Takarazuka

(I never take enough pictures!)

Yesterday, Jess and I made the pilgrimage up to the town of Takarazuka, which is coincidentally where Osamu Tezuka is from (probably the greatest mangaka of all time, he created Astro Boy), and that's where the Tezuka Museum is as well. But that's not why I was there (although chances that Andy drags me back there for the Tezuka Museum: very high). I was there to see a musical version of Zorro put on by one of the famous takarazuka troupes.

If you are not familiar with takarazuka, it is an all-female troupe that performs gaudy, sparkly musicals for the benefit of their legions of obsessed fans, who are mostly middle and high school aged girls and housewives. The subtext here is incredible, but I don't really feel like going into it right now.

Ever since I learned about takarazuka when doing my independent research project over Winter Term my freshman year on Japanese queer identities, I've been pretty fascinated by it. It's highly competitive, and of course like any other mode of entertainment, once you get too old, you're out, and it's time for the next wave to come in. We watched a documentary on it once in Wert's Modern Japanese History class, and that said that former otokoyaku (the women who specialize in the male roles) are supposed to make really good wives, because they understand a male perspective.

Before Zorro, we were treated to a dance performance centering around wind and woodblock prints, and Japanese things, which is kind of rare for takarazuka (although I did see some posters for some Japanese-looking plays coming up). Mostly they tend to stick to very Western themes. They're big on historical romances. But I was thoroughly impressed with the technical elements of this performance, they clearly have quite a LOT of money to spend. I think my favorite was when a giant circle in the middle of the enormous stage began to rotate, with dancers frozen in male-female couples wearing nice hats, while the main male-female couple (in their nice kimono) wove between them and the lanterns. It was like they were on a lake, it was very stunning.

Zorro was pretty fabulous but needed more sparkles. The costumes were very nice though, I liked those a lot. I can't say too much for the music--the chorus to one of the main songs was, Viva Zorro 今から, and in case you don't speak Spanish and Japanese, that means, "Long live Zorro, starting now!" which just doesn't sound that great, let me tell you. But it was still really enjoyable, and there was lots of dancing, and when there were sparkles, oh, there were sparkles. After the story had clearly ended, they segued into Jazz Zorro, where every main character got to do one last huge dance number in more modern-looking outfits with a more abstract feel.

So I mean, I would go again. I'm really sad that we missed the Phoenix Wright one, I don't think anything in the world will be able to make up for that loss. But I'm glad I got to go. And you know, it was all in Japanese, but I understood the most important parts (though I did get lost when the fancy Spaniards were talking). Hooray listening comprehension?