Orientalism in Gilbert & Sullivan’s the Mikado

Blog post only

I obviously can’t let discussion on orientalism in classical operas go by and not mention Gilbert & Sullivan’s the Mikado (1885). There’s so many things going on here that I don’t know where to start. Performances usually involve white characters playing Japanese (just look at the cover of the album linked below), which is bad enough by itself, without considering anything else. The Japanese are portrayed as ruthless, conniving, living life by prejudice and arcane traditions and with little regard of human life.

To be fair, in most Gilbert & Sullivan operas, people are portrayed as ruthless, hypocrites and clueless. So, by comparison, the Japanese don’t come across worse than anyone else.

By today’s standard, this is still a terribly inconsiderate opera. Gilbert & Sullivan knew next to nothing about Japan when they wrote the opera and based their depiction purely on stereotypes that were starting to surface in the Western world (which was suddenly becoming fascinated with Japan in a movement known as japonism). Gilbert & Sullivan never intended to depict Japan much, other than giving their opera a slight exotic tinge. Most of the jokes are not about Japanese, but are about English prejudice. It is meant to be a farce that ridicules English prejudice in the absurd setting of a foreign country. And some of the jokes still land well, like the Lord High Executioner preparing a list of everyone he hates (for quite superficial reasons) just in case he has to pick someone to execute.

So what to do with a piece of art that has such troubled orientalist stereotypes in its centre? Perhaps a solution is to go even deeper than Gilbert & Sullivan went. If they picked Japan because it was far away from home and foreign to their audiences, would we not go a step further and place the opera in a totally imagined space? How about reworking the opera as if it’s set on an alien planet, an unspecified faraway place or an alternative universe? Remove all references to the opera being set in Japan and this stripped down version, it becomes clear that it is a satire of England (by way of a faraway place). Perhaps the opera could still survive in that way?