Ashizawa Jin is an illustrator/columnist who seems to have worked for GRAPH since the 1960s (yes, you read that right). His interview column gets a new title every year but usually the format is fairly similar. The 2019 column, which featured musumeyaku only, was called The Lovely Flowers Bloom. This interview with Ousaki Ayaka was published in the March issue.
Continue readingBackstage Journal is a short Kageki feature where very young cast members write anecdotes about what’s going on behind the scenes of the productions. They’re not very deep, being full of emojis and more like blog entries than articles, but they are a good way to get to know the newest actresses in each troupe.
This one is by Flower Troupe member Kashiro Kiho (of the 87th Class), and was published in the February 2003 issue.
Continue readingThis talk between Asami Hikaru and her classmate Aran Kei was published in Asami’s final GRAPH issue, published in December 2006.
Some outtake photos from the back of the magazine are included.
Continue readingTo the Future is a small GRAPH interview of junior actresses. This one was published in the October 2018 issue.
Continue readingIn this Top Star survey series published in GRAPH in 2006, fans were asked to rank characters in a variety of categories (such as ‘favorite character’, ‘character I would most want to marry’) as well as their favorite costumes.
Haruno Sumire’s was published in the December issue.
Continue readingRhythm was a Q&A feature for young otokoyaku stars published through 2016, with fun questions about the performers’ on and offstage lives as well as some drawings. The specific questions and number of questions vary between features.
Towaki’s was published in the March issue. (At this point she had not yet moved to Flower, so she is still listed under Snow Troupe.)
Some outtakes from the back of the magazine are also included.
Continue reading#InstaGRAPH was a social media-themed photo feature that ran in GRAPH (shocking) in 2019. The January issue featured photos presented by Sumiki Sayato, Seo Yuria, Hana Yuuki, and Agata Sen.
Continue readingThis book, which is something of an ‘oral history’ of Takarazuka’s Rose of Versailles adaptations, was published by Ascom in late 2005, and features chronological accounts from otokoyaku who had performed in the franchise from its first origins through the 2001 productions. Since the book is derived from transcriptions of interviews taking place often many decades after the fact, there may be discrepancies between accounts.
Please note that the term appearing through the text as ‘theatre-comic’ is translated from the Japanese term gekiga [劇画]. Although this term is described as applying to mainly male-oriented comics in most English-language sources, this not accurate. The definition of this word changed to also include sweeping, romantic female-oriented works with Rose of Versailles being arguably the most famous of theatre-comics. Takarazuka even published its own magazine of theatre-comics in the 1970s.
Chapters have been split in two to make them more readable without too much scrolling to reach the explanatory footnotes. Some paragraph breaks have also been added for ease of reading in English. I have also included some images printed in the book as well as sourcing many other archival images to illustrate the text.
Installments will be posted every two weeks, with some breaks if the next chapter is not complete.
Continue readingBackstage Journal is a short Kageki feature where very young cast members write anecdotes about what’s going on behind the scenes of the productions. They’re not very deep, being full of emojis and more like blog entries than articles, but they are a good way to get to know the newest actresses in each troupe.
This one is by Flower Troupe member Natsuzora Momomi (of the 86th Class), and was published in the February 2003 issue.
Continue readingThis book, which is something of an ‘oral history’ of Takarazuka’s Rose of Versailles adaptations, was published by Ascom in late 2005, and features chronological accounts from otokoyaku who had performed in the franchise from its first origins through the 2001 productions. Since the book is derived from transcriptions of interviews taking place often many decades after the fact, there may be discrepancies between accounts.
Please note that the term appearing through the text as ‘theatre-comic’ is translated from the Japanese term gekiga [劇画]. Although this term is described as applying to mainly male-oriented comics in most English-language sources, this is not accurate. The definition of this word changed to also include sweeping, romantic female-oriented works with Rose of Versailles being arguably the most famous of theatre-comics. Takarazuka even published its own magazine of theatre-comics in the 1970s.
Chapters have been split in two to make them more readable without too much scrolling to reach the explanatory footnotes. Some paragraph breaks have also been added for ease of reading in English. I have also included some images printed in the book as well as sourcing many other archival images to illustrate the text.
Installments will be posted every two weeks, with some breaks if the next chapter is not complete.
Continue reading