Madame Sadayakko : the geisha who bewitched the West by Downer Lesley

Author:Downer, Lesley [Downer, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Kawakami, Sadayakko, 1871-1946, Actors, Geishas
Publisher: New York, N.Y. : Gotham Books
Published: 2003-06-01T19:00:00+00:00

"An Opium Hallucination of the Far East"

Paris Swoons, 1900-1901

Sada Yakko in Paris! No one ever imagined that those Japanese prints, which were so popular that they even made their way into Clemenceaus portfolio and into Zola's study, that those precious stilted kakemonos [hanging scrolls], would one day come to life.

Paul Morand, J900 a.d. 1

She is an opium hallucination of the Far East, elegant and fragile like an Utamaro print.

Jean Lorrain 2

And here I am in Paris, the fairy city. I would never have be-lieved it so beautiful, so vast, so imposing.

"Sada Yacco Racont£e par Elle-meme"

in LeGaulo/s 3

At the turn of the century Parisians were enjoying the opulent Jiving and shameless extravagance of la Belle Epoque. Paris was the promised land, shimmering and enticing. New York might be brash and exciting, London the capital of the richest, most powerful nation on earth; but everyone was in love with Paris. Like New York today, no one could say they had made it until they had made it there. It was the throbbing heart of art, fashion, poetry, and theater, the creative center of the world. Frantic, febrile, decadent, degenerate, Paris exerted an irresistible magnetic allure.

Hopeful young artists, writers, and poets from around Europe washed up in the seedy garrets, cafes, brothels, and dance halls of Mont-martre, the labyrinth o{ alleys that sprawled around Sacre Coeur and the legendary Moulin Rouge. There they dissipated days and nights in a haze of sensual indulgence, inhaling ether, injecting morphine, and quaffing laudanum and absinthe, which they dubbed "the green

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