A Glimpse of Dignitaries Dancing

Yoshu Chikanobu's Kiken buto no ryakuke, which loosely translates into "A glimpse of dignitaries dancing."  This woodblock print depicts a group of couples dancing Western-style dance in an elegant dance hall.

This is Yoshu Chikanobu’s woodblock print Kiken buto no ryakuke,[1] which translates to “ a glimpse of dignitaries dancing.”  Despite the Rokumeikan’s popularity in Meiji culture and the position it held as a symbol of Westernization in Meiji Japan, this is one of the only easily accessible woodblocks we have of Western-style dancing.  Close examination of this image yields some interesting insights about how Western-style dancing might have been viewed by Japanese in Meiji Japan.

This image depicts seven couples dancing on an elegant dance floor.  The women are dressed in Western ball gowns, and the men are dressed in black tailcoats.  They are ostensibly dancing in Western style, but beyond superficial elements such as clothing and dance position, there is little resemblance to what Western dignitaries dancing the same dances would probably have looked like.  The dancers show little emotion on their faces, and most of the couples are holding each other at arm’s length.  Only two men hold their partners by the waist, and of these two, one has his mouth obscured by another dancer’s head (thereby blocking any smile that might be on his face), and the other’s head is shown only in profile, showing a hint of a smile.  This contrasts sharply with depictions of dancing in the West, which depicted couples holding each other much closer and being more physically intimate (consider, for example, the depiction of dancing in Renoir’s Le Moulin de la Galette).

There are a few ways one might interpret such a depiction of Western-style dancing in Japan.  If one takes this depiction at face value and assumes that the couples were indeed dancing in the way depicted, one might conclude that the Japanese at the time danced a tame version of Western-style dancing at best.  On the other hand, one might consider Chikanobu’s audience at the time – that is, the Japanese public – and hypothesize that Chikanobu was purposefully presenting a version of Western-style dancing that more closely appealed to traditional Japanese values, which frowned upon close bodily contact and public displays of emotion.  In either case, one can infer a level of resistance to Western-style dancing and Western values from one of the Japanese dignitaries, the Japanese public, or even Chikanobu himself.