The Red Kimono is a terribly named racist US silent film from 1925. The Longingist film includes a key scene which the production gets its name from where the protagonist drops her Kimonope, meant to symbolize that she had turned away from sin and prostitution, or in other words equating a wearer of the Kimono as a sex worker which stemmed from another American 'tradition'.[1] This dreadful melodrama features the previously yellowface-accepter Priscilla Bonner as the lead protagonist.[8] Throughout her trials and tribulations, she faces many ups and downs, like becoming a white version of the Lotus Blossom stereotype, because WASPs. I will explore the origins of the Lotus concept and the 'Jade' in more detail here as to provide the contextual background of the productions symbolism.
Red Kimono Poster (1925, PD) Otis Lithograph Company of Cleveland
Yellowface
Yellowface is a recurring theme built on the minstrel show traditions of the 1830's onwards, which depicted mainly 'Ethiopian', 'Oriental' or Chinese and then eventually Japanese stereotypes (for yellowface, this is from 1853 onwards). Blackface was the blueprint for yellowface being a mockery of other cultures deemed 'inferior' to White traditions (American and perceived heritage European traditions), which first began in the US with performers impersonating 'black characters' like 'Jim Crow' in 1828 (Thomas Dartmouth Rice, 1808-1860) and 'Zip Coon' in 1829 (by George Washington Dixon, 1801-1861). These 'characters' built on earlier 'black types' of mockeries of black people commonly lumped together as 'Ethiopians', which in US theatre often placed black people in demeaning positions such as house slaves, butlers, maids, and the 'plantation black'.[1]
Zip Coon (1834, PD) R Toll | Jim Crow (1836, PD) NYPL
Yellowfaces predecessor
These 'types' were in turn taken from Oriental blackface performances by whites which portrayed Turkish and Muslim ('Moor' performances) of the 18th century which derided all brown people as invaders, which came from European traditions of the crusades and African-European colonisation. Blackface derided African-American culture of having any inherent value of its own throughout the 19th/20th century, and it was from this theatrical 'tradition' of discriminatory stereotypes that yellowface was born. Yellowface was born when its progenitor the french diplomat Evariste Regis Huc (1813-1860) greased himself into it in China (between 1839-1846) to develop his understanding of Mandarin, the language. On his journey around China, he was privy to traditional Chinese culture such as Chinese operas, which he described as the 'chants of savages'. He brought this ... attitude back with him to Paris in 1850, spreading his racist views of Chinese performance art and people, peppering his account with other writers accounts of thievery and non-Christian ways.[2][3]
This account seems to highly flavoured perceptions of Chinese people, as many early stereotypical accounts of Chinese people depict them as thieves, laundry business-owners and exotic. Before the 1850s, these depictions solely relied on commercial goods (porcelain) popular through the Chinoiserie fad, but these kitsch Scottish-Chinese Suona-Bagpipe operas soon gave way to Huc's vision.[2] Heightened Sinophobia against Chinese migrant labourers who sought to work through the California Gold Rush, a time which saw the California Mining Tax (1850-1852) which targeted Chinese miners by enforcing a head-tax.
The Yellowface Jim Crow
In 1854, the first American 'minstrel pioneer, Charley Backus (1831-1883) performed in yellowface as 'John Chinaman' in his San Francisco Minstrel Troupe.[2] John Chinaman ran a laundry, stole gold from his white neighbors, spoke in Chinese-English pidgin, wore a 'shabee' (Hispanic pun) Shan-Ku uniform full of holes and sported a Queue hairstyle. His dinner consisted of dogmeat, rat, cat and mice and was wholly unassimilable and therefore un-American. He later found a home in the 'folksongs' of minstrel performer John A Stone (active 1854-1864), and between Stone and Backus, the John Chinaman stereotype spread internationally, primarily finding its home in New York theatre.[2][4] Whilst a niche in minstrelsy, Sinophobia was deep-rooted in this 'tradition', as in Josh, John (Get Out, John):
Your tail is severed clean off John;
Your pig tail is clean cut off; [...]
