Hailed as an ‘unruly masterpiece’, John Romeril's The Floating World is one of the few ‘new wave’ Australian plays representing Australians and their Asian ‘others’ to be restaged periodically since its première in 1974. Paying particular attention to productions of the play that have used Japanese theatre forms such as kabuki and bunraku, this article focuses primarily on the ways in which the spectacle of race has been coded performatively by different directorial approaches, and how various significations of race have been interpreted by the critical establishment. The fascinating stage history of The Floating World is treated as a barometer of Australian theatre's response to the challenge of representing cultural conflict, during a period marked by public debate about the desirability, and inevitability, of Australia's political, economic and cultural ‘enmeshment’ with Asia.