Henry Black: On Stage in Meiji Japan

Unique among foreigners in nineteenth-century Japan, Australian-born professional storyteller (rakugoka) Henry Black (1858-1923) enthralled audiences with his adaptations of novels by Charles Dickens, Mary Braddon and Fortune de Boisgobey. These tales, later produced as books, brought notions of European modernity to many ordinary Japanese. Black also acted kabuki roles, managed an orchestra, performed magic and hypnotism, lived with his Japanese male lover, drank heavily, and practised tea ceremony. His voice was recorded for the London Gramophone Company on the first disc-shaped recordings made in Japan. In the 1870s Black had joined the pro-democracy movement, promoting equal rights and an elected assembly. His later affiliation with the Sanyu guild of storytellers, under the professional name of Kairakutei Burakku, enabled him to promote the movements aims through his stories. He became a naturalised Japanese, and was shunned by his own family. This is the first full-length English-language account of Henry Black.Translating Blacks narrated adaptations and drawing on newspapers and diary entries, Ian McArthur demonstrates Blacks individual contribution to the modernisation of Meiji-era (1868-1912) Japan.