CARNIVAL was longtime Takarazuka interviewer Ashizawa Jin’s 2015 GRAPH column. This talk with then-Moon Troupe member Asami Jun was published in April.
CARNIVAL #5 – Asami Jun
Asami Jun draws you in with her keen gaze. As Puck in the junior performance of PUCK (main cast – Ryuu Masaki), I was shocked by her performance, which made me wonder if she might be a real fairy after all. She’s one of Moon Troupe’s promising young otokoyaku, with her first Bow Hall lead waiting for her in August.
Ashizawa: In the junior performance of PUCK, when you walked out on the bridge from stage left, I thought ‘This can’t be Asami Jun! This must be a real fairy!’
Asami: Wow~!! I’m so happy (laughs). Thank you so much.
Ashizawa: That was such an unusual sensation.
Asami: I felt like a fairy was an unusual role for Takarazuka, I guess.
Ashizawa: Aren’t Takarasiennes all fairies selling dreams? (laughs) So you started putting together the character with ‘what is a fairy’, is that it?
Asami: You could say that. If we’re just saying the vague images I was building from, then yes.
Ashizawa: Images?
Asami: Things like pictures of fairies in books, where they have wings and they play tricks on humans, those kinds of things. My personality isn’t cute like that at all, so it was fun in rehearsals since I was creating a new, totally opposite side of myself. I was able to discover ‘I can do this, too.’
Ashizawa: A side of yourself you hadn’t noticed before came to life.
Asami: Also, I really like otokoyaku characters like Sakamoto Ryoma, who have a really strong will, but Puck, even as a child and as a fairy had a strong will as well in his love for Hermia (Umino Mitsuki – main cast Manaki Reika).
Ashizawa: Your curtain call address was also something else. “I’ll become an otokoyaku who won’t lose to the Grand Theatre” (laughs).
Asami: I did say that (laughs).
Ashizawa: It seemed like something you were already thinking about slipped out. You wanted to air that frustration no matter what?
Asami: I really did. But thinking back on it now it’s too embarassing (laughs).
Ashizawa: Pisciotta, in Bandito, felt like a difficult role to establish. He felt like he had a bit of a comedy relief element to him as well, but…
Asami: Maybe not exactly comedic, but I wanted to show how he gets caught up in the momentum. What I was thinking was, as the bandit group becomes more violent, Pisciotta also goes along with it until in the end he’s the one who betrays them and everything crashes down around him.
Ashizawa: You had a moustache, right.
Asami: It was my first time.
Ashizawa: What did you think of how you looked with facial hair?
Asami: I thought, oh, I look pretty good (laughs).
Ashizawa: When you started dancing in the finale you were so cool, you took to it like a fish to water.
Asami: Thank you so much. All the Moon Troupe senior actresses look so amazing in suits, so I was getting them to teach me all kinds of things in rehearsals. Things like how to wear the felt hats and all that.
Ashizawa: You hadn’t had that kind of experience before?
Asami: I hadn’t danced with a felt hat and suit very much at all, it had been a really long time. And there were junior actresses who had never done it at all, so they taught us everything from square one.
Ashizawa: You’ve stood out in Junior Performances even while you were still a very junior actress, but your first large [Junior Performance] role was Mercutio (main cast – Miya Rurika) in Romeo et Juliette, correct?
Asami: I loved that role. It was my first time having a full-show character, and my first time getting to sing that much… Even though I was just Ken-4, I was able to live as that character every day in rehearsals and it was so much fun. He dies in the middle, right? And up until then there was so much of his attitude towards life, but he dies leaving so many regrets behind, but up until then I got to live so fiercely, and that was a lot of fun.
Ashizawa: You can really pick up a lot as an actor when you get that kind of juicy role just as you’re learning how fun it is to perform, right.
Asami: Exactly. I was just lost in it. I think that role gave me a ton of motivation as [the otokoyaku] Asami Jun.
Ashizawa: In the Junior Performance of TAKARAZUKA Flower Poems 100!! you were given the lead in many of Ryuu-san’s scenes, right? I think when you perform in revues normally you must already be thinking ‘Look at Asami Jun!’, but did that feeling change at all?
