Gender Ambivalent Shojo Dream Worlds
Gender Ambivalence in Interwar Japan
Gender ambivalence is a facet of what Donald Roden describes as the “iconoclastic spirit of the 1920s.”[1] The icons of gender in the interwar years were meticulously constructed during the Meiji period (1868-1912). Men and women had delineated roles meant to create a modern, enlightened society. For women, this took form in the doctrine of the “Good Wife, Wise Mother.” In this view, the government promoted women’s education to create mothers that could educate the next generation of Japan to continue the goal of modernization. This nationalistic view was later challenged by a shift in the Taisho period (1912-1926) to a focus on the individual, increased consumerism, and aspirations for a metropolitan lifestyle. These new ideas about individuality and subjectivity were then embodied in the image of the modern girl. The Japanese modern girl’s gender ambiguity is not as apparent today, but if examined within the framework of Meiji era gender construction, she was a shocking development for government officials and intellectuals. The Taisho period was represented by urban working-class women finding careers, financial independence, and cosmopolitan identity that blended both Western and Japanese interests. Her modern western dress and predilection for smoking, shopping, and cruising the streets of Ginza, Tokyo’s most fashionable neighborhood, were all attributes that made the modern girl more masculine than her Meiji-era counterpart. Following Chino Saeki’s definition of masculine as being spatially connected to the outer and public, the modern girl’s masculinity was seen in her public visibility.[2] The modern girl was an active participant in the public sphere, both in the economic sense that she could be an independent consumer and producer of goods and just by her mere presence in broader society unaffiliated with her family. Existing outside without being defined by the family unit was a privilege intended only for men. This new world configuration, where the strict lines between public and private were becoming blurred because of economic need and greater individualism, resulted in a cultural and artistic response. Writers and artists taken with the era’s gender ambivalent attitudes would increasingly create works that explored homosexuality and homosociality. This was the environment Takarazuka was conceived in, and it was an increasingly gender-ambivalent generation of young women that would become their target audience. As such, Takarazuka often attracted criticism from those anxious over challenges to Meiji-era values. Its detractors saw the theater as a staged manifestation of their anxieties around masculinized women and “deviant” sexualities.[3] The otokoyaku and her fanbase of predominately young women were the height of the “grotesque eroticism” of the era.[4]
Takarazuka’s owner Kobayashi deflected this by reframing the otokoyaku as an emblem of ideal masculinity and, therefore, a positive reflection of Japan’s patriarchy. To respond to the continued criticism, Kobayashi put limits on the actresses’ behavior off the stage to combat the tabloids’ fascination with their personal lives. The hidden long hair in Figure 15 is an excellent example of this strategy. However, Ashihara’s generation of otokoyaku posed a significant challenge to these limits. Kadota Ashiko, another famous otokoyaku actor, was the first to cut her hair short in 1932, and the rest of the otokoyaku followed suit, including Ashihara. This blatant breaking of the theater’s still-existing rule against cutting one’s hair suggests there might have been tension between the actresses and the administration, although no concrete evidence has emerged. The Revue ultimately conceded to this and made it part of the newly delineated otokoyaku’s style.
The decisive role assignments and distinct new techniques allowed for many otokoyaku to garner larger fanbases. It was these fan circles that caused the majority of Kobayashi’s stress. Ashihara’s fans famously called her “anigi,” an honorific for an older brother. In a letter to Ashihara, Kobayashi warned her not to allow the younger students of the theater to use masculine speech off the stage. Included were terms like boku (a masculine self-referent) and kimi (a masculine form of you.)[5] Ashihara replied to Kobayashi that he had nothing to worry about, that they were all ordinary girls. Robertson proposes that Kobayashi possibly created this reply letter to publish the exchange and assure people that Takarazuka actresses were nothing like the modern girls that had caused so much social tension.[6] Several other correspondences like this exist between Kobayashi and senior women in the theater.
Kobayashi’s most important tool in protecting the theater’s reputation was framing the Takarasiennes as shojo (teenage girls). If the actresses of the theater were girls and not women, then the theater existed in the gray area of adolescence that allowed for the kind of gender and sexual explorations that took place on the Takarazuka stage. This framing as shojo is most apparent in the theater’s terminology about the Takarasiennes. The performers of female roles are referred to as musume (daughter) rather than onna (woman.)[7] Also, instead of using the term joyu (actress), Kobayashi insisted the girls be referred to as seito (student.)[8] These distinctions created associations with family and school, which were proper patriarchal structures for girls to exist within. They created an image of the Takarasiennes as naive and pure, untouched by the adult world of sex and marriage.
