Asami Maki, artistic director of the New National Theatre Ballet, Tokyo and director of Asami Maki Ballet Company, says that “though ballet was introduced to Japan at about the same time as it was taking hold in England and the United States, we took longer to embrace ballet because our culture is different from the West’s. In Japan we had to break the wall of cultural difference in order to introduce this art form.” Yet in 2002, Maki adds, “the ballet in Japan has finally ‘arrived’ and this makes me feel very emotional.”

It has been ninety years since ballet, the classical movement art that was developed by Western culture and nurtured by its esthetics, was introduced to Japan. Today, Japan’s top ballet ensembles are competitive with international companies, both in terms of classical technique standards and production quality. Yet Maki’s comments allude to the story behind this flourishing, a history of overcoming cultural barriers.

There are certain figures in any historical chronicle whose footprints establish the continuity of the art. The story of the lifework of Asami Maki and her mother, Akiko Tachibana, reveals a journey that parallels Japanese ballet’s development, from its uncertain beginnings to its present vibrant place in Japan’s cultural landscape.

Japanese ballet history begins with the visit to Tokyo in 1912 of Italian dance master and choreographer Giovanni Vittorio Rosi. Note 1 Rosi, who trained at the ballet school of La Scala, Milan, was working in London when the Teikoku Theater (Teigeki), which had just opened as an innovative contemporary theater in Tokyo, invited him to Japan. In addition to serving as Teigeki’s director and choreographer for opera and ballet, Rosi became Japan’s first ballet teacher. Though his presence established a cultural landmark, it took another ten years or so before the seeds of ballet took firm root in Japan because there was no precedent in Japanese culture for this art form and its physical values. While the institutional history of Japanese ballet is about as old as that of England or the United States, the realities behind it reveal great differences. For one, Japanese traditional culture and its social environment—the context in which the transplanted art had to grow—are profoundly different from the traditions and culture of the West. There are also different cultural values surrounding the human body. While Japanese dancers grew technically from one generation to the next, especially in the postwar period, they always had to contend with the esthetic conventions that stress a particular Eurocentric body type as the ballet ideal.

In spite of his efforts, ballet did not flourish under Rosi at Teigeki because many of Rosi’s pupils found his strict training difficult. Those dancers and choreographers who trained under Rosi included Baku Ishii, Michio Itoh, Toshi Komori, Masao Takada, and Seiko Takada. Though they first studied ballet technique, by the 1920s many of these students chose to pursue modern dance with artists such as Baku Ishii, who had become a pioneer of this Western contemporary dance form in Japan.

The insurgence of contemporary modern dance not withstanding, in 1921 the famous ballerina Anna Pavlova made her first tour to Japan and her performances did much to develop Japanese audiences’ interest in ballet. Pavlova’s art transcended the dance world; her appearance was viewed as a cultural event and Japanese audiences were impressed by her famous solo, The Dying Swan, which also influenced Japanese traditional dance and Kabuki theater artists. Pavlova showed Japanese audiences that ballet was a legitimate Western art form at a time when it was thought of only as acrobatic display (often referred to disparagingly as “toe dance”). Unfortunately, Anna Pavlova did not remain in Japan long or teach ballet, which could have helped classical Western dance find its footing much more quickly.

During this period, those who contributed to the development of ballet in Japan—those who were responsible for improving the country’s access to good dance training—were mainly Russian dancers who defected to Japan because of the Russian Revolution. Among them was a ballerina named Elena Pavlova (1897-1941), the “mother of Japanese ballet,” who cultivated dancers and raised standards. Pavlova was born to an aristocratic family in Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi), in the Caucasus. She began ballet training in Kiev under Klemlakova, an instructor from the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet Academy, studied local folk dances in Tiflis, and performed at a young age on the stage of the Kiev Opera House.

While Pavlova was on a performance tour in Finland, shortly after she started her dance career, the Russian Revolution broke out. Her aristocratic family was forced to immigrate to Japan in 1919, via Shanghai. During her exile in Japan, Elena performed at theaters in Yokohama and other cities. (Interestingly, Elena Pavlova performed The Dying Swan in Japan around the same time that Anna Pavlova did, but the response to her dancing was overshadowed by the attention lavished on the more famous dancer.) In 1925 she founded the Elena Pavlova Company, and in 1927 opened her ballet school at Shichirigahama in Kamakura city. Her pupils included pioneer figures of Japanese ballet such as Hiroshi Shimada (who went on to become president of the Japan Ballet Association), Chieko Hattori, Yusaku Azuma, and Akiko Tachibana.

