When, in 1903, artist Yoshio Markino (牧野 義雄, Makino Yoshio) was asked to act as an advisor to the London transfer of a ‘Japanese play’ (by two American writers [2]) called The Darling of the Gods, he was the sole person of Japanese heritage involved with the production. However, for the revival a decade later—for which Markino handled the production and costume design—alongside the many white actors in ‘yellowface’, the producers cast a ‘real Japanese’ actress [in a non-speaking part].

Left: Susie Wata, ‘real Japanese’ actress, as Niji-onna (‘Rainbow Woman’); right: Lucy Wilson, ‘stage Japanese’ actress, as Rosy Sky, Niji-onna’s mistress. 1914 production of Darling of the Gods, London. The Sketch (Supplement), 28 January 1914 [1]. Author’s own collection.

In publicity, the Japanese actress’s name was variably spelled ‘Susie Wata’ (in the cast list [3]) and ‘Sussie Wata’ (in the photostory in The Sketch magazine about her casting—quoted above [4]).

In this short article, I first collect all the—scant—mentions of Susie/Sussie Wata in the press to illustrate the challenges in attempting to tell the stories of expatriate performers in early 20th-century Britain against a backdrop of a profession and a period in which invented identities—in all their different forms—were commonplace, and then, provide a theory as to her identity.

A year after being cast in Darling of the Gods, ‘Susie Wata, from Tokio’ was to be found appearing as a chorus girl in one of the many Sydney Blow and Will Collins revues that toured the UK in the early years of the First World War, this one the ‘British Brilliant Burlesque’ Beauties, featuring the patriotically named ‘Allied Chorus of Beauties’ (as well as Japan—and ally of Britain in the First World War—other allied nations represented in the Allied Chorus included France, Russia, and Serbia; that said, it also included an American actress, even though the US was still neutral in 1915). Wata was still with the production more than a year later, in June 1916; however, she then disappears from view for six years—although evidence (see below) would suggest she spent at least part of this period in the USA before returning to England by 1921. By March of 1922, she was performing in a new revue Round in 50 at the London Hippodrome; her role was a small one, ‘The Girl’ in a Chinese ballet sequence, but served as a prelude to the next confirmed sighting, which was in France in 1923 [5].

Playbill for Hippodrome Portsmouth, week commencing Monday 15 February 1915. ‘Susie Wata from Tokio’ is listed as one of the ‘Allied Chorus of Beauties’. Portsmouth Evening News, 20 February 1915. Imaged created by the British Library Board. No known copyright holder.

I will come back to this reference to D. W. Griffith. Le Voile de Bonheur was based on a story with a Chinese setting by Georges Clemenceau, and Wata—who had the leading female role in the film—starred alongside Chinese actors Liao Szi-Yen and Shu Hou. Although thought lost, a partial copy of the film was found in 2024 at the EYE Film Museum in Amsterdam and shown at an event at the Musée Clemenceau in Paris [7]. As can be seen from the quote above from the Comoedia newspaper, in the publicty for Le Voile de Bonheur, Wata was described as Chinese.

So: was Wata a Chinese actress passing as Japanese in 1914–1916 for the sake of a part, or a Japanese actress passing as Chinese in 1923 for the sake of a part?

Sussie Wata in her only known starring role as Si-Tchun in La Voile de Bonheur (1923). Cine Miroir magazine 1923. Author’s own collection.

Asian actors were, and, of course, still are expected to play many different Asian ethnicities—and it is worth mentioning in this context that the director of Le Voile de Bonheur, Édouard-Émile Violet, cast one of the Chinese stars of the film, Shu Hou, as a Japanese character in his next project La bataille, opposite genuine Japanese actor and Hollywood movie star Sessue Hayakawa (早川 雪洲, Hayakawa Sesshū); while, in 1928, another of the Chinese stars of Le Voile de Bonheur, Liao Szi-Yen, would play a Japanese character in the movie Hari-Kiri [8]. However, it is clear from their [stage]names that neither of these actors was trying to pass for Japanese. Sussie Wata’s [stage]name would suggest the same—that is to say, she was not trying to pass for Chinese; she was simply identified as Chinese in the publicity for the movie to match her being cast in a Chinese role—and it is noticeable in this context that in at least one publicity photo for the film, the producers styled Wata to closely resemble Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong (see below) [9]. However, there is a complication, and that is this reference to Wata being ‘la célèbre star chinoise de D.W. Griffith’. This association is explored further in an article about the production of Le Voile de Bonheur in Cinémagazine in February 1923, which also provides us with new information. In the article, director Violet describes how he came to cast Wata.

