 October 1919): 62.
53 EH 9.18 (25 October 1919): 57–58.
54 Helen Rockwell, review of The Dragon Painter, ETR 6.18 (4 October 1919):
1585.
55 New York Times (11 January 1920): VIII-3. The only negative review of The Dragon
Painter was not about the film itself; the reviewer simply wanted Hayakawa to
play another villainous role. A reviewer in Wid’s Daily wrote, “It seems a pity
that they don’t put Hayakawa into some big vital drama where he can play the
heavy. His one great success was ‘The Cheat.’ He is a very capable actor and
with the right opportunity could undoubtedly score a bigger success as a heavy
than he ever has in a sympathetic character.” Wid’s Daily 10.12 (12 October
1919): 3.
56 ETR 7.3 (20 December 1919): 275.
57 MPW 44.12 (19 June 1920): 1622.
58 Taguchi, “Nanjino yatoinin wa dareka” [Who’s your servant?], 51.
59 The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures also “requested a change” in
The Tong Man, according to the letter from the executive secretary to Robertson-
Cole dated 28 October 1920, but Robertson-Cole carried out no change in the
film. “National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Records, 1906–1971,” Box
11: Correspondence with Film Companies—Robertson-Cole Distributing Cor-
poration, the New York Public Library.
60 Gong, “Zen and the Art of Motion Picture Making,” 14.
61 EH 10.2 (10 January 1920): 62.
62 Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (17 December 1887): 296. Leslie’s Illustrated News-
paper often published anti-Chinese cartoons, too. See Choy, Dong, and Hom,
The Coming Man.
63 MPW 42.9 (20 December 1919): 1009.
64 Tom Hamlin, review of The Tong Man, MPN 20.26 (20 December 1919): 4533.
65 Kepley, “Griffith’s Broken Blossoms and the Problem of Historical Specificity,”
40–41.
66 For an example of the kidnap narrative, see Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (19 May
1883): 204.
67 “Sesshu wo miru ki” [Record of watching Sessue], Rafu Shimpo 4782 (11 March
1919): 2.
68 Epstein, Écrits sur le Cinéma 1921–1953, 143, translation by Brian Price.
69 In order for Hayakawa to edit the film by himself, a “special projection ma-
chine, such as was used during the war in military and naval hospitals for the
benefit of service men, was placed in Mr. Hayakawa’s room.” NYDM 83.2216
(4 June 1921): 978. It was reported later that The Swamp was written, or co-
written, by Jack Abe, another Japanese man working with Hayakawa. Tamura,
“Chikagoro no watashi” [About me recently], 81.
70 K. Hayakawa, “Sesshu zatsuwa” [Hayakawa talks], 8.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T w e l v e  309
 71 MPW 45.8 (21 August 1920): 968.
72 Lant, “The Curse of the Pharaoh, or How Cinema Contracted Egyptomania,”
98.
73 Richard White, “Sun, Sand and Syphilis: Australian Soldiers and the Orient,
Egypt 1914,” Australian Cultural History 9 (1990): 50, quoted in Lant, “The
Curse of the Pharaoh, or How Cinema Contracted Egyptomania,” 98.
74 MPW 45.8 (21 August 1920): 968.
75 Hayakawa displayed his chivalrous actions in his other star vehicle, Li Ting
Lang. In Li Ting Lang, a Chinese student (Hayakawa) who falls in love with an
American woman protects her from rebellious Chinese groups, especially in a
climactic fighting scene on a dark staircase in a Chinese temple ornamented
with shoji screens and paper lanterns.
76 Studlar, “ ‘Out-Salomeing Salome,’ ” 103.
77 MPW 43.13 (27 March 1920): 2058.
78 Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 277, 282.
79 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 92.
80 Studlar, “The Perils of Pleasure?” 288–89.
81 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 101.
82 Kern, The Culture of Love, 101.
83 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 115.
84 Hansen, “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification,” 12.

13. Th e M a s k
1 Geraghty, “Re-examining Stardom,” 190–91.
2 Hansen, “The Mass Production of the Senses,” 64.
3 “Actors and Stars,” New York Times (25 April 1920), n.p., in G. Brown, New York
Times Encyclopedia of Film 1896–1928, n.p.
4 “Is the Higher Art of the Movies to Come from Japan?” 30–31.
5 Brewster and Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema; Keil, Early American Cinema in Transi-
tion; Pearson, Eloquent Gestures; Staiger, “The Eyes Are Really the Focus,” 14–
23.
6 Blum, American Film Acting, 8.
7 Brewster and Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema, 88.
8 Pearson, Eloquent Gestures, 8.
9 Pearson, Eloquent Gestures, 15–16.
10 Staiger, “The Eyes Are Really the Focus,” 20; Louis Reeves Harrison, “Eyes and
Lips,” MPW 8.67 (18 February 1911): 348–49.
11 Pearson, “ ‘O’er Step Not the Modesty of Nature,’ ” 9, 21.
12 NYDM (3 December 1913): 36.
13 Pearson, Eloquent Gestures, 5. In 1919, a Japanese film journal, Katsudo Hyoron,
published an essay by Kasamori Sennosuke, in which he examined in detail
the facial expressions of the actress Vivian Martin, who had appeared in films

310  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n
 with Hayakawa. Kasamori attached ten close-up photographs of Martin in his
article and labeled them “joy,” “contemplation,” “hesitation,” “understanding,”
“ridicule,” “fear,” “anxiety,” and so forth, and explained how clearly the skilled
motion picture actors in Hollywood could represent “the motion of emotion” in
their facial expressions. Kasamori, “Hyojo no suii” [Transition of facial expres-
sions], 34–35.
14 Pearson, “ ‘O’er Step Not the Modesty of Nature,’ ” 9, 21–22.
15 Brewster and Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema, 81.
16 Yoshiyuki, “Sekai ni kakeru Nihon no hashi” [The Japanese bridge over the
world], 48.
17 Field, “A Japanese Idol on the American Screen,” 22–25, 72–73.
18 Noguchi, “Sekai no heiwa to waga katsudo gyosha no susumubeki michi”
[World peace and the way that our motion picture industry should take], 46.
19 Field, “A Japanese Idol on the American Screen,” 72.
20 K. McDonald, Japanese Classical Theater in Films, 43.
21 Ihara Toshiro, Ichikawa Danjuro, quoted in Imao, Kabuki no rekishi [History of
kabuki], 165–66. The haragei technique was “the acting style that denies styl-
ized movement or words and attempts to express human emotions or psycho-
logical development in silence, only by static facial expressions and eyes.” Imao,
Kabuki no rekishi, 166.
22 “Hayakawa, Japanese Screen Star,” 70.
23 The same quote was used in Easterfield, “The Japanese Point of View,” 34.
24 Doane, “The Close-Up,” 98.
25 Photoplay 9.4 (March 1916): n.p., in SHE.
26 Epstein, “Grossissement,” 235–41.
27 The emphasis is in the original.
28 Staiger, “The Eyes Are Really the Focus,” 15, 20.
29 Card, Seductive Cinema, 222.
30 Benjamin, “A Short History of Photography,” 240–57; Benjamin, “The Work
of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 235–37. See also Hansen, “The
Mass Production of the Senses,” 70–71.
31 Kracauer, Theory of Film, 71–72.
32 Cavell, “What Photography Calls Thinking,” 14.
33 “Feature Films as Wid Sees Them,” Wid’s Films and Film Folk Independent Criti-
cisms of Features 1.15 (16 December 1915): n.p.
34 “Feature Films of the Week: Lasky Was Right When He Selected ‘The Cheat’ as
His Best Picture—Christmas Spirit in ‘The Old Homestead’ and Pathe’s ‘Life of
Our Savior,’ ” NYDM 74.1931 (25 December 1915): 40.
35 Leed, review of Five Days to Live, Variety 65.8 (13 January 1922): 42. George
Arliss was a British stage actor who came to America in 1902 and appeared in
many Broadway productions. Onstage, Arliss established himself in historical
roles, or as eminent statesmen, kings, and rajahs, or as eccentric millionaires.
At the age of fifty-three, he debuted on film in The Devil (1921), in which he had

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r T h ir t e e n  311
 appeared onstage in 1906. Also in 1921, Arliss reprised his stage work in the
title role of the silent film Disraeli. He won an Academy Award for his work in
the sound version of Disraeli (1929).

14. Th e S ta r Fa l l s
1 “The Motion Picture Hall of Fame,” Motion Picture Story Magazine 16.11
(December 1918): 12; “Popular Contest Closes,” Motion Picture Story Magazine
20.11 (December 1920): 94.
2 “Suggestions,” MPN 24.3 (9 July 1921): 407. Also in 1921, Robert E. Sherwood
of Life mentioned Hayakawa as one of “the stars who neither gained nor lost
much ground.” Robert E. Sherwood, “A Fan Paper Critic Says—This Film Year
Has Been a Fan’s Year,” MPN 25.2 (31 December 1921): 218.
3 “Sesshu ga futsukoku de tsukutta shin eiga Nihongeki ze batsutoru” [La Ba-
taille, a new film about Japan that Sessue made in France], Katsudo Kurabu 7.5
(May 1924): 38. Hayakawa’s decline in popularity did not occur very quickly,
though. Even in March 1922, when Hayakawa left Robertson-Cole, exhibitors
reported the reception of Hayakawa’s films in favorable tones. Where Lights Are
Low was reported by an exhibitor in Maryland to have “pleased 100 per cent” of
the audience and Hayakawa was “in a class by himself.” The Swamp was called
a “very good picture” and Hayakawa was “well liked” by an exhibitor in Illi-
nois. “Straight from the Shoulder Reports,” MPW 55.2 (11 March 1922): 196. The
novelized story of the final Hayakawa star vehicle with Robertson-Cole, The Ver-
milion Pencil (Norman Dawn, 19 March 1922), appeared in a film fan magazine.
Peter Andrews, “The Vermilion Pencil,” Motion Picture Magazine 23.4 (April
1922): 49–53, 102. Robertson-Cole claimed that The Vermilion Pencil was “big
bookings,” the biggest ever in Hayakawa’s films. “Big Bookings on ‘Vermilion
Pencil,’ ” MPW 55.7 (15 April 1922): 723. Of course, Robertson-Cole’s report had a
publicity purpose. It never officially announced in trade journals that Hayakawa
had left the company.
4 Negra, “The Fictionalized Ethnic Biography,” 182.
5 Quoted in Negra, “The Fictionalized Ethnic Biography,” 182.
6 Michaels, Our America, 2, 8–9, 11.
7 Kellor, The Federal Administration and the Alien, 70, 72.
8 Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 77.
9 “Fox Films Show How American and Japanese Interests May Cross and What
Might Happen,” MPW 54.8 (25 February 1922): 824.
10 McClatchy, Four Anti-Japanese Pamphlets, 13–14, 25–26.
11 Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy (New
York, 1920): 297–303, quoted in Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 67. There
were pro-Japanese intellectuals on the East Coast who opposed such an anti-
Japanese tendency. See Kawakami, The Real Japanese Question.
12 “Japan and Ourselves,” 166–67.
13 Bliven, “The Japanese Problem,” 172.

312  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
 14 Tupper and McReynolds, Japan in American Public Opinion, 114.
15 Daniels, Asian America, 151.
16 Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 208.
17 Daniels, Asian America, 149.
18 Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 65.
19 Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, 3:126; Sherwood and Painter Readers’
Guide to Periodical Literature, 4:92; Sherwood and Goodman, Readers’ Guide to
Periodical Literature, 5:77.
20 Gevinson, American Film Institute Catalog, 1284.
21 Katsudo Zasshi 7.2 (February 1921): 79.
22 Yamamoto, “Renai geki ni akita beikoku eiga kai” [The American motion pic-
ture world got tired of love stories], 42–43; Yamamoto, “Beikoku seigeki tsu-
shin” [News about American silent films], 65.
23 Aoyama, “Beikoku katsudo shashin kai [American motion picture world],” 15.
24 Katsudo Zasshi 8.5 (May 1922): 104.
25 The film was based on Julian Johnson’s stereotypically exotic stage play, “Hara-
kiri.” Aoyama, “Nanji no yatoinin wa dareka no shutsuen ni tsuite” [About ap-
pearing in Who’s Your Servant?], 82.
26 ETR 7.14 (6 March 1920): 1442.
27 Wid’s Daily 12.1 (14 March 1920): 17. The MPW also compared Who’s Your Ser-
vant? with The Cheat. “ ‘Who’s Your Servant?’ Acclaimed a Winner; Release Plan
Not Announced,” MPW 43.3 (17 January 1920): 430.
28 Thomas Kurihara (Kurihara Kisaburo) went back to Japan in 1918 and Henry
Kotani (Kotani Soichi) in 1920. Kurihara and Kotani worked with Hayakawa
when they were at the NYMPC. Both Kurihara and Kotani played important
roles in the modernization of cinema in Japan when they returned.
29 Kamiyama Sojin, the only Japanese actor who took an active part in Hollywood
after Hayakawa left, never played any Japanese roles. It was his strategic and
nationalistic choice. Kamiyama wrote in 1930, “I will not appear in any films
if I have to play Japanese. I do not want to dishonor Japan even indirectly. . . .
[For Americans] since Japan is an imaginary enemy, there won’t be any favor-
able Japanese characters. Never.” Many American audiences believed that
Kamiyama was Chinese. Kamiyama, Sugao no Hariuddo [Hollywood without
makeup], 189. As opposed to Hayakawa, Kamiyama had a career as an actor in
Japan before he arrived in the United States in 1919. Kamiyama was a renowned
actor in shingeki, modern drama, the Japanese response to modernization of
theater in Europe by Ibsen and others. In The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh,
1924), a star vehicle for Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Kamiyama played the role of a
conspiring Mongolian prince and became famous.
30 Aoyama, “Beikoku katsudo shashin kai” [American motion picture world], 15.
31 Rafu Shimpo 4846 (23 July 1919): 2.
32 Inoue, “Nichibei shinzen wa mazu nisshi gaiko yori” [Japanese-Chinese rela-
tionship is firstly important for U.S.-Japan goodwill], 25.
33 Katsudo Gaho 6.3 (March 1922): 58.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n  313
 34 “Straight from the Shoulder Reports,” MPW 53.5 (3 December 1921): 584.
35 “Straight from the Shoulder Reports,” MPW 55.6 (8 April 1922): 659.
36 EH 14.23 (3 June 1922): 70.
37 Studlar, “The Perils of Pleasure?” 274.
38 MPW 36.12 (15 June 1918): 1615.
39 ETR 8.8 (24 July 1920): 843. There is an amazing close-up of Hayakawa in Li
Ting Lang. When Li Ting Lang (Hayakawa) suddenly wakes up in a cabin on
a ship to China, as a result of a conspiracy of a rebellious Chinese group, he
displays in a close-up a facial expression of tremendous shock and horror: his
eyes wide open, his mouth half-opened, and his teeth revealed. This close-up
emphasizes Hayakawa’s well-publicized acting styles that used the power of his
eyes.
40 Variety 63.11 (5 August 1921): 26. In Where Lights Are Low, based on the short
story “East Is East” by Lloyd Osbourne, which appeared in Metropolitan Maga-
zine in April 1920, a Chinese prince, T’Su Wong Shih (Hayakawa), who loves a
gardener’s daughter, goes to America to study at a college. Later, when he finds
his loved one in a prostitute auction in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he fights
against gangsters to rescue her.
41 EH 13.16 (15 October 1921): 20; Hart, review of The Swamp, Variety 64.11
(4 November 1921): 43.
42 EH 14.13 (25 March 1922): 59.
43 Quoted in Kakii, Hariuddo no nihonjin [Japanese people in Hollywood], 94.
44 Nogami, Seirin no o Hayakawa Sesshu, 95–96. Hayakawa also appeared as him-
self in the film Night Life in Hollywood (Fred Caldwell and Jack Pratt, 1922) to
publicize his luxurious lifestyle.
45 Rafu Shimpo 4804 (4 April 1919): 3.
46 Rafu Shimpo 4801 (1 April 1919): 3; Rafu Shimpo 5663 (14 January 1921): 3.
47 Katsudo Zasshi 7.2 (February 1921): 69; Katsudo Zasshi 7.3 (March 1921): 74.
48 Rafu Shimpo 5265 (24 September 1920): 3.
49 Rafu Shimpo 5418 (29 June 1921): 3; “Sessue Hayakawa’s ‘Recuperative Trip’
Develops into a Mighty Busy Vacation,” MPW 51.2 (9 July 1921): 212.
50 Nyu Yoku Shimpo 736 (25 June 1921): 4.
51 Nyu Yoku Shimpo 739 (6 July 1921): 1.
52 In The Vermilion Pencil, Tse Chan (Hayakawa), a Chinese man, believing his
wife to be unfaithful, condemns her to the sentence of Ling Chee, a terrible
execution of jumping into a volcano, the Vermilion Pencil. He learns her inno-
cence later. Her son, Li Chan (Hayakawa, in a dual role), returns from America
and falls in love with Hyacinth, but she is kidnapped by a viceroy. Li Chan
rescues her and seeks refuge in the caverns of the Sleeping Dragon, an active
volcano. Li Chan is caught and faces the same torture as his mother, but an un-
known hermit, in fact Tse-Chan, who has been missing, self-sacrificially helps
them. During an eruption of the volcano, the lovers escape.
53 “Thrills in R-C Attractions,” MPN 25.9 (18 February 1922): 1140.
54 Reeve, “What Happened to Hayakawa,” 90.