Besides Elena Pavlova, other exiled Russian dancers who contributed to Japanese ballet education were Olga Sapphire Note 2, who taught at the Nihon Theater (Nichigeki), and Lujinski, who had been invited to teach at the Takarazuka Theatre, in Tokyo. According to Maki, the influence of Sapphire and Lujinski’s teaching was limited to their respective theaters. Sapphire, however, who learned ballet under the famous Semyonov at the Leningrad National Ballet Academy and had danced leading roles there, influenced the development of Japanese ballet in later years. Momoko Tani and Mikiko Matsuyama, both directors of their own ballet companies, as well as Akemi Matsuo, were trained under Sapphire.

Akiko Tachibana, whose real name was Saku Fukuda, came to Tokyo from Utsunomiya city in the Tochigi Prefecture. “My mother was an elementary school teacher,” her daughter Asami Maki recalls, “and her career change from schoolteacher to ballet dancer was big news at that time. She was a girl who dared to walk in the traditional Hakama [the long pleated skirt worn over a kimono] school uniform with a parasol, which was banned by the school. She liked to stand out. This was a career turn against her parents, and she performed on stage after only three months or so under Miss Pavlova. She was a little prepared for the ballet by her experience teaching gymnastic dance and music.”

In those days, ballet was not well known in Japan and generally misunderstood. It was imagined to be akin to the circus—certainly not something for girls of good families to learn. Tachibana’s decision to pursue serious ballet training could not help but raise eyebrows.

“There were two lineages of ballet education,” recounts Maki, “the lineage of Elena Pavlova and the lineage of G. V. Rosi. Most of the ballet dancers came from Pavlova’s school. Olga Sapphire taught at the Nihon Theater, but it was Miss Elena’s teaching that had the most influence. Another thing to mention about this era in Japan was that modern dance was considered to be superior to ballet. My mother in fact visited the studio of modern dance pioneer Baku Ishii and wanted to start classes, but he was not there—so it was just by chance that she went to Pavlova to learn ballet.”

It was natural that Tachibana, who already had some training in the rhythmic exercises of Jacques Dalcroze, would be drawn to the artistry of Baku Ishii. Note 3 Ishii, a founding figure of the Western contemporary dance tradition in Japan, had seen performances by Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Europe. That, perhaps, Tachibana pursued ballet training because Ishii was not at his studio reflects the fluid dance situation that existed in Japan: modern dance and ballet, both of which were introduced around the same time, were viewed as complementary forms of Western art dance—especially as set apart from Japanese traditional dance (Nihon Buho).

As it turned out, however, Tachibana’s experience with Dalcroze Eurthymics facilitated her immersion in ballet. She became the first Japanese ballet dancer to dance on pointe, inspiring Yaoko Kaitani and other young girls.

After leaving Pavlova’s studio after a few years of study, Tachibana in 1933 established the Tachibana Ballet Institute, and later opened the Tachibana Ballet School. She married Mikio Maki Anderson, a fellow dancer with whom she performed several duets in the 1930s. In 1934, their daughter, Asami Maki, was born. “My mother kept it a secret that she had a child in order to continue her stage career,” Maki reports. In the early, formative years of Western classical dance in Japan, dancers who aspired to professional careers were forced to make many sacrifices. This early generation was dedicated to the art of ballet; they frequently danced without salaries but their passion united them like a family.

Then World War II intervened. Everything was destroyed by the war’s end in 1945. Elena Pavlova, who became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1931 and renamed herself Eriko Kirishima, died in China on her way to giving a “comfort performance tour” on the front lines in 1941. Note 4 In spite of the impoverished conditions after the war, curiosity about Western art flooded postwar Japan. One of the landmark cultural events that took place in Tokyo shortly after the Axis surrender was the first full-length Japanese staging of Swan Lake, in 1946. Masahide Komaki, who danced as a soloist with the Shanghai Ballets Russes, returned to Japan and was joined by dancers from the Pavlova Ballet, including Hiroshi Shimada, Chieko Hattori, Yusaku Azuma, and Yaoko Kaitani. Note 5 Together, these dancers formed the Tokyo Ballet (different from the present-day Tokyo Ballet). Their Swan Lake performances at Teigeki took place after four months of preparation. The production was directed and choreographed by Masahide Komaki, and based on his experience with the Shanghai Ballets Russes. Swan Lake enjoyed a month-long run of performances—an outstanding achievement at that time.

