Mori Keaki published this essay book the month before her retirement as Top Star of Snow Troupe. It is mainly a memoir of her personal journey in Takarazuka, as well as her early life. Her writing/formatting style is kind of unique, and I tried to reproduce or reflect it as much as possible.
It’s a really lovely book, that ended up making me cry many times. I hope you enjoy it!
For a table of contents with links to all the chapters, go here.
What it means to ‘transform’…
Luckily for me, my days of receiving roles in junior performances continued.
When I became Ken-2 I was assigned to Snow Troupe, and my very first main performance was a show called Mars of the Blue Rose, but…
Once again I ended up shouting ‘what the heck~!!’ In the junior performance, I was going to play one of the main supporting roles, Nicola.
A foreign man from hundreds of years ago.
And he was lame in one leg, they said.
Nicola.
‘I’m gonna be a man~!!’
That feeling was, of course, really strong.
But it was beginning to change somewhat…
A new, vigorous seed had been planted, which continues to motivate even the current Mori Keaki; namely…
I felt ‘I have to dive into Nicola-kun’s era’.
Looking back on this I end up laughing wryly at myself again, but…
From the day the roles were assigned, I started letting my hair grow out.
Since he was a man from olden times, he would have had long hair.
I wanted to do it with my own hair, instead of using a wig!!
I wanted to get as close as I could to what that sort of ‘man’ would have been like in real life!!
So…
This was my determination to ‘transform’ into a real man.
Also.
Nicola was lame in one leg…
So, when I thought of that, I immediately went out and bought some crutches and started using them, not just in my own house; when I was out and about in the neighborhood I would use a cane to get around, spending my time trying to transform myself into the character.
This might have confused some people around that time who didn’t know the situation.
‘That young girl in Snow Troupe, Mori Keaki, seems to have injured her leg. Poor thing…’ I might have ended up causing that kind of totally meaningless concern.
Uh, so I’ll take this time to say…
If that actually was the case.
I’m really sorry about that…
But, as for me, this whole situation ended up with me making a discovery that had me thinking ‘Whaaaaat~!’ for the first time.
While I was personally studying what it would be like to play a character who was lame in one leg, I got so immersed it that, no joke, just like Nicola my ‘bad leg’ started hurting so much I couldn’t move it.
During the main performance I was totally fine, but.
When I transformed into the role of Nicola, it really hurt!!
Ever since I was a kid…
Ever since before I became Mori Keaki, I was the sort of person to be totally absorbed in something and try to ‘become’ something, but…
Oh~… Playing a role, is becoming someone else…
Figuring this out made things even more fun and fascinating for ‘Mori Keaki’.
In the junior performance of the next Snow Troupe production, Wandering Requiem…
It was May, so I had only just become a brand-new Ken-3, but…
I got a lead role!!
I was given the role of Colonel Kobrinsky1.
Mori Keaki had only just reached her third spring after debuting…
Going by my age, I was only a young girl of barely twenty.
And the role I had to play, Colonel Kobrinsky, was a soldier and a revolutionary.
This wasn’t the kind of role where I could figure things out just by watching boys run around the neighborhood.
But still.
‘I’m gonna be a man~!!’
That again.
The young Mori Keaki pressed forward full of determination.
…But. What was a military, revolutionary man was supposed to be like!?
On top of that, this Kobrinsky guy was in love with one of the princesses, and as the revolution was taking place, even though he was supposed to kill her, he allows her to escape, and then, in order to take responsibility for that, he commits suicide…
Love and revolution.
So it was like, which of those is more important to a man!?
I had no clue.
I tracked down the director (an Actual Man).
“What about all this!?”
I asked him insistently.
He replied,
“For a man, the revolution is in his nature. But his woman is important as well.”
“…………”
Well, that only made poor Mori Keaki, barely twenty, even more confused.
But!?
…If I was a man. Furthermore, if I was Colonel Kobrinsky!?
I ended up diving into it whole-heartedly, as usual.
I was so young.
In the end, Mori Keaki’s performance ended up more along the lines of a Kobrinsky who thought ‘As for which is more important, to be honest, I don’t really know myself!!’
In Takarazuka, the important things are…
‘Style’
‘Aesthetics’
Those are definitely really vital.
Looking back on things,
Although the method was supposed to be to prioritize the Takarazuka ‘aesthetic’ in the roles you were given…
This ridiculously saucy kid, this twenty-year-old Mori Keaki, decided “Who cares about all that! No matter how dumb I look, I want everyone to see the emotions of my performance!!”
So, as an impertinent junior student, I focused on ‘feelings’ instead.
But even so, there were so many teachers and senior students who guided me with smiles.
I’m just…
So grateful.
I was really… Seriously, as a junior student, I was so uncontrollably impertinent about everything…
Thinking about it now, how I was…like…that…
I was too full of youthful energy…I’m really sorry about that.
1 – Wandering Requiem was kind of an odd show with an anthology plot, so this isn’t actually the Top Star role, but the one played by Kotobuki Hizuru. It was the lead role of Act 1. Act 2 was omitted in the junior performance, and Act 3 (which had then-Top Asami Rei as lead) had a separate junior cast. In total, since there were 2 junior productions, there were 4 junior otokoyaku leads (Nanao Tomo and Mori Keaki for Act 1, and Ebira Kaoru and Kiri Satomi for Act 2).