Before going further into the question of the association between Wata and Griffith, it is worth exploring briefly this new information, that Wata ‘travailla également à Londres avec Robertson’. ‘Robertson’ in this context is almost certainly director John S. Robertson, most famous, perhaps, for directing the 1920 version of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring John Barrymore. Robertson worked mostly in the US, but in the second half of 1921, he directed two films in England, alas, both now lost: Spanish Jade and Love’s Boomerang [11]. A review of Love’s Boomerang in the March 1922 edition of Exhibitors Herald reveals that the action in the film was set in part in a travelling circus, and newspaper articles tell us that at least some of the circus scenes were shot on Hampstead Heath in London. So, this part of the story would seem to be verifiable. However, it should go without saying that Wata did not star in a D. W. Griffith film—her name would be well-known if that were the case; it is equally unlikely that he cast her in ‘un rôle important’ for the same reason.

Sussie Wata styled to look like Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong in the publicity for Le Voile de Bonheur (1923). Cinémagazine, 23 February 1923. http://www.cineressources.net/consultationPdf/web/o000/712.pdf, accessed 18 February 2025.

We can, however, tentatively point to a brief passing appearance in a Griffith film that would explain the origin of this claim. In 1919, Griffith directed Broken Blossoms, starring Lillian Gish as ‘Lucy’, a young English girl living in London’s Limehouse, and Richard Barthelmess in yellowface as ‘Cheng Huan’, a Chinese immigrant who becomes romantically involved with Gish’s character [12]. The film’s opening scene is set in a street in a ‘great Chinese treaty port’ that is populated with Asian and Western extras. At around 2 min 17 s, three young Chinese women dressed in qipao appear, pause for a moment to consult a book, and then walk off down the street. They are on screen for 12 seconds, no more; however, they are shown clearly enough to allow us to say that there is a facial resemblance between the middle of the three young women and photographs that we know to be of Susie/Sussie Wata [13].

Although it cannot be said more strongly than this—the two share a facial resemblance—if this is Wata, it would explain the reference to Griffith in the Comoedia and Cinémagazine articles. It would also suggest that the reason that Wata was identified as a Chinese actress in the Comoedia article is because she had played a Chinese character in a Griffith film, information that, given how small the role actually was, could only have come from Wata herself. And this brings us back to my original question: was Wata Chinese passing as Japanese or Japanese passing as Chinese?

Still image from Broken Blossoms (1919), 2 min 23 s into the movie; the actress in the middle has been tentatively identified as Sussie Wata.

I lean toward the latter given her retention of a Japanese-sounding stage name for her role in Le Voile de Bonheur. However, even this brings with it a complication, and to understand that complication, we need to go back to London in 1913/4 and Yoshio Markino.

In December 1913, while Markino was finalizing the production design for the revival of Darling of the Gods, his great friend, the poet, Yone Noguchi (野口 米次郎, Noguchi Yonejirō) returned to England to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford University [14]. Noguchi and Markino met when both men were studying in California in the last decade of the 19th Century. When Markino left the US for England in 1897, Noguchi stayed, and, in 1900, headed east. In Chicago, he was introduced to a young Anglo-Japanese woman ‘Kitishima Tasha Hasche’ who was beginning to make a name for herself as a writer of romances set in her native Japan under the pen name ‘Onoto Watanna’.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Yone Noguchi, London, December 14th, 1913." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 16, 2025. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-b79b-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. "Onoto Watanna. Author of "Daughters of Nijo" "The Heart of Hyacinth" "A Japanese Nightingale"" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 16, 2025. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b5cc2f20-e840-0132-719e-58d385a7b928.

Noguchi was charmed by ‘Tasha Hasche’, despite her inability to speak Japanese due to, she explained, her English upbringing, and the two became friends—a friendship that even survived Noguchi writing, within a year of their first meeting, a novel that satirised Watanna’s work. However, at some point in the next seven years, Noguchi discovered Watanna’s secret. The supposedly Anglo-Japanese ‘Tasha Hasche’ was in fact Winifred Eaton, a Canadian-born woman with an English father and a Chinese mother who had adopted a Japanese alter ego in part to escape the prejudice against Chinese people prevalent in the American society of the time and in part to exploit for financial gain the prevailing fashion for Japonisme. Noguchi turned on Watanna in print (‘The saddest part about Miss Watanna is that she is still posing as a Japanese, a half caste at the least’) and their friendship ended [15].

Fast-forward to December 1913, and Noguchi arrives in London to find his friend engaged in designing costumes for a ‘Japanese play’ that has just cast a young Asian actress in one of its non-speaking parts. It is hard to notice the coincidence of the Wata/Watanna names and not wonder, no matter how unlikely in reality, if the ‘Sussie Wata’ identity was Yone Noguchi poking fun at the gullibility of Western audiences and publishers. It is worth mentioning in this context that the co-writer of Darling of the Gods, John Luther Long, was also criticised by Noguchi in the essay in which he exposed Watanna/Eaton’s deception. And to add to the coincidences, back in 1903, while Noguchi and Watanna were still friends, Watanna had accused David Belasco, the other co-author of the play, of stealing from her work in the writing of it; something that Belasco had reacted angrily to, to the point of suing Watanna for libel and ordering her arrest [16]. Noguchi had a stake in the game.