Tachibana did not take part in the postwar Swan Lake performances, focusing instead on her independent activities. She reopened the Tachibana Ballet School in 1952, and then established the Baby Ballet Company, a troupe that offered performance opportunities for young talents like Noriko Ohara, who went on to pursue a professional career at the Scottish Ballet, and Katsuko Okamoto, the current director of the Inoue Ballet Company in Tokyo. “Tokyo had become just a stretch of burned field after the war,” Maki recalls. “It was surprising to find such vigorous ballet activities starting up so quickly. It was a time of great energy.”

Don Quixote premiered on the September 1952 program of the Baby Ballet Company, with the seventeen-year-old Maki as Kitri. She had been rigorously trained under her mother’s tutorship, and made her stage debut at age three. “I learned my discipline from Miss Pavlova’s Imperial Russian Ballet [as it was transmitted] through my mother” says Maki. With her prodigious talent, Asami Maki was the first Japanese ballerina to perform the requisite thirty-two fouetté turns as Odile in act three of Swan Lake.

In 1953, ballerina Alexandra Danilova arrived in Japan to perform with the touring Slavenska Ballet, and this visit brought Maki into contact with an artist who would have a far-reaching impact on her future. Fifty years later, Maki remembers their first meeting in vivid detail:
“At the welcome party for the company, everybody went to sit with and meet Miss Slavenska, because she led the company. Danilova’s table was empty. I was fascinated by the aura coming from her, so I went and sat beside her. Some days later she came to our studio for individual lessons, and that was when I was invited to go to the United States to study ballet. This was a period in which it was necessary to have a guarantor in order to secure a study opportunity in the United States. Danilova kindly became my guarantor and introduced me to the ballet masters she personally trusted.”

Maki trained in the United States in 1954 and 1955, important years for the development of American ballet. The New York City Ballet (NYCB) had been formed out of Ballet Society by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein a short time before, in 1949; dancers and ballet masters from the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo were active on the scene; and Ballet Theater had just passed its ten-year anniversary.

Through arrangements made by Danilova, Maki studied under celebrated teachers like Igor Schwezoff and Felia Doubrovska, who were teaching at NYCB and Ballet Theater. Maki remembers confronting the challenges of entering a more developed ballet world: “I had no problem with the big steps, but the smaller steps [such as those in petit allegro combinations] were not taught in Japan. I remember Danilova telling me that my dancing was not precise enough—she said it was like ‘sweeping the square room round.’ I could do big jumps and turns, but I had never learned the more refined aspects of technique. I could do the bravura steps, the big finishes, but I did not know how to perform the connecting steps well.”

The year spent under Danilova gave Maki the precious opportunity to learn what a ballerina should be, and the experience was enriched by the lively energy of the New York ballet scene. Her exposure to the impulse to create an American style of ballet cultivated her understanding of how even a classical Western art such as ballet could be adapted to new cultural contexts. This experience developed her sensibilities as a future leader of Japanese ballet. “I learned about humanity more than anything else,” Maki reflects. “When I had time in the afternoon before my next lesson, I usually spent it at Danilova’s home. She was so kind to take care of me—she prepared tea for me. I remember her Myrtha in Giselle, which I saw in London. It was so sharp and brilliantly cut, yet she performed the role in a very natural way. She could become a perfect gypsy when a role required it. I learned from Danilova the importance of performing a role to its fullest extent—and the importance of pursuing perfection.”

Maki’s mother also wanted to embody the spirit of ballet as well as learn its technique. Hoping to acquire an understanding of ballet beyond the cultural differences that defined it in Japan, Tachibana began to seriously examine the ways that Japanese dancers could infuse their own spirituality into ballet without simply imitating forms. “On her trips around the world to see ballet,” Maki recalls, “my mother clearly understood the range of differences in artistic quality.” Her mother recognized that “the top ballerinas of that era, such as Galina Ulanova and Margot Fonteyn, had a strong spiritual core in their expression. My mother was impressed by this spiritual aspect more than by the performance of fouettés. I think Japanese dancers did their best to learn technique but danced ballet in a way that ignored the fuller meaning of the dance. My mother realized the importance for a performer to find the nobility of the person on stage.”

