The Mikado: Satire or Stereotype?

When The Mikado debuted in London in 1885, the sendup of British politics was an instant classic, W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s longest-running hit. The Titipu setting was key—outfitting white singers out in Meiji-era geisha-gear brought British cultural foibles into sharper focus than if the actors wore cravats and crinolines.

It’s only been in the last few decades that performances across the U.S. have sparked protests among Asian-Americans (Japan banned the operetta until a decade or so ago). While these protests, have typically been focused on the ethnic parodies, as Eric Saylor, music history professor at Drake University, points out, The Mikado’s over-the-top japonaiserie is used to spoof only Brits, and not Japanese people.

But it’s the exoticism in these performances that is still a problem, says W. Anthony Sheppard, a music professor at Williams College. Even in productions set in, say, an English hotel in the 1930s (and starring British comedian Eric Idle), the verbal and musical Japanese flourishes remain, he says. And this points to the real source of offense: the condescension inherent when someone uses the aesthetics of another culture as ornament.

“The Mikado lampooned the Brits as much as the Japanese, but that is exactly how exoticism often works in operas, movies, and literature—using an exotic setting to play out domestic desires, fears, or political problems,” Sheppard told Quartz. Opera and musical theater “have long served to teach audiences about exotic peoples and places, often providing a very persuasive and powerful form of miseducation.”

Opera’s Long-Standing Love Affair With Ethnic Exoticism

Like The Mikado, many musical theater pieces written in the heyday of opera that ran from the late 1700s to the early 1900s reflect the ethnic clichés of the age. In fact, many of the best-loved operas used mysterious foreign characters or settings to tease new meaning from well-worn themes. Take for example Aida, Verdi’s Ethiopian princess heroine, or Bizet’s Sri Lankan pearl fishers, seen here below:

Puccini, by comparison, was more ambitious, setting entire operas in foreign cultures. The result was seldom a masterpiece of ethnic sensitivity. Turandot, for instance, offers up a violent vision of imperial China ruled by the eponymous man-hating dragon lady of a princess (whose advisers are named Ping, Pang, and Pong).

While Puccini more kindly exoticizes Japanese culture in Madame Butterfly, his child-bride protagonist is still a cartoon of submissive Asian femininity.