During the week when the first of these films, The Love of Chrysanthemum, was released, the Moving Picture World (28.05.1910) led with an editorial entitled “The Japanese Invasion” – also the title of a 1909 Kalem film that anticipated a future war between Japan and the U.S. While thus evoking the fear of the emergence of a rival imperial power in the Pacific, this editorial emphasized that most popular representations of Japan in the U.S. (including the three Vitagraph productions being screened at this year’s Giornate) conveyed a much more charming picture of the country. These representations drew on a tradition going back especially to John Luther Long’s story “Madame Butterfly” (1898) and its adaptations by Belasco as a play (1900) and by Puccini as an opera (1904). The early 20th century saw a flood of “Japanese” plays – by 1910, Brooklyn high schools were mounting them. The rising film industry did its part. Kalem made The Geisha Who Saved Japan as well as The Japanese Invasion in 1909; Edison made A Japanese Peach Boy in 1910.
The three Vitagraph films differ in one important respect from all these plays and films. Whereas the Japanese characters in the Kalem and Edison films are, as far as I know, all acted by Europeans or European-Americans, a large proportion of the actors in the Vitagraph examples are Japanese or Japanese-American. The main parts are acted by European-Americans, generally by regular members of the Vitagraph stock company, but all the extra parts are taken by Japanese. Where could these actors have come from? The obvious suggestion is that Vitagraph recruited a Japanese theatrical troupe. There were what are described as “Japanese troupes” appearing in vaudeville in 1910, but they seem to have been jugglers and acrobats, which the extras in these films show no signs of being. The noted Japanese actress Hanako (Hisa Ōta) toured the United States with her company in 1907 and 1909, performing in Japanese and reported on in newspapers and trade journals of the period, but it’s not known whether any of her fellow performers remained in America. There were only a few thousand Japanese in New York City in 1910, but that was sufficient to support a Japanese-language newspaper, and other troupes might have fallen below the radar of the English-language press, lay and professional.
The presence of so many Japanese actors has led to the suggestion that these films were somehow made in Japan. However, I do not think there is any doubt they were made in the Vitagraph studio on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. All three pictures use the studio tank, installed some time in 1909. Usually this leads to a characteristic slightly downward-tilted camera angle, so the surface of the water extends to the top of the screen, and the further bank of the supposed river or lake, or an ocean horizon, are out of shot. However, in The Love of Chrysanthemum and Ito, the Beggar Boy the filmmakers have also set up a painted backdrop behind the tank, showing a high-arched Japanese bridge beyond the water, thus using the tank in the way studio tanks have been deployed ever since.
As for the American actors in the principal parts, you will note that some of the cast names in our credit listings have queries against them – perhaps all of them should. As far as I know, there is no contemporary documentation of any of the personnel concerned with particular Vitagraph films of this period, and later filmography is rife with misinformation about them. We cannot rely on written sources for the credits of these films; identifying the casts of 1910 Vitagraphs is a matter of recognizing the actors. The cast identifications above are mine, though I have checked some of them with other people; the queried ones I am less sure about, or, indeed, expect to be challenged on.
Identifying directors is even more difficult. These three films differ so much in style that it looks as if they were directed by three different people. I think that Van Dyke Brooke was the likely director of Ito, the Beggar Boy, since the film has all the hallmarks of his style: medium-long-shot framing, staging in depth, and allowing the actors to turn their backs to camera. All three of these characteristics are present in the remarkable shot when the fisherman brings the family’s child and the apparently dead Ito to the shore where the father and mother and a group of servants are waiting. The Love of Chrysanthemum seems much less assured  – witness the awkward cut back in the garden where the courting characters exit left and then enter on the same side as they come forward. Hako’s Sacrifice has more closer framings than the other two, though some of these are to allow the spectator to read the placard proclaiming the chrysanthemum competition over the characters’ shoulders. If I am right that William Humphrey appears in this film, he might well also have been the director.
The plots can be summarized briefly:
In The Love of Chrysanthemum, young Chrysanthemum is unhappily married to Sayo, a wealthy older man. Vance Redmond, an American tourist, arrives and seduces her. She believes his love genuine, but then sees him in a romantic situation with Alice Langley. Sayo becomes aware of Chrysanthemum’s love for the American and is poised to kill her, but relents; she picks up the knife he’s dropped and stabs herself, her maid Fusi sobbing at her feet. A detailed synopsis in The Motion Picture Story Magazine, February 1911, with photographs, provides the character names.
Ito, the Beggar Boy: Ito and his mother come as beggars to the home of Lord Idzu and Lady Wisteria, a wealthy but childless couple. Ito’s starving mother dies, and Lady Wisteria convinces her husband to take the child in. A year later, she gives birth to a long-hoped-for daughter, Clover Blossom, to whom Ito is devoted. One day the little girl asks Ito to take her in a boat on the lake, but a storm suddenly comes up and they need to be rescued by a fisherman. Realizing that Ito risked his life to protect Clover Blossom, the lord and lady give thanks for their blessings.
Hako’s Sacrifice: Hunchback Hako is sold into bondage to a cruel fisherman. Feeling sorry for his plight, little Morning Glory gives him a chrysanthemum plant, which he hides from his master and waters at night. Morning Glory’s father Oguri is put into debtor’s prison by his business rival Keiki, and when a prince of the province offers a prize for the finest chrysanthemum, she pins her hopes on winning the money and freeing her father. Hako also enters the contest, thinking he can win his freedom from his master, but when Keiki maliciously destroys Morning Glory’s flower, Hako sacrifices his chances by transplanting his own chrysanthemum to her garden, enabling her to win the prize. – Ben Brewster