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
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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