314  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
 55 MPW 51.2 (9 July 1921): 163. In December 1921, Robertson-Cole completed its
“largest and most beautiful” studio on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. “Beau-
tiful Studios for R-C Completed,” MPW 53.7 (17 December 1921): 814; Katsudo
Zasshi 7.6 (June 1921): 66. Robertson-Cole’s film production failed by the end
of 1922 because of the poor quality of the company’s work. Robertson-Cole was
reorganized and its name changed to Film Booking Office of America. The FBO,
the Radio Corporation of America, and the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville
circuit merged into RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. in the 1920s.
56 “Sessue Hayakawa Signs Four Year Contract Renewal with Robertson-Cole,”
MPW 43.13 (27 March 1920): 2170; EH 11.26 (25 December 1920): 156; A. H.
Giebler, “Los Angeles News Letter,” MPW 44.2 (10 April 1920): 247.
57 Kingsley, “Flashes: Hayakawa Solus [sic],” III-4; I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 35.
58 NYDM 83.2196 (15 January 1921): 136; EH 11.3 (17 July 1920): 41.
59 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 150.
60 “Popular Arts Project,” Hayakawa-30.
61 NYDM 81.2156 (10 April 1920): 704; Kingsley, “Flashes: Hayakawa Solus [sic],”
III-4.
62 H. Carr, “Son of the Samurai,” 81. Carr was not satisfied with The First Born,
while highly valuing the original play and praising Hayakawa as an actor. Carr,
“ ‘First Born’ Is Weakling,” III-1. In The First Born, Chang Wang (Hayakawa) is
forced by his father to give up a woman he loves and to marry a woman he
does not love. When his wife dies, Wang goes to America and becomes a wood
peddler to take care of his son. He finds out that the woman he once loved is
now a slave of a notorious man. The man knows of Wang’s romance in China.
In order to avoid Wang’s revenge, the man kidnaps Wang’s son and threatens
Wang. Wang rescues the woman in the end but his son dies falling out of a
window. The First Born was adapted from a stage play written and acted in by
Francis Powers and produced in San Francisco by Fred Belasco, who came
from a family well known in theater. It is assumable that Robertson-Cole tried
to enhance the “Super-Special” quality of the film by adapting a renowned the-
ater production.
63 “Nineteen Exceptional Pictures Selected in 1921,” EH 14.4 (21 January 1922):
26. A Japanese film magazine reported that The First Born was chosen as the
fifth best film in 1920. Katsudo Kurabu 4.6 (June 1921): 84.
64 “ ‘ The First Born’ Has a Large Number of Exploitation Angles,” MPW 49.2 (12
March 1921): 177.
65 MPW 44.7 (15 May 1920): 916.
66 “Sessue Hayakawa Talks of His Future Productions While Visiting New York,”
MPW 44.9 (29 May 1920): 1184.
67 “Jidai shicho ni tekigo suru katsudo shashin no seiryoku” [Power of motion pic-
ture that corresponds to zeitgeist], Rafu Shimpo 5645 (19 December 1921): 1.
68 Rafu Shimpo 5684 (8 February 1921): 3; Katsudo Kurabu 5.3 (March 1922): n.p.
69 New York Times (1 August 1921): 12.
70 MPW 54.3 (21 January 1922): 319.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n  315
 71 MPW 55.3 (18 March 1922): 299.
72 MPW 54.3 (21 January 1922): 319.
73 MPW 55.3 (18 March 1922): 299.
74 “Twenty-six R-C Pictures Scheduled for Year Beginning on September 1,” MPW
51.7 (13 August 1921): 719; EH 13.7 (13 August 1921): 42.
75 “R-C Statement Denies Plan to Close Hollywood Studios,” EH 14.2 (7 January
1922): 35.
76 “Sesshu no songai baisho yokyu” [Sessue’s request for damages], Katsudo Gaho
6.7 (July 1922): 138.
77 “Japanese Star Sues Picture Corporation,” Los Angeles Times (5 May 1922): II-
10.
78 Lipke, “Films Lure Hayakawa,” C25.
79 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 154–55.
80 Stoloff, “Normalizing Stars,” 167.
81 Erich von Stroheim was another. Stroheim’s character in Foolish Wives (Stro-
heim, 1921), who masquerades as Count Karamazin, a Russian aristocrat, was
very similar to Hayakawa’s character in The Cheat, except that Hayakawa was
Japanese and Stroheim was European. In these films, both Stroheim and Haya-
kawa attract married women of leisure by their rich and refined appearances,
but their hidden savage sexual desires are revealed in the middle of the film. In
the end, white men punish both of them. See Staiger, Interpreting Films, 124–
38.
82 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 144.
83 “Valentino to Star for Paramount,” EH 14.5 (28 January 1921): 77.
84 Hayakawa’s character in An Arabian Knight and Valentino’s in The Sheik and The
Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice, 1926) are named Ahmed.
85 Valentino was born in Italy to an Italian father and a French mother.
86 Nogami, Seirin no o Hayakawa Sesshu, 103.
87 In The Brand of Lopez, Lopez (Hayakawa) loves Lola. When Lola flirts with an
opera singer, Lopez brands the back of her neck with a lighted cigarette, out of
jealousy. When Lola’s mother objects to their marriage, Lopez becomes angry
and kidnaps Lola’s younger sister and her child. Though Lola’s sister dies, her
child runs away to Lola. Lopez and his outlaw gangs try to destroy Lola’s home.
When the nurse tells him that the child is actually his and Lola’s, Lopez turns
remorseful. The Brand of Lopez refers to the branding scene in The Cheat. Since
trade journals criticized the scene for its lack of necessity in the narrative, the
meaning of its existence seems only to be that of a reference to The Cheat.
According to MPN, “The branding incident has little to do with the story.” MPN
21.16 (10 April 1920): 3367. Wid’s Daily claimed that “the branding trick was
evidently introduced merely for its sensationalism.” Wid’s Daily 12.4 (4 April
1920): 6. In Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo, 1922), Valentino played the role of a
Spanish matador, very similar to Hayakawa’s role in The Brand of Lopez. Valen-
tino was not criticized for playing a Spaniard.
88 MPN 21.16 (10 April 1920): 3367.

316  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F ou r t e e n
 89 Variety 58.6 (2 April 1920): 95.
90 Walker, Rudolph Valentino, 118–19.
91 Sklar, Movie-Made America, 99.
92 MPN 25.17 (15 April 1922): 2212.
93 Studlar, This Mad Masquerade, 194.
94 Studlar, “The Perils of Pleasure,” 269, 289.
95 H. C. Carr, “Sessue of the Samurai,” 68.
96 McGaffey, “The Man from Japan,” 58–59, 90.
97 Fletcher, “The Orient on the Subway,” 53, 99.
98 Bryers, “The Gentleman from Japan,” 54, 109.
99 Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 154–56. Hayakawa also sent a letter
explaining the anti-Japanese movement in California to his home in Japan on
22 May 1921. Oba, “Shokan kara mita Hayakawa Sesshu no kunan” [Sessue
Hayakawa’s hardship indicated in his letters], 49–51. Yet, at that point, Haya-
kawa did not imply any possibility of leaving Hollywood.

15. Am e r i c a n i z at i o n a n d N at i o n a l i sm
1 Gulick, “Nihonjin wa douka shiuruya” [Are the Japanese assimilable?] (1), 2.
2 Gulick, “Nihonjin wa douka shiuruya (2),” 2.
3 “Gokuaku naru hainichi katsudo shashin jikken ki” [A record of watching an
extremely evil anti-Japanese motion picture], Rafu Shimpo 3696 (25 December
1915): 3.
4 “Harakiri no katsudo ni tsuite” [About the film Harakiri], Rafu Shimpo 4318
(1 September 1917): 3. Harakiri turned into Who’s Your Servant? in 1920, against
which Aoyama himself engaged in an action to ban its release. Rafu Shimpo
5031 (1 May 1920): 3.
5 Kinema Junpo 120 (11 December 1922): 9.
6 “Hainichi katsudo saien setsu” [Rumor about another anti-Japanese film], Rafu
Shimpo 3968 (14 July 1916): 3.
7 “Katsuhai o seisai seyo” [Sanction motion picture actors], Rafu Shimpo 4312 (25
August 1917): 3.
8 “Sesshu no shingeki” [Sessue’s new drama], Rafu Shimpo 4782 (9 March 1919):
2. The ad of the film with Hayakawa’s portrait appeared every day from the day
of its release. Rafu Shimpo 4627–4634 (1–7 September 1918): all in p. 2.
9 “Katsudo dayori” [Motion picture report], Rafu Shimpo 4741 (21 January
1919): 2.
10 “Tsukai na katsudo” [Delightful motion picture], Rafu Shimpo 4627 (3 Septem-
ber 1918): 3.
11 “Yoso no Nihonjin dai-kirai” [I hate the Japanese in Western clothes], Rafu
Shimpo 4682 (8 November 1918): 2.
12 Shigoro, “Rafu todai fujin arubamu (1)” [Album of famous ladies in Los Angeles
1], Rafu Shimpo 4764 (16 February 1919): 3.
13 Kotoku Shusui (1871–1911) was one of the founders of the socialist movement

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n  317
 in Japan at the turn of the century. Kotoku started a newspaper called the Hei-
min Shinbun [Newspaper for ordinary people] in 1903, and translated Karl
Marx’s and Frederick Engels’s The Communist Manifesto (1848). In the Japanese
government’s suppression of the socialist movement, Kotoku was accused of
conspiring to assassinate the emperor in 1910 and was sentenced to death.
14 According to Okina, the Nichibei Shinbun had been read widely in southern
California. The Rafu Shimpo, which started as a local paper, tried to increase
its popularity by degrading the value of the Nichibei Shinbun and by attacking
Sessue and Okina. Okina, Okina Kyuin zenshu [Okina Kyuin’s complete works],
108–12. Okina’s claim about the Rafu Shimpo’s attitude was probably correct
because the Nichibei Shinbun was also taking a position that criticized anti-
Japanese films, even though it reported in a less nationalistic tone. One article
in the Nichibei Shinbun noted, “It is good for actors to introduce beautiful Japa-
nese characteristics, but they should stop showing cruel behaviors and help-
ing to enhance anti-Japanese sentiment among white people.” Nichibei Shin-
bun 5778 (25 December 1915): 5. Another article reported, “The Association of
Tokyo People is conducting an investigation to do something against motion
picture actor Sessue Hayakawa who caused anti-Japanese sentiment by appear-
ing in an ugly motion picture.” Nichibei Shinbun 5780 (27 December 1915): 5.
Later in 1917, Okina was invited by Hayakawa to his house when he visited
Los Angeles. Okina was impressed by his “dignified attitude as a renowned
actor” and his house, “similar to those of upper-class white Americans.” Itsumi,
Okinna Kyuin to imin shakai 1907–1924 [Okina Kyuin and immigrant communi-
ties 1907–1924], 259–69.
15 H. Yamaguchi, “Okina Rokkei ni kuyu [I regret about Okina], 7.
16 Nyu Yoku Shimpo 268 (9 September 1916): 4.
17 Newly started film magazines included Film Record (October 1913), the pio-
neer magazine that exerted a strong influence on subsequent publications in
their formats and tone (it changed its name to Kinema Record in December
1913); Katsudo Shashin Zasshi [Motion picture magazine] (May 1915); Katsudo no
Sekai [Active world, or Motion picture world] (January 1916); Katsudo Gaho [Mo-
tion picture graphic] (January 1917); Katsudo Hyoron [Motion picture review]
(November 1918), which changed its name to Katsudo Kurabu [Motion picture
club] in September 1919; Katsudo Zasshi [Movie magazine] (September 1919;
and Kinema Junpo (aka The Movie News, July 1919).
18 Ichioka, “Japanese Associations and the Japanese Government,” 409–37.
19 Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 3.1 (January 1917): 207.
20 Katsudo no Sekai 1.9 (September 1916): 4.
21 “Beikoku de daininki no nihon joyu Aoki Tsuruko” [Tsuru Aoki, a very popular
Japanese actress in the U.S.], Katsudo no Sekai 2.1 (January 1917): 93.
22 Katsudo Kurabu 3.11 (November 1920): 30; I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 69; Ma-
kino, Nihon eiga kenetsu shi [History of motion picture censorship in Japan],
150–51. Some Japanese religious groups were said to protest against the film’s

318  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
 depiction of a Japanese god. “Mondo yuyo” [It is useful to question and answer],
Shukan Asahi 31 August 1952: 22.
23 Katsudo Gaho 3.1 (January 1919): 14.
24 Katsudo Kurabu 2.8 (August 1919): 95; Katsudo Kurabu 3.1 (January 1920): 84.
25 Nonomiya, “From Rice Curry to Sessue,” 7.
26 It was also because of Robertson-Cole’s strategy to increase its international
market.
27 Osaka Mainichi Shinbun (17 February 1918), in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi
1918, vol. 1, 456.
28 Saiki, “Awabi romansu” [Abalone romance], 38–40. Hayakawa was born in
1886, according to his passport.
29 Aoyama, “Zaibei Nihonjin katsudo haiyu hatten shi” [History of progress of
Japanese photoplay actors in the U.S.], 10.
30 Aoyama, “Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako yori” [From the capital of the
American motion picture], 46; Aoyama, “Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako
yori (12),” 35.
31 Takemura, Taisho bunka [Taisho culture], 135–36.
32 Bernardi, Writing in Light, 22.
33 Bernardi, Writing in Light, 13.
34 Hansen, “The Mass Production of the Senses,” 61.
35 Bernardi, Writing in Light, 133.
36 Gerow, “Writing a Pure Cinema,” 306–12.
37 “The World’s Latest News,” Kinema Record 3.15 (10 September 1914): 18.
38 Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 4.11 (November 1918): 174.
39 Kaeriyama, “Jiko o shireriya?” [Do we know ourselves?], 2.
40 Okura, “Ware mo mata shutsuba semu” [I will also run], 17–18.
41 “Eiga puropaganda ron” [An idea of film propaganda], Katsudo Shashin Zasshi
5.5 (May 1919): 38–39.
42 “Obei gekidan to toyo no geki” [European and American stage and dramas of
the East], Kinema Record 2.9 (15 March 1914): 2–3.
43 Numata, “Katsudo shashin no geijutsu bi” [Artistic beauty of motion picture],
142.
44 Mukai Shunko, “Katsudo shashin kai no shin keiko: Kigeki no zensei jidai kuru”
[A new tendency in motion pictures: The golden period of comedy has come],
Katsudo Gaho (March 1917), quoted and translated in Bernardi, Writing in Light,
192.
45 Muromachi, “Furukushite atarshiki tsuneni tayumanu taido” [An old but new,
consistent attitude], 4.
46 Gerow, “Writing a Pure Cinema,” 300–2.
47 Gerow, “One Print in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” n.p.
48 Rhodes, “ ‘Our Beautiful and Glorious Art Lives,’ ” 308–9.
49 Kinema Record (November 1916): 479, quoted and translated in Gerow, “Writ-
ing a Pure Cinema,” 123. Kaeriyama repeated his nationalistic vision on cinema,

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n  319
 using the same terms in his article of 1917, in another film magazine, Katsudo
Gaho. Kaeriyama, “Katsudo shashin kogyo ni tsuite” [About the motion picture
industry], 45.
50 Kakeisanjin (Kaeriyama), “Geijutsu to shite no katsudo shashin” [Motion pic-
ture as an art], 15–16; Kakeisanjin, “Katsudo shashin ga atauru chishiki” [Knowl-
edge that motion picture can provide], 16; Kakeisanjin, “Katsudo shashin gei-
jutsu ron” [Theory of motion picture art], 4. See also Bernardi, Writing in Light,
192.
51 Shibusawa, “Odorokubeki beikoku no katsudo shashin kai” [Amazing world of
motion picture in America], 62–65. Contributors to Katsudo no Sekai wrote in
abundance about the “national and social mission” of cinema, stressing edu-
cational and military applications. Kamata Eikichi, the president of Keio Uni-
versity, suggested an application of the motion picture for education and “for
the national interests.” Kamata, “Zento tabo naru katsudo shashin kai” [Prom-
ising motion picture world], 96–99. Nagai Ryutaro, a lecturer at Waseda Uni-
versity, wrote, “Cinema and national education are inextricably related.” Nagai,
“Waseda no kodo kara” [From the hall of Waseda University], 24.
52 S. Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, 182.
53 Kinema Junpo 104 (1 July 1922): 3.
54 I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 15–17, 72.
55 “Hayakawa Sesshu shi to Keraman jo” [Mr. Sessue Hayakawa and Miss Keller-
man], Katsudo Gaho 3.11 (November 1919): 47.
56 Mochizuki, “Beikokujin no rikai” [American people’s understanding], 2–3. Mo-
chizuki highly valued Madame Butterfly for its “understandable” treatment of a
Japanese subject. Another critic writing for women’s magazines also regarded
Cio-Cio-San not as shameful but as favorable for her loyalty. Terada, “Teiso no
kuni no onna Ocho fujin” [Cio-Cio-San, the woman of faithful country], 70.
57 Numata, “Rafu no eiga kai kara” [From cinema world in Los Angeles], 40.
58 Kinema Junpo 51 (21 December 1920): 7.
59 Koda, Sesshu, 99.
60 I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 40, 58–59, 90, 95, 128, 131. Mori highly valued The
Swamp because it was written by Hayakawa and was based on a famous Japa-
nese story, “Shidehara Tasuke.” Mori wrote, “It is pleasurable that the Japanese
story told in a different form moved the American audience.” I. Mori, Haya-
kawa Sesshu, 141.
61 Kinema Junpo 71 (11 July 1921): 9.
62 Katsudo Gaho 6.9 (September 1922): 50–51.
63 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (22 July 1922): 3.
64 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (1 July 1922): 2.
65 “Saikin ni okeru eiga keiko yori” [From the recent tendency of cinema], Kinema
Record 38 (10 August 1916): 336.
66 Kaeriyama, “Katsudo shashin geki kyakushoku jo no kenkyu (2)” [A study of
directing photoplays], 4.

320  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
 67 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (5 February 1921), in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi 1921,
vol. 1, 330.
68 “Gujin no gugo ka aruiwa Nihon eiga no ketten ka” [Foolish words from a fool,
or the weak point of Japanese cinema], Kinema Record 39 (10 September 1916):
n.p.
69 “Beijin no waga katsudo shashin kan ni tsuite” [About the American view of our
motion picture], Kinema Record 41 (10 November 1916): 478.
70 R. Matsumoto, “Nihon eiga no shinro” [Japanese cinema’s direction], 9.
71 Ide, “Eiga geki no honshitsu to enshutsu ho no icchi” [Correspondence between
the essence of photoplay and the directing method], 4.
72 Inoue, “Chikaku tobei shitai” [I want to visit America soon], 38–39. In 1930,
Inoue appeared in a stage drama, Appare Wong (The Honourable Mr. Wong), with
Hayakawa.
73 Ichikawa Sadanji, “Katsudo yakusha to naru niwa” [To become a motion picture
actor], 35.
74 Y. Kasagi, “Ikyo no eiga kai ni katsuyaku seru Hayakawa Sesshu no hyoban”
[The reputation of Sessue Hayakawa, who is popular in a foreign film world],
84–87, 109–10; Hayakawa Sesshu, “Katsudo shashin ni yakusha toshite seiko
suru yoso” [Elements (needed) to become successful as a motion picture actor],
117. All the words by Hayakawa quoted in Kasagi’s article are translations of
those in Easterfield, “The Japanese Point of View,” 33–35.
75 Kaeriyama, “Eiga geki to haiyu dosa (Sono 1)” [Photoplay and acting (1)], 5.
76 Kaeriyama, “Eiga geki to haiyu dosa (Sono 2),” 5.
77 “Daredemo katsudo yakusha ni nareru” [Anybody can become a motion picture
actor], Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 2.8 (August 1920): 56–59.
78 Kaeriyama, “Sesshu no seiko bunseki” [An analysis of Sessue’s success], 2–5.
79 Fujiki, “American Cinema Reshaping Japanese Culture,” n.p.
80 I. Mori, “Eiga haiyu no hanashi (2)” [A story about film actors], 72. Hayakawa
was reported to be 172 centimeters (5 feet 8 inches) tall. This was taller than
the average for Japanese men of the Taisho period because, according to the
novelist Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, at that time a height of 165 centimeters (5 feet
6 inches) was considered to be tall. Yoshiyuki, “Sekai ni kakeru Nihon no hashi”
[The Japanese bridge over the world], 46. However, there is a prevalent term,
“Sesshu suru” [Do Sessue], among Japanese filmmakers, which means to use a
stepladder to make an actor look taller on the screen. If this expression is based
on fact, Hayakawa was not a tall man.
81 “Hayakawa Sesshu shi no chikagoro no seikatsu” [Sessue Hayakawa’s life these
days], Katsudo Gaho 3.10 (October 1919): 75; I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 37–38.
Articles in American trade journals publicized Hayakawa’s physical training
when he started Haworth. “Hayakawa Keeps in Physical Trim with Bicycle in
His Attic,” ETR 4.12 (24 August 1918): 1005.
82 Hanayagi, “Katsukai enma cho” [Evaluation book of the motion picture world],
75.