You have lost your nankin shirt of blue, [...]
You have come, as it were alone;
And you lead an unhappy kind of life,
Coming without a cheerful wife,
A cheerful wife of your own, John;
An almond-eyed wife of your own.
You've left your national god, John,
You've left your god and your land
You've left the dress of the land of flowers
And in leaving these, haven't taken ours;
And you've friends upon neither hand, John,
You have friends upon neither hand.[5]
Whilst 'almond-eyed' Chinese women were nowhere remotely as populous as their male counterparts, some Chinese women did find their way to America.[2][5] Before 1850, these few women reflected popular stereotypes found in Euro-American operas which were based on Chinese artefacts, mostly for women the pottery beauties depicted mostly in gardens on the sides of pottery. Afong Moy (c.1815-c.1850) was brought to the US for this very reason, displaying her 'exotic' bound feet to sell pottery for the Carnes brothers from the 1830s-1840's.[2][7] After 1850, yellowface songs referred to Chinese women in passing as 'Jades', or prostitutes because many Chinese-American women were sex trafficked into North America to get there, often into California and the West, with much of their time seemingly spent in laundries in competition with Irish laundry business owners if we believe the minstrels shows. Stereotypical yellowface Jade marriages often broke down, usually with the sudden death of the Chinese husband in these 'plays', or the white husband leaving mysteriously.[2] Other insults included 'monkey', 'dusky, 'drumstick eaters', 'mongol', 'Asiatic', 'Coolie', 'Baboon', 'leper' and opium related stereotypes.[2]
Irish Yellowface
By the 1860s, not one to miss out, the Irish, German and Italian immigrants began cashing in on the John Chinaman act such as the classic 1860s minstrel character 'Ching Chong'. Ching Chong was a warning to Asian men not to attempt to marry whites, who like Ching Chong's debauched lover, would run away, as the Chinese did from California on the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, much as the Great Migration from the South did. By 1870 though, Sinophobia became overwhelming amongst Statesian WASPs, as Chinese people tried to survive living in a genocidal hellhole. This migratory tension was seen in American vaudeville yellowface 'Chinese' acts, which portrayed 'Heathen Chinese' stereotypes, saw the rise of the Gong to signal 'Asian-ness' and set the proverbial Sinophobia dry grass pile alight, seeing the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) come to pass, the first American legislation to ban POC from entering North America.[2]
Chinese Must Go Advert (1886, PD) George Dee Magic Washing Machine Company
Yellow Peril
After the Exclusion Act and drawing up of laws like the Racial Covenant Clauses later on, Chinese-Americans began to form China Towns, which had Chinese Theatres. These were established by the 1890s, a time when Statesian imperialism, Jingoism and Sinophobia flourished with the acquistion of the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam and many other territorial acquisitions and protected territiories.[2] This saw a rise in hatred of all Asians, and saw a diversification to the hatred of all Asians, in an equal opportunity discrimination age were Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino etc were now all 'Asiatics' who needed Americans guiding hand towards the light of civilisation, especially Tagalog. The Japanese however were particularly 'barbaric savages' and feared through what became known as the Yellow Peril, because of their victories in 1895 in the Sino-Japanese war. Yellow Peril belied a mysterious Oriental plot to overthrow white supremacy in the US and Europe, with MiSCEgEnAtIoN (or a 'pollution of the caucasian race').[2] These numbers grow and dipped by the 20th century, as more Gentlemans Agreements (1907) and 'Immigration Acts' (1917, 1924) were passed, limiting specifically East Asian emigrants to the US. This lead to the American concentration camps of WWII, redlining, etc and gasp, Sessue Hayakawa (1886-1973) who was an early cinema international heartthrob.[6]
The realities of the 1890s colonisation of Eastern Asia (c.1899, PD) Stewart
A Chinese political map, the bear is Russia, the dog is Britain, the frog France and the Eagle the US
Japan sits poking Korea I think
Export Kimono
Kimono came into this messy picture by the 1870s globally. Whilst European families were accustomed to 'Nightgownes' since the early 17th century, these only reached Statesian shores as Export Gowns with the growth of Japan Inc. in the late 19th century, and were increasingly bought by those wild enough to travel to Japan who bought many Kimono back with them as bric-a-brac souvenirs. Worn at first by the Rothschilds in the 1870s and 1880's, later the Vanderbilts in following the fashions of the French stage actresses. Kimono after Loti's seminal Madame Chrysantheme (1887) represented a prostitutes attire born from the classic Lotus Blossom trope, and were often longinguistically associated with 'Geisha' from the operatic classic of Puccinis opera after Long's 1898 original, and the news of diva actresses like Sarah Bernhardt who would be found swaraying around backstage and through the Hollywood gossip columns. These Longingly became staples of middle class Boudoir attire by the early 20th century in imitation of the 'European fashions' becoming fashionable lingerie attire for white Americans, and shameful unmodern attire for Japanese-Americans.
