Archive for the Takarazuka Category


Takarazuka Documentary: Dream Girls

May 23rd, 2007

Many thanks to today’s review sponsor, Bruce. The copy of this DVD that I watched is his, on loan to me until he finds space in his new place for it. ^_^ Thanks Bruce!

Dream Girls is a 1994 documentary about the Takarazuka Musical Revue. It follows new students just joining the school and several performers in various stages of development, interspersed with interviews of some of the fans of various performers.

In any discussion of Takarazuka, gender and gender identity are inevitable topics. Upon entering the Takarazuka school, women take either male or female roles, and are required to not only play those roles upon the stage, but to live them 24/7. And to this viewer’s eye, the insistence on those gender roles are absurdly, obscenely old-fashioned and misogynistic. So much has been written about Takarazuka and gender that honestly, it would be silly for me to even attempt a basic discussion. If you are interested, do yourself a favor and click the picture above for the Google search for this movie. You’ll find all sorts of interesting articles and comments, links to books, etc.

Instead, I’m just going to blather a bit about some of the things that made an impression upon me, personally, while watching the movie. One – most people are fascinated (and a bit skeeved) by the apparent obsession with cleaning. I’m not surprised, really. You have to remember two things.

First, that Takarazuka was founded in the newly nationalistic and militaristic early 20th century Japan, so you can easily see that the “hazing” of cleaning obsessively and with bizarre attention to detail and random rules that make no apparent sense, as simply a way of developing a military-type precision and order. It’s also a way to create a group from people with disparate backgrounds, personalities and interests – as in, “we are the ones who endured this hardship together.” The movie shows some of the cleaning/hazing but from what the performers say, the hazing rituals go WAY beyond merely obsessive cleaning. I don’t know what, exactly, they are told to do, but no less than three performers say something like, “Even when they tell you to do horrible things, it’s good for you, because you learn to endure.”

Secondly, it’s important to remember that Takarazuka was not designed to create strong, independent women – its was created to create “good wives, wise mothers.” These women are not graduating to positions of financial and personal independence; they are expected to marry and subordinate themselves fully to their husbands – something that, again, several performers comment on. One of the women who plays a female role (musumeyaku) comments that even in the school and on the stage, those who play the women are in a subordinate role. (And when I heard her say that I thought, well, you won’t be going far, will you?)

Thirdly, one cannot help but think, after watching this movie (and I apologize before I say anything, because this is simply going to be offensive) that Japanese men are clearly the biggest bunch of pricks on the PLANET. By the end of the movie I wanted to start asking around just to find a single Japanese guy who is nice to their wife or girlfriend. A lot of the time spent with the fans is on how horrible men are to them, how they have to hide their interest in Takarazuka from their husbands, how rough and coarse and unpleasant they are, etc, etc and how bad women are treated in general by society. There are so many reasons for this institutionalized sexism, I’m not going near the topic, except to comment that, when we see a newly retired male role performer (otokoyaku) with her family, her father is a raging, pompous blowhard and so far beyond condescending to the women around him that I cannot for a second imagine that they didn’t beat him to death with kitchen implements. (But then, I come from a family in which the women run the household, so it just seems alien to me.) The icing on the cake was when the former otokoyaku comments that she’ll make a better wife now because, after having worn men’s jackets on stage, she’ll understand better how to help her husband into one. I probably wouldn’t have been so enraged by the sentence, except that behind her smile was an expression of utter misery.

I know for a fact that things have changed in the last fifteen years. When this film was made performers, even Top Stars, were pressured to retire after two years or at 25, to get married. (In this sense, one’s time at Takarazuka was seen as making a more accomplished wife – just like doing ikebana or traditional dance made a woman more accomplished.) Women not married by 25 were called “Christmas Cake” – implying that the day after Christmas, no one wants a Christmas cake. Nowadays, stars remain in Takarazuka much, much longer. Older Top Stars now have their own troupe, the Superior troupe. Performers are still not financially independent and the leadership of Takarazuka is still predominantly male, but based on the number of past performers who retire to less conventional lives – running clubs, restaurants, continued performing careers – it’s not as oppressive as it was previously.

But I can’t help but think that, for the women who get to shine in the limelight, especially those who play the men, it’s a poor lookout to go from being the main focus of attention to someone behind the chorus.