Modern girls wearing “Beach Pajama” style clothing walking down Ginza, 1928.
The image extended to the otokoyaku through the rise of terminologies such as “chusei” and “Dansō no reijin” (a beautiful woman dressed as a man) to refer to the male role performers. Chusei was neutral, neither man nor woman, and the term implied a childlike naivete. While Dansō no reijin translates to “a beautiful person in male attire,” the person is understood to be female. The theater employed chusei to free the otokoyaku from the fraught discussion of gender and sex in the interwar years. Dansō no reijin was not a phrase Kobayashi liked or used for the otokoyaku, but it was used by the public in the 1930s sympathetically towards the otokoyaku.[9] Both these terms create a language for the gender ambivalence present in the promotional images of Ashihara Kuniko.
The combination of feminine and masculine visual markers, like those visualized in Figure 18 and 19, created a sense of overall androgyny rather than the expected masculinity. Ashihara, in these images, embodies a clean-cut suaveness like popular movie stars of the day but also more delicate “girlish” features that female viewers could connect with. In this way, the otokoyaku was never intended to be a real man. Instead, they were an ideal man, one that is “suaver, more affectionate, more courageous, more charming, more handsome, and more fascinating” than a real man.[10]
The Shield of Shojo Culture
Takarazuka never entirely escaped its critics. For all the tempered language and efforts to desexualize, it presented a compelling dream world where gender and sexuality were in flux. Young women and girls could imagine themselves in positions and relationships that the patriarchal structures of Japanese society did not allow. Moreover, these girls were Takarazuka’s paying fanbase. As a commercial enterprise, it was in the theater’s best interest to lean into what made them famous. The disconnect between ideals and commercial appeal had to stay because Takarazuka’s dream world was part of the larger world of shojo culture. The shojo culture was a unique subculture for young girls that rose from the homosocial environments of the same-sex schools formed in the Meiji, the same schools that Takarazuka would use as the model for their institution. This subculture found a home in the publication Shojo no tomo (1908).
Figure 21. Nakahara Junichi, Illustration for “A Note on Purple” by Yoshiya Nobuko, 1940.
Portrait of Nakahara Junichi, Date Unknown.
Here shojo gained narrative and illustrative forms that would become an essential basis for the stories and aesthetics of Takarazuka. The dominant aesthetics of shojo culture identified by Deborah Shamoon are “purity, elegance, innocence, and chastity,”[11] as well as the articulation of female friendships through “the language of spiritual love.”[12] In Shojo no tomo, the stand-out contributors were author Yoshiya Nobuko and illustrator Nakahara Junichi, who married Ashihara in 1938. To facilitate a discussion of shojo‘s narrative, illustrated, and staged forms and their relationship, I will use an example of a piece where all are present. In a 1940 issue of Shojo no tomo, Yoshiya Nobuko published a short story titled “A Note on Purple,” illustrated by Nakahara Junichi. (Figure 21)
“A Note on Purple” tells the story of a young girl named Kimi who joins the Takarazuka music academy with her friend Katsu. The two girls dream of performing together on the stage. This dream becomes complicated when after their debut, Katsu becomes a popular otokoyaku, and Kimi, a musumeyaku, struggles to get roles. Eventually, Kimi learns she must move to Hokkaido to live with her aunt and give up her Takarazuka dreams. At the last minute, Kimi fills in as the maid in the show Katsu is leading. She only has to walk on stage and hand Katsu’s character a letter from the female lead. Kimi decides to use this chance to say goodbye to Katsu, so she writes a note on the prop. She tells Katsu how much she loves her and how she will miss her. After getting her fleeting moment on stage with Katsu, Kimi leaves the theater.
