Known across fifty countries as the voice of Madame Butterfly, the opera singer Miura Tamaki was surrounded by imitation, yet to her listeners she was never a copy among copies: she was the voice of Butterfly. Drawn from Exley’s book project on celebrity culture in Japan's long twentieth century, this talk asks how celebrity converts imitation into singularity. It centers on Arai Wagorō's silhouette animation Madame Butterfly's Fantasy (Ochō fujin no gensō, 1940), scored and sung by Miura herself. The recorded voice and the silhouette work alike: each offers the outline of a real person, and each is completed by the fans’ recognition. Following Miura's voice from her recordings and radio performances through its curious afterlives, the talk argues that her singularity rested neither on the voice's origins nor on anyone's legal claim to it, but on her audience's power to recognize it as hers—a power that anticipates the virtual idols of our own moment.

Bio: Charles Exley is associate professor of Japanese literature and film at the University of Pittsburgh. He coordinates the biennial Japan Documentary Film Award, held in conjunction with Pittsburgh's Screenshot Asia Film Festival, for which he serves as faculty advisor.

Exley’s research emphasizes the global dimensions of Japanese cultural practices, and he has published on such topics as Morimura Yasumasa, Tawada Yōko, Japanese vaudeville and musical theater, Edgar Allan Poe in Japan, and the Japanese Western Yurusarezaru mono. His publications include Satō Haruo and Modern Japanese Literature (Brill, 2016) and Old Crimes, New Scenes (MerwinAsia, 2018; co-edited with Michael Tangeman). His current book project examines celebrity culture in the long twentieth century.