ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates hitherto neglected sources of hybridity in the pseudo-Japanese author Onoto Watanna’s fabrication of Japan. Starting with an examination of her concept of being “Eurasian,” this chapter discusses how creatively, albeit eclectically, Watanna combines diverse materials from different trends of Orientalism to re/create A Japanese Nightingale, her signature hybrid romance published in 1901. The three foci are the willow pattern of British chinoiserie, the expatriate American choreographer Loie Fuller’s dance performance, and the folk story of Urashima, one of the Japanese oldest hybrid romances, that Watanna incorporates into her romance. The chapter puts Watanna and her Japanese romance within a transnational perspective to challenge the notion according to which she was a sheer copier of male literary Japonisme, and her Japanese Nightingale just another Butterfly.