Again, that the ‘Sussie Wata’ name was the invention of Yone Noguchi is highly unlikely and it remains much more likely that Susie Wata was simply some version of the actress’s real Japanese name (and this is the theory I explore below). However, the story of Noguchi and Watanna/Eaton serves to illustrate how fluid identities were in this period in a world of different grades of prejudice and different levels of opportunities for different ethnicities at any given moment—and this was not just restricted to Asian identities.

While performing in the chorus line of Beauties, Wata may have encountered another music hall artist who toured the UK extensively during the First World War, the man who billed himself as ‘Chief Carlisle Kawbawgam, the North American Indian tenor’. While there was a real Chief Kawbawgam, he died in 1903, and modern scholarship suggests that the man who performed as Carlisle Kawbawgam was in fact a man of African American descent named Craig Carlisle Williams [17]. It is hard to read the Kawabawgam/Williams story and not see echoes of the Watanna/Eaton story in the trading of a derided ethnic identity for one with more cachet at that moment (North American Indians were ‘in fashion’ in Europe in the late-19th and early-20th centuries due to the popularity of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Shows).

Was this the case with Sussie Wata, too? As I outline below, I think not, but the ambiguities remain.

Costume for Si-Tschun, the character Susie Wata played in Le Voile de Bonheur. Designed by Jean Bradin. Cinémagazine, 23 February 1923. http://www.cineressources.net/consultationPdf/web/o000/712.pdf, accessed 18 February 2025.

So who was Sussie/Susie Wata? There is no one of that name in UK public records, and while the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, this suggests that this was a stage name. In trying to work back from there to a possible real name, the obvious starting point is to ask what Japanese surnames do we know of that match/are close to ‘Wata’? Three spring immediately to mind: Wada, Ueda, and Watanabe. It was using this logic that led me to the 1921 England Census entry for Susan F Watanabe, aged 23, ‘theatrical artist’ [18]. For the rest of the story, I am indebted to the Digital Museum of Japan-UK Show Business entry for the Lukushima Troupe of Japanese acrobats (https://ninjin.co.uk/lukushima-troupe-1901-1918/).

Susan F Watanabe was born Sussy (or Suzanne) Fukushima in France in 1898. The 1901 census finds her with her mother Tora Fukushima and brother Tsuneo living in Soho in London. Tsuneo’s father was Tsunekichi Fukushima, who, based on the name, may have been the son of the founder of the Fukushima Troupe of Japanese acrobats, Tsuneko Fukushima; however, this may instead have been an adopted name reflecting this individual’s role within the acrobatic troupe (i.e., successor to the founder), a practice common in Japanese performing arts. Tsunekichi Fukushima may have been Sussy’s father too. However, it is also possible that this is the troupe name of Seishu Watanabe, who is described as the step-father, not father, of Susan Watanabe in the 1921 England Census. This confusion speaks again to the shifting identities of expatriates, particularly those involved in the world of entertainment. Regardless, by 1911, Tora is listed as Tora Watanabe married to Seisho Watanabe and touring with the troupe, while Sussy Fukushima, now known as Susan Lukushima, and a younger brother, Masao, are in Clacton, where Susan is at school [19]. Finally, it is telling that, in the 1921 England Census entry, Seishu and Tora Watanabe are described as ‘music hall artists’, whereas Susan Watanabe is described as a ‘theatrical artist’.

Thus, we have a Japanese theatrical artist, childhood name Sussy, surname Wata-nabe, raised in England in a family of Japanese acrobats, who would have been in her mid-teens in 1914. I believe that Susan Fukushima Watanabe is a strong candidate for the true identity of Sussie Wata.

So what happened to Susan Watanabe after 1923—the last year we have a sighting of Sussie Wata? According to the Digital Museum of Japan-Uk Show Business, in 1923, Susan Watanabe’s mother and brothers returned to Japan, and Susan followed them the following year, travelling under what was presumably her birth name, Suzanne Fukushima [20]. Aged 26, she left behind the life she had known, and the career she had chosen for herself, for a new life in the country of her parent’s birth. Did she continue acting in Japan? It would be pleasing to think so. Research is ongoing.

Alas, after her starring role in Le Voile de Bonheur, Sussie Wata disappears completely from view. Winning the part would surely have represented the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream; did she retire from stage and screen having achieved it? Or did she re-invent herself once more and continue acting under a new name? We do not know for certain. However, it is hoped that the theory about her identity outlined below will allow further research to point toward an answer.

Jamie Barras, February 2025.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to Pernille Rudlin of the Digital Museum of Japan—UK Show Business for the information on the Fukushima—Watanabe family and the relationship dynamics of Japanese acrobat troupes.

Resources

Programme, 1914 Production of Darling of the Gods, Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Darling of the Gods Supplement, Sketch Magazine, 28 January 1914.

Programme, 1922 Production of Round in 50, London Hippodrome.

Le Voile de Bonheur special issue, Film Complet Magazine, December 1923.

Le Voile de Bonheur cover story, Cine Miroir Magazine, 1923.

Banner: Lobby card for the American release of Love's Boomerang. Public Domain. Source: wikipedia.