Locating the musics of modern Osaka

This chapter attempts to write an alternative history of Takarazuka, by re-interpreting its interwar and later history, centring on the key terms Japanese Western hybridity and national theatre. Takarazuka has been coupled with kabuki, a theatrical genre in which men perform female roles, and the tendency is to view it as something exotic. The Takarazuka Revue Company is a comparatively recent creation; originally, before the war, the English translation was usually Takarazuka Girls Opera, and this custom continued well after the war. The direction taken by Takarazuka in its attempt to establish a national theatre and be ranked as equal with Western opera can be reduced to Kobayashi Ichizs phrase, the opera-isation of kabuki. In 1932, Kobayashi established the Tokyo Takarazuka Corporation and expanded into Tokyo. The 20-year Japanese folk-dance series that began with the 1958 production of Kujira and ended with Matsuri no fantajii in 1978 illustrates this postwar archetype.