Like a Queen

Summary

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Cabinet of Curiosities – "Like a Queen" (October 21, 2025)

Overview

In this episode of Cabinet of Curiosities, Aaron Mahnke delves into two compelling tales from history: the first highlights the unique role of Benshi narrators in Japanese silent cinema, and the second chronicles the rise and cultural impact of industrial "Queens" in Great Britain and beyond. Both stories explore the unexpected ways people have sought to interpret, celebrate, and mediate social change through performance and symbolism.

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Story 1: The Benshi – Narrators of Japan’s Silent Films

[Start: 00:42]

Key Discussion Points

• The Advent of Cinema:

  • The late 19th-century birth of motion pictures led to the first era of film, the silent era, marked by significant evolution in technology and storytelling.
  • Contrary to modern beliefs, many silent films were hand-tinted in color and not strictly black and white.

• Cinema and Japanese Culture:

  • After the Meiji Restoration, Japan embraced modernization, but traditional entertainment like Kabuki theater remained dominant.
  • Western films were introduced as novelties, which led to the creation of a new class of film interpreters: the Benshi.

• The Role and Fame of Benshi:

  • Benshi were more than translators; they became essential attractions, providing live narration, character voices, and poetic commentary.
  • Movie theaters featured Benshi as celebrity draws, listed alongside film stars on posters.
  • The profession was regulated, with rigorous training in voice, history, and world culture. Government oversight ensured Benshi adhered to censorship laws.

• The Art of Setsume:

  • Benshi’s narration, or “Setsume,” became a valued skill, with over 6,800 practitioners in Japan by 1927, and similar roles in Korea and Taiwan.
  • Even as sound films gained popularity, Benshi remained integral to Japanese cinema longer than in the West.

• Legacy and Modern Revival:

  • Although the profession waned by the 1930s, a small group of performers kept it alive.
  • Midori Sawato stands out as a contemporary Benshi, still bringing silent films to life.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the allure of Benshi:

  "A great Benshi projecting his or her voice over the musicians in a thousand person theater would become a celebrity in their own right."
  — Aaron Mahnke [03:15]

• On the endurance of the tradition:

  "It turns out that the silent era in Japan was never very silent at all."
  — Aaron Mahnke [05:55]

Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:42] – Introduction to the development of cinema and Japanese entertainment
• [01:50] – Emergence of Benshi and their evolving role
• [03:10] – Benshi training and regulation
• [04:00] – Benshi’s peak and international counterparts
• [05:00] – The decline and legacy of Benshi, featuring Midori Sawato

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Story 2: Like a Queen – Industrial Queens in Britain

[Start: 07:00]

Key Discussion Points

• Elective Monarchy and Cultural Traditions:

  • Unlike heredity monarchs, community queens have been chosen through festivals (e.g., the May Queen) as celebratory figureheads.

• The Rise of the Industrial Queen:

  • In 1925, to mark their centenary, the Stockton and Darlington Railroad in England launched the Railway Queen beauty pageant, crowning Helena Wotton.
  • This concept swiftly spread; soon, countless industries—cotton, wool, coal, silk, even radio—began selecting their own queens.

• Role and Impact of Industrial Queens:

  • Though largely ceremonial, queens acted as spokespeople, giving speeches and appearing publicly to represent their industries.
  • Many gained substantial local fame and even opportunities to travel internationally.

• Remarkable Anecdotes:

  • In 1935, 15-year-old Audrey Mossom was crowned Britain's Railway Queen. Her whirlwind tenure culminated in a trip to meet Joseph Stalin in Moscow, where she received a Russian nesting doll from Lenin’s widow.

• Shifts After World War II:

  • The competitions evolved, focusing on recruitment as industries aimed to appeal to female workers in a changing labor landscape.
  • Queens starred in promotional films encouraging other women to join the workforce.

• Criticism and the End of an Era:

  • The practice faced pushback from trade unions, who saw it as a distraction from labor struggles.
  • By the 1980s, with shifts in public taste and labor politics, these pageants faded into history.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the ceremonial function:

  "…there was more to being a Queen of Industry than being a pretty face. They were expected to give speeches, make public appearances advocating for their industry. Essentially, they were the face of their field for the entire year."
  — Aaron Mahnke [08:28]

• On labor tensions:

  "Like actual royalty, though, these Queens of industry would have a tense relationship with the workers themselves. From the beginning, the title was roundly criticized as a distraction from the growing power of trade unions."
  — Aaron Mahnke [10:12]

• On the legacy of the practice:

  "The Queens of Industry might be a thing of the past, but they definitely seem to serve a purpose at the time. And looking back, they've left us with something incredibly valuable. A Curious Chapter in History."
  — Aaron Mahnke [12:18]

Important Segment Timestamps

• [07:00] – Introduction: can a queen be elected?
• [07:50] – The first Railway Queen and the expansion to other industries
• [08:45] – Duties and opportunities for industrial queens
• [09:24] – Audrey Mossom's meeting with Stalin
• [10:30] – Postwar transformation and tensions with labor movements
• [11:55] – End of an era and the meaning of industrial queens

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Episode Tone & Style

Aaron Mahnke’s delivery is warm, engaging, and steeped in curiosity, reflecting his signature style: weaving historical facts with storytelling, and closing each narrative with a thoughtful moral or twist that links past to present.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Cabinet of Curiosities masterfully illustrates how communities elevate figures—be it narrators or queens—to make sense of change, preserve tradition, and inspire society. Through vivid descriptions and memorable anecdotes, Mahnke invites listeners to see the hidden richness behind once-familiar roles, leaving us, as always, a bit more curious.

