*Hi all. I’m sorry about the lack of updates on the blog recently; I’ve been getting home at 12 in the morning just about every night due to live events and just haven’t had the time or energy to write recently. I hope my next posts can make up for my absence as of late. I have a lot of good stuff to write about!*
Below are pictures from my first trip to see the Takarazuka Revue at their Grand Theater home in the Ginza area of Tokyo. I saw the musical “Akatsuki no Roma” or “The Dawn of Rome,” a rock opera based off of the play Julius Cesar by Shakespeare. After the two hour musical was the one hour song and dance revue, "Les Bijoux Brillants" or "Poetry of Glittering Jewels," featuring songs and imagery inspired by precious stones.
I am currently trying (to no avail) to secure tickets to the next Takarazuka show run of “Phantom,” based on “The Phantom of the Opera” (though not the Andrew Lloyd Webber version). However, because Takarazuka musicals are insanely popular in Japan, most seats sell out immediately for every show. Somehow or another, I was able to secure a great seat for the show I went to last weekend.
I will be writing my honors thesis for the Japanese major on the defining features of Takarazuka musical theater and answering the question, can this unique form of Japanese theater be brought to the American stage?
Takarazuka was formed in 1914 by the president of the Hankyu Railway Corporation, Kobayashi Ichizo (you may be familiar with the Hankyu Department Store chain in Japan that still bears his name). Kobayashi wanted to create a tourist attraction for his small city of Takarazuka (about 45 minutes from Osaka) that would increase the volume of people riding the full length of his train line, which just so happened to end in the city of Takarazuka. Created as a comical answer to the all-male kabuki theater, Takarazuka is an all female, highly modern, highly Japanese musical theater tradition that has a fanatically devoted fan base of middle-aged Japanese women.
A Takarazuka show usually consists of a two hour musical play followed by a short intermission, and then a one hour song and dance revue. Upon graduating high school in Japan, young girls may apply to be one of the 50 lucky members of each year’s entering class at the Takarazuka Music School in Takarazuka City, the only training school for this type of theater. The Takarazuka Music School is a highly prestigious school and considered to be the Julliard of Japan. When girls enter the school, they must choose whether they wish to play male or female characters on the stage. Once they decide, it is very unlikely that they will ever switch and play roles of the opposite gender. This is do to the fact that the decisions on what sex to play are often made based on height, look, and vocal range, and each specialization requires its own respective extensive movement and voice training.
There are only two formal Takarazuka Grand Theaters in Japan – one in Takarazuka City, right next to the school, and one in Tokyo. In its near 100 year history, Takarazuka has performed in Europe and North America as well. The themes of Takarazuka musicals are as diverse as the colors of the rainbow striped spandex pants worn by one star during a dance number. Some shows are based on traditional Japanese stories such as “The Tale of Genji,” while some may come from Japanese comics. Others are redoes of western musicals. Take for instance the all female versions of “Guys & Dolls” and “West Side Story.” Lastly, some are strange mixes of Americana, such as the original biopic musicals on the life of Ella Fitzgerald or JFK (the latter which featured a dancing Saddam and Castro). Takarazuka is certainly different from anything on Broadway.
Takarazuka is a money making machine! Not only was every seat at my show sold out, but there was a gift shop (with a fancy French name) that sold every piece of merchandise imaginable. One housewife rubbed a towel with a picture of her favorite actress on it across her face, while another woman loaded up on collector postcard sets at $20 a pop. Thanks to a research grant from Stanford, I was able to buy some stuff, including a $100 DVD video of a musical I wanted to see. One could easily drain their bank account on pencil sharpeners that play snippets of show music when you grind your writing utensils and ashtrays that let you snuff out your cigarettes into the face of your favorite star. This is not to mention the plethora of stalls inside the theater lobby that sell rice crackers with the Takarazuka logo grilled into it or a special kiwi mango flavored snow cone that happens to be favorite taste treat of a top star.
I was seated on the ground floor of the theater, dead center, about halfway back from the stage. I would say that the audience was between 85 - 90% females of age 40 and above. There WERE men present in the audience (some even my age), though most of them looked to have been dragged to the show by their wives / girlfriends / mothers. I was the only non-Japanese person in attendance as far as I could tell. I of course heard gossip about my unusual presence in the theater from the Japanese people in the surrounding rows. The gossip bit was funny, because obviously if a foreigner is going to a musical show entirely in Japanese, they would have to be able to understand Japanese in the first place. And yet, people kept making observations about me as if I was incased in a prison of incomprehensibility.
Here is the complete story of “The Dawn of Rome” in a simple, easy to follow arrow-linked chain.
Cesar is great, people like Cesar --＞ Brutus makes a speech, people hate Cesar --＞ Brutus kills Cesar, people like Brutus --＞ Antony makes a speech, people hate Brutus --＞ Brutus kills Brutus, Rome is happy! ~fin~
The song and dance review that followed the musical was everything that Takarazuka is famous for; blinding strobe lights, oversized novelty diamond rings, disco balls, glittering rhinestone studded pimp-costumes, and completely random American songs sung in Japanese. Music included, “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Will Smith’s rap “Wild Wild West,” and one of my real life favorite songs, “So Happy Together” by The Turtles.
Audience participation in Takarazuka is limited to robotic synchronized clapping during the opening and finale numbers. No one gives a standing ovation or calls for an encore as the performance comes to a close. Interestingly however, everyone will burst into applause whenever a performer makes use of the arched runway that extends out in front of the audience. Even if it was a dialogue scene, everyone would burst into applause if a character walked onto the runway – weird.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my first Takarazuka Revue experience. There are links to various pages about Takarazuka on the right side of the page if you would like to learn more. I encourage anyone visiting Japan, who is brave enough, to experience the magic of Takarazuka. Right alongside kabuki and noh and puppet theater, Takarazuka is truly Japan’s modern theatrical tradition. Even if you don’t understand Japanese you should still go! The stories are simple enough that anyone can follow along, and the Takarazuka website provides English summaries of each of the shows they run. Well, what are you waiting for?!
B.E.W.
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