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.

I got bigger…?

Moving on.

During that time when I had been secretly building up barriers around myself.

Looking at things from an outside perspective, Mori Keaki of Takarazuka was being called ‘really talented’, a ‘top student’, continually being blessed with good roles…and so eventually I reached Ken-7.

At that point, somehow I ended up becoming the ‘second supporting star’.

To say ‘somehow’ as if it’s someone else’s affair might seem like a silly way to put it, but…

To me, it really felt that way…

A Takarazuka Top Star.

Of course everyone feels ‘it would be great to become Top Star!’

But the process of getting there varies so much.

As for me, I was really lucky, and I never really had a time where I was stuck at the bottom…and then suddenly, I was the second supporting star!? So in my situation, I sort of ended up there.

By some chance, the retirement of the troupe’s Top Star lined up with my own situation at the time……

And if those timings hadn’t matched up…?

I might never have become second supporting star, let alone Top Star…

It was the 60th year of the Showa Era¹.

Asami Rei had retired from Snow Troupe, and Taira Michi was about to have her debut as Top Star. And I…

I still had those same barriers up. And even though I thought of myself “I’m so boring. No matter what role I do it all seems the same! I’m not interesting at all,” I was promoted to second supporting star.

This brought my depression and frustration to a peak.

Due to all the lead roles I had been given in junior performances and Bow performances, as well as third supporting roles, et cetera, in main performances, I had gradually, and then more rapidly, begun to feel more strongly “This is Takarazuka, after all. Of course I need to put my heart into my roles, but the most important thing is to do it beautifully, isn’t it.”

‘I’m gonna be a real man!!’

Somehow, on the way to becoming second supporting star,

Really suddenly, I realized.

Oh. I’m a woman. And actually, a really feminine woman. I should try to create the sort of ‘man’ that a ‘woman’ like me would like. Takarazuka is about creating the man of a woman’s dreams, after all!!

All of a sudden, I did a 180 degree reverse, from aiming for realism to trying for a romantic fantasy. My viewpoint totally changed…

But in that case, what was I supposed to do about the identity I had built up for so long!?

The role that came to me at that time was Valentino.

It was a Bow performance.

I had the lead role. Rudolf Valentino. A real-life movie star from the old days. A super attractive, romantic man. When they gave me the script to read I thought ‘this is really my type of man, I could really become this man,’ so it was a bit of a new start.

But, before that Bow performance started production, there was the Grand Theatre performance of Flower Legend of Mt. Ooe.

This was Taira Michi’s second performance as Top Star of Snow Troupe.

Taira played the demon Ibaragi-Douji.

I played the human Watanabe-no-Tsuna, who held some affection for Ibaragi-Douji even though they were enemies.

So there was that performance.

And then I had the Bow performance of Valentino.

And then there was the Tokyo Takarazuka Theatre performance of Flower Legend of Mt. Ooe, in that order…

First.

During the Grand Theatre performance of Flower Legend of Mt. Ooe, my voice broke for the first time since I entered Takarazuka.

Compared to this, the time I wrote about before², when I realized during the performance of Dawn of Lombardia “my voice won’t come out!!” was nothing at all.

“My voice won’t come out” and “My voice broke” are as different as heaven and earth!!

Anyone, when they get a cold or a sore throat, will have their voice not come out above a faint whisper, right? But when that throat inflammation dies down, their normal voice will come out just like before.

But.

To ‘break’ your voice…

No joke, it’s really broken.

It means your vocal chords are really damaged.

It’s as if something that was supposed to be round got crushed into a triangle shape. That’s not overstating it, I think.

In the state my throat was, Mori Keaki’s voice might not return to the way it had been ever again. I know it is a bit prideful of me to write this, but up until then I had a really nice voice. Especially when singing.

Therefore, if I was given solos in a performance, I never thought it over much or worried about it at all, just sang happily exactly as the sheet music instructed.

But.

As Watanabe-no-Tsuna, with my scratchy, croaky, broken vocal chords…

I couldn’t use the pretty voice I had before!!

“What am I supposed to do!? The audience will never understand the emotion of my performance this way…”

The doctor told me “this isn’t a situation where your normal voice will come back right away if you wait for the inflammation to heal.”

