Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan

Abstract

TakaraZuka:Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. jENNIFER ROBERTSON. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; 278 pp. Reviewed by ALAN TANSMAN Georgetown University A rich and provocative study of the all-female Takarazuka theater revue, this book grapples with complicated connections among theater, gender politics, nationalism, colonialism, and commerce in twentieth-century Japan. Through impressive archival research and fieldwork, Robertson analyzes modem reflexively create sense of themselves as female or (p. 20), and how this is central to the discourse of national cultural identity in Japan. She examines how the Revue's performances were an extension of Japan's colonialist project (p. 97), and explores the politics of representation, which determines how `the people' are variously claimed as agents of, an audience for, and products of popular cultural forms and practices (p. 21). book also tells fascinating story of commerce and capitalism in modem Japan and of one creative capitalist, the Revue founder Kobayashi Ichizo. In attempting to puzzle through the connections between culture and politics, Robertson has hard nut to crack, one that perhaps can be less cracked than pried open, and this she does through style of figurative analysis. Argument through analogy, homology, and allegory leads Robertson to make intriguing and imaginative insights. This is brave methodology, sometimes too speculative, but worthwhile. It displays the difficulties of cultural studies that strives to cover vast array of material employing the tools of various disciplines. problem is especially vexing when the analyst uses literary tools to link art and reality. The performance efficacy of montage, or its potential to exert sociopolitical influence, whether in photography, cinema, or theater, is allegorical (p. 117), writes Robertson, and though this might be shown to be true, too often she relies on arguments made through mere assertion of similarity. About acting and colonialist policy, for example, Robertson writes: Acting, as process of assimilation, involved the production of the external markers of character through technical expertise (kata) as well as the dialogical creation of character's inner life, in order to animate the role. She then argues that a similar twofold process characterized assimilation in the service of colonialist (p. 95). Elsewhere, she suggests homology between the process of an onnagata [man in woman's role], or otokoyaku [woman in man's role] becoming Woman and man, respectively, and the process whereby colonial subject 'became' Japanese. As we shall see, androgyny is related to hybridity . . . (p. 91). And again: Japanese androgynes and their fans signify, allegorically, national culture that is an evercontemporizing, self-consciously hybrid formation (p. 207). connections Robertson makes, through phrases like conceptually related, though suggestive, are not entirely concrete. Much the same might be said when Robertson argues the analogical relationship between acting and empire. nation was not unlike 'real' onnagata [man in woman's role], male who contains and controls the female by becoming the Woman . . . (p. 93); and the use of whiteface makeup is theatrical equivalent of the colonial policy of assimila tion .. .. It involves an erasure, or whiting out, of an actor's facial features and the substitution of inscribed signs of ideal masculinity or femininity (p. 190). Robertson sometimes comes to conclusions that smooth over the complexity of the wide range of materials she so impressively reveals, and she envelops these materials within arguments that feel constructed to substantiate political argument. One way of doing this is to assume an intimate understanding of her subjects' motivations and desires. …