Asami: No, it was totally different, I was constantly thinking about ‘if Asami Jun is performing something that Ryuu-san is supposed to perform how is that going to end up’… And the things Ryuu-san was teaching me were totally different from normal Junior Performances1: How to aim my gaze, singing style, how to look at the audience, where to raise the excitement level to give the audience the most fun experience, how to wear the costumes, et cetera.
Ashizawa: I see!
Asami: Lots of things I could use normally too.
Ashizawa: How to level up your revue performance?
Asami: That’s right. In revues we’re all on stage, so we don’t normally have the chance for senior actresses to look at what we’re doing, but [Ryuu] watched me from the audience seats and gave me all kinds of advice. I learned a ton and it was a really valuable experience.
Ashizawa: A revue is a type of drama too, after all.
Asami: That’s right. Ryuu-san said that too, “In a revue the character you’re playing is ‘yourself’.” Even the junior kids, or those who didn’t have many scenes in the main cast, got to dance a lot and learn a lot in the Junior Performance. We were all talking about how much we’d improved and what a good experience it was.
Ashizawa: Rehearsals have started for the next show, 1789: Les Amants de la Bastille. What’s your role like?
Asami: Miya (Rurika)-san plays the Comte d’Artois, King Louis XVI’s younger brother, who is scheming for his brother’s throne, so as far as that goes he’s a villain, but anyway, under him is Ramard, played by Shimon (Yuriya)-san, and under him in turn are me and my classmate Kizuki (Yuuma) as a pair of useless henchmen.
Ashizawa: Are you at the point where you know what you’ll be doing?
Asami: At this point just that we capture Ryuu-san and stuff (laughs). There’s a big comedy relief element so I want to make the audience laugh.
Ashizawa: Kizuki Yuuma is quite charismatic both as a person and an actor, so I hope you make a fun team. And there are so many amazing people all grouped in your class, you can’t afford to lose.
Asami: They’re amazing. But when we were in the Music School, they told us there’d never be a star from this class.
Ashizawa: Really?
Asami: Really. We all got on really well, so we all were like ‘let’s do our best together~!’, more friendly rivals than anything else.
Ashizawa: Rather than sprinting to get ahead you were taking each other’s hands (laughs). Then you must have been thrilled when your class produced some Top Musumeyaku2 and others have done Junior Performance leads, right?
Asami: Yes, really happy.
Ashizawa: You’re Ken-7 now, so in your current situation, you’ve attained all your basics as a performer, and now what you need to do is take that, add in ‘yourself’ and keep going further.
Asami: I want to take the skills I’ve cultivated so far and teach them to my juniors. Since I’m the chairman of the junior performance cast, I have to hold everyone together, and I hope I can look at everyone individually and help them bring out their best points, and use our ‘junior power’ to make the main performance even better as well.
Ashizawa: Ah, there is that part of it as well. The junior performance is like a miniature of the main performance.
Asami: But the way I think of it, the junior performance only exists because of the main performance, so we can’t let the junior performance become the main event. I want what we gain from the junior performance to come out in the main performance. Even if we get a bigger role in the junior performances, there’s no meaning to it if we let that be the main thing and nothing comes out in the main performance, so I hope everyone, including me, can tie back into the main performance.
Ashizawa: Junior performances are such a major factor [in Takarazuka]. The experiences you gain from them are so valuable. Without junior performances, Bow Hall shows, and things like that, I think a lot of people would become discouraged.
Asami: I’m so grateful for them.
Ashizawa: In late summer this year you have your first Bow Hall lead, a double feature with a play and revue called A-EN.
Asami: Thank you so much. I never dreamed the day would come when I’d get a lead in Bow Hall… And a play and revue [in Bow Hall] isn’t something that happens often, so I think it will be a challenge.
Ashizawa: It’s a shared lead between you and Akatsuki Chisei, but it will apparently be different versions [for each cast].
Asami: Yes. Please do come watch.
1 – Junior performances for revues are very rare so the standard junior performance is assumed to be a play.
2 – At this point Manaki Reika and Misaki Rion were Top Musumeyaku, and Hinami Fuu was about to become Top Musumeyaku in Star Troupe.