Kushibiki Yumindo

, also given as Yumeto, Yumito, and Yumeno, was a Japanese impresario responsible for organizing many international exhibitions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Japanese Exhibition King

Kushibiki Yumindo was born in the town of Gonohe, Aomori, either in 1859, as most Japanese sources claim, or 1865, as he stated on several occasions while in the United States. Little is known of his early life. A brief Japanese biography from the Aomori Prefectural Library states that he went to Tokyo with the intention of entering Keio Gijuku but was unsuccessful. According to a 1916 profile in ''California's Magazine'', he "came first to America in 1884." The beginnings of his entrepreneurial career are similarly undocumented. According to the 1916 profile, "At the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 he presented his first conception of an exploitation of Japan on the Midway, which proved highly successful, both as an instructive and popular exhibition and as a financial venture." Kushibiki's name does not, in fact, appear among the main organizers of that exposition, but within a few years he would become known as the "Japanese Exposition King."

Kushibiki's success owed much to his collaboration with another Japanese organizer at the Columbian Expo, Arai Saburō (1867-1951). In subsequent years, "Kushibiki and Arai organized Japanese villages and tea gardens at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition (1895), Atlantic City (1896-1900), the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition (1901), the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition at Charleston (1902), Coney Island’s Luna Park (opened May 1903), the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis (1904), the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in Seattle (1909) and the Panama–California Exposition at San Diego’s Balboa Park (1915)," along with the San Francisco Panama–Pacific International Exposition (1915) and Japan–British Exhibition (1910).

Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Omaha

Aside from the names and dates of expositions in which they participated, there are few descriptions of what sorts of work Kushibiki and Arai actually did at the expositions they organized, but it can be surmised that they operated as independent entrepreneurial managers or contractors in a style somewhat reminiscent of Professor Risley and his so-called Imperial Japanese Troupe, or Tannaker Buhicrosan's Japanese Village at Knightsbridge, London. Kushibiki worked well with both American and Japanese associates, with excellent collaboration skills and little need for recognition. It was five years before they received any attention in the American press, but five years after that, Kushibiki was declared "undisputedly the best Japanese showman in America."

For the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, September to December 1895, Japanese commissioner M. Fujisawa requested and received a place off the Midway for a "high class" attraction. Japan was winning the Sino-Japanese War and hoped for international recognition. But the stratagem failed. "The Japanese Village, though located in another part of the park, may be considered a part of the anthropological display of the Midway group," wrote a local historian.

Although the Japanese exhibits at the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition at Nashville were omitted from its official guidebook, they were at least spared the indignity of the racist depiction of the Chinese Village with its "queer creatures that are almost savages" and theater of "crude acting and dancing."

Nor could Kushibiki attract much attention on the Midway at the Omaha Exposition in 1898, where "the German Village, the Streets of Cairo, the Temple of Palmistry, the Japanese Tea-Garden, and a hundred others, offer their various tempting delights."

Atlantic City, gardens, nurseries, and landscaping

In addition to their exposition work during this period, Kushibiki and Arai also ran a Japanese tea garden and nursery in Atlantic City.

And they took on private landscaping commissions. In 1899 they were hired to construct a fernery (now part of the Morris Arboretum) for wealthy Philadelphia siblings John and Lydia Morris. "To create the distinctive subterranean grotto ambiance, Morris hired Japanese garden makers Kushibiki and Arai to arrange one hundred tons of local Wissahickon schist into rockery formations resembling a cave or mountain cliff accented by delicate waterfalls, a flowing stream bed, and a goldfish pond. Once the plants took hold on the rocky surfaces, entering the fernery felt like a journey through a personal terrarium." The garden contained "about one thousand ferns, representing 523 different varieties," and was considered "one of the finest displays of filmy ferns ( Hymenophyllaceae) in cultivation."

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Arai's films and the Kawakami tour

In 1896 Kushibiki and Arai returned to Japan, to recruit talent for current and future projects, and bringing along two of what would be Japan's first motion picture projectors. Arai had "bought two Vitascopes and a dozen films" from the Edison Company and began screening in early February in Asakusa. In March Arai arranged screenings at the Kawakami-za in Kanda, a modern Western-style theater opened the previous year by actor-playwright Kawakami Otojirō. Kawakami's meeting with Kushibiki at the event would have far-reaching effects.

"Kushibiki," according to Joseph Anderson, "had been looking for his next Japanese novelty. He proposed a tour to Kawakami that would 'introduce the New Theatre to American ladies and gentlemen.'" Kawakami hoped to travel to Paris to perform with his troupe at the 1900 Paris Exposition. "At the very least, such a trip could help pay Kawakami's expenses for getting to the exhibition in Paris."

