What is Takarazuka?

Takarazuka Kagekidan is a Japanese musical theatre with over 100 years of history. The most identifying aspects of Takarazuka are the all-female cast and a specific visual style in makeup and costumes which emerged through the years. The plays are very varied, but they are almost always musicals with a hour long revue afterwards, and if not, at least a short revue-like finale (after longer play). The revues are the art form of itself, designed to make the viewer feel even more amazement after the experience. The costumes are rich and glittery, there are a lot of dancers on stage and the big, splendid finale with feathers and luminous stairs.



The otokoyaku (players of male roles) and musumeyaku (players of female roles) compliment each other perfectly and sing together with their distinctive techniques which are assigned to their performed gender, with the looks and voices that work together to perform the contrast - the performative, exaggerated expression of binary, but is it hetero and binary after all?



Takarazuka is heavily queer-coded for its fans, due to alternative gender expression and the romantic tone to their performances. It's a very interesting element of Japanese culture and Japanese gender definition which often provides a kind of safe interest space for people, often otherwise closeted.



At the same time, the official discourse of Takarazuka company often minimized the meaning and avoided the public acknowledgement of a queer aspect through the years. This dissonance is very prominent and specific to Japanese mainstream treatment of LGBT tropes at the time, but in the hearts of fans Takarazuka often becomes the gateway to lesbian or genderqueer themes, and/or the extension of their already established identity. This is especially prominent with western fans, with a bit different approach to their public queerness, but even in Japan the unspoken stereotype associated Takarazuka with the homoerotic appeal otokoyaku have onto women - and it's no new revelation.



Takarazuka is an interesting case of a theatre established in a far different era (the 1914!) which radically grew and started to be a multigenerational chain of inspiration during the next century. The performers, who grew up watching Takarazuka, become the new generations of actresses, and a circle goes on. The theatre consists of 5 troupes, with a very strict inside hierarchy, and the position of an actress depends on her seniority in the troupe, with a "top star" as a main leader. The top stars shift during the years, allowing younger actresses to play main roles. This hierarchical arrangement is specific for Japanese revue and unique in itself.

The Japanese all-female revue isn't limited to Takarazuka, as there is a movement of smaller theatres inspired by it. Takarazuka is the biggest and the most documented one though, and the one which is the most accesible for foreign fans due to fan-translations.





To watch Takarazuka in English, you need to look for the video streams run by fans on Tumblr, Dreamwidth or other website, as there is no official distribution of translated shows. You can buy various DVD and CD in Japan, but only in Japanese language so far. There is a base of downloadable fanmade subtitles matching with various DVDs though, this the second option of distribution of fan translations. One of the English resources about Takarazuka is called TakaWiki, there is also fanbase on VK and Amino. You can see videoclips of Takarazuka performances on VK, NicoNico, BiliBili and YouTube.