The Journal of Japanese Studies

The urban experience has everywhere always derived a lion’s share of its charm from the spectacle of street artists, be they the jongleurs of old-world markets or the jugglers of metropolitan public squares today. In the shogun’s capital of Edo, the proverbial Chinese lion dancers themselves come to mind, though other exemplars of these lowly, and therefore often little-studied, figures abound: standup comic duos (manzai), sand painters, puppeteers, automata operators, peepshow impresarios, blind minstrels, [End Page 142] Zen flutists, Buddhist mendicants reciting benedictions, yin-yang diviners, sacred dancing mimes, vocal impersonators, storytellers, soapbox orators, prestidigitators, conjurers, thimble riggers, acrobats, ladder balancers, basket jumpers, and sword swallowers, to name a few, not to omit professional regurgitators. One such regurgitator (okematsu in Japanese—a term this reviewer admits to not having known previously) would routinely swallow a handful of loose needles and a length of string, then, with neither apparent bodily harm nor dearth of razzmatazz, cough these up perfectly threaded (p. 224).

Thrusting us into this dazzling if at times lurid world is Gerald Groemer’s thoroughly researched, well-argued, clarifying, and frequently entertaining Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600–1900. By “street performers,” Groemer means freelancers who, performing in liminal if public spaces such as street corners and market places, were never beholden to theater managers or highbrow tastes, though these artists occasionally moved to indoor performance halls (yose) and stages. Street Performers presents a wonderfully kaleidoscopic view of urban Japanese society during the Edo (1600–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods through these freelancers without devolving into sentimental eulogy for their lost performance arts. Groemer’s main conviction is that “little tells one more about a society than the way in which the arts it supports can free themselves from their immediate determination by economic, political, and social forces” (p. 7).

To this end, Groemer (who teaches ethnomusicology and Western musicology at the University of Yamanashi in Kōfu, Japan) judiciously builds on a dozen of his own articles on street performers and related topics, published in major journals over the past two decades. The result may well be his magnum opus. It certainly represents a considerable achievement and contribution to the study of the period’s urban popular culture. As such, it should be required reading for scholars of literature, culture, and history, though it may not be quite broad enough for general readers, let alone for use in college courses.

At least two major challenges must have confronted Groemer, the first being that street arts are notoriously ephemeral. The perceived low social status of performers and a Confucian disdain of amusements do not help matters. Detailed reliable accounts of these arts and their particular performances are scant. What records survive range from the likes of oblique references within comic haiku (senryū) to snippets of dialogue in works of fiction (often illustrated), woodblock prints (often texted), works related to the kabuki stage, even legal documents. Groemer admirably marshals these sources, including 83 images by my count (regrettably, there is no list of illustrations—or credits), with the guidance of Japanese scholarship, providing the most comprehensive account in English of these street arts to date, at least since the pioneering work of Andrew Markus. [End Page 143]

The second challenge concerns a basic understanding of the shifting identities of these performers. The conventional wisdom has long been that they were the disenfranchised, particularly “nonhuman” outcastes (hinin), the poor, the homeless, the physically or mentally disabled, the economically hobbled, not to mention Buddhist and other sorts of religious mendicants. One surprise, however, is that members from all four major social classes could and did resort to performing street arts. Given the downward social mobility of the day, this is not surprising. Still, the mental image of samurai literally putting on a song and a dance is striking.

Samurai were only willing to do...