In February 1899, Kushibiki visited the Kobe hospital where Kawakami was convalescing after an illness. On March 1, the ''Miyako Shimbun'', a Kyoto newspaper, reported that Kawakami planned to leave in 20 days with his wife Sadayakko, niece Tsuru, and an 18-member troupe. Before their departure, Kushibiki "left suddenly for San Francisco ahead of the Kawakami company with the explanation that he was called back early because his Atlantic City enterprise was in trouble and he was not feeling well."

The Kawakami troupe arrived in San Francisco on May 21 to find that "Kushibiki was not there to take care of them as he promised. He had had a major loss in his business and could no longer afford to sponsor them. So he handed them over to a Japanese lawyer named Kosaku Mitsuse, who became their manager." They were also surprised to find that Kushibiki had featured Sadayakko as the troupe's main attraction. "There was no getting out of it, concluded Yakko. She was going to have to be an actress." Kushibiki's choice of manager proved disastrous: within weeks Mitsuse had driven the troupe into bankruptcy through mismanagement and outright theft. But their eventual success was largely the result of Kushibiki's promotion of Sadayakko as actress. By the time they returned to Japan she was recognized as a major international star.

New York

In 1901, Kushibiki organized "Fair Japan" at the Buffalo, New York Pan-American Exposition that ran from May to November. On the morning of July 27, running to catch a moving trolley car to the Exposition grounds, he had a tragic mishap. Slipping, his left leg caught under the wheels, and had to be amputated just below the knee. The '' Buffalo Evening News'', reporting the story, described Kushibiki as "one of the best known among the Pan-American concessionaires." When gangrene set in, a second operation was performed. "At first it was thought he stood but small chance of recovery," but "a strong constitution pulled him through." At the end of August he was still hospitalized; "his partner, Mr. Arai, has had charge of the Japanese village, and a monster benefit has been prepared in behalf of Kushibiki." Finally, on September 26, Kushibiki, making his first appearance at the Exposition since the accident, "hobbled through the Midway on crutches. In spite of his misfortune he was as philosophic and debonnaire as ever."

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Kushibiki had little time to lose in organizing his next "Fair Japan" in Charleston for the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition, set to open on December 1, 1901. "A Japanese rock garden, complete with Bonsai trees, waterfalls, and bridges, was recreated inside the Fair Japan concession. A typical tea house with quaint booths was attended by geisha girls. There was also a theatre where actors, jugglers, and tumblers entertained fairgoers. Price of admission was 15¢; admission to the theatre was 15¢ extra." The exposition continued until June 20, 1902.

Kushibiki had at least three New York projects underway in the summer of 1903. The first was a Japanese Village and Japanese Gardens for Luna Park, an amusement park on Coney Island whose feature attraction was A Trip to the Moon, a popular ride debuted at the Buffalo Exposition two years earlier. The second was a "Japan by Night" installation and concession for the rooftop garden at Madison Square Garden, created to accompany a Japanese-themed play, ''Otoyo''. Japanese writer Yone Noguchi worked as a curio-seller, “doing a pretty good business, selling things between 7 and 12 dollars a night,” and stayed through the summer, as it was “awfully jolly to do such a thing upon the roof full of fresh air and music.” Kushibiki's third New York project was a set of Japanese-style buildings for railroad millionaire Frederick William Vanderbilt's summer camp in the Adirondacks at Upper St. Regis Lake.

St. Louis and Portland

Kushibiki's major project for 1904 was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis from April 30 to December 1, 1904. The St. Louis Exposition received unprecedented support from the Japanese government: $400,000, plus $50,000 from the Japanese colonial government of Formosa, and over $250,000 in Japanese commercial and regional government investments. A large garden featured a replica of Kyoto's famous Kinkakuji.

In another part of the grounds was "Fair Japan on the 'Pike' ... a private concession controlled by the Fair Japan Company, which was organized by Y. Kushibiki, S. Arai, and several prominent business men of St. Louis." Visitors passed through a large Niōmon-style gate, said to be a "reproduction of the famous portal at Nikko," built at a cost of $25,000.

The exposition would prove to be especially important because the Russo-Japanese War, which began on February 8, 1904, remained in progress through the whole of the exposition. In April, Kushibiki announced that thirty geisha had embarked from Yokohama and were expected to arrive about April 25.

Louisiana Purchase Exposition