Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe. Frederik L. Schodt
a young man described as the older son and pupil of the troupe’s lead performer, Hamaikari (but also believed to be the adopted son of Hirohachi), lost his balance in a critical maneuver on a high ladder. It broke under his weight, causing him to plummet to the stage, striking his face and cutting open his lip. The shocked audience feared for his life. But after the curtain briefly came down the show went on and, as a reporter recalled later with relief, “the surgeons are not apprehensive of fatal result.”30 As sometimes happens with such accidents, the drama and excitement created seemed to endear the troupe to the citizens of San Francisco even more.
A Deal with Maguire
Thomas Maguire was quick to notice the extraordinary popularity of the new troupe and the potential to make even more money. He was turning hundreds away each night at the Academy and people were begging him to extend their booking. The Imperials were originally scheduled to leave San Francisco on January 10 for the east coast of America on a steamer named the Golden City (and they would appear on the passenger lists published in the papers as having actually left then), but Maguire was able to persuade them to stay longer. First it was announced that they would continue to perform until the steamer of January 19, at “the enormous nightly expense of $1,000.”31 Then the stay was extended until the steamer of the thirtieth.
As he had with the Smith and Burgess Tetsuwari group, Maguire decided to invest in Risley’s Imperials, too, and in this case to follow them to the East Coast and on to Paris. Maguire was called the “Napoleon of the theatre” for good reason. He was aggressive, ambitious, and already had a near monopoly on professional entertainment in northern California and even Nevada, and he regularly sent performers on touring circuits he created through the gold country, even to Australia and Asia. He also had dreams of transcontinental theatre management, with operations in New York, too.
On one level, Maguire and Risley were quite similar. Maguire was around forty-two years old, and younger than the nearly fifty-three year old Risley. Both men were flamboyant, charismatic, larger than life personalities, and good looking. Maguire, said to be one of the handsomest men in San Francisco, dressed like the typical California gambler that he was, with an enormous diamond in his scarf, jeweled rings on his fingers, and a heavy gold watch chain hanging from his waistcoat. But he was also moody, opportunistic, arrogant, and nearly illiterate. Like many impresarios in the mid-nineteenth century, he was also constantly involved in lawsuits and feuds, including one with the Daily Dramatic Chronicle, one of the few San Francisco newspapers that regularly dared to criticize him. Even that paper, however, conceded that Maguire might be able to make the $200,000 fortune that he bragged he would make by investing $100,000 in both acrobat companies. Under this scheme, he would leave Risley in charge of the Imperials, and the combined companies could be his “left and right wings.” With the additional performers, there would be backups in case more injuries occurred and sudden substitutes were needed. The Imperials, thenceforth, could be referred to as the “Risley-Maguire Imperial Japanese Troupe.”32
The ever-dapper Thomas Maguire. california historical society quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1 (march 1942).
Risley was well aware of potential problems in a union with Maguire. He had already known Maguire for over a decade, and he knew the turbulent mid-nineteenth-century entertainment world—with its shifting fortunes, jealousies, alliances, struggles, and potential riches—better than anyone. But the added capital investment could not hurt, for the Imperials were paid the then-huge sum of twenty dollars per person per day (at a time when skilled carpenters earned less than five dollars for ten hours of work), and had to be housed and fed. Maguire’s connections would help too, for—unlike Risley—he was still well connected to the East Coast and even Europe. Risley also had several reasons to want to postpone his departure for the East Coast. Denkichi, the star acrobat injured in the first San Francisco show, needed time to heal (and in fact would not appear on stage again until January 28, just before the Imperials finally departed). As it happened, Risley himself was involved in one of his many lawsuits, this time with a woman named Louisa Gordon and her daughter, who claimed that Risley owed them $5,200 plus interest for services performed a decade earlier when they had been in his employ (it would eventually be settled in her favor). Furthermore, Risley, along with Maguire and three members of the Imperials, had been arrested and was on trial for having violated the “Anti-Sunday Amusement Law,” which prohibited most amusements on Sunday (they would be given the minimum fine). And finally, Risley, the well-known lover of animals, had lost his favorite dog, which had run away, and he wanted him back. For the remainder of January, advertisements ran in the San Francisco papers, offering a thirty dollar reward for the return of a black spaniel, with a gray nose, that answered to the name of Prince and had been stolen or strayed from the Archibald. Prince was never found.33
In the midst of all this, the performances went on, almost daily. The weather was terrible, with heavy rain and buffeting winds. Nonetheless, both Hirohachi’s diary and the local newspapers confirm that at nearly every performance audiences clamored for more, and people had to be turned away at the doors of the Academy of Music. Given that the Imperials followed in the wake of the Tetsuwari Company’s long December run in San Francisco, and that they themselves appeared for a total of three weeks, this was quite an accomplishment. It required not only an extraordinarily high level of skill from the Imperial troupe members, but an ability to vary their performances every night to sustain interest, for San Franciscans were hardly an uncritical audience. Six months later, after the arrival of yet another Japanese acrobatic troupe headed for Paris, one newspaper would grumble about having been completely “Japanned” and state: “Being the probably extreme rear of the Jap army that the Tycoon has kindly permitted us the honor of passing in review, we thank the Tycoon, and don’t care a raccoon whether we look upon their like again or not.”34
But this was not the case with the Imperials. The troupe stood out not only for the skill of its performers, but for the quality of the overall production, and for the way it was packaged and promoted for American audiences, who loved it. Ultimately, the troupe’s success was a testimony to the skills of Professor Risley. As a January 20 article in the Daily Morning Call put it,
. . . Risley’s previous triumphs, brilliant as they were, have culminated in his recent splendid Japanese coup. If he don’t make a fortune out of those sad-looking, but iron-muscled Asiatics, it will be because the spirit of curiosity has died out, and the appreciation of the wonderful has been lost.35
At eleven o’clock on the morning of January 30, after a suffocatingly crowded final performance the night before, the Imperials finally left San Francisco, headed for the East Coast on a steamer named the Constitution. They were accompanied by Risley and Edward Banks, Thomas Maguire and wife, and Smith and his company of performers. A brass band played at their farewell, and the papers predicted their resounding success in New York and eventually Paris. The passenger list included the names of prominent citizens who traveled in better-class cabins, and “175 whites and 30 Japanese in the steerage.”36
Meanwhile, San Franciscans, knowing Maguire’s personality and ambition, soon began speculating on his ultimate intentions vis-à-vis Risley and the Imperials. Maguire had decided to later send a Japanese man from the Tetsuwari faction, nicknamed Yo Shid, back to Japan to look for even more Japanese jugglers and acrobats and especially child stars like “Little All Right.” According to the Call, it was to make the Tetsuwari Company better than Risley’s Imperials, at which point Maguire would “probably cut his connection with that gentleman.” And Maguire’s nemesis, the Daily Dramatic Chronicle, ran an even more provocative but suggestive article. It described a scene witnessed on the quarter deck of the Constitution just before the ship’s departure. A constable from San Francisco Judge Barstow’s court (possibly where Louisa Gordon had sued Risley) approached Risley with some business, whereupon Risley turned to Maguire, said something unintelligible, and Maguire reached into his pockets and withdrew some money, which Risley then handed to the constable. “This was indeed a noble act,” the paper editorialized, sarcastically, “for if the Professor had been left in the clutches of the law, we suspect that the great Napoleon would scarcely have regretted to find the entire management thrown upon his shoulders.”37