Leonie Stickland, Gender Gymnastics: Performing and Consuming Japan's Takarazuka Revue

The artifice of gender performance - sometimes playful, mostly conscientious - as enthralled and entertained audiences of Japan’s all-female Takarazuka Revue for more than ninety years. The dashing male-role players in its musical theatre productions enjoy the adulation of a predominantly female audience for whom those handsome idols represent ideal masculinity, while those 'men' in turn are reflected and magnified by the overwrought femininity of their female-role counterparts.

This volume resounds with the voices of those closest to Takarazuka: the girls and women who have danced, sung and acted in its limelight. Using exclusive interviews, historical records, autobiographies and years of close-hand observation, former Revue translator and voice actor Leonie Stickland extensively explores the aspirations, endeavours and experiences of Takarazuka’s creators, performers and adoring fans, while simultaneously elucidating gender issues which have impacted upon the life-stages of women in Japan throughout the past century.