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

Author:Downer, Lesley [Downer, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Kawakami, Sadayakko, 1871-1946, Geishas -- Japan -- Biography, Geishas, Japan
ISBN: 9780755310326
Publisher: London : Review
Published: 2004-06-14T19:00:00+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 Clemenceau's portfolio and into Zola's study, that those precious stilted kakemonos [hanging scrolls], would one day come to life.

Paul Morand, i900 A.D. ]

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

Jean Lorrain 2

'And here 1 am in Paris, the fairy city. 1 would never have believed it so beautiful, so vast, so imposing.'

'Sada Yacco Racontee par Elle-meme' in Le Gaulois 3

t the turn of the century Parisians were enjoying the opulent living and shameless extravagance of la belle-epocjue. Paris was JL 1 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 theatre, the creative centre 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 Montmartre, the

labyrinth of alleys which 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 fairy'. Some disappeared into oblivion. Others turned out hallucinatory works of art.

Inspired by the flat planes and surrealistic style of Japanese woodblock prints, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec created posters of the dancers of the Moulin Rouge and a fashionable can-can venue called Le Divan Japonais. Maurice de Vlaminck was painting the cabaret dancers of Le Rat Mort, Henri Matisse was at work in his garret, Claude Debussy was brooding over his opera Pelleas et Melisande , Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel were at their pianos, Alfred Jarry was creating absurd dramas and the twenty-year-old Guillaume Apollinaire was writing poetry.

The models, dancers and prostitutes of Montmartre (often one and the same) were an essential thread in the rich fabric of life. They were the lovers of artists and poets and the celebrated subjects of painting and verse. Les grandes honzontales, the great courtesans of the Second Empire, had grown old,- but the city still had its salons presided over by grandes dames of uncertain morals whose jewels sparkled as brilliantly as their conversation. In this decadent world, there was no shame in having started one's upward career as a lady of the night. Coming from the geisha quarters of Tokyo, Yakko must have felt quite at home.

That year the City of Light was celebrating the turn of the century by hosting the largest and most spectacular Universal Exposition ever. Like moths to a flame or iron filings to a magnet, people from all over the world converged on Paris.

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