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n  321
 83 Deguchi, “Nani ga hakujin konpurekkusu o umidashitaka” [What caused white
complex?], 104–23. In the 1930s, a female Japanese star, Hara Setsuko, became
popular for her face and body, which “detached from Japaneseness.” Yomota,
Nihon no joyu [Actresses of Japan], 13.
84 Fujiki, “American Cinema Reshaping Japanese Culture,” n.p.
85 Watanabe, “Meiji shoki no Dawinizumu” [Darwinism in the early Meiji period],
85.
86 J. Thomas, “Naturalizing Nationhood,” 117.
87 Gaimu sho [The Ministry of Foreign Affairs], Nihon gaiko bunsho: Pari kowa
kaigi gaiyo [Japanese Documents of Foreign Affairs: Abstract of the Paris Con-
ference], 203, quoted. in Ichinokawa, “Koka ron to Yusei gaku” [The yellow peril
and eugenics], 136. Since the Racial Equality Clause was based on Japan’s “Cau-
casian complex” and its desire to obtain equal status with Caucasian nations in
international relations, Japan did not question its own colonialism that racially
discriminated against China and Korea. The Japanese government suppressed
independence movements in China and Korea that occurred during the confer-
ences.
88 Kinema Junpo 106 (21 July 1922): 14.
89 Y. K. Kasagi, “American News,” Kinema Record 47 (15 May 1917): 226.
90 Kaeriyama, “Hatashite jinshu kankei kara kangaeruto sekaiteki ni nariuru ya”
[Is it going to be worldwide if we think of racial relations?], 40–43. Also quoted
and translated in Fujiki, “American Cinema Reshaping Japanese Culture,”
n.p.
91 Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 3.12 (December 1921): 83.
92 Katsudo no Sekai 4.1 (January 1919): 95; “Beikoku ninki haiyu oyobi kaisha mei
ichiran” [A list of popular American actors and film companies], Katsudo Gaho
3.4 (April 1919): 96.
93 Imura Shigeru, letter to the editor, Katsudo Gaho 3.3 (March 1919): 168.
94 T. Nagai, “Nihonjin Hayakawa Sesshu wa shieseri” [A Japanese Sessue Haya-
kawa is dead], 97.
95 Kataoka, “Sesshu nitsuite Toshimichi san e” [To Toshimichi about Sessue], 98.
96 Willis, “Famous Oriental Stars Return to the Screen,” 90.
97 Willis, “Famous Oriental Stars Return to the Screen,” 44.
98 Nanbu, “Hayakawa Sesshu shi to kataru” [A talk with Mr. Sessue Hayakawa],
32–33.
99 I. Kondo, “Sesshu Hayakawa no engi” [Sessue Hayakawa’s acting], 6–14.
100 Katsudo Gaho 6.7 (July 1922): 100.
101 Oda, “Beikoku katsudo kai kenbutsu miyage” [After visiting American motion
picture world], 100.
102 Y. Sato, “Amerika eiga haiyu no tanaorosi” [News of American film actors], 53.
103 Handy, “Kipling Was Wrong!” 124.
104 I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 8, 17, 51–52, 151–52, 154, 166–68.
105 O. Taguchi, “Hariuddo kenbun roku,” 32.

322  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
 106 Amano, “Beikoku katsudo shashin no chimata yori” [News from American mo-
tion pictures], 164, emphasis in the original.
107 Seki, “Shitashiki Hayakawa Sesshu shi yori eta watashi no kangeki” [I was im-
pressed by Mr. Sessue Hayakawa, my good friend], 33–34.
108 I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 93, 96, 104, 109.
109 Koda, Sesshu, 60; Kinema Junpo 50 (11 December 1920): 7.
110 Katsudo Gaho 6.1 (January 1922): 48–49.
111 Tsukimura, “Setsumeisha kara mitaru Sesshu geki” [Sessue’s films viewed by
benshi], 26.
112 Katsudo Gaho 3.6 (June 1919): 78.
113 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (21 August 1922): 3.
114 Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan, 4.
115 Hashikawa, Oka monogatari [Story of yellow peril], 187, 200.
116 Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan, 4.
117 In 1918, Kita Sadakichi was launching a new academic journal, Minzoku to
Rekishi [Ethnos and history], which posed a question, “Who are the Japanese
people?” Kita, “ ‘Minzoku to rekishi’ hakkan shuisho,” 1–8.
118 Shillony, “Friend or Foe,” 187–211.
119 Kinema Junpo 101 (1 June 1922): 15; Katsudo Zasshi 8.8 (August 1922).
120 T. Mori, “Hayakawa Sesshu fusai o mukaete” [Welcoming Mr. and Mrs. Sessue
Hayakawa], 28–29.
121 Kinema Junpo 97 (21 April 1922): 11; “Senpu no gotoku okorishi Taisho Katsudo
Shashin Kabushiki Kaisha” [Taikatsu company, which rose like a hurricane],
Katsudo Zasshi 6.5 (May 1920): 92–93; Kurihara, “Katsudo shashin to boku”
[Motion picture and I], 22.
122 I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu; Ichikawa Sai, Sekaiteki meiyu ni naru made [Before he
became an international great actor]; Koda, Sesshu; Kasumi Ura Jin, Hayakawa
Sesshu.
123 Kasumi Ura Jin, Hayakawa Sesshu, 1–76.
124 Kinema Junpo 105 (11 July 1922): 4.
125 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27 June); (9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18 July
1922): all in page 3.
126 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (14 June 1922): 3.
127 Nichibei Shinbun 8140 (7 July 1922): 3; Katsudo Zasshi 8.9 (September 1922):
85.
128 Katsudo Zasshi 8.8 (August 1922): 65.
129 Nichibei Shinbun 8134 (1 July 1922): 5. It was also reported in a newspaper that
Japanese communities in America did not want Hayakawa to come back to
the United States because of Hayakawa’s cooperation with anti-Japanese move-
ments. Manshu Nichinichi Shinbun (1 July 1922): 1.
130 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (5 July 1922): 5.
131 Kinema Junpo 104 (1 July 1922): 3.
132 “Beikoku mubi kai no iro iro” [Various news about American movie world],

N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n  323
 Katsudo Gaho 7.4 (April 1923): 106. Already in 1920, Hayakawa was reported
to be the adviser of Shochiku Kinema Company, which intended to pursue the
Pure Film Movement. Katsudo Zasshi 6.11 (November 1920): 113; Tokyo Nichi-
nichi Shinbun (26 February 1920), quoted in Tsuzuki, Shinema ga yattekita!
[Cinema has come!], 186.
133 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (28 June 1922): 3; Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (18 August
1922): 3.
134 Ushiyama started a fashion school in Japan in 1925. See the Hollywood Fashion
and Beauty College website, http://www.hollywood.ac.jp/d/d.html (accessed
Nov. 17, 2006).
135 Katsudo Gaho 6.11 (November 1922): 35–38.
136 Fujiki, “American Cinema Reshaping Japanese Culture,” n.p.
137 Y. Azuma (or Higashi), “Aoki Tsuruko to gyunabe o kakomu” [Having beef for
a dinner with Aoki Tsuruko], 44–46.
138 Y. Suzuki, “Shinsetsu na Hayakawa Sesshu to Tsuruko fujin” [Kind Sessue
Hayakawa and Mrs. Tsuruko], 16–20.
139 Shigeno Yukiyoshi, “Beikoku dewa Nihongeki ga donnna kankyo de torareruka”
[Why films about Japan were made in the U.S.],” 28.
140 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (1 July 1922): 2; Miyako Shinbun 12392 (1 July 1922): 11;
Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun (1 July 1922), in Taisho nyusu jiten 5:564–65; Rafu
Shimpo 5808 (2 July 1922): 1.
141 Katsudo Zasshi 8.8 (August 1922): 66–67.
142 Kinema Junpo 108 (11 August 1922): 8.
143 “Beikoku mubi kai no iro iro” [Various news about American movie world],
Katsudo Gaho 7.4 (April 1923): 106.
144 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (28 August 1922): 3; Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (29 August
1922): 2.
145 “Fifteen Years Ago in Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times (1 August 1937): D1.
146 Kinema Junpo 110 (1 September 1922): 14.
147 Sakamoto, “Sesshu ni atauru sho” [A letter to Sessue], 96.
148 Mori mentioned in his book that many Americans highly valued Hayakawa’s
directing ability in addition to his acting. I. Mori, Hayakawa Sesshu, 164.
149 Ichikawa Sai, “Aa awarenaru Sesshu yo” [Ah, poor Sessue], 60–63.
150 Kinema Junpo 106 (21 July 1922): 15.
151 “Kibei shita Hayakawa Sesshu fusai wa ko nihon taizai no shinso o katatta” [The
returned Mr. and Mrs. Sessue Hayakawa talked about the truth of their stay in
Japan like this], Katsudo Zasshi 8.12 (December 1922): 74–75. A Japanese fan
pointed out that several welcome parties were held only for obtaining money
from Hayakawa. Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (21 July 1922): 3. Japanese spectators, in-
cluding the advocates of Pure Film, believed that Hayakawa was a millionaire
because it was reported in a Japanese film magazine that Hayakawa had told
Nitobe Inazo that he was earning $20,000 a week. Katsudo Kurabu 5.6 (June
1922): 93. However, it became clear later that Hayakawa received $20,000 per
film, not per week, when Hayakawa sued Robertson-Cole. That is, according to

324  N o t e s t o C h ap t e r F i f t e e n
 Aoyama, Hayakawa received only $1,538 a week. Aoyama, “Gimon datta Haya-
kawa Sesshu no kyukin” [Sessue Hayakawa’s salary, which had been unknown],
50–54. Later, Mori and Aoyama corrected Hayakawa’s salary to $3,500 a week
when he made an initial contract with Robertson-Cole. I. Mori, Hayakawa Ses-
shu, 55; Aoyama, Hariuddo eiga okoku no kaibo, 249.
152 Katsudo Zasshi 8.8 (August 1922): 67–68.
153 Miyako Shinbun 12449 (27 August 1922): 10.
154 Yamauchi, “Sesshu san!” [Mr. Sessue!], 108.
155 Noguchi, “Hayakawa Sesshu,” 81–82. There were a few fans who sympathized
with Hayakawa. Ayase, “Waga Sesshu o noroeru hitora e” [To those who curse
on Sessue], 154–55.
156 Morioka, “Ko kikai” [A good opportunity], 40; Ishimaki, “Kongo no eiga haikyu
mondai” [The issue of film distribution from now on], 47.
157 Tsutsumi, “Nihon mono to Oshu mono to o motte” [By Japanese and European
films], 38.
158 “Beikoku eiga fujoei mondai” [The issue of not showing American films],
Katsudo Zasshi 10.8 (August 1924): 36.
159 Kinema Junpo 163 (21 June 1924): 24; Kinema Junpo 164 (1 July 1924): 27.
160 “Japan’s Film Boycott Given Up as Failure,” New York Times (13 July 1924): sec-
tion 2–1; K. Thompson, Exporting Entertainment, 141.
161 Katsudo Zasshi 8.9 (September 1922): 92–93.
162 Nyu Yoku Shimpo 864 (16 September 1922): 3.

Epilogue
1 New York Times (14 January 1923): n.p.; Atlantic City Union (16 January 1923):
n.p.; Variety (19 January 1923): n.p., in Tiger Lily Clipping, The New York Pub-
lic Library for the Performing Arts, Robinson Locke Collection. According to
Aoyama Yukio, Hayakawa signed a contract with Lee Shubert (1871–1953), the
Broadway theater owner and producer, in early May 1922, right after he left
Robertson-Cole. Aoyama, “Beikoku sukurin geppo” [American screen monthly],
136.
2 The New York Times reported, “Sessue Hayakawa and ‘Tiger Lily’ seem to have
been unaccountably lost en route to the Metropolis.” New York Times (4 Feb-
ruary 1923): X1. There is no listing of Tiger Lily in the Internet Broadway Data
Base. When Hayakawa appeared in another stage drama, The Love City, in 1926,
its program note stated, “May we introduce to you a new actor on the American
stage. . . . None of you have ever seen him on stage before.” Program of The
Love City, in SHE.
3 Aoyama, “Gimon datta Hayakawa Sesshu no kyukin” [Sessue Hayakawa’s salary,
which had been unknown], 54
4 La Bataille was based on an exotic novel by Claude Farrere. Iijima, “Hayakawa
Sesshu ga furansu de satsuei suru” [Sessue Hayakawa shoots a film in France],
19.

N o t e s t o E p i l o g u e  325
 5 “Oshu butai de oatari no Hayakawa Sesshu” [Sessue Hayakawa’s big success on
European stages], Katsudo Zasshi 10.5 (May 1924): 40–43.
6 “British Producer Praises R-C Stars and Tells of Handicaps in England,” MPW
54.1 (7 January 1922): 56.
7 MPW 68.4 (24 May 1924): 409.
8 Another thing that Hayakawa relates about La Bataille in his autobiography is
the shooting of the climactic naval war scene, which used actual French battle-
ships borrowed from the French navy. When Hayakawa was a child, he gave up
his dream of becoming a naval officer because of an accident. For Hayakawa, La
Bataille was also a chance to realize his broken dream of taking command of a
navy vessel. Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way, 171–72.
9 Takada, “Butai no Hayakawa Sesshu” [Sessue Hayakawa on stage], 25–26.
10 Program of The Love City, in SHE.
11 Hayakawa’s performance in The Love City was poorly reviewed for the same
reason that he was praised on the silent screen, the “rigid” facial expression. The
Billboard 38.6 (6 February 1926): 10; Theatre Magazine 43.301 (April 1926): 16.
A critic at the New York Times praised Hayakawa’s acting, but only in reference
to his early film career: “Mr. Hayakawa is a good enough actor, held down, by
the nature of the play, when he plays a death scene with genuine emotion. It
was a moment that atoned for much of the monotony of his earlier work.” “ ‘ The
Love City’ Blends Drama and Fantasy,” New York Times (26 January 1926):
18.
12 Busby, “Hayakawa Plays Suave Oriental,” A9; “Chinese Robin Hood,” New York
Times (2 January 1927): BR12.
13 Sessue Hayakawa, The Bandit Prince.
14 New York Times (27 July 1926): 15.
15 Reeve, “What Happened to Hayakawa,” 33, 90, 91.
16 Lipke, “Films Lure Hayakawa,” C25–26.
17 Lipke, “Films Lure Hayakawa,” C26.
18 “Sessue Hayakawa Heading Hillstreet Vaudeville Bill,” Los Angeles Times (12
August 1928): C13.
19 Kingsley, “Romantic Vehicle Serves Star,” A9.
20 Variety 103.11 (25 August 1931): 14.
21 “Japanese Actor Adopts Heir,” Los Angeles Times (26 August 1931): A1.
22 “Mother Fights Hayakawa Adoption,” Los Angeles Times (17 October 1931): A16.
23 “Hayakawa Served in Child Suit,” Los Angeles Times (18 October 1931): A5.
24 Hayakawa was believed to be a womanizer and was responsible for this inci-
dent, though. See Nogami, Seirin no o Hayakawa Sesshu [King of Hollywood,
Sessue Hayakawa], 136–43.
25 “East and West Part in Tears,” Los Angeles Times (11 December 1931): A2.
26 “When East and West Came to Parting: But Twain May Meet Again,” Los Ange-
les Times (12 December 1931): 3.
27 “East and West Part in Tears,” Los Angeles Times (11 December 1931): A2.
28 Mrs. Sessue Hayakawa, “Mrs. Sessue Hayakawa Talks,” A2.