If you’re a fan of Takarazuka, gender studies, women’s studies or, yes, queer studies, this movie is a very, very interesting hour spent. I can’t help but also recommend Jennifer Robertson’s book, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

I also was surprised to note how many younger fans there were. Every discussion of Takarazuka that I have ever read comments that the fanbase is middle-aged married women. These women were way younger than “middle-aged.” One pair of fans they interviewed were, but the rest, early twenties, latest.

One last thing. The word “fan” comes from “fanatic” and at the beginning of this movie, especially, there is no doubt that that is the correct etymology. Those fans terrified me. I am 100% certain that I would crack and break before adoration/desire that intense and consuming. Luckily for me, I’m not likely to have the chance. Thank heavens. ^_^





Takarazuka: Singing in the Rain

February 6th, 2007

I am not a Takarazuka fangirl. I know this because I do not know the nicknames of every actress in a particular troupe. I do not follow a particular troupe or actress to the exclusion of all others. I just like what I like with no preference for anyone or anything. Makes *real* fangirls crazy, because I’m like “I have no clue what troupe so-and-so is in.” ^_^

Okay, so way back in the dawn of time, I got a copy of the Takarazuka Rose of Versailles: Oscar et Andre on VHS. It was pretty, and pretty…er…laughable. Mostly because my wife kept singing her own lyrics to the music. But at some point Aran Kei stepped out on the stage as Fersen and my interest in Takarazuka was born. And despite my refusal to obsess, I do still like Aran Kei. ^_^

So Sean Gaffney, in his continuing effort to destroy what little soul I have remaining, brought his DVD of Singing in the Rain starring Aran Kei to what was essentially a Yuricon regional staff meeting with munchies.

I had never before seen the original Singing in the Rain. Isn’t that awful? So, while I vaguely knew the story, it was all really fresh and new to me.  I think I probably liked it better *because* I hadn’t ever seen it before. I was able to follow some of the dialogue, and I honestly marveled at the way the songs were translated. They really worked.

But the number one reason the show works is the combination of Aran Kei as Don Lockwood and Yamato Yuuga as Cosmo Brown. Let me digress for a moment…

When I attended Winter Comiket 2002, I picked, quite at random, a Takarazuka doujinshi which, quite at random, was an Aran Kei book. In fact, it was a “Touko x Tani” book, which translates into English as “Aran Kei x Yamato Yuuga as a BL couple”. ^_^ It’s very bizarre to me, the lesbian who sees the otokoyaku as women in suits, that straight fans see these women as men somehow…

In any case, I went into the show knowing that fans liked the two of them together. And, now that I have seen the show, I agree. The dynamic between them was simply delightful. They aren’t Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor, but their dance moves aren’t too shoddy, either. ^_^ I can see why the doujinshi artists paired them together, and not Aran Kei and Hizuki Hana (who was, btw, quite cute as Kathy.)

In general, I am not a fan of musical theater. But you add in the gender-bending of Takarazuka, and that weird surrealism that comes from translating a thing into Japanese from English and I’m always going to find it much more entertaining. ^_^

Ratings:
Cinematography – 7
Music – 8
Story – 8 (It’s pretty funny in any language)
Characters – 9
Yuri…or is it Yaoi this time? We’ll call it – 3

Overall – 8

Mmm…Aran Kei….





Takarazuka: Elizabeth

July 8th, 2005

Yay! Imagine my happy-happiness to not only receive this awesome DVD from Japan about a week after I ordered it, but to find that it plays on my DVD player!

(Special Note: I’m getting alot of interest in this post, mostly because of YouTube. I purchased this DVD from the regular Japanese Takarazuka website through a buying service. It is not a cheap process – you will be paying for the DVD, the buyer’s commission, the shipping to buyer and the shipping to you. I don’t have a special source or website to offer you, I just threw money at the problem.)

And before I say anything else, I want you to know that the virgin watching of this DVD was done with my wife and parents – and Mom was drooling over Death’s clothes too, so it’s NOT just geeks, goths and lesbians. ^_^

You may remember back in April, just as the Yuri Revolution tour was getting underway, I, Serge, Donna and Bruce bailed to go see a Takarazuka show at their Tokyo Theater. If you do not remember, please feel free to read my original gushing report.

