Author: Takarazuka.
Title: A collection of 112 bromide photo postcards of Takarazuka actors
Description: n.p. c1920 to 30. These were obviously in an album with corners which have somehow interacted with the photo surface and caused bleaching and marks to corners and edges. There are three or four plain photos, the rest are postcards. Four have writing on the back and three are stamped. These are dated 1920. ¶ The Takarazuka, the all women theatre company, was founded in 1913, presented their first show in 1914, introduced the revue to Japan in 1927, and is now, as much of the world knows, huge. There is a mountain of stuff out there but there is a paucity of images and information from their first years. A collection like this - the number of postcard photos - makes it evident that there was a well established fandom and a fair industry in satisfying them by the twenties, but not so much seems to have survived. Sketchy and gap-toothed lists of actors are extant but most have no accompanying portraits; similarly sketchy lists of productions survive but even fewer are accompanied by photographs. I went through a decade of actors grouped by their first year assiduously collected on Takawiki expecting to find several examples of the same cards; I found one. In later years actors became specialists, the otokoyaku play men, the musumeyaku play women, but our actors played men and women, Japanese and westerner, traditional and modern, gangster and empress. Nara Miyako, Kadota Ashiko and Ashihara Kuniko are identified; the rest are up to you. All are in costume and most are in action on stage.

Keywords: theatre Japan c20th women Takaruzuka feminism photography modernism