326  N o t e s t o E p i l o g u e
 29 “Taisho 13 nendo no waga eigakai” [Our film world in 1924], Katsudo Zasshi 11.1
(January 1925): 75–76.
30 “Sesshu ga futsukoku de tsukutta shin eiga nihongeki Ze Batsutoru” [La Ba-
taille, a new film about Japan that Sessue made in France], Katsudo Kurabu 7.5
(May 1924): 39.
31 Katsudo Zasshi 10.12 (December 1923): 49–56.
32 Eiga Shincho 1.1 (May 1924): 78–79.
33 “Hayakawa Sesshu no Ra Bataiyu geki no joei zengo” [Before and after the ex-
hibition of Sessue Hayakawa’s La Bataille], Katsudo Zasshi 10.12 (December
1924): 49–56.
34 Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun (1 October 1924), in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi
1924–3 [Periodical history of Taisho through newspapers], 12.
35 Yomiuri Shinbun (28 September 1924), in Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi
1924–2, 1205.
36 Iwamoto and Makino, Eiga nenkan Showa hen I–4, Showa 5 nen ban [Annual
report of cinema: Showa period I-4, Showa 5 edition] [1930], 19, 756–57; Miyako
Shinbun (13 April 1930), in Shinbun shusei Showa hennenshi, 5: 240. According to
Nogami, Hayakawa did not agree with the plan, but this plan developed without
Hayakawa and resulted in the establishment of Toho, one of the largest studios
in Japan. Nogami, Seirin no o Hayakawa Sesshu, 140.
37 Kamiyama, Sugao no Hariuddo [Hollywood without makeup], 219.
38 Kinema Junpo 371 (11 July 1930): 24.
39 Kinema Junpo 424 (21 January 1932): 44.
40 Yamanaka, “Hayakawa Sesshu ‘onna’ o kataru” [Sessue Hayakawa talks about
“women”], 118–21; Hayashi, “Sesshu to Itari garu” [Sessue and Italian girls],
40–42; Abe, “Appare ‘Wongu’ no koi” [Love of great Wong], 124–28.
41 The Honourable Mr. Wong was made into the film The Hatchet Man (William
Wellman, 1932) with Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young.
42 Takahashi, “Sekaiteki meiyu no eiga toshite” [As a film of the world famous
actor], 124.
43 Kinema Junpo 442 (21 July 1932): 53.
44 Kinema Junpo 443 (1 August 1932): 71. The print of Taiyo wa higashi yori is not
extant.
45 Nichibei Jiho (29 December 1928): 3.
46 This was the first talking picture in Japan in which Hayakawa appeared.
47 For a more detailed discussion on the historical transformation of jidaigeki, see
Yoshimoto, Kurosawa, 205–22.
48 Kinema Junpo 475 (1 July 1933): 74.
49 Kinema Junpo 473 (11 June 1932): 6.
50 Kinema Junpo 477 (21 July 1933): 10.
51 Keijo Nippo (24 April 1935): n.p., Sessue Hayakawa Scrapbook, Hirasaki National
Resource Center, Japanese American National Museum.
52 Hayakawa Sesshu, “Kicho geidan” [Talk on art on his return], 26. Another film
about Nichiren, Kokuchu Nichiren daishonin [The great Nichiren, the pillar of

N o t e s t o E p i l o g u e  327
 Japan] (Nakajima Jitsuzo, 1935), was made at Daito studio in the same year.
After Nichiren, Hayakawa even established the Japan Buddhist Theater Group
and appeared in a play that depicted the life of the Buddha, written by Haya-
kawa himself. “Hayakawa Sesshu: Jijo shoden (jo) [Sessue Hayakawa: A short
autobiography (1)],” Sande Mainichi (20 November 1949): 16.
53 Hubler, “Honorable ‘Bad Guy,’ ” 149.
54 “Enter the ‘Villain,’ ” Newsweek (17 March 1958): 62.
55 Pyongyang Mainichi (20 April 1935), evening edition, n.p., in Sessue Hayakawa
Scrapbook, Hirasaki National Resource Center, Japanese American National
Museum.
56 The Japanese actress Ri Koran (aka Li Xianglan, aka Shirley Yamaguchi), who
disguised herself as a Chinese star in propaganda films for Japanese imperial-
ism, existed as such a pan-Asian star, especially in the 1930s and 1940s. See
Stephenson, “ ‘Her Traces Are Found Everywhere,’ ” 222–45.
57 Hubler, “Honorable ‘Bad Guy,’ ” 148–49.
58 Kinema Junpo 513 (1 August 1934): 105.
59 Kinema Junpo 530 (1 February 1935): 110.
60 Towa shoji had imported German and French films since 1928. Kawakita was
willing to export Japanese films to Europe and the United States.
61 Kinema Junpo 597 (1 January 1937): 238.
62 Some audiences opposed the film’s “anachronistic” depiction of the Japanese
family system, “insulting” description of Japanese men, and “ignorant” charac-
terization of Japanese women. “Gijutsu hihyo no hitsuyo” [Necessity for criti-
cism on techniques], Kinema Junpo 603 (1 March 1937): 11. A fan criticized
Fanck’s “infantile point of view on Japan” and his “primitivist” view of Japanese
people. Kinema Junpo 604 (11 March 1937): 83.
63 Kinema Junpo 588 (21 September 1936): 24; Kinema Junpo 600 (1 February
1937): 27–28.
64 Uchida, “Futatsu no Atarashiki tsuchi” [Two Die Tochter des Samurai], 10.
65 Even the heroine of the film, Hara Setsuko, who played Hayakawa’s daughter,
was criticized for her Westernized image in the late 1930s after she came back
to Japan from the promotional tour in Germany. Like Hayakawa, her Western-
ized image, which had been used for the fascist propaganda film, was used for
a completely different purpose after World War II: promoting American-style
democracy in films, including Kurosawa Akira’s controversial film Waga sei-
shun ni kui nashi (No Regrets for Our Youth, 1949). Hara later appeared in many
films by Ozu Yasujiro and played roles that were considered as “typically Japa-
nese.”
66 Okudaira, “Eiga no kokka tosei” [The state regulation of cinema], 238–55.
67 “Honra Japonesa,” Cine-Journal (Portugal) 122 (14 February 1938): n.p.
68 Variety 126.9 (12 May 1937): 15.
69 Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun (13 March 1937), in Shinbun shusei Showa hennenshi
12-I, 757. Yoshiwara was not released in Japan until 1946.
70 Other films were Tempête sur l’Asia (Storm over Asia, Richard Oswald, 1938),

328  N o t e s t o E p i l o g u e
 Patrouille blanche (Christian Chamborant, 1942), Le Soleil de minuit (Bernard
Roland, 1943), Malaria (Jean Gourguet, 1943), Quartier chinois (René Sti, 1946),
Le Cabaret du grand large (René Jayet, 1946). Macao, L’enfer du Jeu was banned
in France because it was not pro-Nazi. It was released in 1950 in the United
States, when the Korean War drew more interest in Asia, with two different new
titles, Mask of Korea and Gambling Hell. Variety 179.9 (9 August 1950): 9.
71 Newsweek (14 November 1949): 91. Hayakawa regarded himself as stars of
these films. He praised Bogart because Bogart let him act as he wanted. In
contrast, Hayakawa criticized Colbert for being afraid of losing her star status
in the film and for being irritated with Hayakawa’s “restrained” performance.
“Hariuddo konjaku: Hayakawa Sesshu miyage banashi” [Hollywood, the past
and the present: Sessue Hayakawa talks], Shukan Asahi 1554 (23 October 1949):
22. In Tokyo Joe, Hayakawa’s fiendish Japanese smuggler, who pretends to be
an entrepreneur of a commercial airline but, in fact, tries to bring back a trio
of Japanese ex-generals to Japan from post–World War II Korea, was “typical
Japanese malevolence” but simultaneously “suave.” New York Times (27 October
1949): 35; Variety 176.5 (12 October 1949): 6.
72 Newsweek (14 November 1949): 92.
73 Edwin Schallert, “Women’s War Story Inspired,” A8; Motion Picture Herald
178.6 (11 February 1950): 185.
74 Schallert, “Hal Roach Television Plans Move into High; Hayakawa Will Re-
turn,” 7.
75 Schallert, “Women’s War Story Inspired,” A8.
76 Kinema News (10 May 1949): 2.
77 “In This Corner, Sessue Hayakawa,” New York Times (9 January 1949): X5. In
1949 at a gallery in Los Angeles there was an exhibition that showed the paint-
ings Hayakawa had done in France. The report of it in the Los Angeles Times
again emphasized the ambivalent characteristic of Hayakawa’s work between
Japaneseness and Westernization: “His [Hayakawa’s] style infuses into tradi-
tional Chinese-Japanese brush drawings [a] charming delicacy of tone and color
evidently learned from French Impressionism.” “Oriental Style Works Shown
by Hayakawa,” Los Angeles Times (27 February 1949): D4.
78 Sukurin Suteji 174 (6 September 1949): n.p.
79 Quoted from an unidentified newspaper clipping. Ito Daisuke Bunko [Ito Dai-
suke Collection], Box 20, Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan.
80 “Hayakawa Sesshu: Jijo shoden (Ge)” [Sessue Hayakawa: A short autobiography
(2)], Sande Mainichi (27 November 1949): 22.
81 Hollywood Reporter (10 December 1948): 5.
82 The period of postwar occupation of Japan began with the Japanese surrender
to the Allies in August 1945 and continued until signing of the San Francisco
Peace Treaty in April 1952. Australia, the Soviet Union, China, and the United
States officially administered the occupation, but for all intents and purposes it
was a U.S.-run operation.
83 Nogami, Seirin no o Hayakawa Sesshu, 192.

N o t e s t o E p i l o g u e  329
 84 Mori Masayuki, who played the husband in Rashomon, and Sugimura Haruko,
who appeared in Ozu’s films many times, were among them.
85 The director Ito Daisuke, who initiated the rise of jidaigeki after 1923 with his
modern techniques, had been a big fan of Hayakawa. T. Saiki, Eiga dokuhon
[Cinema reader], 135.
86 Hayakawa’s Japanese character in Harukanari haha no kuni, Joe Hayami, com-
mits a crime in December 1915. Because of the crime, Hayami leaves Japan
for Latin America and does not come back to Japan for twenty years. When he
finally comes back, his former sweetheart has been married to another man
and has a daughter. Hayami protects them from gangsters. After the fight he
decides to leave Japan, where there is no place for him. The story of Hayami
consciously incorporates Hayakawa’s own life story. When The Cheat was re-
leased in December 1915, Japanese spectators treated Hayakawa as if he had
committed a crime. He was not able to stay in Japan when he came back twenty
years later and so left for France.
87 Daiei Kyoto sakuhin annai, 193, in Ito Daisuke Bunko, Box 14, Kyoto Bunka
Hakubutsukan.
88 Jiji Shinpo (2 November 1950): 4.
89 “Amerika orai” [To and from America], Mainichi Gurafu (15 November 1949):
20–21.
90 These exotic films were not necessarily popular among domestic audiences.
Ironically, films by Ozu or Naruse Mikio that were set in contemporary Japan
were regarded as “too Japanese” and were not exported eagerly but rather re-
tained within the domestic market. There was a double standard or two differ-
ent forms of Japaneseness here: Japaneseness for foreign audiences and Japa-
neseness for domestic audiences.
91 Shishi no za, production plan, Ito Daisuke Bunko, Box 29, Kyoto Bunka Haku-
butsukan.
92 “Hariuddo konjaku: Hayakawa Sesshu miyage banashi” [Hollywood, the past
and the present: Sessue Hayakawa talks], Shukan Asahi 1554 (23 October 1949):
23.
93 Hayakawa Sesshu, “Kicho geidan,” 27–28.
94 Ross, “Sessue Hayakawa Prefers the Wicked Roles,” n.p., in SHE.
95 Variety 219.10 (3 August 1960): 7.
96 Atkinson, “Theatre,” 26.
97 Thirer, “Sessue Hayakawa—Then and Now,” n.p.
98 Ross, “Sessue Hayakawa Prefers the Wicked Roles,” n.p., in SHE.
99 “Risen Sun,” New Yorker 35 (1 August 1959): 16.
100 “Kenzainari Sesshu” [Sessue still good in health], Shukan Asahi (30 March
1958): 47–49.
101 “Sekai o butai ni suru otoko Hayakawa Sesshu shi” [The man who plays in the
world: Mr. Sessue Hayakawa], Shukan Yomiuri (20 September 1959): 43, 47.
102 “Anata e adobaisu” [Advice to you], Shukan Yomiuri (2 March 1958): 90.
103 “Anata e adobaisu” [Advice to you], Shukan Yomiuri (2 March 1958): 90.

330  N o t e s t o E p i l o g u e
 104 Paul L. Montgomery, “Sessue Hayakawa Is Dead at 83 [sic]; Silents Star Was in
‘River Kwai,’ ” New York Herald Tribune (25 November 1973): n.p., in SHE.
105 “Moto Hariuddo haiyu, Hayakawa Sesshu, shishite ichidai gimon: Kare wa hon-
toni kokusai suta dattanoka” [The ex-Hollywood actor, Sessue Hayakawa, died
with a big question: Was he really an international star?], Shukan Bunshun 756
(17 December 1973): 176, 181–82.

N o t e s t o E p i l o g u e  331
 Filmography

N e w Y o r k M o t i o n P i c t u r e C o m pa n y
( 1 91 4 – 1 5 )
O Mimi San (Domino, Reginald Barker, 5 February 1914)
The Courtship of O San (Domino, Barker, 26 February 1914)
The Geisha (Kay-Bee, Barker, 10 April 1914)
Love’s Sacrifice (Kay-Bee, George Osborne, 1 May 1914) (Tsuruko Aoki only)
The Ambassador’s Envoy (Ince?, 28 May 1914)
A Tragedy of the Orient (Broncho, Barker, 10 June 1914)
A Relic of Old Japan (Domino, Barker, 11 June 1914)
The Wrath of the Gods (aka The Destruction of Sakurajima, Domino Special,
Barker, 22 June 1914)
Star of the North (Domino, Jay Hunt, 16 July 1914)
The Curse of Caste (Domino, Barker, 30 July 1914)
The Village ’Neath the Sea (Domino, Hunt, 27 August 1914)
Death Mask (Kay-Bee, Hunt, 25 September 1914)
The Typhoon (NYMPC/Paramount, Barker, 8 October 1914)
Nipped (Domino, Osborne, 19 November 1914)
The Vigil (Domino, Osborne, 3 December 1914)
The Last of the Line (aka Pride of Race, Domino, Hunt, 24 December 1914)
The Famine (Kay-Bee, Osborne, 29 January 1915)
The Chinatown Mystery (Broncho, Barker, 10 February 1915)

J e ss e L . L a s k y F e at u r e P l ay C o m pa n y
( 1 91 5 – 1 8 )
After Five (Oscar Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille, 28 January 1915)
The Clue (James Neill and Frank Reicher [credited as Frank Reichert], 8 July 1915)
The Secret Sin (Frank Reicher, 21 October 1915)
The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille, 4 December 1915)
Temptation (Cecil B. DeMille, 30 December 1915)
Alien Souls (Reichert, 11 May 1916)
The Honorable Friend (Edward J. Le Saint, 24 August 1916)
The Soul of Kura San (Le Saint, 30 October 1916)
The Victoria Cross (William C. DeMille, 14 December 1916)
Each to His Kind (Le Saint, 5 February 1917)
The Bottle Imp (Marshall Neilan, 26 March 1917)
The Jaguar’s Claws (Neilan, 11 June 1917)
Forbidden Paths (Robert T. Thornby, 5 July 1917)
Hashimura Togo (William C. DeMille, 19 August 1917)
The Call of the East (George H. Melford, 15 October 1917)
The Secret Game (William C. DeMille, 3 December 1917)
The Hidden Pearls (Melford, 18 February 1918)
The Honor of His House (William C. DeMille, 1 April 1918)
The White Man’s Law (James Young, 6 May 1918)
The Bravest Way (Melford, 16 June 1918)
The City of Dim Faces (Melford, 15 July 1918)

H aw o r t h P i c t u r e s C o r p o r at i o n ( 1 91 8 – 2 0 )
H aya k awa F e at u r e P l ay C o m pa n y ( 1 9 21 )
R- C P i c t u r e s (1922)
His Birthright (William Worthington, 1 or 8 September 1918)
Banzai (1918)
The Temple of Dusk (Young, 13 or 20 October 1918)
Bonds of Honor (Worthington, 19 January 1919)
A Heart in Pawn (Worthington, 10 March 1919)
The Courageous Coward (Worthington, 14 April 1919)
His Debt (Worthington, 25 May 1919)
The Man Beneath (Worthington, 6 July 1919)
The Gray Horizon (Worthington, 18 August 1919)
The Dragon Painter (Worthington, 28 September or 4 October 1919)
The Illustrious Prince (Worthington, 2 November 1919)
The Tong Man (Worthington, 14 December 1919)
The Beggar Prince (Worthington, 25 January 1920)
The Brand of Lopez (Joseph De Grasse, April 1920)
The Devil’s Claim (Charles Swickard, 2 May 1920)
Li Ting Lang (Swickard, July 1920)
An Arabian Knight (Swickard, 22 August 1920)
The First Born (Colin Campbell, 30 January 1921)
Black Roses (Campbell, 22 May 1921)
Where Lights Are Low (Campbell, 4 September 1921)
The Swamp (Campbell, 30 October 1921)
Five Days to Live (Norman Dawn, 8 January 1922)
The Vermilion Pencil (Dawn, 19 March 1922)

1 9 2 2 a n d Af t e r
Night Life in Hollywood (Fred Caldwell and Jack Pratt, 1922)
La Bataille (The Danger Line, E. E. Violet, 1923)

334  F i l mo g raph y
Sen Yan’s Devotion (A. E. Coleby, 1924)
J’ai tué! (I Have Killed, Roger Lion, 1924)
The Great Prince Shan (Coleby, 1924)
The Man Who Laughs Last (aka The Man Who Laughed, 1929)
Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931)
Around the World in 80 Minutes with Douglas Fairbanks (Douglas Fairbanks and
Victor Fleming, 1931)
Taiyo wa higashi yori [The sun rises from the east] (Shochiku, Hayakawa Sesshu,
1932)
Nanko fushi [Father and son of Honorable Kusunoki] (Uzumasa Hassei, Ikeda
­Tomiyasu, 1933)
Bakugeki hiko tai [Bomber pilots] (Uzumasa Hassei, Saegusa Genjiro, 1934)
Araki Mataemon: Tenka no Iga goe [Araki Mataemon: Beyond the nationally famous
Iga] (Uzumasa Hassei, Katsumi Yotaro, 1934)
Tojin Okichi [Okichi the China girl] (Shinko Tokyo, Fuyusima Taizo, 1935)
Kuni o mamoru Nichiren [Nichiren, who protects Japan] (Shinko Tokyo, Sone Chi-
haru, 1935)
Atarshiki tsuchi (Die Tochter des Samurai, Arnold Fanck and Itami Mansaku, 1937)
Yoshiwara (Max Ophuls, 1937)
Forfaiture (Marcel L’Herbier, 1937)
Tempête sur l’Asia (Storm over Asia, Richard Oswald, 1938)
Macao, L’enfer du jeu (Gambling Hell, aka Mask of Korea, Jean Delannoy, 1939)
Patrouille blanche (Christian Chamborant, 1942)
Tornavara (Jean Dreville, 1943)
Le Soleil de minuit (Bernard Roland, 1943)
Malaria (Jean Gourguet, 1943)
Quartier chinois (René Sti, 1946)
Le Cabaret du grand large (René Jayet, 1946)
Tokyo Joe (Stuart Heisler, 1949)
Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1949)
Harukanari haha no kuni [Far away mother’s country] (Daiei, Ito Daisuke, 1950)
Re Mizeraburu [Les Miserables] (Toyoko, Part 1 “Kami to akuma” [God and devil] by
Ito Daisuke, and Part 2 “Ai to jiyu no hata” [Flag of love and liberty] by Makino
Masahiro, 1950)
Akoroshi [The royal forty-seven samurai] (Toei, Sasaki Yasushi, 1953)
Higeki no shogun Yamashita Hobun [The tragic general, Yamashita Hobun] (Toei,
Saeki Kiyoshi, 1953)
Kurama Tengu to Katsu Kaishu [Kurama Tengu and Katsu Kaishu] (Shintoho, Ikeda
Toyoyasu, 1953)
Nihon yaburezu [Japan did not lose] (Shintoho, Abe Yutaka, 1954)
The House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller, 1955)
Yarodomo omote e dero [Guys, get out] (Toei, Kobayashi Tsuneo, 1956)
Ikare! Rikidozan [Get angry! Rikidozan] (Toei, Kobayashi Shigehiro, 1956)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)

F i l mo g raph y   335
The Geisha Boy (Frank Tashlin, 1958)
Green Mansions (Mel Ferrer, 1959)
Hell to Eternity (Phil Karlson, 1960)
Swiss Family Robinson (Ken Annakin, 1960)
The Big Wave (Ted Danielewski, 1962)
Daydreamer (Jules Bass, 1962)
Bosu wa ore no kenju de [With my gun, Boss] (Toei, Murayama Shinji, 1966)
Junjo nijuso [Naïve duet] (Shochiku, Umezu Meijiro, 1967)

336  F i l mo g raph y
 Bibliography

A r ch i va l M at e r i a l s
Cecil B. DeMille Scrapbook. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
Robinson Locke Collection.
Harry and Roy Aitken Papers, 1909–1940. State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
Archives Division.
Ince/Reed Collection. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Ito Daisuke Bunko [Ito Daisuke Collection]. Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan [The Mu-
seum of Kyoto].
The Motion Picture Commission of the State of New York File. New York State Ar-
chives, Cultural Education Center, Albany.
National Board of Review Records, 1907–1971. The New York Public Library, Special
Collections.
Paramount Script Collection. Center for Motion Picture Study, Margaret Herrick
Library, Beverly Hills.
“Popular Arts Project: Sessue Hayakawa.” Oral History Research Office, Columbia
University, 1959.
Script of The Cheat and Temptation. University of Southern California, Cine-TV
Library, Special Collection.
Script of The Cheat (1931). New York State Archives, Cultural Education Center, Albany.
Sessue Hayakawa File. Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles.
Sessue Hayakawa File. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Sessue Hayakawa: Locke Collection Envelope 659. The New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts, Robinson Locke Collection.
Sessue Hayakawa: Scrapbook. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
Robinson Locke Collection. Abbreviated in the “Books and Articles” section of
the bibliography as SHS.
Synopses of Productions Made by Thomas H. Ince During the Period of April 1912
to August 1915. UCLA Research Library, Special Collections.
Thomas H. Ince Scrapbook. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
Robinson Locke Collection.

