Post a Comment. At the turn of the last century, when Japonisme was at its height, one woman became the toast of two continents. She performed before heads of state, she inspired playwrights and musicians, and she was immortalized by many noted artists of the day. Her name was Sadayakko She was born Sada Koyama, the daughter of a man from an impoverish samurai family.
After the death of her father, she is adopted at age seven by the owner of the Hamada geisha house in Tokyo. She is trained to sing and play the koto, and she shows a particular aptitude for dance.
Unusual for the time, she is sent to a local Shinto priest to be taught to read and write. At age 12, she makes her debut as an apprentice geisha. That man would be Otojiro Kawakami, known as the Liberty Kid. He was a Liberal party actor who performed in political, agitprop amateur plays. Yakko saw him perform in the summer of , and the pair began to have an affair, despite the fact that he was socially inferior to her other clients.
In , Kawakami starts to perform jingoistic plays about the Sino-Japanese War. A number of woodblocks show depict Kawakami in scenes from such plays. Kawakami, however, was hopeless with money, and was constantly fending off creditors.
After a disastrous run for Parliament in , he loses his theatre. Otojiro Kawakami [center] Performing the. Sada accompanies him, not as an actress but as a wife who will support him behind the scenes.