Clearly the plot, characters, cool clothes and Deathlings have not significantly changed since I saw this show three months ago, so the original review will stand unaltered.

I was very impressed by the DVD itself though. Not only did it unexpectedly work on my R1 DVD player (I knew it would work on my computer, of course, but this was an added bonus) but it was exceptionally high quality, with a nice little “Program” inside that included cast, crew, synopsis, scenes, songs, and history. All in Japanese of course, but that is hardly an obstacle to fangirly-dom. Even more important was the picture card of Nao looking hunky as Der Tod. Yum. It now lives on my desk at work. ^_^

Every scene/song comes with a title on the screen, so you know what song you’re listening to. I was amazed that I could read about 80% of the song titles. I guess they keep those pretty simple.

The number one win in my book was that the tango between Nao Ayaki and Jun Sena at the very end of the revue portion of the show, was just as sexy as I remember it being. I know this is really fanservice Yuri and not really even that, because we’re supposed to see Death as a guy, but you know – Nao is gorgeous and doesn’t look remotely like a guy, so to my Yuri-goggles-on-low eyes, what you have is two women dancing. And I like it a lot. ^_^

I still want one of those Hapsburg shield mirror things from the finale, too. ^_^

Ratings:
Cinematography – 6 (like all stage shows we have too many close ups and often lose what’s actually going on on the stage)
Music – 7 (sticky Broadway theme stuff)
Story – 10 (If this doesn’t make you love history, NOTHING can)
Characters – 9 (With the exception of Rudolph who is a total pussy)
Yuri – 9

Overall – 8, objectively, but for me and those of my androgynous-women-in-uniform-loving ilk, 10, really.





Yuri Revolution, Day 4

April 12th, 2005

Sorry for the delayed update – yesterday was awfully busy. All that sitting and grinning and being happy wore me out…but I digress.

The morning began with meeting the gang in the lobby. We had a fair crowd: Bruce, Zeyl, Wing, Erin, Laura, Kelli, Donna and Serge.

We hit the streets of Ikebukuro for a short walk, and then, like the good host I am, I had to bail. Donna, Serge, Bruce and I had a date with Death.

Takarazuka is an all-female musical revue troop (for the geeks out there, it’s the kind of thing Sakura Taisen is based on) that has been in existence since the 1920s. Getting tickets is hard, but Rica got us a few and the show was SO good, I forgive her for killing me the other day!

I recommend you click the above link for the story and pictures (because I couldn’t of course take pictures during the show….) but you HAVE to read the story! Who *knew* that the fall of the Hapsburgs was because Death had the hots for a woman??? I sure didn’t! I’m going to track down my history teacher and complain, because that’s a damn site better a story than boring old socio-politcal forces and changing economics!

I did manage to take a picture of the nice policeman who gave us directions at Hibiya Park:

And the outside of the Theater (all the ladies loitering are probably scalpers):

And this statue at the corner of the building:

But it will take me several separate entries to truly gush about the show. It was perfect! It was everything I’d ever hoped a Takarazuka show would be. Nao Ayaki as Death was great – she moved so cool that Donna and I kept trying to mimic it unsuccessfully – and the music and songs were brilliant. Even Luigi, the stereotypical Italian cum Greek Chorus was fantastic.

Really – my toes wiggled through the whole show it was so good.

And everywhere Death went, “he” was accompanied by a dozen Deathlings (which Donna called the “Deathkateers”. I kept singing, “He’s Mister Death Miser” tunes when they came out – and if you know the reference, you’ll understand what they looked like.

When I get home, I’ll scan in some pictures, just to show you some good bits.

In any case, it was brilliant. It was also 3 hours long. By the time we got back to Ikebukuro, I was wiped but, as it happens, almost everyone had fled. So Donna, Serge, Bruce, P and I went for Italian at the Italian Tomato (I had a spinach pasta dish which was pretty good) we crashed in our room for Doctor Who and Live Action Sailor Moon, then I kicked everyone out and was asleep by ten.

Today (Day 5) was supposed to have been sunny, but is once again rainy, so I think we won’t bother with Tokyo Tower. I’m going to start at Akasakusa and try to get to Kappabashi…and then we’ll see. :-)