Here we see an example of a narrative and relationship standard in Yoshiya Nobuko’s work and shojo at large. This type of passionate friendship between girls was categorized as an S relationship. This relationship was a product of the insular world of the all-girls schools and education that cautioned girls against sex before marriage. To guard their chastity, heterosexual connections were out of the question, but girls could pursue and be pursued by one another with no risk.[13] Because of the lack of risk, educators imposed no strict limitations on these interactions. With no regulation, fiction in girls’ magazines developed to include these relationships. Another common facet of these stories is a narrative that accentuates the fleeting nature of the relationship. The S relationship was understood as one that would end eventually. The girls would go on to become wives and mothers in the future. This impermanence was usually a by-product of a school setting where older characters would eventually graduate and enter adulthood. This setup worked in Takarazuka, as it was expected that Takarasiennes would retire upon marriage. The implication in “A Note on Purple” is that because Kimi has found no success in Takarazuka, her family has decided she should move on and find a marriage partner with the help of her aunt.
The two-page illustration that accompanies the story features both Kimi and Katsu. Katsu can be seen in the mirror reflection standing behind Kimi; the corner of her matador cape peaks into the left side of the composition. Kimi is sitting at a vanity surrounded by photos of various Takarazuka actresses. On the vanity are containers of make-up as well as dolls. They can be read as symbols of childhood and purity which was the perpetual state of the world of Takarazuka. By leaving Takarazuka, Kimi is leaving her childhood behind. The dolls are also a signature mark of Nakahara. Nakahara’s interest in shojo began with French doll making. These dolls were the model for his shojo protagonists. Both girls have delicately rendered faces with a soft oval shape, big stary eyes, and small lips and noses. It is interesting to consider that Ashihara might be the model for Katsu in this image. Katsu is also one of the only instances where Nakahara depicts a masculine-presenting person pre-world war 2. With no other model in this period for how Nakahara might draw men, it can be argued that Ashihara, and, by extension, the otokoyaku, is Nakahara’s beautiful boy.[14] Just like Ashihara, Katsu at first reads like a young man in the room with Kimi, but her visual similarity to Kimi reminds us that she is also a girl.
Sameness was a common feature in shojo illustration. Nakahara’s girls often came in pairs, sometimes dressed in identical uniforms or different fashions, but always with the same doll-like faces. This mirroring in the features communicated a sense of community among girls.[15] No matter what the girls wore or the setting, they were united by this similarity. It made it easier for readers of Shojo no Tomo to identify with the girls in the story but also gave them a unified ideal. The elegant poses in Nakahara’s illustrations communicated a sense of weakness and longing. Nakahara expressed emotionality through the strategic placements of hands and demure head tilts. This longing was an extension of the impermanence in shojo stories. Circumstances outside their control often separated the girls. They were left with a melancholy that would come through in the copious amount of highlight Nakahara used in their eyes, creating a watery dazed quality.
Portrait of Yoshiya Nobuko, late 1930s. Kamakura Museum of Literature Archives.
Takarazuka gave flesh and form to the ideas in Yoshiya’s stories and Nakahara’s illustrations. The appeal of Takarazuka and, more specifically, the otokoyaku can be traced back to the S-relationship. The otokoyaku presented a safe place for girls to place their love and fantasies. The tension and power dynamics inherent in heterosexual relationships were nonexistent in the world of Takarazuka; instead, the otokoyaku fits comfortably into the aesthetics of sameness articulated by Nakahara. She was a part of the shojo community, and audiences could imagine themselves as the otokoyaku or her musumeyaku partner. This connection between the Otokoyaku and the S-relationship in shojo is the foundation for the queerness of the Takarazuka theater along with its manipulation of gender on stage. Ultimately the individuals on stage were both women and even though the otokoyaku was tasked with performing masculinity, the popularity of the S-relationship tells us that Takarazuka audiences were still reading these relationships as being ostensibly between two women. While scholarly debate is still had on the lesbian erotic potential of the theater, it is difficult to ignore Takarazuka’s queerness considering its relationship to this distinctly queer era of shojo culture.
This illustration also demonstrates that this relationship of influence did not only travel in one direction. Takarazuka had, by 1940, become a new venue for shojo to play out their stories of S-relationships and delicate sameness. Takarazuka had so thoroughly constructed itself upon the shojo tradition that it was now a new environment for shojo to materialize its fantasy world. Yoshiya had been a known supporter of the theater throughout the 1930s, and Nakahara’s marriage to Ashihara would solidify his fan status. In an interview for the August 1938 issue of Graph magazine, the two discussed how they met. Nakahara mentioned seeing Arlesienne in 1935, which had starred Ashihara, along with several other productions. He had even seen Unforgettable Song three times earlier that year.[16] These personal and working relationships between Nakahara, Ashihara, and Yoshiya exemplify the interconnectedness of these three art forms in the creation and proliferation of shojo culture.
