by Nina Revoyr
In my youth and early adulthood, I never entertained such thoughts. My early days in Hollywood were unpredictable and heady. There was no future, only the present, and the project of the moment was everything. One tried to stay as uncommitted as one possibly could, in order to be prepared for the next development. And for the young, rising players in the early days of film, there was always a next development.
The great irony of my success in the motion picture world is that I never set out to become an actor. Such an existence seemed utterly frivolous to me. Indeed, other than my lifelong love of literature, I had no connection to the arts at all as a boy, and certainly no premonition that I myself would one day become a figure that other people paid to see. My intention when I came to America for schooling in 1907, all the way up until two days before my ship was scheduled to sail for Tokyo, was to return to Nagano Prefecture and become a schoolteacher. I had arranged to take a post at my old secondary school and teach courses in English and literature, and my time in America only added to my value as a legitimate instructor in these subjects. At the University of Wisconsin, where I was an English major, I studied the literature of Britain and France; I developed a particular love for Hardy, Eliot, Dickens, and Forster, as well as a passable knowledge of Balzac and Flaubert. I loved the Russians, whose work I read in Japanese translation—Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky. And I read plays and watched every theater company that passed through Madison, particularly those who performed Shakespeare and other classics of the English stage. Once, I even had the good fortune to see the Kyoto Players, the Japanese company led by the young actress and playwright Hanako Minatoya, when they performed Spring Blossom at the university theater. I was able to arrange my studies to include modern Japanese authors as well, such as Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki; it was my dream to eventually do my own translations.
So it was with the intention of boarding a ship back to Tokyo that I took a train across the country to Los Angeles. This was in the spring of 1911, just after my twentieth birthday, and I faced my trip to Japan with apprehension. Although I looked forward to seeing my homeland and my family for the first time in four years, there had been many changes while I was away. My father had died during my second year at university, and I was afraid that his sickness and passing had aged my fragile mother as well. My older brother, Akira, who was managing the farm, had married a year previously, and his wife had borne a sickly child. My younger sister, Miya, had just turned seventeen; she was finished with school and there were apparently no prospects for marriage. And my little brother, Toru, who had been a mischievous and amusing boy of eight when I left, was twelve now, and driving everyone mad with his rebellions and declarations of autonomy. My presence, although I was only the second son, was expected to bring stability. Indeed, I had always been somewhat of a calming figure in the family, despite the fact that I often lived outside of it. My mother wrote me many letters during the spring of my senior year, urging me to come home as quickly as I could.
But fate, I suppose, had something different in mind. When I arrived in Los Angeles, I stayed at the home of a Japanese-American friend, a classmate from the University of Wisconsin. His family, the Yamadas, lived in Boyle Heights, and they insisted that I experience some of the pleasures of the city and visit the center of its Japanese community. I was to spend five days in Los Angeles, and on each day they showed me a new wonder of the city: the ocean, the mountains, the orange groves. And on each of these nights we dined at an establishment owned by one of their friends—always in Boyle Heights or Little Tokyo, of course, the only parts of town where Japanese were welcome. By the end of the third evening, I was feeling so indulged and so tired of socializing that I asked my host, John Yamada, if we could strike out on our own. I wished to do nothing more than have a quiet meal and perhaps take in a performance. As a fellow English major and lover of the arts, John knew exactly where to take us.
The place was named simply, the Little Tokyo Theater. It was a small, plain structure, recently built, which held about a hundred people. It was located just off of First Street, walking distance from the many bars, and so John and I stopped for sake and snacks before rushing into our seats just as the lights went down. Perhaps we had consumed too much of the sake, for I can think of no other reason why I behaved as I did, which was, to say the least, uncharacteristic. But when the play began—a work so minor and forgettable I don’t recall its name—it was so awful I couldn’t mask my displeasure. Everything about it was wrong: The writing was awkward, the acting overwrought, the stage direction, sets, and lighting looked like the work of total amateurs. I was so offended by the poor quality of the production, and by the fact that I had squandered one of my final nights in America on such a piece of rubbish, that I unleashed a stream of criticism, pointed but whispered, to John, who suffered beside me. No one, including us, was rude enough to walk out of the theater, but I could tell from the pursed lips and sagging eyelids that other people were as miserable as we. When the play ended, mercifully, a full two hours later, I stormed into the back hallways with a reluctant John behind me and demanded to see the manager. John pleaded with me to stop, but I was not to be denied, and I stood in the hallway complaining until a rumpled gentleman in his fifties finally stepped out of a doorway.
“I am Okamoto, the owner,” he said to us, bowing. “And what can I do for you, young sirs?”
I bowed back quickly, introducing myself, and then forsook the usual pleasantries. “My friend and I just saw the play this evening, and it smells worse than the manure on my family’s farm.”
The man looked stunned. “I beg your pardon?”
“It was terrible,” I said. “Badly written, badly acted, and an utter waste of my time and money. Excuse me for saying so, but if this is the kind of fare you usually offer at your theater, I would not be surprised to see it fail within the year.”