Selected Periodicals
Bioscope, 3 February 1916–26 October 1922.
Exhibitor’s Herald (Exhibitor’s Film Exchange; Exhibitor’s Herald and Motography;
­Motion Picture Herald), 24 June 1915–3 June 1922.
Exhibitor’s Trade Review, 16 December 1916–25 March 1922.
Katsudo Gaho [Motion picture graphic], January 1917–September 1922.
Katsudo Kurabu [Motion picture club], September 1919–July 1925.
Katsudo no Sekai [Active world, or Motion picture world], January 1916–April 1919.
Katsudo Shashin Zasshi [Motion picture magazine], May 1915–December 1921.
Katsudo Zasshi [Movie magazine], September 1919–December 1925.
Kinema Junpo (aka The Movie News), July 1919–present.
Kinema News, 10 May 1949–31 May 1949.
Kinema Record, December 1913–November/December 1917 (formerly Film Record,
October–November 1913).
Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1915–22 December 1957.
Motion Picture Classic, December 1916–May 1926.
Motion Picture Magazine, January 1915–April 1922.
Motion Picture News, 10 January 1914–15 April 1922.
Motography, 19 November 1911–23 March 1918.
Moving Picture World, 14 March 1908–15 April 1922.
New York Clipper, 15 December 1906–1 August 1914.
New York Dramatic Mirror, 2 November 1910–March 1922.
New York Times Film Reviews 1913–1968. Vol. 1: 1913–1931. New York: Arno, 1970.
Nichibei Shinbun (Japanese American News), 25 December 1915–16 September 1922.
Nyu Yoku Shimpo, 18 September 1915–6 September 1924.
Picture Progress (Paramount Magazine), January 1915–May 1917.
Rafu Shimpo, 8 December 1914–26 January 1923.
Reel Life, 23 August 1913–9 June 1917.
Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi [Periodical history of Taisho through newspapers].
Tokyo: Meiji Taisho Showa Shinbun Kenkyukai, 1980–1987.
Shinbun shusei Showa hennenshi [Periodical history of Showa through newspapers].
Tokyo: Meiji Taisho Showa Shinbun Kenkyukai, 1958–1990.
Taisho nyusu jiten [Taisho news encyclopedia]. 8 vols. Tokyo: Mainichi komyunike-
shonzu, 1988.
Tokyo Asahi Shinbun [Tokyo Asahi newspaper], 18 February 1919–29 August 1922.
Variety, 2 February 1907–12 November 1960.
Wid’s Daily (formerly Wid’s Films and Film Folk Independent Criticisms of Features and
Wid’s Independent Reviews of Feature Films), 9 September 1915–15 August 1920.

B o o k s a n d A rt i c l e s
Abe, Yu. “Appare ‘Wongu’ no koi” [Love of great Wong]. Fujin Saron 4.9 (September
1932): 124–28.
Abel, Richard. French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology 1907–1939. Vol-
ume 1, 1907–1929. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Abramson, Harold J. “Assimilation and Pluralism.” Harvard Encyclopedia of Ameri-
can Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephen Thernstorm, 150–60. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1980.

338  B i bl i o g raph y
Affron, Charles. Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her Life. New York: Scribner’s, 2001.
———. Star Acting: Gish, Garbo, Davis. New York: Dutton, 1977.
Amano, Chugi. “Beikoku katsudo shashin no chimata yori” [News from American
motion pictures], Katsudo Gaho 3.9 (September 1919): 164–65.
“Amerika orai” [To and from America]. Mainichi Gurafu (15 November 1949): 20–21.
Andrews, Peter. “The Vermilion Pencil.” Motion Picture Magazine 23.4 (April 1922):
49–53, 102.
Aokusasho. “Kamome tobu Korea-maru no kanpan de” [On the deck of the Korea
where seagulls fly], Katsudo Gaho 4.6 (June 1920): 50–51.
Aoyama, Yukio. “Aren kun no Nihon kan” [Mr. Allen’s view on Japan]. Katsudo
Shashin Zasshi 3.12 (December 1917): 88–89.
———. “Beikoku katsudo shashin kai” [American motion picture world]. Rafu
Shimpo 5951 (18 December 1922): 15.
———. “Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako yori” [From the capital of the Ameri-
can motion picture]. Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 3.10 (October 1917): 44–47.
———. “Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako yori (12).” Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 4.7
(July 1918): 35–41.
———. “Beikoku katsudo shashin no miyako yori (13).” Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 4.8
(August 1918): 58–65.
———. “Beikoku no eiga to Hirai Yoshitaka kun” [American films and Mr. Yoshitaka
Hirai]. Katsudo Zasshi 8.5 (May 1922): 116–21.
———. “Beikoku sukurin geppo” [American screen monthly]. Katsudo Zasshi 8.8
(August 1922): 136–40.
———. “Gimon datta Hayakawa Sesshu no kyukin” [Sessue Hayakawa’s salary,
which had been unknown]. Katsudo Zasshi 10.1 (January 1924): 50–54.
———. Hariuddo eiga okoku no kaibo [Anatomy of Hollywood film kingdom]. Tokyo:
Hakubundo, 1929.
———. “Haro Tomasu” [Hello, Thomas]. Katsudo Zasshi 9.11 (November 1923):
68–71.
———. “Nanji no yatoinin wa dareka no shutsuen ni tsuite” [About appearing in
Who’s Your Servant?]. Katsudo Zasshi 6.11 (November 1920): 78–82.
———. “Zaibei nihonjin katsudo haiyu hatten shi” [History of progress of Japanese
photoplay actors in the U.S.]. Katsudo Shashin Zasshi 4.4 (April 1918): 5–11.
Atkinson, Brooks. “Theatre: Japanese Style.” New York Times (4 June 1959): 26.
Ayase, Hideko. “Waga Sesshu o noroeru hitora e” [To those who curse on Sessue].
Katsudo Zasshi 8.12 (December 1922): 154–55.
Azuma (or Higashi), Takeo. “Kaigai ni odoru hiro Sesshu Hayakawa to Aoki Tsu-
ruko” [International heroes, Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuruko Aoki]. Fujin Gaho
290 (June 1930): 152–55.
Azuma, Yonosuke (or Higashi). “Aoki Tsuruko to gyunabe o kakomu” [Having beef
for a dinner with Tsuruko Aoki]. Katsudo Kurabu 3.8 (August 1920): 44–46.
Baily, Leslie. The Gilbert and Sullivan Book. London: Spring, 1952.
Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans.
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

B i bl i o g raph y   339
Barbas, Samantha. “The Political Spectator: Censorship, Protests and the Movie-
going Experience, 1912–1922.” Film History 11.2 (1999): 217–230.
Barber, X. Theodore. “The Roots of Travel Cinema: John L. Stoddard, E. Burton
Holmes and the Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Travel Lecture.” Film History 5.1
(1993): 68–84.
Bardèche, Maurice, and Robert Brasillach. The History of Motion Pictures, trans. and
ed. Iris Barry. New York: Norton, 1938.
Barrett, Wilton. A. “The Work of the National Board of Review.” Annals of the Ameri-
can Academy of Political and Social Science 128 (November 1926): 175–86.
Bartlett, Randolph. “The Star Idea Versus the Star System.” Motion Picture Magazine
18.7 (August 1919): 36–37.
Beauchamp, Cari. Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of
Early Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Bell, Michael. Primitivism. London: Methuen, 1972.
Benjamin, Walter. “A Short History of Photography.” In One Way Street and Other
Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter, 240–57. London: Verso,
1985.
———. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations,
ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, 217–51. New York: Schocken, 1969.
Bernardi, Joanne. Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film
Movement. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
“Biographical Brevities: Sessue Hayakawa.” Picturegoer (February 1921): 39.
Bliven, Bruce. “The Japanese Problem.” Nation 112.2900 (2 February 1921): 171–72.
Blum, Richard A. American Film Acting: The Stanislavski Heritage. Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1984.
Blumin, Stuart M. “The Hypothesis of Middle-Class Formation in Nineteenth-
Century America: A Critique and Some Proposals.” American Historical Review
90 (1985): 299–338.
Bodeen, Dewitt. “Sessue Hayakawa: First International Japanese Star.” Films in Re-
view 27.4 (April 1976): 193–208.
Bourne, Randolph. The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911–1918. New York: Urizen,
1977.
Bowser, Eileen. The Transformation of Cinema 1907–1915. New York: Scribner’s,
1990.
Bowser, Pearl, and Louise Spence. Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His
Silent Films, and His Audiences. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
2000.
Brewster, Ben, and Lea Jacobs. Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early
Feature Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Brock, Alan. “Sessue Hayakawa: American Style.” Classic Film Collector 27.12
(spring/summer 1970): 12–13.
Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and
the Mode of Excess. 1976. Reprint, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

340  B i bl i o g raph y
Brown, Gene, ed. New York Times Encyclopedia of Film 1896–1928. New York: New
York Times, 1984.
Brown, Jane Converse. “ ‘Fine Arts and Fine People’: The Japanese Taste in the
American Home, 1876–1916.” Making the American Home: Middle-Class Women
and Domestic Material Culture 1840–1940, ed. Marilyn Ferris Motz and Pat
Browne, 121–39. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular
Press, 1988.
———. “The ‘Japanese Taste’: Its Role in the Mission of the American Home and
in the Family’s Presentation of Itself to the Public as Expressed in Published
Sources: 1876–1916.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1987.
Browne, Nick. “Orientalism as an Ideological Form: American Film Theory in the
Silent Period.” Wide Angle 11.4 (1989): 23–31.
———. “The Undoing of the Other Woman: Madame Butterfly in the Discourse of
American Orientalism.” The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S.
Cinema, ed. Daniel Bernardi, 227–56. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1996.
Brownlow, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime: Films
of Social Conscience in the Silent Era. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990.
Bryers, Leslie. “The Gentleman from Japan.” Motion Picture Magazine 23.3 (March
1922): 54–55, 109.
Busby, Marquis. “Hayakawa Plays Suave Oriental.” Los Angeles Times (20 December
1926): A9.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Rout-
ledge, 1990.
“Can We Assimilate the Japanese?” Literary Digest 47.5 (2 August 1913): 165–66.
Card, James. Seductive Cinema: The Art of Silent Film. New York: Knopf, 1994.
Carr, Harry. “ ‘First Born’ Is Weakling,” Los Angeles Times (6 February 1921): III-1.
———. “Son of the Samurai.” Motion Picture Classic 14.7 (July 1922): 31–33, 81.
Carr, Harry C. “Sessue of the Samurai: Hayakawa Is the Proud Old Japanese Caste
with the Manners of Modern America.” Motion Picture Classic 7 (January 1919):
22–23, 68.
Carroll, David. The Matinee Idols. New York: Arbor, 1972.
Cavell, Stanley. “What Photography Calls Thinking.” Raritan: A Quarterly Review 4.4
(spring 1985): 1–21.
Choy, Philip P., Lorraine Dong, and Marlon K. Hom. The Coming Man: Nineteenth-
Century American Perceptions of the Chinese. Hong Kong: Joint, 1994.
Clair, René. Cinema: Yesterday and Today. Trans. Stanley Appelbaum. Ed. R. C. Dale.
New York: Dover, 1972.
Cohen, Paula Marantz. Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
Colette. Colette at the Movies: Criticism and Screenplays. Trans. Sarah W. R. Smith. Ed.
Alain Virmaux and Odette Virmaux. 1970. Reprint, New York: Frederick Ungar,
1980.

B i bl i o g raph y   341
Conroy, Hilary. “Concerning the Asian-American Experience.” In Ethnic Images in
American Film and Television, ed. Randall M. Miller, 157–69. Philadelphia: Balch
Institute, 1978.
Conte-Helme, Marie. Japan and the North East of England: From 1862 to the Present
Day. London: Althone, 1989.
Cook, Clarence. “Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks-III.” Scribner’s Monthly 11
(1875): 494.
Coontz, Stephanie. The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families.
London: Verso, 1988.
Copley, Stephen, and Peter Garside, eds. The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature,
Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994.
Cortés, Carlos E. “Hollywood Interracial Love: Social Taboo as Screen Titillation.”
In Beyond the Stars II: Plot Conventions in American Popular Film, ed. Paul Lou-
kides and Linda K. Fuller, 21–35. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University
Popular Press, 1991.
Crisp, Colin. Genre, Myth, and Convention in the French Cinema, 1929–1939. Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
Current Biography. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1962.
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.
———. The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the
Struggle for Exclusion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.
Deacon, Richard. Kempei Tai: A History of the Japanese Secret Service. New York: Beau-
fort, 1983.
deCordova, Richard. “The Emergence of the Star System in America.” In Stardom:
Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill, 17–29. London: Routledge, 1991.
———. Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Deguchi, Takehito. “Nani ga hakujin konpurekkusu o umidashitaka” [What caused
white complex?]. In Nihon eiga to Modanizumu 1920–1930, ed. Iwamoto Kenji,
104–23. Tokyo: Riburopoto, 1991.
Delluc, Louis. “Beauty in the Cinema.” Le Film 73 (6 August 1917): 4–5. Translated
in Richard Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology 1907–1939.
Vol. 1, 1907–1929, 137–39. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Dixon, Royal. Americanization. New York: Macmillan, 1916.
Dizikes, John. Opera in America: A Cultural History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1993.
Doane, Mary Ann. “The Close-Up: Scale and Detail in the Cinema.” Differences: A
Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 14.3 (2003): 89–111.
Downer, Lesley. Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Seduced the West. London:
Review, 2003.
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. Reprint, New York: Penguin, 1982.
Dullac, Germaine. Écrits sur le cinéma (1919–1937). Paris: Paris Experimental, 1994.

342  B i bl i o g raph y
Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New
York: Hill, 1995.
Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI, 1979.
Easterfield, Harry Carr. “The Japanese Point of View: And Incidentally a Chat with
Hayakawa.” Motion Picture Story Magazine (15 April 1918): 33–35, 119.
Elliot, Harvey. “Hollywood’s Yellow Streak.” After Dark (September 1977): 76–78.
“Enter the ‘Villain.’ ” Newsweek (17 March 1958): 62.
Epstein, Jean. Écrits sur le Cinéma 1921–1953. Vol. 1, 1921–1947. 1957. Reprint, Paris:
Seghers, 1974.
———. “Grossissement.” In Bonjour Cinema, 93–108. Paris: Editions de la sirène,
1921. Translated and reprinted in October 3 (spring 1977): 9–15. Reprinted, with
changes, in Richard Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology
1907–1939. Vol. 1, 1907–1929, 235–41. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1988.
———. “Magnification and Other Writings.” Trans. Stuart Liebman. October 3
(spring 1977): 9–25.
———. “The Senses I (b).” In Bonjour Cinema, 27–44. Paris: Editions de la sirène,
1921. Translated and reprinted in After Image 10 (autumn 1981): 9–16. Reprinted
in Richard Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology 1907–1939.
Vol. 1, 1907–1929, 241–46. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
“Ethnological Basis of the Japanese Claim to Be a White Race.” Current Opinion 55
(July 1913): 38–39.
Evans, Delght. “West Is East.” Photoplay 20.4 (October 1921): 30.
Feldman, Charles Matthew. The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pic-
tures, 1909–1922. New York: Arno, 1977.
Fenollosa, Mary McNeil. The Dragon Painter. Boston: Little, Brown, 1906.
Fernett, Gene. American Film Studios: An Historical Encyclopedia. Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 1988.
Ferry, J., and Y. Moreno. “Sessue Hayakawa.” Tras La Pantalla: Galeria de Artistas
Cinematograficos 21 (16 April 1921): 1–16.
Fescourt, Henri, and Jean-Louis Bouquet. L’Idée et l’écran: Opinions sur le cinéma,
vol. 1. Paris: Haberschill and Sergent, 1925.
Field, Charles K. “A Japanese Idol on the American Screen: A ‘Close-up’ of the Haya-
kawas on the New Rialto.” Sunset 37 (July 1916): 22–25, 72–73.
Fletcher, Adele Whitely. “The Orient on the Subway.” Motion Picture Magazine 20.9
(October 1920): 52–53, 99.
Fox, Dennis. “Silent Film Star Guided by Zen.” Japan Times (21 June 1987): 8.
“From Out the Flowery Kingdom.” Motion Picture Classic (November 1918: n.p.).
In SHS : 167–68.
Fujiki, Hideaki. “American Cinema Reshaping Japanese Culture: The Beauties of
the Body and Expressions, and Tanizaki Junichiro.” Paper presented at the annual
meeting of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 6 March 2004, Atlanta.
Fuller, Karla Rae. “Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American
Cinema.” Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1997.

