Kiku San
Sun Jun 19, 2005 5:58
pm
Here is what I found out about Kelly Sue's adopting a Japanese persona:
Do you find it odd that Kelly Sue adopted a Japanese name (Kiku San)
while living in New York?
Understand that at this time there was growing interest in the Orient
among certain circles in the western cultural centers.
Inspired by the work of Ezra Pound and WB Yeats in popularizing Far
Eastern literature among modernist writers, and before them by the
pioneering interests of Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (who changed his
name to Tei-Shin after converting to Buddhism in the 1880's), elements
of Japanese art and culture were starting to seep into the American
consciousness. Witness young Peggy Guggenheim dressed up as a geisha
(photograph circa 1908, private collection). While Kelly Sue can't have
understood the Japanese way of life in much depth, her
hyper-imaginative nature was intrigued by exotic tales from this
foreign land.
We can presume that she took the name Kiku San from a story published
in Red Book Magazine (June 1910), called "The
Marriage of Okiku-San,"
by Onoto Watanna, illustrated by Taka Spiro. She was inspired by the
feisty heroine, who was frustrated by her traditional culture, just as
Kelly Sue was frustrated by her own way of life back in Indiana. From
the story:
"Miss Kiku Taguchi was not an
ordinary young lady. Her father, a
pompous, important individual, entertained a distinct contempt for her
insignificant sex. His wife was a mere nonentity, a puppet, who vaguely
repeated, parrot-like, the paradoxes voiced by her lord. Hence, when
this same lord emphatically expressed his opinion concerning the proper
education for a female -- this within twelve hours after the birth of
Okiku-san, Lady Taguchi assented, and promised things. The result was a
girl of naturally independent and original disposition, trammeled by
the contracted rules common for women in Japan half a century before.
Kiku knew by heart the great rules
laid down by Confucius for her
miserable sex. Aimlessly and dully, she would repeat them from day to
day, while her vapid-faced mother, herself a product of the new Japan,
mechanically kept time on the small box desk by which she was wont to
squat."
Another note of interest on this Japanese connection: in an odd link
demonstrating how artifice can influence life, the underground gossip
about Kiku San was well known by Yoko Ono, growing up in Scarsdale
after WWII. Ono was an early member of Fluxus, an association of
avant-garde artists that developed in the early 1960s. Perhaps her
unique viewpoint was partially inspired by this mid-Western woman who
reinvented herself
as a Japanese Snow White. Remarkable to observe this incident of
cross-fertilization from east to west and back again.
[CE]