Now that my beautiful voice wouldn’t come out, for the first time I felt scared of singing.

Even though I had been so excited to get the lead role for Valentino, and I’d been thinking ‘This might be perfect for me!?’, now rehearsals were starting and my voice wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to!!

“What do I do, what do I do, what do I do…”

I was still hiding all of my stress behind my barriers.

But.

“What about…that time with Ricardo and Francois…!?”

My first Bow Hall appearance.

“You sing. It only has worth because you’re the one singing it,” was what Director Masatsuka had told me, right?

Back then, I had been totally desperate. My voice had been totally gone.

“But…I did sing, didn’t I. With just the energy I felt from the ‘heart’ of the role…” I thought. “I know what to do. This time, I’m much more experienced than I was then. I can’t get away with just doing the whole show in a daze. What I can do, is to make sure I fully internalize the meaning of the song lyrics, and make sure I convey that ‘heart’ to the audience in the songs!!”

With my broken voice.

I sang.

As Rudolph Valentino.

To be honest, I can’t really say now that I was totally satisfied with the result. Mori Keaki being stuck with a husky voice like that…

I really missed the self that had been able to sing so clearly.

But still.

It was definitely true that when I had been relying on my pretty voice, I hadn’t ever considered “I need to convey the meaning of the lyrics!” much at all.

Due to breaking my voice, I had been able to discover the ‘heart’ of the music.

Even though I had all the issues with my voice, and my acting, and my mental state as an actor and stage performer, that I was struggling with, I felt I had to overcome that; fighting my way through may have helped me more fully get into character as Valentino’s protagonist Rudi.

Happily, the Bow Hall production reached its finale with excellent reception.

I almost feel like absorbing the character of Rudi as much as I did may have had something to do with creating the person I am now…

In any case, then too, I ended up in my usual habits…

During the performance run of Valentino, my stomach would start hurting at the same time every day.

Exactly during the scene when Rudi was getting beaten up.

My body would end up responding to Rudi’s mental distress.

Absorbing Rudi’s character was giving me gastric inflammation!!

The day after the final performance, that time passed but it didn’t start hurting at all…

So, with that, the rather tumultuous production of Valentino came to an end.

Next was the Tokyo performance of Flower Legend of Mt. Ooe.

I made a mysterious new discovery there, too…

‘What might that be?’ I’m sure you’re saying, so.

The Top Star of that time, Taira Michi, was really blessed in terms of height. She was about 6cm taller than me. Therefore, usually if we had a scene standing together, Taira would end up looking down at me slightly to make eye contact.

I had ended up being quite aware of the fact that “I always have to look up at Taira-san when I’m saying my lines, don’t I…” ever since I was in the position to be acting together with her.

But…then…

When we were performing in the Tokyo run of Flower Legend of Mt. Ooe.

“!?…!?…!?”

Somehow, my sightline and Taira’s could make contact on the same level!!

Even though there was a 6cm height difference.

Our eyeline ended up at the same height.

“I’m not looking up at Taira-san…”

This was a real shock!!

“Maybe I’ve grown some…” I thought, but I hadn’t.

In normal circumstances, I was still 6cm shorter than Taira.

But on stage, our eyeline was at the same level!!

It’s really mysterious. That’s all I can say about it, but it really happened.

Ever since then, when I’m acting together with someone who is taller than me, I keep trying to make sure our sightline is at the same height…

How it turned out like that, I don’t understand myself, I really don’t.

But, looking at the other students, especially the junior students, sometimes a girl who is working really hard to do well one day will suddenly start to look bigger. Of course, it’s not that they suddenly grew a lot, but sometimes it will look as if they’ve become a bit larger.

Looking back on that, I think maybe it was that sort of thing for me, too…

Internal power, or something.

“The curtain’s rising! This is the real thing!!”

Those sorts of times.

Some sort of mysterious power will give them a bit of a size boost…

Or, something.

But no matter what it was, that was a huge, huge, huge, surprise to me.

Every day I would be like “Let’s ride this momentum!!”

And go out onstage full of energy.

At that time, I felt so much of the mysterious power and endless possibilities humans have.

1 – 1985 in Western reckoning.

2 – See Chapter 2.