Behind me, I could feel John shrinking in embarrassment. Okamoto’s lips worked madly, and his glasses slid down his nose. “Well, I suppose you could do better, Mr… .”
“Nakabayashi,” I said, “Junichiro Nakabayashi. And indeed I could do better! My friend John and I could put up a play that would keep your theater full for a month. Couldn’t we, John?” I turned toward him for confirmation, but he looked away.
Okamoto, shifting in his too-large suit, considered me as if I were a madman. “What play do you propose to put on?” he asked.
“I have one in mind,” I assured him, although in fact I had no idea.
“And exactly what kind of experience do you have in the theater?”
“None.”
“None? Never acted? Never directed?”
“No. But I have seen enough theater to know what makes a good play. Give me a chance, Okamoto-san. Certainly a play that I produced couldn’t be any worse than what I saw tonight.”
Okamoto’s eyebrows wiggled as if they had a life of their own. “Well, I am searching for another new play this season,” he said, more to himself than to us. “And the last three productions have not been well-attended.”
I sensed my opening, and forged ahead. “You won’t be sorry, Okamoto-san. And besides, you have nothing to lose.”
After another moment of hand-wringing, Okamoto beckoned us to join him in his office. John continued to shake his head in disbelief, and I was fully aware that he had little time to devote to my sudden project, as he was due to start working in his father’s dry goods company the following Monday. But he sat patiently as Okamoto and I conversed. The owner told me about the history of the theater, which had opened two years earlier with the backing of several of Little Tokyo’s most prominent businessmen; and about the daily challenges of running an artistic enterprise with actors, directors, and stagehands who all had regular full-time jobs. Apparently, after sellouts of the theater’s first three productions, attendance had dropped off markedly—that night the theater had been half-full—and Okamoto and his backers were at a loss to explain why. When he told me the plays they’d
put up there, I immediately saw the reason. They were all old Japanese dramas, tales that people had seen before, and probably to much greater effect.
“You have to engage people,” I argued. “The people who came to America are the ones who were brave enough to leave everything behind. They don’t want to see the same old stories. You need to excite them, give them something that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “So what do you propose?”
By this time, an idea had come to me. There was a novel, published ten years earlier, entitled The Indifferent Sea, about a naval officer who falls in love with a girl in the town where he is stationed. The officer is promised to another young woman from his hometown, and to make matters worse, he discovers that the girl he loves is actually the daughter of his superior, the naval commander. Because she belongs to a higher social class than he, neither family would approve of their match. The lovers bemoan the cruelty of fate, but after several months of meeting secretly, they decide to do the proper thing and part. Within a year the young officer is married to the woman from his hometown—but then she passes away during child-birth. By the time he locates the commander’s daughter, she is already married to someone else. He is left with neither the woman he loved nor the woman he married, and with a child he must raise by himself. By letting himself get caught between duty and desire, he gains nothing and loses all that he cares for.
It was a story whose themes of responsibility and social duty would appeal to the transplanted Japanese audience. But it was also a story with enough of a romantic twist to satisfy their desire for intrigue. I first encountered this novel when I was twelve; I surprised a classmate who was crying over a book on his stoop one afternoon as I passed him on my way home from school. After teasing him for his sensitivity, I asked what was having such a deep effect on him. He wordlessly handed over the book, and I started reading it right there, so engrossed in the story of young Officer Kubota that I forgot my friend was present. Later, after he finished the book, he passed it on to me. Because my family would have disapproved of me reading something so frivolous as a novel, I kept the book out in the chicken coop and read it in bits when I went out to feed the animals. For several days, when I came back into the house, it was obvious I had been crying, until one day my mother looked at me and shook her head. “Jun-chan, you are growing too attached to the chickens. Don’t mourn for them. We may have to kill them soon, but I promise there will always be more.”
This novel had a tremendous effect on me—indeed, I could go so far as to say that it ignited my love for the arts— and it was one of the few items I had brought from Japan that was not a strict necessity. I had playacted all the parts as a boy hundreds of times, and knew almost every line in the book. It was clear to me that this was my opportunity to really play Kubota, and I already had an actress in mind for the crucial part of Emiko, the commander’s daughter—the least terrible of the players from that night’s performance.
I explained the story line to Okamoto and saw his eyes brighten with excitement. “Young man,” he said, “you are a gift from Buddha. I hand you the fate of my theater.”
Although this may seem like a large burden to place on the shoulders of a twenty-year-old with no experience, I was—perhaps because of my youth—undaunted. In fact, I was enthused about the prospect of putting on an entire production, and after postponing my passage to Tokyo and sending a telegram to my mother, I quickly got down to business. The play was scheduled to open in exactly six weeks, but there was not yet an actual play. The novel had never been adapted—a detail I had neglected to share with Okamoto—so while I spent the evenings holding auditions and arranging the construction of the set, I passed the days furiously transforming the story of Kubota into the dialogue and stage directions of a play. This could have been tedious work, but since I had committed nearly the entire book to memory, and was energized by the prospect of bringing it to an audience, the hours fiew quickly by. Within two weeks, the transformation was complete, and after four more frantic weeks of set design, fittings, advertisements, and rehearsals, the play opened on a Friday in the June of 1911.
