This book is a memoir of Aran Kei’s time as a member of Takarazuka, as well as her post-Takarazuka career and memories of her childhood. It was published in 2010 to commemorate the 20th year of her stage career. It also features messages from Takarazuka classmates and other colleagues and theatre artists she has worked with.
Some paragraph breaks have been added for ease of reading in English. I have also collected many archival images from various sources to illustrate the book.
“Looking at my foundations in Korea”
When I was creating my stage name for Takarazuka, my father kept bringing me stage name suggestions where he had inserted a character from his own name. But I felt like all the names using my father’s name characters were too ‘heavy’, and I could only think of one name that felt like ‘me’. That was “Aran Kei”.
The family name, ‘Aran’, is taken from the protagonist of the legend of Arirang, and the characters are the [安 (‘A’)] from my real name and the flower [蘭 (‘ran’, orchid)], and the given name is taken from my roots in Korea, with the [慶] from South Gyeongsang Province (慶尚南道 ‘Gyeongsangnam-do’) transcribed in phonetic syllables. Even though my father had his candidates rejected, he was very happy that I had woven my pride as a Zainichi Korean into my stage name.
Though I didn’t mean to intentionally explain it without being asked, if someone asked why I had chosen my stage name, I intended to answer honestly1. The name also represented my intentions to stop having a complex about my Korean heritage and feeling inferior because of it. My mother was also very happy about my stage name. Although, since she was a mother who accepted everything, I think she would have been happy about any stage name.
Out of us four siblings, only my older sister went to a North Korean School, and the other three of us went to a Japanese school. I was sort of bullied at school sometimes. I had friends so I wasn’t all alone, but I had people say “North Korean, North Korean” to me sometimes. I would unhappily wonder why I couldn’t go to a North Korean School too. I’m at the level where I can read and write it, but when I see my older sister speaking Korean, even now I wish I could have learned more of my mother tongue when I was in school.
I was raised in a town where there was a large Zainichi Korean population. It was an area where everyone in the same situation helped each other out, so as a child I felt very safe and protected. While we spoke Japanese at home, there was always Korean food on the table. We ate in Korean style, sitting around one large dish and eating from it without serving it out onto smaller plates, so competing over the food with my siblings is a good memory.
Our deep relations with our relatives, and our Buddhist funeral traditions, were also according to Korean custom. Confucian traditions are still strong in Korea, so I think I naturally learned to feel respect for those above me and to behave politely towards them. Even though I went to a Japanese school, the culture at home was Korean. When I was a child I often struggled with being different, so I think that difference eventually created a feeling of being ashamed of my Korean ethnicity.
Although my father sent us to Japanese schools, he also tried to raise us to be prouder than anyone of our Korean roots. But I wanted to get away from the feelings of competing with Japanese people that had developed due to being overly fixated on my Korean roots. I tried not to think about it too much, but that just made me develop even more of a complex about being 3rd-generation Zainichi Korean, and I think that formed a dark side within me.
When I was in a long plateau period and wasn’t moving forward in Takarazuka, there were times where I thought the reason might have been my Korean nationality. Takarazuka is a ‘pure, proper, beautiful’ dream world. I thought I couldn’t let my dark side out there. But refusing that was refusing my own self. I think that the time I spent struggling within that narrow space and recreating myself is how I am the person I am now. Eventually I started to think that if I had not joined Takarazuka while I was thinking about the balance of light and dark within myself, that dark side may have become much darker. Now that I have flown free of Takarazuka, I think I will have more opportunities to express those light and dark sides in different ways.
If there are those who are prejudiced towards me because of my ethnicity, I will just need to make them acknowledge me due to something else. That thought has always motivated me to challenge myself. Being Korean is a complex of mine, and part of my power, and more than anything my pride.
1 – She actually was asked this at the time of her debut, during a televised interview with the new performers.