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Madame Butterfly (1907, PD) University of Washington, Francis MacLennan, Elza Szamosy
Appropriation for America
Yellowface is not specifically seen in the Red Kimono as far as I can tell; I don't deal in this everyday; however it was certainly a widely accepted idea that the Japanese and Chinese were to be considered an 'other' type of people than 'Americans'. Performers like William 'Chung Ling Soo' Robinson (1861-1918) normalised these expectations on the stage to make fun of their East Asian counterparts (see the talented Ching Ling Foo | 1854-1922 ) by stealing their identities, cultural items, jobs and even performances to do so.[7] Picking up another cultural item and associating it with 'sin', the Red Kimono as produced by women (Dorothy Davenport | 1895-1977), as was common in the early days of American cinema clearly sat well with all involved at the time with the production. The protagonist of the film is played by Priscilla Bonner (1899-1996), who symbolized white American women who had 'fallen into prostitution'. Wealthier white women would in turn lift them from their circumstances, a popular trope of late Victorian/Early Edwardian period literature and film in a bid to 'alleviate the suffering of the' poors.
Bonner had previously been cast and agreed to work in Shadows, a another silent yellowface production, three years before (in 1922) Red Kimono was shot, which was a continuation of white fears born from the subjugation of the 'yellow races' of Eastern Asia by the United States beginning in 1898 when the USA bought the Phillipines from Spain. 'American interests' in the area had allowed the colonisation of Korea, subjugation of China and colonisation of certain Pacific Islands between 1880-1920, which gave whites a false sense of superiority over the 'Mongol' species as American pseudo-race-science and Eugenics then claimed Asian peoples were descended from something other what white people were descended from.
Lon Chaney in Yellowface on set (1922, PD) Orange County Archives
WASPs were also, as against African-Americans, terrified that Asian peoples would do the same thing to themselves as the WASPS had done to POC groups, leading to cultural appropriation of objects like the Kimono as a self-serving way to show racial superiority of whites over the 'Asiatics'. This culminated in the Kimonope, a clothing version of yellowface, to make white women feel safer in their place at the top of the racial hierarchy they and white men had created for themselves. These roles using yellowface against East Asian women were mostly established by the 1890s, when the Yellow Peril and Chinese Exclusion Act brought the issues into mainstream Statesian society. It was this and the hit classical opera Madame Butterfly (published 1898, in theatres by 1904) which established the Lotus Blossom stereotype, predating the need for the 1934 Dragon Lady stereotype.[7]
The Red Kimona
The Red Kimono in fact refers to the scarlet woman (sex worker/prostitute) trope, and appears in the film after the film's 'protagonist' sees her mirror image shift into a Red 'Kimono', indicating a change in future status. The protagonist indeed becomes a 'histrionic' Jane as netizens put it, who serves her pimp after this.[8] The protagonist upon finding her cheating husband and being brushed off; her taste is that good apparently; shoots him in the shop where he is buying the next 'wife's' ring from protagonists stolen money and promptly gets a straight to jail card with plenty of histrionics.[8]
During the trial of her shooting her pimp, the Kimono is dropped on the floor indicating that she is leaving her 'prostitution' days behind her. In this way, the Kimono in this film is depicted as an Orientalist-adjacent object (see Said 2003), which perpetuates pre-existing stereotypes that people who wear this particular garment are the archetypical 'geisha', 'prostitutes' or 'scarlet women'. The Kimono in the American canon though is most often a Kimonope in disguise as legitimate Wafuku, in this case being a form of boudoir lingerie, transformed as such by the fact that a white woman has worn this garment which the audience or 'Us' is meant to understand as a non-racialist body. Worn on any other POC woman, particularly in Silent Hollywood, this would more likely make her a 'Jade', sex worker or 'Geisha' stereotype.
