Sada Yacco is probably the first ‘modern’ actress in Japan. She was recognised as such for her role as Desdemona in the Japanese adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello in 1903. This was a great revolution because in traditional Japanese Kabuki theatre, female characters were played by transvestite actors. Although the law had already abolished this constraint in the theatre (1890), no one knew how to proceed if the tradition of learning the actor’s craft based on ‘imitation’ was abandoned. This unlikely revolution, however, was made possible by the great tour of the theatre company directed by Otojiro Kawakami, Sada Yacco’s husband, to North America and Europe between 1899 and 1901, a financial, social and artistic success. This tour, which offered an adaptation of Kabuki theatre to local tastes, was a great success, with Sada Yacco embodying, through her exoticism, an ani­mated etching. However, an analysis of the views of Parisian critics and artists, who were more amazed by these theatre performances than by other attractions proposed at the 1900 Universal Exhibition, reveals that this geographically and temporally distant form had a mirror function: it was a kind of reflection of what no longer existed on the French scene, or of what some artists were looking for to renew their register of expression. This work shows some examples of these comings and goings that allowed an opening on both sides of the world, and proposes to reread cultural history in this perspective of the reflection that the Other brings us.