The first night’s performance had sold out quickly, partly because my challenge to Okamoto had become public knowledge, and partly because the family of John Yamada, who played Kubota’s best friend, had ensured that all their friends were in attendance. I remember gazing out of the wings at the crowded theater and wondering if I had been mad; wondering how I had ever thought that someone like me could come from nowhere and put on a play. I was anxious now—we all were—and I remained nervous through the raising of the curtain, through a moment of feeling naked when I first walked out on stage, and through the delivery of my first several lines, which suddenly seemed trite and inadequate. But soon enough, as I concentrated on how Kubota was feeling during his first chance meeting with Emiko, I forgot the people in the audience altogether. The only person in the world was the admiral’s daughter, played well by Midori Hata—and as I stopped worrying about the reactions of the audience, I could feel them engaging in the story. Near the end of the first act, when Kubota confesses his love, he impulsively grasps Emiko’s hand—and as we touched, I heard a gasp rise from the audience. We had captured them completely. The rest of the play went smoothly, with only a few hardly noticeable errors, and after it ended to thunderous applause, the audience brought us back four times for curtain calls. It was a triumph of the highest order. And I remember looking out at the standing, cheering audience; at the beaming faces of my fellow players, and thinking, It was I who made this happen. And I realized at that moment that the course of my life had suddenly, irrevocably changed.
The Indifferent Sea earned a rave review in the Japanese newspaper, the Rafu Shimpo. The second night sold out, and also the third, and so Okamoto added another week to its original one-week run. After the final performance, the businessmen who backed the theater threw a party at Haraoka, an exclusive restaurant to which I never before could have gained legitimate entry. After many toasts, and countless emptied bottles of sake, beer, and champagne, one of the businessmen put his arm around me and said, “Thank you for saving our theater, Nakabayashi. What do you have in mind for the next production?”
I was due to sail for Tokyo—once again—two weeks later, and I didn’t relish the idea of sending my family a telegram announcing another delay. But it would be disingenuous to say I wasn’t prepared for such a question, and as the people around me all fell into a hush, I pulled myself up straight. “A mystery,” I said, “entitled Double Bind. I saw it in a theater in Tokyo just before I sailed to America, and it was a fine piece of work, taut and resonant.” The businessmen all nodded solemnly, and then looked at Okamoto, who was as happy and red-faced as Buddha. “Well, prepare the theater, Okamoto!” the first businessman said. “The boy’s got a play to put on!”
The second play, Double Bind, was as successful as the first. It was followed by The Swallows, and then Futility and The Shadow of the Mountain, all plays that had been produced very recently by the new theater companies springing up in Tokyo. By the time the third play opened, the theater had become the talk of Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo—as had the young new actor/director behind it. I had been staying with the Yamada family through the summer months, but once I began to collect some of the earnings from the plays—and once it became clear that I would not be returning to Japan in the immediate future—I took two rooms in a house off Second Street. Now, suddenly, I was being recognized on the streets of Little Tokyo. People bought me drinks when I ate in local restaurants; launders competed for my business; middle-aged women offered me their daughters’ hands in marriage. I cannot claim that I didn’t enjoy this attention, but my real devotion—as it was from the moment I first demanded to speak to Okamoto—was to the quality of the plays we presented.
It was in the interest of expanding my artistic range that I decided to produce, as my next play, Twelfth Night. This was not the first work the
theater had presented in English—one of the plays that Okamoto had produced before my arrival was an English translation of a German play—but it was the first that had been penned by an English-speaking writer. Few of the theatergoers were familiar with Shakespeare, and those who were had seen the master’s plays in Japanese translation, where much of his poetry and verbal trickery were lost. I did not know how well a Shakespeare play would be received in its original English, but I was ready to make the theatergoers stretch their minds—and I had built up enough credibility and good will by that point that the audience would trust me. Moreover, the backers of the theater, who were concerned with how the growing Japanese population was perceived by the Americans, were pleased by this production of a Western classic. It turned out that we gambled correctly. Although the actors were more nervous than usual—especially those who felt uncertain that they could convey the subtleties of English—the play was a tremendous success.
Because the production of Twelfth Night by a Japanese theater was considered somewhat of a novelty, this play garnered a level of interest that was completely unprecedented for the Little Tokyo Theater. For the first time, there were Caucasian faces in the audience. Then, a week into the run, a favorable review appeared in the Los Angeles Times, which had previously ignored the existence of Japanese in California except to express concern about their growing numbers. It was clear that our play was a hit. While Okamoto and some of the players were unnerved by this increased exposure, I enjoyed the fact that our work was receiving accolades from a broader audience. Then one night after a performance, an usher came into the dressing room and ceremoniously cleared his throat.
