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= Cross-Gender Acting Wiki Page =

Traditions of male-only performance cultures
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The Takarazuka Revue is a contemporary all-female Japanese acting company, known for their elaborate productions of stage musicals. Takarazuka was created in the early 20th century by Ichizō Kobayashi Takarazuka actresses specialize in either male roles (otokoyaku) or female roles (musumeyaku), with male-role actresses receiving top billing.

In contrast to kabuki’s exclusion of female performers, Takarazuka introduced a theatrical performance platform where women could take the stage. However, despite this opportunity for women to embody roles that represented their sex, as well as a man’s, the structure of Takarazuka still reflected the patriarchal control of Japan. The musumeyaku represented fictional recreations of women. As for the otokoyaku, their roles aimed to emulate a model man that women would desire. Jennifer Robertson asserts, “Personal or contrary motivations and desires aside, both musumeyaku and otokoyaku are the products of a masculinist imagination in their official stage roles”.

Women as Men
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In contrast to women playing men and vice-versa in Spain’s comedia, Japan’s Takrazuka Revue Company only had female performers for both their male and female roles. Amongst the Takarasiennes, the musumeyaku and otokoyaku role distributions were determined after they graduated from the Takarazuka Music School (Takarazuka Ongaku Gakkō). The musumeyaku and otokoyaku positions of the performers were determined through an evaluation of the performers’ appearance and behavioral performance ability of a female or male. In this assessment, facial and body signifiers (e.g. jaw structure, eyebrows, height, shoulder span) were taken into consideration to determine what females would be fit for the positions. Additionally, behavioral test runs examined the voice, mannerism, and overall persona of the performers.

Gender-Sex Politics in Cross-Gender Acting
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Within Japan’s Takarazuka Revue Company, their most notable feature, besides their show-stopping extravagant productions, is the role of their otokoyaku character. This is the popular male character played by trained female performers that specialize in exuding the dreamy, heroic, and graceful man of women’s dreams. To further explain the role of the otokoyaku ‘male’ character, Lorie Brau contends that, "The otokoyaku does not represent a 'nama no otoko,' that is to say, a 'man in the raw,' but an idealized, 'beautiful' man-a man without dirt, sweat, roughness, and a need to dominate. The otokoyaku's female following see her as a version of this kind of androgynous, safe beauty rarely found in real men". Therefore, while the otokoyaku presents a male guise that is the “risoteki na dansei” (ideal man) women are attracted to, the otokoyaku also creates an admirable attraction from female fans because they embrace a type of androgynous freedom and non-constrained continuum of gender. As female performers, fans see women breaking the confines of societal female expectations, as well as embracing the femme side of the male-masculine image. However, despite this progressive multi-dimensional role of the otokoyaku, the reality of how far these interpretations could be expressed by the actual female performers was quite the opposite.

With the creation of the Takarazuka Revue Company, Ichizō Kobayashi intended to use the troupe to reinforce the patriarchal status quo of Japan by training his female performers how to be obedient women and “good wives and wise mothers”. Despite the non-conventional female position as the otokoyaku, this too played into patriarchal ideologies. Jennifer Robertson mentions, “Kobayashi theorized that by performing as men, females learned to understand and appreciate males and the masculine psyche” (p. 147).