B i bl i o g raph y   343
Funahashi, Kazuo. “Hayakawa Sesshu, Oini kataru” [Sessue Hayakawa talks a lot].
Shinario [Scenario] 49.12 (December 1993): 58–61.
Gaddis, Pearl. “The Romance of Nippon Land.” Motion Picture Classic (December
1916): 18–20.
Geltzer, George. “The Complete Career of Reginald Barker.” Griffithiana 32/33 (Sep-
tember 1988): 245–51.
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1980.
Geraghty, Christine. “Re-examining Stardom: Questions of Texts, Bodies and Perfor-
mance.” In Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams,
183–201. London: Arnold, 2000.
Gergely, Emro Joseph. “Hungarian Drama in New York: American Adaptations
1908–1940.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1947.
“Germany Flirting with the Orient.” Literary Digest 54.12 (24 March 1917): 808.
Gerow, Aaron. “One Print in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Film Industry
and Culture in 1910s Japan,” http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/
firstrelease/fr1100/agfr11e.rtf. Accessed 20 June 2006.
———. “Writing a Pure Cinema: Articulations of Early Japanese Film.” Ph.D. diss.,
University of Iowa, 1996.
Gevinson, Alan, ed. American Film Institute Catalog: Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in
American Feature Films, 1911–1960. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997.
Gleason, Philip. “American Identity and Americanization.” Harvard Encyclopedia
of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephen Thernstorm, 31–58. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1980.
Gluck, Carol. Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1985.
Goll, Claire. “Amerikanisches Kino.” Die neue Schaubühne 2.6 (1920): 164–65.
Gonda, Yasunosuke. “Minshu goraku mondai” [Issues of mass entertainment] (1921).
In Gonda Yasunosuke chosaku shu dai 1 kan [Gonda Yasunosuke collection vol. 1].
Tokyo: Bunwa shobo, 1974.
———. Katsudo shashin no genri oyobi oyo [Principles of motion pictures and their
application]. Tokyo: Uchida rokakuho, 1914.
Gong, Stephen. “Zen and the Art of Motion Picture Making.” Program of 1982 Asian-
American International Film Festival (June 1982): 9–18.
———. “Zen Warrior of the Celluloid (Silent) Years.” Asian American Perspectives/
Bridge 8.2 (winter 1982–83): 37–41.
Greene, Daniel Crosby. “Anti-Japanese Prejudice.” Outlook (9 July 1910): 539.
Griffis, William Elliot. “Japan and the United States: Are the Japanese Mongolian?”
North American Review 197 (June 1913): 721–33.
———. “Our Honor and Shame with Japan.” North American Review 200 (October
1914): 566–75.
Grimsted, David. Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater and Culture 1800–1850.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

344  B i bl i o g raph y
Gulick, Sidney L. American Democracy and Asiatic Citizenship. New York: Scribner’s,
1918.
———. The American Japanese Problem: A Study of the Racial Relations of the East and
the West. New York: Scribner’s, 1914.
———. “Nihonjin wa douka shiuruya (1)” [Are the Japanese assimilable?]. Rafu
Shimpo 3581 (8 August 1915): 2.
———. “Nihonjin wa douka shiuruya (2).” Rafu Shimpo 3582 (10 August 1915): 2.
Hammond, Robert M., and Charles Ford. “French End Games: For Some American
Silent Stars a Trip Abroad Was a Tonic for Ailing Careers.” Films in Review 34.6
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Hanayagi, Tamio. “Katsukai enma cho: Hayakawa Sesshu no maki” [Evaluation book
of the motion picture world: Sessue Hayakawa]. Katsudo Zasshi 8.9 (September
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Handy, Truman B. “Kipling Was Wrong!: West Isn’t West, nor Is East East, as Far as
the Hayakawas Are Concerned.” Photoplay 17.1 (December 1919): 51, 124.
Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
———. “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Ver-
nacular Modernism.” Film Quarterly 54.1 (2000): 10–22.
———. “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Mod-
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———. “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectator-
ship.” Cinema Journal 25.4 (summer 1986): 6–32.
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of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1911–1920. Berkeley:
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America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Harrison, Louis Reeves. “Eyes and Lips.” MPW 8.67 (18 February 1911): 348–49.
Hashikawa, Bunzo. Oka monogatari [Story of yellow peril]. 1976. Reprint, Tokyo:
Iwanami, 2000.
“Hayakawa, Japanese Screen Star.” Literary Digest (3 November 1917): 70, 72.
Hayakawa, Kintaro. “Sesshu zatsuwa” [Hayakawa talks]. Nichibei Jiho [Japanese-
American commercial weekly] 1044 (16 July 1921): 8.
Hayakawa, Sesshu. “Katsudo shashin ni yakusha toshite seiko suru yoso” [Elements
(needed) to become successful as a motion picture actor]. Katsudo Gaho 2.11
(November 1918): 117.
———. “Kicho geidan” [Talk on art on his return]. Eiga Hyoron (March 1950): 24–31.
Hayakawa, Sessue. The Bandit Prince. New York: Macaulay, 1926.
———. Zen Showed Me the Way . . . to Peace, Happiness and Tranquility. Indianapolis:
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B i bl i o g raph y   345
Hayakawa, Sessue, Mrs. “Mrs. Sessue Hayakawa Talks; Loyal to Actor in Woe.”
Los Angeles Times (14 December 1931): A2.
Hayakawa, Yukio. “Heaven and Hell: The Legend of Hollywood Star—Sessue Haya-
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———. “Heaven and Hell: The Legend of Hollywood Star—Sessue Hayakawa (2).”
Shinshokurin 18 (July 1997): 84–101.
———. “Heaven and Hell: The Legend of Hollywood Star—Sessue Hayakawa (3).”
Shinshokurin 19 (November 1997): 82–99.
———. “Heaven and Hell: The Legend of Hollywood Star—Sessue Hayakawa (4).”
Shinshokurin 20 (March 1998): 34–49.
———. “Heaven and Hell: The Legend of Hollywood Star—Sessue Hayakawa (5).”
Shinshokurin 22 (November 1998): 76–84.
———. “Heaven and Hell: The Legend of Hollywood Star—Sessue Hayakawa (6).”
Shinshokurin 23 (August 1999): 44–57.
———. “Tsuru Aoki: A Flower of Japan.” The Rafu Magazine 1.4 (19 June 1998): 3–5,
16–18.
“Hayakawa Sesshu: Jijo shoden (Jo)” [Sessue Hayakawa: A short autobiography (1)].
Sande Mainichi (20 November 1949): 14–16.
“Hayakawa Sesshu: Jijo shoden (Ge)” [Sessue Hayakawa: A short autobiography (2)].
Sande Mainichi (27 November 1949): 22–24.
Hayashi, Hisao. “Sesshu to Itari garu” [Sessue and Italian girls]. Bungei Shunju 8.14
(December 1930): 40–42.
Hayne, Donald, ed. The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1959.
Hearn, Lafcadio. Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. 1894. Reprint, Tokyo: Tuttle, 1976.
Hearne, Joanna. “ ‘ The Cross-Heart People’: Race and Inheritance in the Silent West-
ern.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 30.4 (winter 2003): 181–97.
Herman, David George. “Neighbors on the Golden Mountain: The Americanization
of Immigrants in California.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1981.
Higashi, Sumiko. Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994.
———. “Cecil B. DeMille and the Lasky Company: Legitimating Feature Film as
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364  B i bl i o g raph y
 Index

Abalone fishing, 50–51 Anglo-conformity, 89, 104, 144

Abdullah, Achmed, 266 Anti-American film movement, 260
Abe, Jack, 309 n. 69 Anti-American thought, 156
Acting style, 17, 243; Hayakawa and, 2–5, Anti-Asiatic Society (Los Angeles), 216
13–17, 24, 70, 74, 77, 114, 138, 144–46, Anti-Chinese cartoons, 181
195–213, 237–38, 247–55, 261, 267– Anti-Japanese film, 13, 27, 153, 219, 221,
72, 279–82; transition in, 196–99 236, 238, 253–58
Action film, 190, 210, 212, 268 Anti-Japanese movement, 6, 13, 18, 27,
Actor-identity, 220 33–34, 90, 94–95, 99, 175, 216–23,
Adventure film, 193 238–41, 253–61
African Americans, 163–64, 301 n. 15 Anti-modernism, 108
After Five, 46 Aoki, Toshio (aka Aoki Hyosai), 25
Akashi, Motojiro, 71 Aoki, Tsuruko (aka Tsuru Aoki), 24–25,
Alienation, 83 51, 54, 57–60, 84, 91–92, 97–98,
Alien land laws (1913), 95 118–19, 138–43, 155, 161, 178, 238–40,
“Aliens ineligible for citizenship,” Japa- 255–65, 271, 279
nese as, 6, 12, 95, 218 Aoyama, Yukio, 219, 236
Alien Souls, 22–23, 49, 91, 117, 137, 142, Appare Wong (The Honourable Mr. Wong),
149, 153, 155, 240, 262 266, 268, 321 n. 72
Ambassador’s Envoy, The, 293 n. 11 Arabian Knight, An, 17, 44–45, 187–94,
Ambiguity, 34–35, 43–44, 70, 115, 166, 211–12, 247, 306 n. 13
200–213, 254, 269, 288 n. 66 Arabs, 174, 187, 189–90, 211, 228
Americanism: Japan and, 242–43, 255, Aragoto (violent act), 65, 74, 198
260; United States and, 12, 89, 214, Araki Mataemon: Tenka no Iga goe [Araki
231 Mataemon: Beyond the nationally
Americanization: “Americanization famous Iga], 268–69
Movement,” 12, 89–90, 215; Aoki’s Arbuckle, Roscoe “Fatty,” 3
star image and, 257; cinema and, 256; Argentina, 227
female immigrants and, 142; Hayaka- Arliss, George, 213
wa’s star image and, 12–16, 44, 88– Asiatic Exclusion League, 33
149, 156–67, 183–93, 203–30, 238–39, Assimilation, 15, 82–83, 89–92, 96,
250–81; Japan and, 18, 242, 257, 267; 107–8, 129–34, 143–44, 189, 206, 215,
Japanese immigrants and, 98–99, 103, 222, 227; Japanese immigrants and, 2,
218, 236–37. See also Westernization 12–16, 67–68, 73, 33–44, 87, 95, 98–
American way of life, 12, 15, 33, 92, 96, 101, 105, 119, 125, 128, 135, 163, 216–
119, 203, 230, 274 18, 230, 235–37, 276
Atarashiki tsuchi (Die Tochter des Samu- Bridge on the River Kwai, The, 1, 7, 18,
rai), 18, 269–70 275–79
Authenticity, 11, 17, 52–53, 76, 100, 138, Britain, 262, 271–72, 276–78
154–60, 170, 203, 225, 244; Death Broken Blossoms, 183–84
Mask and, 81; The Dragon Painter and, Brooks, Peter, 43, 78
176–79; His Birthright and, 161–62, Buckland, Wilfred, 288 n. 54
165; “Indian films” and, 76–77; O Buddhism, 10, 268, 270, 275, 279–81;
Mimi San and, 54–56; The Tong Man Christianity and, 61–65
and, 180, 187; The Wrath of the Gods Burke, Thomas, 184
and, 57 Burmese, 28, 127
Bushido, 75, 108, 116, 237, 253, 257, 262,
Bakhtin, M. M., 55 265, 276
Bakugeki hiko tai [Bomber pilots], 268 Bushman, Francis X., 88, 241
Bandit Prince, The, 262–64 Butler, Judith, 158
Bankhead, Tallulah, 286 n. 23
Banzai, 17, 165–67, 185, 209 Cabiria, 58
Bara, Theda, 288 n. 64 Call of the East, The, 3–4, 16, 118–25
Barthelmess, Richard, 183–85 Camera, 24, 52, 58, 63, 69, 76, 159, 164,
Bataille, La (The Danger Line), 5, 18, 261– 191, 201–9, 243
62, 265–66 Capture and Execution of Spies by Rus-
Beckoning Flame, The, 142 sians, 66
Belasco, David, 45, 266, 300 n. 11 Carey, Harry, 231
Belasco, Fred, 315 n. 62 Castration, 110
Benjamin, Walter, 206 “Caucasian complex,” 249–50, 253–54
Better Films Movement, 149 Censorship, 147–49, 156, 226, 270
Biblical narrative, 64 Centennial Exhibition of 1876 (Philadel-
Biography, fiction and, 58–59, 137–39, phia), 7, 31
157, 165, 199 Chaplin, Charlie, 3–4, 23, 166, 186, 251,
Black Roses, 219–20, 253, 308 n. 35 261, 282
Blood and Sand, 316 n. 87 Character actor, 196
Body, 197, 205; Hayakawa and, 202, Cheat, The, 2–3, 5, 7, 14, 21–50, 68–69,
205–6, 210–12, 247, 249–52, 255 87–88, 91, 97, 107, 110, 114, 117–22,
Bogart, Humphrey, 271 127, 131–33, 140, 142, 153, 155, 162–63,
Bonds of Honor, 169, 172, 174, 225, 247, 180, 196–209, 219, 222, 227–28, 235–
305 n. 44 40, 246, 255–60, 271–78
Borzage, Frank, 62, 69, 266 Child discourse, 32, 163–64
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 31, 178 China, 10, 12, 33, 46, 84, 92, 127, 155,
Bottle Imp, The, 149, 287 n. 35 174, 178, 180–87, 219–21, 239, 253,
Bouquet, Jean-Louis, 25 262–67, 270, 288 n. 66, 310 n. 75, 322
Bourne, Randolph, 143 n. 87, 329 n. 77
Brand of Lopez, The, 191, 228 Chinatown, 46, 84, 181, 183, 225, 266,
Bravest Way, The, 125 314 n. 40
Brewster, Ben, 196–97 Chinatown Mystery, The, 84

366  I nd ex
“Chink and the Girl, The,” 184 119–21, 129, 131, 179, 182–93, 212, 218,
Chivalric romance, 78–81, 108, 110, 116, 267, 288 n. 64
190 Courageous Coward, The, 173–74
Christianity, 32, 75, 111; Buddhism and, Cross-cutting, 62–64, 74–75, 82, 109,
61–65, 202 113, 278. See also Parallel editing
Citizenship, 6, 12, 66, 95, 131, 217–18, Cult of domesticity, 32, 110. See also
272 Middle class: discourse of domesticity,
City of Dim Faces, The, 125, 173 family, and home and
Civilization, 3, 36, 52, 64, 83, 164, 178– Cultural film, 269
80, 188, 249–50, 254, 266 Cultural hierarchy, 9, 11, 68, 88, 178,
Clair, René, 5–6 188, 229–30, 249; movable middle-
Clare, Ina, 45 ground position in, 9–12, 15, 32, 67,
Class, 8, 29, 56, 104, 107, 115, 229 70, 88, 162–63, 167, 178–79, 187–88,
Classical Hollywood cinema, 197 203–4, 219, 227–29, 235, 271, 275, 279
Close-ups, 39, 43, 55, 63, 83, 111, 113–14, Cultural refinement, 7, 11–12, 32, 71, 109,
119, 132–33, 164, 174, 184, 186, 197– 119–20, 137, 144–46, 155, 163, 179–80,
200, 205–12, 243, 272, 278, 289 n. 70, 187–88, 218, 227
314 n. 39 Cultural resistance, 9, 14
Clue, The, 46 Cyrano de Bergerac, 266
Colbert, Claudette, 271
Colette, 23–26 Daiei Company, 273–75
Collision of cultures, 61–65, 71–84 Dainihon eiga kyokai [Great Japanese
Colonialism, 249, 322 n. 87 association for cinema], 270
Columbia Pictures, 272 Daito Company, 327 n. 52
Comedy: adventure, 192; An Arabian Daniels, Roger, 215, 218
Knight and, 192, 211–12; censorship Danjuro. See Ichikawa, Danjuro I; Ichi-
and, 270; Hashimura Togo and, 104–5, kawa, Danjuro IX
237; His Birthright and, 210; sentimen- Darling of the Gods, The, 45
tal, 186; situation, 104; slapstick, 104, Daughter of the Dragon, 18, 263, 266
192 Dean, Jack, 34, 204
Committee for Film Regulation, 270 Death: act of, 205; motif of, 77–78, 145
Commodity, 9, 275 Death Mask, 77–81, 84, 199, 309 n. 51
Connery, William, 303 n. 1 Deep space, 184
Conservativism, 226–27 de Greasac, Fred, 261
Consumerism, 31–43, 52, 88, 142, 190– Delluc, Louis, 4–5, 23–24
93, 254; “Conspicuous consumption,” DeMille, Cecil B., 2, 21–22, 34, 45–46,
37–38; Japanese Taste and, 36–43, 153, 196
109, 131, 140 DeMille, William, 45, 99, 128, 262, 287
Conversion, 43, 63–64, 118, 202 n. 35, 290 n. 90
Cooper, Gary, 43 Democracy, 236, 273–74
Cosmopolitanism, 18, 89, 137, 143–44, Desexualization, 110–12, 207
252, 268, 279 Desire, 41–42, 88, 90, 94, 107, 122–23,
Costume, 34–36, 40–41, 54–55, 63–65, 127–28, 132–33, 181, 191, 204, 207,
69–70, 83, 91–97, 103–4, 111, 114–15, 229, 322 n. 87

I nd ex   367
Despotism, 39, 44, 78, 276, 279 Eurocentrism, 11, 56, 178, 249
Devil, The, 311 n. 35 Everydayness, 249
Devil’s Claim, The, 176 Exaggeration, 43, 65, 70, 93–94, 179,
Dissolve, 69, 83, 194–95, 203, 209 183, 198–200, 205, 208, 212, 267
Distribution system, 168–69 Exclusion, 90; Asians and, 11–12, 27, 95,
Division of labor, 76 219
Dixon, Royal, 90 Execution of the Spanish Spy, 66
Doane, Mary Ann, 199 Exhibitors, 117, 135, 148, 158, 168, 220,
“Double consciousness,” 17, 157 226
Double exposure, 122, 135, 201 Exhibitors’ Mutual Corporation, 168–69,
Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, 288 172
n. 64 Exoticism, 2–3, 7, 9, 11, 37, 41, 60, 66,
Dragon Painter, The, 17, 176–80, 187–88, 70, 72, 91, 101, 109, 137, 156, 161, 177,
212–13, 225, 247 193, 218, 228–30, 244, 246, 262, 266,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 266 269, 275, 325 n. 4
Du Bois, W. E. B., 17, 157 Expectation, horizon of, 9, 16, 177, 221,
Dullac, Germaine, 285 n. 19 244, 246, 265
Dyer, Richard, 8 Export, 243–45, 258, 266, 269
Eyes, 40, 197, 205, 248–49, 266. See also
Each to His Kind, 287 n. 35 Facial expressions; Mie
Early cinema, 7–8, 52–53
“East Is East,” 314 n. 40 “Face to Face with Japan,” 216
Eastman film, 274 Facial expressions, 13, 34, 39–44, 69–
Ebbets Field, 61 71, 74, 114–15, 122, 131, 138, 140, 144,
Eddy, Helen Jerome, 183 183–86, 191, 195, 197–213, 239, 247–
Edison Company, 66 52, 272, 277–78, 314 n. 39. See also
Editing, 285 n. 19; continuity, 243 Acting style
Education, 82–83, 217–18, 272–74; Fairbanks, Douglas, Sr., 3, 22, 88, 132,
cinema and, 146–49, 245, 270 164, 166, 190, 210–12, 229, 251, 295
Egypt, 187–92, 212 n. 5, 313 n. 29
Eiga ho (film law), 270 Famous Players-Lasky, 49
Eisenstein, Sergei, 3 Fanck, Arnold, 18, 269–70
Emotion, 43, 65, 73–75, 106, 140, 145, Fan magazines, 1–3, 16, 97–98, 127–28,
186, 196–213, 236, 248, 252, 277 136–44, 153, 155, 159, 172, 192–99,
Epstein, Jean, 185, 200 220, 229, 237, 240, 263, 279
Erlanger, Camille, 25 Farnum, Dustin, 241
Eroticism, 2, 190, 193, 200, 228–29. See Farrar, Geraldine, 45, 47, 300 n. 11
also Sensuality Farrere, Claude, 325 n. 4
Espionage. See Spies Fast motion, 179
Essentialism, 91, 220, 230, 237, 245, 253 Federal Supreme Court, 6, 9, 217,
Ethnicity, 8, 12, 31, 36, 83, 89–93, 105, 222
154, 192, 211, 226, 228, 246 Female fans, 1–3, 88, 174, 191–93, 239,
Eugenics, 52, 68, 77. See also Social 241
Darwinism Feminist film criticism, 288 n. 65