Conclusion
In context therefore we see how from the 1830s-1920s, East Asian women were created into the exotic other, in order to push racist white supremacist narratives of 'racial and civil superiority'. Beginning with Afong Moy, East Asian culture was denigrated as worthy of only being an exotic good to be sold by white men. This progressed into the first American theatre tradition, minstrelsy, which on the basis of blakface created by the 1850s internationally known yellowface impressions. This progressed to the 1890s into the Yellow Peril, Lotus Blossom stereotype and the denigration of Chinese/Japanese/Korean-Americans. The Kimono originally an artistic export item worn by the wealthy, eventually with the appearance of the Madame Butterfly opera was adopted into the American theatrical Kimonope and combined with the anti-Asian milieu to create acceptable cultural paradigms in which productions like The Red Kimono were born. Therefore, the Kimonope in American cinema, certainly of the early 20th century is a racist construction of Japanese women as the 'Asiatic' other.
Bibliography
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface
[2] Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, Krystyn R. Moon, 2005, pp.6-74
[3] Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, Evariste Regis Huc, 1854[1928], pp.xxx-xxxi | Available at https://archive.org/details/b3135953x_0001
[4] Empire of Culture: US Entertainers and the Making of the Pacific Circuit; 1850-1890, Matthew Wittman, 2010, pp.62-69
[5] Put's Original California Songster, John A Stone, 1868, p.62 | Available at https://archive.org/details/putsoriginalcali00ston/page/n63/mode/1up
[6] See Essay #4
[7] See Essay #18
[8] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016276/reviews?ref_=tt_urv
The production in full: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2dBX2S3_LU
Essay Abstracts
#1 Renee Vivien (1877 - 1909) --- Born Pauline Tarn, was an English lesbian poet. She wrote in French and perhaps English. She took up the style of the Symbolists and Parnassinism and was well known during the era of the Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Age) for producing Sapphic verse and living as an open quasi butch lesbian poet; her verse derived from the ancient poet Sapphos, also famed for her love of women.
# 2 Birth of the Kimonope --- Here I shall introduce the notion of the Kimonope, that is as a garment attached to the social construct of the 'Geisha' in North America. Kimonopes being Orientalized clothing, or 'negatively affiliated or exoticized ethnic dress' which lead to the perceived notion of the Kimono and Geiko as simultaneously both high and low culture to American culture makers, such as film, television, media, writers and some academics. An example of Kimonope are the tacky Halloween costumes you may find at the Dollar store.
#3 The Legacy of the MacArthur Dynasty on KTC & The Problem with the 'Traditional Garment' Argument --- The problem with arguing that the Kimono is a 'Traditional ethnic Garment' is that that assertion is in itself, arguably Ethnocentrism, which to clarify is the imposition of, in this case, American values onto Japanese cultural values, belaying the 3 pronged pitchfork of idiocy.
#4 Divine --- Government name Harris Glenn Milstead (1945-1988) was the infamous North American Queen & Drag artist. Specifically, Divine was known for being a character actor, part of her act is well-known for its eccentricity. My personal exposure to Drag lite was Pantomine Grand Dames as a kid, and later when my friends made me watch RuPaul in art classes, so to me this is nothing new, the over the top, the glitter, the upstaging is all part and parcel.