In developing her ballet pedagogy, Tachibana began to introduce traditional Japanese cultural practices, and included the Ogasawara method of manners, flower arranging, and the tea ceremony, as well as Japanese dance and Bugaku lessons, in her studio’s ballet training syllabus. Young pupils were required to have lessons in Japanese manners and cultural arts which appeared to have little to do with ballet. On her return from the United States, Maki was urged by her mother to incorporate training in these arts as she taught the new techniques she had acquired abroad. “For example,” Maki explains, “the carriage of the body in the tea ceremony wastes no movement. Ballet is like the tea ceremony, in that it wastes no step to prepare for the next. So, it is true that a dancer with [useless steps] cannot dance beautifully. Japanese dancers should appreciate the clarity of movement that wastes nothing. At the tea ceremony, every movement starts from the center of the body, which is similar to ballet. Ogasawara manners have a protocol that requires a polite bow to show respect for a companion, and this tells us to remain aware of our surroundings. We practiced Zen, too, to heighten concentration.”

The most striking addition to the training regimen was an austere form of meditation, to help achieve a higher level of physical and mental concentration. Maki was taken to meditation practices in the waterfall, a traditional mental training regimen for Zen priests, the day after she returned to Japan from New York. These meditation sessions were held every month—even in March, which though called spring, is still cold. In addition to Maki, dancers who practiced this spiritual regimen included Noriko Ohara and Yoko Morishita, who first trained in her home town of Hiroshima and then continued her training at the Tachibana Ballet School. In the decade after the war, the democratic atmosphere that prevailed spurred the public’s interest in a diverse range of arts new to Japan, including ballet. Individual ballet companies, having established their own institutes or studios, began to compete with each other—Hiroshi Shimada and Chieko Hattori, Masahide Komaki, Momoko Tani, Aiko Ohtaki, and Reiko Kondo, to name a few. Tachibana was reevaluating her relationship with Japanese culture at a time when the country was being inundated by Western cultural influences. Out of this confluence of war, destruction, and rebirth, she began to create a Japanese ballet. Her process of investigation took place at a time when wartime defeat and the barrage of Western influences challenged many traditional Japanese cultural values.

“My mother always said that though defeated in war, we should not be defeated in art,” comments Maki, and in the postwar years Akiko Tachibana poured her energy into writing librettos for the productions she choreographed. The first was Asuka Story (1957), which used Gagaku (traditional Japanese music); later works include Kakubeijishi (1963), and Sengoku Jidai (War Period, 1966), for which she was awarded the Ministry of Education Award in 1966. This dance was later revised by her daughter, with different music, as Hokuto, which became part of the permanent repertory of the Asami Maki Ballet Company.

Tachibana also helped her daughter establish the Asami Maki Ballet Company in 1956, after Maki’s return from the United States. In 1957 the company gave a joint performance, with Alexandra Danilova and Frederic Franklin, of Coppelia, Raymonda Act III, and the second act of Swan Lake (staged by Danilova). The role of Swanilda in Coppelia was well suited to Maki’s temperament, and her performances, in which she was partnered by Frederic Franklin, were a popular success.

Like her mother, Maki wanted to explore ballet from a fresh, Japanese point of view, and this pushed her to create new dances, such as The Spider’s Thread and Touriptique, with music for both by Yasushi Akutagawa, and Silk Road, with music by Ikuma Dan. She also choreographed Bugaku and Mandara Symphony, both to music by Toshiro Mayuzumi, ambitious works that displayed a strong consciousness of Japanese cultural identity in their themes and in their use of original music. Mandara Symphony received high critical acclaim for its successful visualization in dance of the philosophical and religious universe heard in Mayuzumi’s music. This postwar focus on Japanese themes came to be echoed in works by choreographers working outside of Japan—for example by George Balanchine (Bugaku), and Maurice Bejart (Kabuki, Bugaku)—all of which used scores by Mayuzumi.