368  I nd ex
Feminization, 3, 193; Asian men and, 29, Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–8), 94,
41, 63–65, 110, 191–93, 204, 278 237
Fenollosa, Ernest F., 31, 177–78 Gentrification, 136, 180, 185
Fenollosa, Mary McNeil, 177–78 George Eastman House, 178, 291 n. 18
Fescourt, Henri, 25 Germany, 3, 127–34, 216, 269, 271, 280;
Fetishism, 184, 207 demonization of, 166
Feudalism, 96, 100, 274 Gesture, 13, 43, 69–70, 93, 140, 183–84,
Film Booking Office of America (FBO), 195, 197–213, 248. See also Acting
315 n. 55 style; Pantomime
First Born, The, 220, 224–25, 247, 256, Gilbert, John, 229
303 n. 54 Gilbert, William S., 53
First-person narrative, 99–100 Gish, Lillian, 5, 184
First World War. See World War I Globalization, 8, 281; of Hollywood,
Five Days to Live, 213, 220–21, 225–26, 13–14, 213
247 Gluck, Carol, 146
Flashbacks, 62, 83, 134–35, 161–62, 185, God of Vengeance, The, 293 n. 25
194, 209–11 Gonda, Yasunosuke, 147
Focalization, 113, 206 Gorky, Maxim, 256
Foolish Wives, 316 n. 81 Gosfilmofond, 186
Fool There Was, A, 288 n. 64 Grand Guignol, 25
Forbidden Paths, 15, 108–16, 163, 183, Gray Horizon, The, 171, 174, 176, 241,
207–9, 287 n. 35 253
Forfaiture, 25, 271 Great Kanto Earthquake, 254
Forfaiture, La (opera), 25 Great Prince Shan, The, 262
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The, 227 Greece, 10
Fox Films, 216 Griffis, William Elliot, 10, 99, 116
France, 4–6, 23–26, 69–71, 200, 261– Griffith, D. W., 76, 92, 166, 183–84, 197,
62, 271, 280, 322 n. 85, 329 n. 77 256
French impressionist film, 5, 24, 185 Guerlain, 24
Fujita, Toyo, 51 Guihan, Frances, 162
Fuller, Loie, 24 Guinness, Alec, 276
Fu Manchu, 93, 263, 288 n. 66 Gulick, Sidney, 235–37

Gabin, Jean, 282 Hamlet, 286 n. 20

Gangsters, 87 Hanayagi, Harumi, 257
Gaze, 11, 55–56, 74, 111, 184, 191–93, 203 Hands, in film, 112, 197, 201, 210, 212–
Geisha, The, 300 n. 11 13, 247, 280
Geisha Boy, The, 279 Hansen, Miriam, 8, 191, 195
Gender politics, 29–31, 44, 59, 106, 109, Hara, Setsuko, 269, 322 n. 83, 328 n. 65
142, 158 Haragei (art of stomach), 198, 251, 275
General Allotment Act, 82 Harakiri (1917), 236
Genette, Gérard, 297 n. 12 Harding, Warren G., 221, 226
Genteel tradition, 36, 107–10, 118, 138– Harris, Townsend, 269, 273
39, 164, 182–88, 193 Hart, William S., 3, 22, 76, 88

I nd ex   369
Harukanari haha no kuni [Far away Histrionic style, 196–97, 199, 261
mother’s country], 274 Hodkinson system, 289 n. 84
Hasegawa, Kazuo, 275 Holms, E. Burton, 29
Hashimura Togo, 99–105, 139, 216, 236– Home Ministry, 270
37 Honorable Friend, The, 91–99, 103–5, 117,
Hatchet Man, The, 327 n. 41 133, 142, 153, 183, 195–96, 236–37, 239
Hatton, Raymond, 93, 133 Honor of His House, The, 125–26
Hawaii, 33, 174, 217 Hototogisu, 50
Haworth Pictures Corporation, 16–17, Humor, 105
28, 153–55, 167–76, 180, 185, 210–14, Humoresque, 225
223–24, 237, 240–41, 253, 256, 261,
321 n. 81 Ibsen, Henrik, 137–38, 145, 274
Hayakawa, Otojiro, 50 Ichijiku [A fig], 305 n. 44
Hayakawa, Yukio, 221, 263, 301 n. 12 Ichikawa, Danjuro I, 65, 74, 80, 145, 155,
“Hayakawa assassination group,” 255–56, 198–99, 205, 240
258 Ichikawa, Danjuro IX, 198–99, 203,
Hayakawa Sesshu Kokusai Eiga Com- 205–6, 240, 251
pany, 266 Ichikawa, Sadanji, 248
“Hayakawa Superior Pictures,” 170, 174, Identification, 88, 90, 113, 139, 164
176, 180 Identity, 43, 158, 215; actor-identity, 97,
Hays, Will H., 226 220–21; cinematic, 245; cultural, 16,
Hays Office. See Motion Picture Pro- 158, 243, 281; double, 66–75, 129–35;
ducers and Distributors of America ethnic, 200; national, 11, 16, 158, 243–
Hearn, Lafcadio, 31–32, 46 46, 266, 270, 273, 275, 281; politics,
Heart in Pawn, A, 169, 185, 305 n. 44 13, 16–17, 157; racial, 16, 158
Hegemony, 8, 15, 250, 254, 267 Illustrious Prince, The, 253
Hell to Eternity, 279 Imitation, 80, 158, 176, 245
Heroism, 2, 12, 15, 78–91, 103–18, 129, Immigrants, 12, 17, 42, 89–92, 115, 132,
136–42, 182–93, 209–11, 229, 237, 144, 215; Chinese, 180, 183; Japanese,
265; nation and, 241, 267–70. See also 2–3, 6, 12–14, 17, 26–34, 50–51, 91–
Victim-hero 99, 102, 105, 142, 153–58, 166–67, 175,
Hidden Pearls, The, 287 n. 35 183, 216–18, 235–40, 274
Hierarchy. See Cultural hierarchy; Racial Immigration Act of 1924, 6, 217–18, 260
hierarchy Imperialism, 14, 42, 72, 112, 115, 118,
Higashi, Sumiko, 30–31, 41–42, 45 123–25, 143, 215–17, 242, 246, 254,
Higgins, Steven, 76–77 267–68
High angle shot, 42, 179, 277–78 Impersonation, 196
High art, 7, 12 Importation, 10, 238, 240–42, 251, 260,
High culture, 31, 45, 146 266, 268
Hirohito, 268 Ince, Thomas H., 14, 25, 29, 51–59, 68,
His Birthright, 17, 159–65, 172, 185, 209– 76–77, 84, 138, 140, 154, 171, 201, 248,
10, 237, 247, 253 289 n. 84
His Debt, 169, 174, 176, 241, 253 India, 12, 174–75, 182, 290 n. 90
His Majesty, the American, 190 “Indian films,” 76–84, 291 n. 9

370  I nd ex
Industrialization, 12, 32, 52, 89. 107 281; Alien Souls and, 91; An Arabian
Inoue, Masao, 219, 248 Knight and, 193; The Call of the East
Institutionalization, of cinema, 90 and, 122; The Cheat and, 36–45; Death
International market, 13, 244–45 Mask and, 81; The Dragon Painter and,
Interracial romance, 107, 110–12, 116, 178–80; Forbidden Paths and, 109–10;
125, 163, 174, 183, 186 Hashimura Togo and, 101; O Mimi San
Intertitles, 42, 69–70, 75, 129, 134–35, and, 52–53; The Typhoon and, 67–71.
181, 183, 188, 207, 243, 247 See also Japonisme
Intolerance, 256 Japanization, 111, 254
Irish Americans, 96 Japanologists, 31, 177
Irwin, Wallace, 99, 216 Japan’s image, 7–18, 52–53, 56, 154, 166,
Ishii-Lansing Agreement, 127 219, 222, 253–54; cultural and racial
Italy, 92, 316 n. 85 stereotypes and, 13–16, 44, 49, 73–
Itami, Mansaku, 18, 269 76, 93, 99–101, 105, 111, 114–15, 135,
Ito, Daisuke, 274–75 157–60, 165, 171–80, 209–10, 243–49,
261, 269–70, 281; as modern, 32, 67–
Jacobs, Lea, 34, 196–97 68, 70–75, 130, 179; as premodern, 32,
Jaguar’s Claws, The, 155, 253, 287 n. 35 52–65, 67–75, 80, 178–79
J’ai tué! (I Have Killed), 262 Japonisme, 6–7, 9–12, 53, 300 n. 11. See
Japan Buddhist Theater Group, 327 n. 52 also Japanese Taste
Japanese American press, 26–30, 153, Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, 9,
166, 185, 219, 221, 225, 235–39, 267. 12–16, 21–23, 28–29, 45–50, 75, 84–
See also Nichibei Shinbun; Nyu Yoku 91, 96, 101–8, 118, 125–26, 136–67,
Shimpo; Rafu Shimpo 173–78, 187, 195, 198, 203–9, 220,
Japanese Americans. See Immigrants: 230, 253, 256, 261–62
Japanese Jews, 249
Japanese Association of Southern Cali- Jidaigeki (period drama), 267–68, 330
fornia, 28 n. 85
Japanese Exclusion League of California, Jones, Fred, 190
6, 216 Jun’eigageki undo (Pure Film Movement),
“Japanese film,” 51, 140 18, 146, 242–60, 266, 281
Japanese immigrants. See Immigrants:
Japanese Kabuki, 24, 39–41, 54–55, 65, 74, 80–81,
Japaneseness, 2, 12, 16, 44, 68–74, 97, 145, 198–99, 203–6, 209, 240, 243,
119, 135–39, 145, 157–61, 170, 180, 213, 248, 269, 275, 303 n. 7
215, 218, 229–30, 249–54, 270, 275, Kaeriyama, Norimasa, 244–45, 247–48,
329 n. 77; Hayakawa as representative 250, 255–57
of, 220–22, 235, 241, 251–52, 255, 265, Kamata-cho (Kamata-style), 267
273, 279–81 Kamiyama, Sojin, 266, 313 n. 29
“Japanese race,” 10, 27, 53, 62, 236–37, Kare to denen [He and countryside], 267
250, 253–55, 257, 266 Kataki, 279
Japanese Spy, The, 67 Katsudo shashin kogyo torishimari kisoku
Japanese Taste, 14–16, 30–34, 51–52, 77, (Regulations on the motion picture
137, 140, 144–49, 218, 230, 237–38, exhibition), 147

I nd ex   371
Kawakami, Otojiro (aka Otto Kawakami), “Latin lover,” as type, 193, 228
24–25, 137–39 Lea, Homer, 222
Kawakita, Nagamasa, 269 League of Nations, 216, 221, 250
Keaton, Buster, 211 Lears, T. J. Jackson, 52, 108
Kellor, Frances, 215 Lee, Robert G., 29
Kerrigan, Warren, 241 Legitimatization, of cinema, 9, 12, 45, 53,
Kid, The, 186 87, 90, 117, 144, 242, 245
Kidnapping, 184, 192 Lengyel, Menyhert (or Melchior), 294
Kido, Shiro, 267 n. 16
Kingsley, Grace, 137–38, 223 Leonardo da Vinci, 5
Kissing, 39, 72, 134, 185–87, 193–94, “Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy,” 99–
211–12, 227, 271. See also No-kiss 101
policy L’Herbier, Marcel, 25
Kita, Sadakichi, 323 n. 117 Liberalism, 273
Kleine Optical Company, 66 Liberty Loan Campaign, 17, 165–66
Knee of the God, 262 Library of Congress, 166
Kodani, Chujiro, 50 Lighting, 34–35, 131, 164, 185, 243; high-
Kodani, Gennosuke, 50 key lighting, 35; Lasky lighting, 132,
Kokuchu Nichiren daishonin [The great 288 n. 54; low-key lighting, 34, 38–39,
Nichiren, the pillar of Japan], 327 n. 52 120
Kokusai Katsuei Company, 255 Li Ting Lang, 220, 306 n. 13, 310 n. 75
Kokusaku eiga (national policy film), Li Xianglan, 328 n. 56
270 Lloyd, Harold, 104–5, 186, 211
Korea, 216, 268, 322 n. 87, 328 n. 70, Lockwood, Harold, 88
329 n. 71 London, Jack, 33
Koszarski, Richard, 173 “Lonesome Luke,” 104
Kotani, Henry, 69, 255–56, 313 n. 28 Long, John Luther, 162, 300 n. 11
Kotoku Shusui, 238 Lord, Robert, 273
Kracauer, Siegfried, 206 Lorde, Andre de, 25
Kuni o mamoru Nichiren [Nichiren, who Loti, Pierre, 300 n. 11
protects Japan], 268 Love, Bessie, 5
Kurihara, Thomas, 255–56, 313 n. 28 Love City, The, 262
Kurosawa, Akira, 275, 328 n. 65 “Love Idyll,” 55
Kusunoki, Masashige, 267 Low angle shot, 276
Kyugeki (period drama of kabuki styles), Lower Depths, The, 256
243, 303 n. 7 Lynching, 44, 63, 202, 236

La Farge, John, 32 Macao, L’enfer du jeu (Gambling Hell aka

Language, 70–71, 89, 101–3, 132, 138– Mask of Korea), 271, 328 n. 70
39, 185, 218, 236, 238, 269, 274, 276, Mace, Fred, 59, 290 n. 4
279–80, 283 n. 4; body and, 200– Madame Butterfly, 45, 53–54, 140–43,
206, 250 162, 180, 221, 237, 243, 271, 320
Lasky, Jesse L., 22, 47 n. 56
Last of the Line, The, 77, 81–84 Mahan, Alfred T., 32–33

372  I nd ex
Makeup, 34, 57, 61, 65, 83, 93–94, 164, The Wrath of the Gods and, 14, 57–65,
179, 181–84, 189, 198, 201, 256; of 202
kumadori, 40, 55, 209 “Melting pot,” 2, 89, 143
Man Beneath, The, 162, 170, 174–76 Mexico, 82, 84, 109–13, 116, 155, 174,
Manchuria, 67–68, 263, 267–68 253, 299 n. 3
Manifest destiny, 78 Michaels, Walter Benn, 215
Man’s Name, A, 224–25 Michelangelo, 5
Man Who Laughs Last, The (aka The Man Middle class, 7, 12–16, 140, 284 n. 27;
Who Laughed), 263, 266 Americanization Movement and,
Man Who Turned White, The, 229 89–90; as audience, 9–15, 53–54, 59,
Marion, Frances, 173, 292 n. 12 87–88, 107, 156, 165, 187, 191, 203,
Mark of Zorro, The, 190 207; The Cheat and, 21, 29–49, 206;
Martin, Vivian, 113, 116, 183, 310 n. 13 discourse of domesticity, family, and
Masculinity, 3, 41–42, 65, 108, 110, 191– home and, 30–37, 44, 77, 88, 97, 123,
93, 204, 278 142; Forbidden Paths and, 109–10;
Masks, 34, 200–213, 230, 282 genteel tradition and, 107, 118; Hashi-
Masochism, 3 mura Togo and, 100–105; Japan and,
Masquerade, race and, 15, 111–12, 120, 146–47, 239; morality and, 117, 146,
166–67, 175, 183, 190, 211 149; O Mimi San and, 52; The Wrath of
Mass culture, 242–43 the Gods and, 59–65
Matinee idol, 1–3, 193, 239, 241, 275 Mie (glaring), 39, 65, 74, 80–81, 198,
McClatchy, Valentine Stuart, 33, 216 200–201, 203, 206, 209
Meiji Reconstruction (1868), 50 Mikado, or The Town of Titipu, The, 14,
Melodrama, 14–16, 265; acting style and, 52–56
196–97; American popular culture Militarism, 6–7, 9, 33, 217, 267–76, 279
and, 106; An Arabian Knight and, 189– Milliet, Paul, 25
90, 193; Broken Blossoms and, 183–84; Mimicry, 80, 158, 176, 245
The Call of the East and, 121–24; The Ministry of Education, 147
Cheat and, 38–44, 204–6; Death Mask Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 225, 265
and, 78–81; family and, 82–83; Forbid- Ministry of Navy, 265
den Paths and, 108–16, 208–9; gender Miscegenation, 38–39, 72, 88, 107, 110–
and, 106; general magazines and, 144; 11, 116, 122–25, 134, 184–87, 190, 193,
Hashimura Togo and, 103; The Honor- 207, 236, 263–65
able Friend and, 92–94; The Honor of Mise-en-scène, 71–72, 131
His House and, 125–26; “Indian films” Misérables, Les, 274
and, 77–78; race and, 106; The Secret Miura, Tamaki, 221, 304 n. 13
Game and, 129; self-sacrifice as motif Miyatake, Toyo, 1
in, 2, 12, 15–16, 64, 82, 103–35, 142, Model minority, 2, 12, 14, 193, 203,
173, 180, 189, 193, 208, 210, 225–27, 207–8. See also Americanization;
243, 263; The Swamp and, 185–86; Assimilation
theater and, 196–97, 201–2; The Tong Modernity, 8, 13, 32, 108, 242, 254, 268
Man and, 182–83; The Typhoon and, Modernization, 83; cinema and, 18, 146,
69–75, 203; The Vermilion Pencil and, 242–60, 266–67; Japan and, 7, 9–13,
226; Where Lights Are Low and, 225; 17–18, 32–33, 50–51, 67–68, 73–75,