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Transcript

[Erin Menke]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Bobby Bones]

Hey, it's Bobby from the Bobby Bones Show. I had an incredible time at this year's iHeartRadio music festival and even got the chance to hang out with Diplo and Bailey Zimmerman while I was there. How did Ashes come together? Diplo?

[Diplo]

I pulled up real quick. He was about to leave on tour. You're about to jump in your tour bus and we had like three hours.

[Bailey Zimmerman]

It was really cool. He literally just like randomly showed up to my house and I'm like, oh hey Diplo, what are you doing? He's like, I have a song that I want to show you. And I was like, okay, you can.

[Bobby Bones]

Listen to the full episode out now, wherever you get your podcast. And big shout out to my friends at Hyundai for making this possible. Had a blast cruising around festival weekend in the all new Palisade hybrid.

[Erin Menke]

Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The advent of cinema in the late 19th century changed the world. Even though motion pictures started as a sideshow oddity, their popularity grew fast as the years went by. Single shot films slowly started to evolve in complexity and audiences tastes evolved along with them. Within a few decades, people were no longer diving out of the way of trains coming toward the movie screen and the first proper era of filmmaking took off. The silent era. Talking about it now, a century later, there are many misconceptions about the silent era. For instance, most of the films were not presented in black and white, but hand tinted in vivid monochrome hues. They it was primitive technology, sure, but audiences of the time were just as used to color films as we are today. Another misconception is how the world at large took to cinema. Every country had a different entertainment landscape, and for many countries outside of Europe and America, moviegoers wanted different things out of their entertainment. So follow me to early 20th century Japan to see what I mean. Japan was in the process of modernizing and following the Meiji Restoration, industry and commerce was booming. But for entertainment, people largely still looked to the classics. Kabuki theater was in the middle of a resurgence in popularity and remained the dominant entertainment for a night out on the town. So when movies were first arriving from Europe, they seemed like an oddity. However, this oddity sparked an entirely new class of entertainer which eventually allowed movies to take over Japanese pop culture. Early imported movies were simple scenes of daily life without much narrative to speak of. So in order to increase the value of the night's entertainment, theatrical venues hired a performer to interpret the silent action on screen for the audience. This role became known as the Benshi, or orator. And they weren't just necessary for interpreting Western movies to a Japanese audience. They became an integral part of all moviegoing experiences, even films produced in Japan. Abenchi became just as much of a draw for a film as the content of the movie itself. Many picture houses promoted their live performers on the posters with the movie stars, and this emphasis was an important one. Their job was not just to blankly recite what's happening on the screen and, you know, read the title cards. They guided viewers through jarring cuts or scene transitions, provided voices for all the different characters, and would sometimes even recite poetry to describe the emotions of an evocative visual. A great Benshi projecting his or her voice over the musicians in a thousand person theater would become a celebrity in their own right. In the 1910s, Benshi training schools opened throughout Japan. Their classes included extensive voice training and education in various performance styles that suits different sorts of films. The wannabe Benshis were also educated in history, geography, and world cultures to better prepare them for interpreting foreign films. And as Benshi became more legitimate throughout the country, the government stepped in to make sure that they were properly licensed and abiding by public morals and standards. Since a Benshi could interpret a piece of art for the Japanese public, their performances would be monitored by public officials in if they didn't abide by censorship laws, their licenses would be revoked immediately. Now, the narration Abenshi provided was known as setsume, and it was ultimately their skill at Setsume that would make a Benshi's career. At the peak of the profession, Around 1927, there were over 6,800 Benshi throughout Japan, and there were also Benshi equivalents in nearby countries, including Korea and Taiwan. It also lasted a little longer than it did in the West. And when sound films started to overtake silence in the late 1920s, it took many years to catch on across the Pacific. But inevitably, the popularity of Benshi began to fade. By the 1930s, the profession was almost gone. However, they never truly went extinct. Small groups of dedicated performers kept the practice alive and became famous faces in the world of film preservation and exhibition. The most famous of these might just be Midori Sawato, a woman whose narration of silent films remains popular to this day, she's still alive and still performing the art of Setsume, lending her voice to movie stars who would otherwise be mute. It turns out that the silent era in Japan was never very silent at all.

[Bobby Bones]

Hey, it's Bobby from the Bobby Bones show. I had an incredible time at this year's iHeartRadio music festival and even got the chance to hang out with Diplo and Bailey Zimmerman while I was there. Check this out. So how did Ashes come together, Diplo?