#5 Dori-Style or 21st century Kimono Fashion --- The Dori-Kimono style. Something which I just made up because in going over notes for the first 20 years of 21st century section of Kimono history, I noticed a lack of a clear catchall term for what was happening in Japan at the time, at least in English descriptions of the time. I use the term Dori as I do not want to coin an unrelated term to the topic, but I also am reticent to claim all of Street style as 'Tori' either, whilst a large number of streets upon which the subculture originates in all use the suffix 'dori' (the bottom of Takeshita-dori for example), thence Dori-style.
#6 The Tea Gown --- This essay will cover the aspects of how 19th century Japanese import textiles to Western countries were used and repurposed, as well what their desirability tells us about how Japanese design was regarded and the image which these people held of Japan through the Western lense and consciousness. This follows the progression of how Kimono can be used in the West from the undress of the 1860s, adapting silk bolts in the 1870s to high fashion western daywear, to the 1880s aesthetic movement and 1890 wholesale adoption in the Victorian age to being used prominently by society hostesses as tea gowns by the Edwardian period, and the subsequent change in Japanese export culture which we see in extant textile collections of Japanese textile in Western dresses of the periods.
#7 Kimono and the Pre-Raphaelite Painters --- This essay will cover the aspects of Kimono in the Portraiture of the Pre-Raphaelites. The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of British artists and writers active during the late Victorian period. Unlike the Royal Academy artists, this circle of painters operated outside of the established comfortable boundaries of the expected white, cisgender middle class audience of the Victorian age. The movement is notable for its inclusion and encouragement of women, and in portraying and engaging non-conventional beauty and beauties as figures from the Classical World alongside Religious, Mythological and Folklore Heroines into Victorian 'Femme Fatales'.
#8 Jokyo/Genroku Kimono Textile Culture and the new role of the Komin --- This essay will return back to GKTC (Genroku Kimono Textile Culture ; 1688-1704) and JoKTC (Jokyo K.T.C. 1684-1688) and the new role of the Komin (Artist caste) in GKTC. JoKTC is notable for being the lead up to GKTC, JoKTC being characterised by its transitory nature in comparison to GKTC, which was far more bold in its relations to what Kosode could and should be. Komin entered the picture at this juncture, and I shall elaborate a little more here than in other posts about why that was. GKTC is notable for its elaborate, perhaps gaudy and innovative Kosode design features, whilst JoKTC more so for the enabling factors of the time, as a sort of incubatory GKTC.
#9 Tagasode Byobu - This essay will explore the art motif known in Japanese art as Tagasode Byobu ( Whose sleeves Screen) This motif is a recurring art form which was particularly popular during the Azuchi-Momoyama era ( 1568-1600 ) as a representation of the ways in which Buddhist sensibilities met with the fast changing events of the end of the Sengoku Jidai (1467-1615) and as an extension of the habit of wealthy women from military families came to own and store a large number of Kimono. Prior to this, Kin Byobu ( Golden Screens) for the most part depicted nature like Sesshuu Touyou (1420-1506) after Chinese Cha'an painter Muxi ( c.1210-1269 ) or 'flower-and-bird' scenes like those of Kano Eitoku (1543-1590), rather than humans or human paraphernalia as an extension of the Zen painting school of thought about materialism.
#10 Cultural Acculturation --- The topic of our essay is on the nature of Cultural Exchange in KTC which will be an ongoing mini-series throughout 2022. This covers the 1000CE - 1500 period in Japanese History.
#11 Cultural Appropriation --- The topic of our essay is on the nature of Cultural Appropriation which will be an ongoing mini-series throughout 2022.
#12 Cultural Acculturation --- The topic of our essay is on the nature of Cultural Acculturation which will be an ongoing mini-series throughout 2022. This covers the Asuka (Hakuho), Nara (Tempyo), and Heian periods (500CE-1000CE) in Japanese History.