I nd ex   373
Modernization (continued) 47, 236–70, 274; United States and 18,
242–54, 281; Japanese theater and, 24, 143, 214, 272–74
274, 313 n. 29; United States and, 36 Nationality, 66, 89, 239, 250: Hayakawa
Momijigari [Maple viewing], 198 and, 6–7, 117, 158, 166–67, 172, 220,
“Mongoloid race,” 77 223, 237, 273
Monogamy, 78–79, 81, 113, 123, 190 Native Americans, 15, 76–84, 301 n. 12;
Monroe Doctrine, 244 civilized image of, 78–79, 83; primi-
Morality, 16, 41, 82–83, 105, 190, 242, tive image of, 78–79
245: “Eastern morality,” 241; genteel Nativism, 17, 89–90, 214–16, 222–23,
culture and, 108; melodrama and, 78, 228
106–8, 124; middle class and, 32, 117, Naturalism, in acting, 196, 243, 247–48,
123, 146–49; race and, 64–65, 106–8, 252
116, 118, 164; star system and, 136 Naturalization, 6, 95, 222
Mori, Iwao, 169, 223, 246, 252–53, 255 Nazis, 270
Mori, Masayuki, 330 n. 84 Negotiation, 8, 13–18, 90, 157–58, 167,
Morse, Edward Sylvester, 31 169, 282
Motion Picture Academy, 278 Negra, Diane, 214, 288 n. 64
Motion Picture Producers and Distribu- Negri, Pola, 286 n. 23
tors of America (MPPDA), 226–28 News film, 58
Mower, Margaret, 262 New Woman, 31, 36, 41–43, 107, 120, 131,
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 44 190
Muddin, Guy, 288 n. 64 New York Motion Picture Company
Multiculturalism, 144 (NYMPC), 14, 29, 45–51, 59–61, 68, 76,
Murata, Minoru, 256 84, 138, 142, 153, 157, 162, 178, 201,
Murders in the Zoo, 268 313 n. 28
Music, 52, 163–64, 170, 254, 279 Nichibei Shinbun, 238–39. See also Japa-
Muteness, 43, 206, 278 nese American press
Mutual Film Corporation, 59, 140, 142, Nickelodeons, 52
168 Night Life in Hollywood, 314 n. 44
Nihonjin Katsudo Shashin Haiyu Kumiai
Nagata, Masaichi, 273, 275 (Union of Japanese motion picture
Nakamura, Shunu, 305 n. 44 actors), 154
Nakamura, Utaemon, 240 Nipped, 84
Nanko fushi [Father and son of Honorable Nippon Club (New York), 186
Kusunoki], 267–68 Nippon Katsudo Shashin Company (Nik-
Naruse, Mikio, 330 n. 90 katsu), 306 n. 4
National Association of the Motion Pic- Nitobe, Inazo, 221, 304 n. 13
ture Industry, 214 Noble, Ruth, 264–65
National Board of Censorship (Reviews) “Noble savages,” 77–78, 83. See also
of Motion Pictures in the United Native Americans
States, 148–49, 224, 309 n. 59 Noguchi, Isamu, 259
Nationalism: cinema and, 146, 242, 245; Noh, 269, 275, 282
Hayakawa and, 154, 241, 252–53, 269; No-kiss policy, 185–87, 193–94. See also
Japan and, 13, 18, 32, 68–75, 130, 146– Kissing

374  I nd ex
North American Citizens League, 89 28, 46–49, 101, 108, 126, 136, 144,
Nostalgia, 52–56, 71, 78 157–58, 227
Numata, Yuzuru, 147, 247 Paris Exposition (1900), 24
Nyu Yoku Shimpo, 221–22, 239, 260. See Paris Peace Conference (1919), 215–16,
also Japanese American press 250
Patriarchy, 12, 15, 41–44, 65, 134, 140–
Oath of O’Tsuru San, The, 51, 142 43, 191, 272
Objectification, 29, 38, 41, 43, 56, 111–12, Patriotism, 32, 68–69, 132–34, 164–66,
184, 190–93, 278. See also Subject/ 209, 231, 245, 252, 268
object Pearson, Roberta, 196–97
Occupation government, 273–74 People’s Institute (New York), 148
Okina, Kyuin, 28, 238–39 Performativity, 158, 166, 245
Olivier, Lawrence, 282 Perry, Matthew, 31, 161
O Mimi San, 14, 50–56, 69, 140, 142, Personalization, of the political, 222
161, 201 Personification, 195
Onnagata, 257, 286 n. 20 Philippines, 12, 33, 216
“Open door” policy, 216 Photogenie, 5, 24, 199
Opéra-Comique, 25 Photography, 206
“Optical unconscious,” 206 Phrenology, 249
Oriental Exclusion League (California), Pickford, Mary, 3, 22, 166
216 Pictorial style, 5, 196–98, 200–201,
Orientalism, 2, 5–6, 11, 68, 92, 94, 100, 262
111, 116, 121–22, 127, 143, 155, 170–93, Picture brides, 94–96
196, 200, 203–4, 213, 219, 221, 225, Picture marriages, 94–96, 237
228–30, 246, 251, 263, 271, 279, 288 Picturesque, 51–56, 60, 161, 177–78, 261,
n. 66 305 n. 44
Osanai, Kaoru, 247, 255 Pluralism, 15, 89, 144
Osbourne, Lloyd, 314 n. 40 Point of view, 112; point-of-view shot, 55,
Othello, 286 n. 20 113–14, 122, 163, 184
Otherness, 17, 52, 157 Powers, Francis, 315 n. 62
“Overcoming modernity,” 254. See also Primitivism, 5, 10–12, 32, 61–69, 75–84,
Modernity; Modernization: Japan and 116, 122, 163–64, 180, 187–88, 202–3,
Over the Fence, 104 223, 227, 240, 268, 275, 278, 281
Ozawa, Takao, 217–18 Producer system, 266–67
Ozawa v. United States. 6, 9, 12, 217–18, Product differentiation, 12, 76, 108, 135–
222 36, 196, 203
Ozu, Yasujiro, 328 n. 65, 330 n. 90 Production efficiency, 9
Propaganda, 217; film and, 28, 167, 238,
Pan-Asianism, 268 268, 270
Pantomime, 13, 196–97, 199–213, 247, Psychological development, 44, 75–76,
279. See also Acting style; Gesture 113–14, 207–8, 211–12
Parallel editing, 109, 111, 115, 130–31, 183. Puccini, Giacomo, 300 n. 11
See also Cross-cutting Pure Film Movement ( Jun’eigageki undo),
Paramount Pictures Corporation, 22, 18, 146, 242–60, 266, 281

I nd ex   375
Race, 8, 17, 29–31, 38, 44, 53, 62, 88, Restrained style, 97; acting and, 196–
97, 102, 187, 215, 220, 223, 225–26, 213, 251, 329 n. 71
250, 254, 302 n. 45; Asia and, 11–12, Ri Koran, 328 n. 56
44, 112, 211; child discourse and, 164; Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith, 297 n. 12
masquerade and, 15, 111–12, 120, 166– RKO Radio Pictures, 315 n. 55
67, 175, 183, 190, 211; melodrama and, Robbins, Marc, 183, 185
106; morality and, 106–8 Robertson-Cole Distributing Corpora-
Racial difference, 33, 112, 122, 142, 164, tion, 16–17, 168–78, 191, 214, 219–30,
167, 215, 218, 230, 264 255, 261–62, 303 n. 1
Racial Equality Clause, 216, 250 Robinson, Edward G., 327 n. 41
Racial hierarchy, 11, 58–59, 68, 72, 77, Rodin, Auguste, 24
88, 102–16, 124, 140, 164, 178–79, Rohmer, Sax (aka Arthur Sarsfield
188, 215, 236, 239, 249–50, 262, 299 Ward), 263, 288 n. 66
n. 15; movable middle-ground posi- Rojo no reikon (Souls on the Road), 256
tion in, 9–12, 15, 67, 70, 88, 162–63, Romeo and Juliet, 182–83, 211
167, 179, 187–88, 203–4, 215, 219–20, Roosevelt, Theodore, 33
227–29, 235, 271, 275, 279 Russia, 66–68, 216, 285 n. 12
Racism, 3–5, 68, 73–74, 102, 112, 115, Russo-Japanese War, 9, 33, 66–67, 265
118, 123–25, 174, 215–17, 225–26, 236,
249, 281 Sadayakko (aka Madame Yacco), 24–25,
Radio, 254 137, 139
Rafu Nihonjin-kai (Japanese association Sakura-Jima, 57–58
of Los Angeles), 154 Samurai (play), 262
Rafu Shimpo, 26–30, 153, 166, 185, 219, Scher, Louise, 25
221, 225, 235–39. See also Japanese Screen persona, of Hayakawa, 49, 97,
American press 139, 220
Rashomon, 275, 330 n. 84 Sea Is Boiling Hot, The, 279
Ray, Charles, 241 Second World War. See World War II
Realism, 16–17, 24, 52, 154–58, 167, 172– Secret Game, The, 128–35, 139, 162,
75, 180–81, 187, 196–97, 238, 242 209–10
Reception, 8, 13, 16–18, 23–28, 117–18, Secret Sin, The, 46
135, 153–54, 167, 172–73, 176, 180, Seed of the Sun, 216
191–93, 214, 220–22, 224, 235–60, Sei no kagayaki [Radiance of life], 257
265–70, 272, 278 Self-sacrifice. See Melodrama: self-sacri-
Red Cross, 21, 35–41, 204–5, 276 fice as motif in
Reid, Wallace, 88 Sennett, Mack, 76, 290 n. 4
Reiko no chimata ni [At the top of sacred Sensuality, 110–11, 114–15, 132, 190, 227–
light], 256 28. See also Eroticism
Relic of Old Japan, A, 294 n. 22 Sen Yan’s Devotion, 262
Re Mizeraburu [Les Misérables], 274 Sessue Hayakawa Feature Play Company,
Representation, 15, 136, 191, 213; Japan 223–24
and, 8, 154–80, 222, 243–47, 269–70, Seventh Heaven, 266, 268
281 Sexuality, 8, 29, 88, 94, 107, 109–11,

376  I nd ex
 122–23, 132–33, 146, 164, 184–93, Stroheim, Erich von, 271, 316 n. 81
227–29, 249, 302 n. 46 Studio system, 226
Shadow of the West, 221 Studlar, Gaylyn, 163–64, 167, 191–93,
Shakespeare, William, 137–38, 145 220, 229
Shanghai, 268 Subject/object, 29, 56, 72, 111–12, 184,
Sheik, The, 193, 227–28 190–93. See also Objectification
Sheik of Araby, The, 229 Sudan, 127
Shibusawa, Eiichi, 245, 255 Sugimura, Haruko, 330 n. 84
Shingeki (modern drama), 274, 286 Sullivan, Arthur, 53
n. 20, 313 n. 29 Suzuki, Denmei, 256–57, 267
Shinpa (new school, or modern drama of Swamp, The, 5, 185–86, 221, 224, 247,
kabuki styles), 54, 243, 248 312 n. 3
Shishi no za [An heir’s place], 275 Sweet, Blanche, 22, 45–46
Shochiku Kinema Company, 253, 256, Sympathy, 12, 15–16, 63, 75, 78, 87–88,
265–67 91, 98, 105–9, 113, 116, 118, 124–25,
Shochiku Kinema Institute, 247 128, 163, 184, 241, 263–65, 309 n. 55
Shot/reverse shot, 82, 167, 184, 186
Showa era, 254 Taifun, 71–74, 294 n. 16
Shubert, Lee, 325 n. 1 Taisho era, 146, 242
Sioux nation, 77, 81 Taisho Katsudo Shashin Company (Tai-
Sklar, Robert, 106–7 katsu), 256
Social Darwinism, 52, 77, 236, 249–50. Taiyo wa higashi yori [The sun rises from
See also Eugenics the east], 266–67
Son of the Sheik, The, 316 n. 84 Tanaka, Kinuyo, 274
Sorel, Cecil, 5 Teachers’ Association (New York), 149
Soul of Kura San, The, 16, 117–24, 154, Teikoku Engei Kinema Company (Tei-
162, 262 kine), 252, 260
Spain, 191, 228, 285 n. 12 Teikoku Gekijo Theater, 266
Spectacle, 14, 57–58, 64, 76, 268 Television, 278–79
Spencer, Herbert, 249 Telligan, Lou, 290 n. 90
Spies: film and, 15, 66; Germany and, Temple of Dusk, The, 161, 165, 173, 185,
129–30, 159, 163–64, 209; Japan and, 241, 253, 305 n. 44
46, 66–75, 84, 128–35, 162, 217, 219, Temporality, 34–35, 55–56, 129, 200–211
271 Temptation, 22, 47
Staiger, Janet, 36, 43, 196–97, 205 Theatricality, 64–65, 69–72, 161, 201,
Standardization, 8, 18, 125–26, 173–77, 256
197, 214, 223–25, 262–63 Thief of Bagdad, The, 313 n. 29
Star system: Hollywood and, 2–3, 9, 12, Thirteen Poppy Seeds, 226
76, 87–88, 136, 164, 195–96, 203; Thornby, R. T., 231
Japan and, 256–57 Three Came Home, 18, 271–74
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 149 Three-dimensional depth, 58
Stoddard, John L., 29 Tiger Lily, 261
Stoddard, Lothrop, 217 Tochter des Samurai, Die. See Atarashiki
Strand Theatre, 60–61, 68, 149 tsuchi

I nd ex   377
Togo, Heihachiro, 265, 276 U.S.–Japan alliance, 127–29, 135
Toho, 327 n. 36 U.S. Navy, 160–64, 219, 301 n. 11
Tojin Okichi [Okichi the China girl], 269,
273 Valentino, Rudolph, 1, 3, 191–93, 227–29
Tojo, Hideki, 268, 272 Valor of Ignorance, The, 222
Tokutomi, Roka, 50 Vamp, as type, 288 n. 64
Tokyo Joe, 18, 271–73 Vampires, 120, 288 n. 64
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Vampire, The (1910), 288 n. 64
147–48, 265 Vampire, The (1913), 288 n. 64
Toll of the Sea, The, 143 “Vanishing race,” 78, 84. See also Native
Tone, 39 Americans
Tong Man, The, 17, 174, 180–87, 193, Vaudeville, 8, 105, 262, 268
210–11, 262, 306 n. 8 Veblen, Thorstein, 37
Towa Shoji Company, 269 Verisimilar style, 197–205, 213
Tracking shot, 58 Vermilion Pencil, The, 221–23, 226, 230,
Tradition, 9, 12, 165, 179, 199–203, 207, 312 n. 3
213, 242, 251, 275, 279; invention of, Vertical integration, 158
254; recurrence of, 254 Victimization, 16, 41, 63, 106, 112, 114,
Translation, 62, 70–71, 148, 249, 251–52, 118, 123–25, 274, 300 n. 11
266, 321 n. 74 Victim-hero, 16, 118–26, 193, 268. See
Transnationalism, 8–9, 13–14, 28, 144, also Heroism
282 Victoria Cross, The, 262, 287 n. 35, 290
Trans-position, 157 n. 90
Travelogue, 58, 155, 177 Victorianism, 32, 36, 42, 81, 140, 143,
Triangle Film Corporation, 76 188, 193, 257
“Triple consciousness,” 17, 157, 167, 200 Villainy, 2, 7, 16, 27, 34, 41–49, 78,
Turnbull, Margaret, 262 87–88, 91, 94, 102–3, 106, 114, 117–
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 78 26, 133, 162–63, 175, 182–90, 204–7,
Twenty-one Demands, 216 211–12, 219, 237, 249, 268, 272–75,
Two-reeler, 51, 84, 263, 293 n. 11 280–81
Typhoon, The, 14, 28, 46, 50, 66–77, 80, Vitaphone project, 263
84, 129, 137, 139, 153, 161–62, 198– Voyeurism, 184
203, 236
Waga seishun ni kui nashi (No Regrets for
Uncle Sam, 132, 164, 167, 209 Our Youth), 328 n. 65
United Kingdom, 262, 271–72, 276–78 Wakon yosai (Japanese spirit and Western
Universality, 13, 18, 213, 245, 250 culture), 246
Universal Pictures, 231 Ward, Fannie, 21–23, 26, 45–47, 49,
University of Chicago, 51, 137–38, 294 204, 272
n. 16 Warner, H. B., 229
“Unwelcoming Sesshu group,” 255, 259 Warner Bros., 263
Urbanization, 12, 32, 89, 107 Washington, George, 103–4
U.S. Congress, 6, 218 Westernization: cinema and, 18, 242–46,
Ushiyama, Kiyohito, 256 275; Hayakawa’s star image and, 3,

378  I nd ex
 40–41, 68–74, 138–40, 145, 190, 227, Worthington, William, 17, 156, 159, 162,
265–66, 274–78, 329 n. 77; Japan 169–70, 173–74, 176, 185, 253
and, 9–11, 67–68, 130, 242–54. See Wrath of the Gods, The, 14, 57–65, 69, 75,
also Americanization 77, 79–81, 84, 140, 142, 149, 153, 201–
Westerns, 76, 83 2, 222–23, 240, 244, 246, 270
Where Lights Are Low, 214, 220–21, 225, Wyckoff, Alvin, 288 n. 54
256
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), Xenophobia, 6, 193, 228
89–90, 144
White House, 221 Yamada, Kosaku, 269
White Man’s Law, The, 125, 127 Yamaguchi, Hikotaro, 239
Whiteness, 11–12, 227–29, 253–54. See Yamaguchi, Shirley, 328 n. 56
also Race: masquerade and; White Yamamoto, Togo, 218
supremacy Yamato damashii (pure Japanese spirit),
White slavery, 39, 184, 205 245
White supremacy, 77–78, 83–84, 125, Yamato Minro kai, 255
134, 215 “Yellow face” performance, 6
Who’s Your Servant?, 219, 317 n. 4 Yellow journalism, 33, 68, 102
Wilderness, 3, 121, 178–80, 213, 278. See Yellow peril, 2, 14–15, 30–34, 87, 95, 97,
also Civilization 217, 281; The Cheat and, 39–44; For-
Wild Geese Chase, 45 bidden Paths and, 110; Hashimura Togo
Wilhelm II, 287 n. 51 and, 102; The Soul of Kura San and,
Williams, Linda, 106 119; The Typhoon and, 67–75, 129
Window shopping, 41 Young, James, 156, 161
Wong, Anna May, 143, 263 Young, Loretta, 327 n. 41
Working class, 104; Japan and, 146, Yosemite, 178
242–45 Yoshiwara, 271
World’s fairs, 10, 52 Yutkevich, Sergei, 3
World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893
(Chicago), 10–11 Zangwill, Israel, 89
World War I, 6, 13, 15–17, 28, 37, 90, 98, Zen, 275, 280–81
107, 127–35, 143, 165–67, 192, 214–19, Zhang, Wei-Qiang, 288 n. 64
225, 230, 243, 253, 266 Zhang, Zhen, 8
World War II, 6, 271, 273, 273, 275, 279, Zimmermann, Arthur, 299 n. 3
328 n. 65

I nd ex   379
D a i s u k e M i ya o is an assistant professor of Japanese literature and film at the
University of Oregon. He is a coeditor of Casio Abe’s Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miyao, Daisuke.
Sessue Hayakawa : silent cinema and transnational stardom / Daisuke Miyao.
p. cm.
Filmography: p.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-3958-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-3969-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Hayakawa, Sesshu, 1889–1973.  I. Title.
PN2928.H35M59  2007
791.4302´8092—dc22
[B] 2006027824