This paper discusses the first visit of the New York City Ballet [NYCB] to Japan in 1958. In the 1950s, as the Cold War continued, both Washington and the Kremlin realized the significance of cultural diplomacy. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Soviet leaders began to spend vast sums of money in a cultural offensive; they began to finance the trips of Soviet artists to many countries and also emphasized the barrenness of American culture.
In order to counteract such Soviet cultural propaganda, Dwight Eisenhower created the President’s Emergency Fund for International Affairs in 1954. The U.S. government began actively sponsoring tours abroad of American performing arts to show American excellence in cultural achievement and promote its message of democracy all over the world. NYCB’s visit to Japan in 1958 was one of the tours under the auspices of this fund.
American ballet, with European traditions and American elements, was regarded as a weapon of the cultural Cold War. In particular, NYCB, which had a “modern” style that was supposed to show the superiority of American culture, enhanced its status as a ballet company unique to the United States that was successful in its overseas tours.
In Asia, where the Soviet cultural offensive intensified in the mid-1950s, American performing arts were in demand. In order to hold performances efficiently on a low budget in Asia, the U.S. government considered the San Francisco Ballet, which was small and had a style similar to that of NYCB, the best choice.
The U.S. government’s plan to send the San Francisco Ballet to Japan, however, was opposed by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and the Japanese government as well as Japanese impresarios. Aware of the U.S. and Soviet competition for sending artists to Japan, the Japanese impresarios requested well-known “first-class” artists and did not accept the San Francisco Ballet. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, appreciating the aesthetic sense of Japanese intellectuals with deep knowledge of the arts, also insisted that the NYCB should visit Japan to satisfy them. The Japanese government, furthermore, with a sense of crisis about the favorable reaction to the visit of the Bolshoi Ballet in 1957, asked the U.S. government to promote a more active cultural offensive in Japan. In short, NYCB’s visit to Japan, which was a part of the U.S. government’s cultural program, demonstrated the various motivations of a number of “actors” in realizing it.
NYCB received a favorable response from intellectuals and the media in Japan, the target of U.S. cultural diplomacy toward Japan. In this sense, it can be said that the tour was successful. However, the NYCB’s performance was a box office failure; some Japanese had a negative reaction to the characteristics of the NYCB, which the U.S. government considered a weapon in its cultural diplomacy. This paper shows that a deep analysis of some negative opinions of the NYCB and the causes of its box office failure should have been carried out by the U.S. government, with a view to subsequent projects.
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