Zoe Kincaid Penlington

Zoë Rowena Kincaid Penlington (March 2, 1878 – March 28, 1944) was a Canadian-born American journalist, critic, and editor. She wrote Kabuki: The Popular Stage in Japan (1925), considered "the first extensive study of kabuki in English".[1] (Her first name is written both with and without the diaeresis in sources.)

Zoe Kincaid Penlington
A young white woman with hair in a bouffant updo, wearing a high-collared dress or top
Zoe Kincaid (later Penlington), from the 1902 yearbook of the University of Washington
Born
Zoe Rowena Kincaid

(1878-03-02)March 2, 1878
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
DiedMarch 28, 1944(1944-03-28) (aged 66)
Ventura, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Journalist, arts critic, editor
RelativesTrevor Kincaid (brother)

Early life and education

Zoe Kincaid was born in Peterborough, Ontario[2] and raised in Olympia, Washington,[3][4] the daughter of Robert Kincaid and Mary Margaret Bell Kincaid. Her father was an Irish-born Canadian surgeon and a veteran of the Union Army in the American Civil War. Her older brother Trevor Kincaid became a noted biologist.[5] She graduated from Olympia High School, and from the University of Washington in 1902.[6][7] In college she was the founding editor of the yearbook and the literary editor of the school newspaper. In 1908, she was elected president of the University of Washington Alumnae Association.[8]

Career

Kincaid worked as a journalist in Washington state as a young woman,[9] especially at The Westerner, a regional literary magazine.[8] She moved to Tokyo in 1908, to write and teach English.[10] She was founding co-editor Japan Magazine, an English-language monthly launched in 1910[11] as the official publication of the Tokyo Industrial Association.[12] Her first article for Japan Magazine was a profile of meteorologist Itaru Nonaka and his wife Chiyoko, who maintained a weather station on Mount Fuji.[13]

With her husband Penlington she also helped produce The Far East, a weekly English magazine.[14][15] The magazine's offices were destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. She was a theatre critic,[16][17] and a member of the International Press Association of Japan.[8] She wrote Kabuki: The Popular Stage in Japan (1925), the first English-language book about the kabuki tradition,[18] and "a much needed and very important history of the popular Japanese stage," according to The New York Times reviewer Charles DeKay.[19] She also wrote about noh dance-dramas[20] and bunraku puppetry.[17][21] She worked with a translator to adapt two kabuki plays by Kido Okamoto, published as The Human Pillar and The Mask-Maker.[8]

Publications
  • "Nonaka the Mountaineer" (1910)[13]
  • "The Hidden Genius of the East" (1921)[22]
  • Kabuki: The Popular Stage of Japan (1925)[23]
  • "Playgoing in Present-Day Japan" (1926)[24]
  • "The Stage of Today in Japan" (1927)[25]
  • "The Virile Drama of Japan" (1927)[20]
  • "Hina Matsuri: The Girls' Festival" (1927)[26]
  • "An International Theater" (1927)[27]
  • The Mask-maker: A Drama in Three Acts (1928)[28]
  • Tokyo Vignettes (1933)[29]

Personal life

Kincaid married British journalist John Newton Penlington in 1910.[10] Her husband died in 1933,[30][31] and she returned to the United States permanently in 1941. She died from a ruptured appendix in 1944, at the age of 66, while visiting her sister in Ventura, California.[18]

References
  1. "#AsiaNow Speaks with Satoko Shimazaki". Association for Asian Studies. 2018-03-16. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  2. "Noted Writer Dies Here". Ventura County Star. 1944-03-28. pp. 1, 2. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. "Tokyo Resident Plans Trip Here". The Daily Olympian. 1936-02-17. p. 3. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. "Former Olympian Returns to Give Unusual Program". The Daily Olympian. 1936-09-13. p. 3. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. "Dr. Robert Kincaid Dies at Son's Home in Seattle at Age of 88". The Washington Standard. 1920-08-20. p. 1. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. University of Washington, Tyee (1902 yearbook): no page numbers. via Ancestry
  7. "Mrs. Penlington Returns to Orient". The Washington Standard. 1921-09-23. p. 8. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. Di Biase, Linda Teresa (Spring 2015). "Zoe Kincaid: A Western Journalist Discovers Japan" (PDF). Columbia: 10–17.
  9. Hollingsworth, Helen (1936-07-12). "Olympian Returns After 20 Years Study in Japan". The Olympian. pp. 1, 8. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "Will Marry Japanese Newspaper Man". The Wenatchee Daily World. 1910-08-24. p. 1. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. "News Writer to Speak at Forum". The Fresno Bee. 1936-11-14. p. 6. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. Japan Magazine Co. (1910). Japan Magazine 1910 v1 vol. 1. pp. masthead.
  13. Kincaid, Zoe (February 1910). "Nonaka, the Mountaineer". Japan Magazine. 1 (1): 54–56 – via Internet Archive.
  14. "Helps to Understanding The Far East". The Business Chronicle of the Pacific Northwest. 13: 38. June 24, 1922.
  15. Gould, Dorothy Fay (1921-08-24). "Mrs. John N. Penlington Brings Tokyo Art Here". The Seattle Star. p. 8. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. Balme, Christopher B. (2019). The Globalization of Theatre 1870-1930: The Theatrical Networks of Maurice E. Bandmann. Cambridge University Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-108-48789-4.
  17. Hanifin, Ada (1936-10-13). "Highlights and Shadows". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 24. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. "Notable Woman Writer Passes". The Province. 1944-03-29. p. 11. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. Kay, Charles de (1926-01-31). "In the Theatres of the Orient; Tradition Weighs Heavily on the Drama of China and Japan". The New York Times. p. 13. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  20. Kincaid, Zoe (July 1927). "The Virile Drama of Japan". Japan Overseas Travel Magazine. 15: 5–8.
  21. Matthews, Brander (February 1926). "New Picture Books of the Playhouse". The Literary Digest International Book Review. 4: 162–164.
  22. Penlington, Zoe Kincaid (March 1921). "The Hidden Genius of the East". Pacific Review. 1: 452–463 – via Internet Archive.
  23. Kincaid, Zoë (1965). Kabuki; the Popular Stage of Japan. B. Blom.
  24. Kincaid, Zoe (October 1926). "Playgoing in Present-Day Japan". Japan Overseas Travel Magazine. 15: 18–20.
  25. "The Stage of Today in Japan". Japan Overseas Travel Magazine. 15: 5–8. January 1927.
  26. Kincaid, Zoe (March 1927). "Hina Matsuri: The Girls' Festival". Japan Overseas Travel Magazine. 15: 9–11.
  27. Kincaid, Zoe (September 1927). "An International Theater". Japan Overseas Travel Magazine. 15: 14–15.
  28. 岡本綺堂 (1928). The Mask-maker: A Drama in Three Acts. S. French.
  29. Kincaid, Zoë (1933). Tokyo Vignettes. Sanseido Company, Limited.
  30. "John N. Penlington; Dean of Foreign Newspaper Correspondents in Far East". The New York Times. 1933-03-30. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  31. "John N. Penlington Correspondent in Far East, is Dead". The Ottawa Citizen. 1933-03-29. p. 2. Retrieved 2022-11-09 – via Newspapers.com.
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