#13 Asai Ryoi --- This essay will explore the legacy of Asai Ryoi on KTC. Who was Asai Ryoi you may ask? Only one of the most important writers for the Ukiyo genre. Asai Ryoi ( act. 1661-1691 ) was a prolific Ukiyo-zoshi ( Books of the floating world ) or Kana-zoshi ( Heimin Japanese Books ) writer. His leading 1661 publication, lambasted and satirized Buddhism and Samurai culture of restraint in favour of the Chonin lifestyle of worldy excess.
#14 Edith Craig --- This is a post regarding the early adoption and promulgation of the Kimono and Japanese aesthetics in the life of the wonderful Edith Craig (1869-1947), daughter of the famous actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928) and Edward William Godwin (1833-1886). Edith was also known as 'Edy'.
#15 European Banyans --- This essay will explore the European garment known as a Banyan, which originated as a European reaction to Kimono in the 17th century, popular until the end of the 18th century. The word Banyan originates from Arabic ( Banyaan), Portuguese (Banian), Tamil ( Vaaniyan ) and Gujarati ( Vaaniyo ) loanwords meaning 'Merchant'. Alternative versions saw the item fitted with buttons and ribbons to attach the two front sides together. The Banyan was worn by all genders and was particularly regarded in its first iterations as a gentlemanly or intellectual garment worn with a cap to cover the lack of a periwig, and later adopted by women and greatly influenced how British womens garments were designed with preference for comfort in removal of panniers whilst maintaining luxurious, modest 18th century fashions (see Robe a la Anglaise).
#16 Miss Universe and Kimonope --- This essay will explore how Beauty Pageants, principally Miss Universe, has engaged with KTC. While there may be real Kimono worn by Japanese and Japanese adjacent contestants in the 'National Costume' category, I will be focusing on the Kimonope worn by contestants. The idea of Kimono as a 'national costume' sparks interesting conversations on what 'national costumes' are, their target audiences, and how we form ideas about these things to begin with.
#17 Onna-E --- Womens pictures refers to the Nara, Heian and early Kamakura ( 710-1333CE ) practice of drawing women in elongated Hand scrolls, which today are regarded as feminine gender coded Art. Some of these narratives depict the lives of women, their extra diaries, or the literature they wrote. The Onna-E style derives from how mostly Heian women represented themselves and others as a performed self in these scrolls, drawing from their lives indoors at their and the imperial abodes. Whilst a limited number of women could read Kanji, they also used their knowledge of Chinese culture to create and inspire their own culture; the first truly Wamono aesthetics; and it was with these preconditions that Onna-E became established in the Japanese art scene alongside Yamato-E and Oshi-E.
#18 A Jamaican, a Monster and Portuguese bar in the Orient --- This essay looks at the Kimonope attire adopted by North American Dancehall artists Shenseea (Chinsea Linda Lee | 1996 - present ) for the video to 'ShenYeng Anthem'. Whilst the aesthetic derives mostly from East Asian, principally Chinese aesthetics, the language used is specifically Japanese, referring to Chinsea Linda Lee as 'ShenYeng Boss', a perpetuation of the Dragon Lady stereotype. The essay mostly charts how this ridiculous Kimonope derides from the North American Anti-Chinese movement and how this intersects with contemporary Orientalism.
#19 The Red Kimonope --- The Red Kimono is a terribly named racist US silent film from 1925. The Longingist film includes a key scene which the production gets its name from where the protagonist drops her Kimonope, meant to symbolize that she had turned away from sin and prostitution, or in other words equating a wearer of the Kimono as a sex worker which stemmed from another American 'tradition'. This dreadful melodrama features the previously yellowface-accepter Priscilla Bonner as the lead protagonist. Throughout her trials and tribulations, she faces many ups and downs, like becoming a white version of the Lotus Blossom stereotype, because WASPs. I will explore the origins of the Lotus concept and the 'Jade' in more detail here as to provide the contextual background of the productions symbolism.
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