Change came in 1971. Akiko Tachibana died; and, during a rehearsal of Asuka Story, Maki sustained a serious injury to her Achilles’ tendon, ending her dancing career. Since those events, Maki has devoted herself to the role of artistic director of her dance company and to raising a new generation of young dancers. In the last thirty years, the Asami Maki Ballet Company has evolved into one of Japan’s most important dance organizations, in terms of both its repertoire and the quality of its dancers. Maki’s work has been accomplished in collaboration with her husband, the company’s artistic director Kyozo Mitani, a former dancer and Varna Ballet Competition winner.

Akiko Tachibana was guided in her work by her commitment to “raise new children,” and by the philosophy that “all children are equal.” These are values that Maki has inherited. The pioneer vision that led her mother to follow a course of artistic and educational inquiry that was unusual for a woman in early twentieth-century Japan continues to enrich the present company, even after its forty-fifth anniversary, and the sixty-eighth anniversary of Tachibana’s company.

Maki’s respect for the performing arts of the West has resulted in collaborations with internationally acclaimed directors, choreographers, and dancers. In addition to Danilova and Schwezoff, these artists have included Jack Carter, Terry Westmoreland, Patricia Neary, Azari Plissestski, and Valentina Savina. The company repertoire reflects the results of these efforts over the years; it includes full-length classics such as Swan Lake (Westmoreland version), Don Quixote (Plissestski/Savina version), Sir Frederic Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée, in addition to original works. The company is famous for producing excellent dancers, including (in addition to Maki and Kyozo Mitani) Yuriko Kawaguchi; Noriko Ohara, a former principal ballerina with the Scottish Ballet and currently a ballet mistress for the Asami Maki Ballet Company; Miyoko Kato, a former dancer with the Joffrey Ballet; Yoko Morishita, director of the Matsuyama Ballet; Tamiyo Kusakari, a principal dancer with the Asami Maki Ballet Company; Naoya Kojima and Hana Sakai, two leading dancers with the New National Theatre Ballet; Koichi Kubo, a member of the Colorado Ballet; and the young ballerina Mizuka Ueno, a protégé of Roland Petit who has recently danced at La Scala, Milan as the first Japanese guest prima ballerina to appear with Petit’s company.

“What is important for dancers,” Maki ruminates, “is to perform good dances. Dancers grow through experiencing the reality of the stage; and, of course, they must dance well known choreography, because the choreographer’s thought will penetrate into their bodies through the choreographer’s work.” The company’s artistic integrity, indeed, attracts choreographers of the first rank: in 2001 Maki’s company presented the world premiere of Roland Petit’s Duke Ellington Ballet. Today, the Japanese ballet world enjoys considerable diversity, and a healthy sense of artistic competitiveness. For example, the Tokyo Ballet has been successful in mounting contemporary works by choreographers such as Maurice Bejart and Jirí Kylián. Yet, among all the companies on the Japanese scene, the Asami Maki Ballet Company has the most distinguished reputation for high standards in a repertoire based on classical as well as contemporary choreography.

In 1999, Maki was appointed Artistic Director for Ballet and Dance at the New National Theatre, Tokyo (NNTT). She follows in the footsteps of Hiroshi Shimada, the first Artistic Director for Dance at the NNTT. Maki has been successful in this important new theater complex, presenting works by George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Anthony Tudor, Kenneth MacMillan, and Nacho Duato. Maki’s work at the NNTT is expanding the perspective of the Japanese ballet.

In thinking about the future, Maki recently remarked that “now, more than ever, I would like to teach children. Children will grow.” In her company, the Tachibana style founded by her mother, extended through Maki’s own research, melds traditional Japanese mental self-discipline with the rigorous physical demands of Russian ballet pedagogy. The result is excellent training for dancers. Maki has an international reputation as a ballet educator, and appears on juries of important competitions in Japan, Lausanne, and New York. Recently, she was invited to instruct the senior class at the Royal Ballet School in London. Maki’s heritage has traveled a unique journey that is very personal and parallels the unfolding of Japan’s twentieth-century cultural engagement with the world. Throughout, her efforts have been animated by her passion for ballet. Asami Maki imbues the future of Japanese ballet with her belief in the possibilities of the art form itself.

This article is sponsored by Dance Advance as part of its JP/PA initiative--connecting artists with each other through creative dialogue. The translation of this article has been edited by Bill Bissell.