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The Kawakami troupe, which helped to pioneer Japan’s modern theatre, toured across the United states during 1899–1900 en route to the 1900 Paris exposition. Although they were viewed as exotic orientalia in much of the country, they enjoyed a two-month run of commercial and critical success in boston. This essay examines the Kawakami troupe’s boston run with respect to the city’s preexisting status as a center of Japonisme, as well as the troupe’s semi-realist style and alliance with the boston-based Japanese merchant Matsuki Bunkio, suggesting that these factors together allowed for the formation of a modernist audience that received the Kawakamis as examples of modernist theatre.

On the Fourth of July, 1860, the New York Times introduced readers to a new persona treading the minstrel boards: Matinées are the order of the day, two at both the Bowerys, at George Christy's, at Bryant's, and at the Palace Gardens. Here “versatile performers” and “talented danseuses” will diversify the hours of patriotic emotion with comic pantomime and grand “Japanese ballets,” led by “Little Tommy.” Japan has dropped a little into the sere and yellow leaf, perhaps, for the natives, but for the “strangers from the provinces” the land of blacking may still have charms, and we desire that “all such” may understand that the Japan of their dreams will be on exhibition to-night at Miss Laura Keene's Theatre.

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