Even before Japan opened to the west in 1853, westerners were beginning to discover Japan’s extraordinary culture. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth Japonisme was hugely in vogue. Across Europe and the United States, people filled their houses with fans, screens, blue and white porcelain, netsuke and samurai swords like the one that inspired WS Gilbert to write the Mikado. Fashionable women wore kimonos and were painted in them. As well as poets and artists, musicians too were inspired by Japanese culture.
Right at the height of the vogue for all things Japanese, an exquisitely beautiful ex-geisha named Sadayakko arrived in the US. She toured from the west coast to the east, then crossed the Atlantic and performed in England. At the Paris Expo of 1901, she was acclaimed as the star of the entire show. Debussy went to see her perform and shortly afterwards composed La Mer. She went onto be the inspiration for Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, along the way being painted by Picasso, admired by Isadora Duncan and dining with Tsar Nikolai II.
This July the Proms featured a programme of Japanese and Japanese-inspired music and asked me to talk about Sadayakko, the embodiment of Japonisme. Here is what I said.