I will now return to the bromide of Ashihara analyzed earlier in this chapter and examine it side by side with an illustration by Nakahara (Figure 22) from a year later, in 1939, an illustration representative of the majority of Nakahara’s oeuvre. The comparison reveals some immediate visual similarities, that better articulate the otokoyaku’s ability to fit into the world of Shojo. In both the bromide and illustration, the eyes are cast to the side dreamily. Both figures have long, soft eyebrows with no arch that expresses a sense of sentimentality. Nakahara’s illustration only has the subtle suggestion of a nose using two simple lines. A similar effect is created in Ashihara’s photo with the help of intense studio lighting and cake makeup that smoothed her skin. Ashihara’s lips are delicately painted to minimize their size but define their shape; Nakahara’s girl also has a small, well-defined mouth. The poses also mirror each other. Nakahara has a more substantial tilt to the head, and both hands are held up in an expression of emotion and longing. Ashihara’s pose evokes a similar feeling of demureness, just more subtly. It is easier to imagine these two characters existing in the same world. Ashihara would not be out of place among her husband’s elegant illustrations in Shojo no tomo. Her portraits paint her as the “ideal man” whose gender neutrality makes them the perfect subject of adolescent fantasy in the homosocial world of shojo.
Figure 22. Comparison of Nakahara Junichi, Cover illustration for Hanamonogatari, 1939 (Left) & Bromide of Ashihara Kuniko, ca.1938 (Right)
Conclusion
By contextualizing Ashihara’s and, by extension, the Otokoyaku’s image within the turbulent culture of interwar Japan, we can understand one-way women negotiated freedom and expression within the strict structure of patriarchy. Takarazuka and shojo were not necessarily intended to be hyper-subversive. Like their early modern predecessors, they were wrapped in layers of strategic androgyny and performance that lessened their transgressive potential. But they did ultimately create a space for young women to expand their understanding of themselves, whether that be in romances outside the patriarchal order or as the hero of their own story. Unlike the early modern cross-dressed geisha and the print publishing industry at the mercy of the feudal censors, the Otokoyaku was allowed to thrive in modern Japan’s new profits-driven world. The cross-dressed woman’s image was too appealing for the modern woman to ignore, and the modern woman’s buying power couldn’t be ignored as well. Ashihara and Nakahara would continue to influence the shojo subculture in the post-war years when they were free work and publish again. This continued presence allowed for the otokoyaku’s vision of androgynous masculinity to continue into contemporary art and literature, existing within and complicating the boundaries of Japanese femininity.
[1] Roden, “Taishō Culture”, 37.
[2] Chino, “Gender in Japanese art,” 32.
[3] See Teresa A. Algoso’s “Thoughts on Hermaphroditism: Miyatake Gaikotsu and the Convergence of the Sexes in Taishō Japan.” The Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (2006) for more on the fears of women becoming men in relationship to rising coverage in the news of intersex and transgender individuals during the Meiji period.
[4] Robertson, Takarazuka, 67.
[5] Robertson, Takarazuka, 73.
[6] Robertson, Takarazuka, 73.
[7] Robertson, Takarazuka, 14.
[8] Stickland, Gender Gymnastics, 28-29.
[9] Robertson, Takarazuka, 72.
[10] Robertson, Takarazuka, 17
[11] Shamoon, Passionate Friendship, 30.
[12] Shamoon, Passionate Friendship, 29.
[13] Shamoon, Passionate Friendship, 44.
[14] There is a very small selection of post war examples of Nakahara drawings of boys. Those drawings bear a striking resemblance to Katsu.
[15] Shamoon, Passionate Friendship, 67.
[16] “Nostalgic Photo Studio: Ashiahra Kuniko and Nakahara Junichi talk, August 1938. The reason they hit it off and got married” Tsubuyaki-kan. accessed December 12, 2021, https://tsubuyaki3578.at.webry.info/202003/article_57.html