[Diplo]

Well, I kind of briefly met Bailey, I think, at Morgan's show, one of them. And I think he's just the guy in Nashville. He's cool as hell, and I had a new kind of sound I wanted to do, and I think he's the one guy that could carry it. And I came to his house, I had a show, I pulled up real quick. He was about to leave on tour. You're about to jump in your tour bus. And we had like three hours play the record for him. We kind of like got a scratch, and then he handled it on his own on the road.

[Bailey Zimmerman]

Yeah, it was really cool. He really just like randomly showed up to my house and I'm like, oh, hey, Diplo, what are you doing? He's like, I have a song that I want to show you. And I was like, okay. And then now we're here playing it live.

[Bobby Bones]

You can listen to the full episode out now, wherever you get your podcast. And big shout out to my friends at Hyundai for making this possible. Had a blast cruising around festival weekend in the all new Palisade Hybrid.

[Erin Menke]

This show is sponsored by American Public University. You want your master's degree, you know you can earn it. But life gets busy. The packed schedule, the late nights. And then there's the unexpected. American Public University was built for all of that. With monthly starts and no set login times, APU's 40/ flexible online master's programs are designed to move at the speed of speed of life. Start your master's journey today at Apu Apus. Edu. You want it? Come get it at apu. Is it possible to elect a queen? Usually the answer to that question is no. Elective monarchies have existed throughout human history. But the kings and queens we remember are often parts of dynasties chosen by bloodline or a conquest. Which is perhaps why, among ordinary people, there are often little competitions to choose queens of our own. A queen, after all, is a great title for a figurehead, even if she has no real power. Perhaps you're familiar with the concept of a May queen, A woman who was appointed in a midsummer festival to be dressed in flowers and celebrate nature. It's an old and extremely popular traditional. But at some point this practice spread from folklore to that of the Industrial Society of Great Britain. It began as a publicity stunt. In 1925, to celebrate their 100 year anniversary, the Stockton and Darlington railroad held a beauty pageant where they crowned Helena Wotton as their first Railway Queen. For a year this symbolic figure would represent the great progress and the shining future of of the industrial age. Even though it was commemorating an anniversary, the Railway Queen was not a one time appointment. Every year afterward, the railway would appoint a new queen with all the fanfare and publicity of the first. Although the early queens were all daughters of railroad company employees, soon the candidates expanded to their greater British public. And other industries caught on as well, leading to an explosion of industrial queens in the 1930s. There was a cotton queen, a wool queen, a coal queen, queens of silk, salt, fish and radio. It became the go to method for celebrating each given quarter of British industry. The United States also got in on the action, crowning their own queens of Industry. But what did a Queen of Industry actually do? Well, their role was ceremonial. To be sure, the early critics who labeled it as a publicity stunt couldn't have been more correct. But there was more to being a Queen of Industry than being a pretty face. They were expected to give speeches, make public appearances advocating for their industry. Essentially, they were the face of their field for the entire year. As a result, this appointment catapulted a number of young women and girls into something resembling celebrity. In the most dramatic cases, this even led to opportunities to go abroad and observe how other countries handle their industries. For example, in 1935, the 15 year old Audrey Mossum was crowned Britain's Railway Queen. The following year saw her experience a whirlwind of public appearances and ceremonies culminating in a controversial trip to the east. The Railway Queen, you see, had been invited to go to the Soviet Union. She would undertake this trip in the summer of 1936, traveling by rail from Minsk to Moscow, where she met Joseph Stalin himself. The head of Soviet Russia greeted her before a crowd of railway workers. And the widow of Vladimir Lenin presented her with a special Russian nesting doll to commemorate her Visit. Since the 1930s, competition to be crowned a Queen of Industry became more and more stiff. Rather than simply be chosen by a small group of companies, these became full competitions with finalists and a panel of carefully selected judges. After the Second World War, the role of the Queens of industry even expanded to one of recruitment. You see, women were not just the faces of industry, they were increasingly part of it. Companies produced recruitment films starring the Queens of Industry in order to encourage women to join the workforce. Like actual royalty, though, these Queens of industry would have a tense relationship with the workers themselves. From the beginning, the title was roundly criticized as a distraction from the growing power of trade unions. Union members would eventually allow their families to participate in these sorts of pageants, but they would abstain from participating if a strike was called. The final Queens of Industry were appointed in the 1980s, showing how the practice had faded as times and tastes changed. Beauty competitions in general have become less in vogue and labor disputes between workers and government backed management have made the whole thing seem much less quaint. Communities, though, have always been good at finding fresh ways to overcome the problems they face. The Queens of Industry might be a thing of the past, but they definitely seem to serve a purpose at the time. And looking back, they've left us with something incredibly valuable. A Curious Chapter in History I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting curiositiespodcast.com this show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series and television show and you can learn all about it [e-mail] and until next time, stay curious.

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[Erin Menke]

This is an I Heart podcast.