Yachiyo Kasugano as Prince Genji, 1952. Source. TakaWiki.
A hundred years ago or so it was a common strategy of urban railway companies to construct a public attraction at the end of a new line to help ensure a regular ridership. That's how Ottawa's Britannia Park came about. In 1913 the owners of Osaka's Hankyu Railway put up a grand theatre at the end of the Osaka-Takarazuka line, and in so doing helped create a new kind of Japanese spectacle, the Takarazuka Revue.
Takarazuka employs a large all-female troupe of singers, dancers and actors who perform lavish showpieces mixing Western and Japanese entertainment traditions. The performers, many of whom specialize in male roles, have a huge female fan following.
James A. Michener, aware that the Japaneses novelists of his day liked to send their characters to the theatre, structured his 1954 novel Sayonara around the Takarazuka Revue.
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