A Dance Lesson in the Rokumeikan

This is an illustration by Georges Bigot depicting a dance lesson taking place in the Rokumeikan.

This image[1] is an illustration by Georges Bigot depicting a dance lesson on a Monday in the Rokumeikan.  The image, produced by a Frenchman and released to a French audience, yields a Western perspective on Western-style dancing in Japan.

In the image, a dance instructor, possibly a Westerner, holds a dance lesson for a group of Japanese women.  The women are dressed in Western-style dresses, though their dresses are not as elegant as those depicted in Chikanobu’s woodblock.  The instructor is likely giving some guidance about how to step properly, since he is depicted giving a strong step forward, and most of the women are looking directly at the instructor’s feet.  All of the women have a neutral expression on their faces, except for the two in the middle.  Of these two, one has a smile on her face and is confidently standing on her toes with her feet turned inwards.  By contrast, the other has a distressed look on her face and is leaning to one side, as if she has fallen off-balance.  Interestingly, her feet are hidden from view.

The variance in dance level and the intense concentration with which the women are looking at the instructor reveal a potential possibility for what Bigot may have trying to show: that all of the women, no matter their current proficiency, are trying to learn this new style of Western dance.  This interpretation leads to a relatively benign hypothesis about the message Bigot may have been trying to send to his audience in France – that the Japanese were trying their best to assimilate to Western traditions.  There is, however, a less benevolent interpretation of the image.  We can see from the women shown in profile that the Japanese women have ape-shaped heads, an idiom Bigot used to depict Japanese people in other illustrations and which recalls the pseudoscientific conclusions of phenology which were common at the time.  Furthermore, the women are disorganized, facing a number of different directions and standing in different positions; some are on raised toes, while others simply stand and watch the instructor.  Critically, none of women are trying to imitate the step that the instructor is showing them.  These observations lead to an alternate interpretation of Bigot’s work – that the Japanese women are inept and not learning from their instructor.

These two interpretations are very different from each other and lead to very different conclusions about how Westerners may have viewed Western dancing in Japan.  In fact, there was likely a diversity of opinions on the subject, and the ambiguities in Bigot’s work help illustrate that diversity of opinion.