University of Virginia Library

Famous Across the Sea

To start the conversation, I remarked that I had heard of his fame as an actor and producer in Japan. Sojin looked alarmed, glanced at his wife, made a deprecating motion and assured me his fame was “very little.” Then something unusual in a Japanese household occurred. Mrs. Sojin contradicted her husband, something no obedient wife would ever dare to do in Japan.

“Ah! Is ver' greatest fame at Japan,” she said.

Sojin looked disturbed and uncomfortable.

“Excuse,” he said, and then added swiftly, no doubt to placate his wife: “I speak not very kind English. My wife speak very good.”

I asked him whether in Japan he had produced the old classical dramas.

“Only at beginning of career. I am of very modern school, madame,” he explained.

His wife put in eagerly: “My husband first pioneer in new drama movement—Little theater, you understand. He make first production in Shakespeare, Ibsen, Sudermann, Goethe— many other—one hundred other!”

I tried to imagine a Japanese audience watching a performance of “The Doll's House,” The Master Builder,” “Hedda Gabler,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Hamlet,” “Othello,” “Anthony and Cleopatra,” “Faust,” and the Russian, German, and French plays, all of which were included in Sojin's repertory.

“Were these European plays successful?”

“Very so,” said Sojin. Again Mrs. Sojin interposed, eagerly: “Always plenty people come to theater. High class people—intelligentsia—artist, writer, student, scholar. All very hungry see my husband in European drama.”