Since my eyes were large even when I was a newborn, I was given the name \u2018Touko\u20191<\/sup>. First, I think I want to begin by talking about the time before Touko became Aran Kei.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I\u2019m going to talk about my childhood, my father is of course very significant. My father was a second-generation Zainichi Korean, so he went through a lot of struggles. Since he had to live resolutely through a time where he faced much more discrimination than there is now, he was an extremely strong man. Rather than merely laying down severe rules, his strictness came from living a life full of turmoil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps because we were raised by a father like that, us four siblings\u2014my older sister, my younger brother, my younger sister, and myself\u2014all get along very well. Having siblings who shared the same feelings and worked to help each other has been a great help for us. One of our aunts once told us \u201cYou were all brought up so diligently and properly, weren\u2019t you?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thinking back on it now, my father must have had his own vision of \u2018an ideal family\u2019 that he was striving for. When I was little, he would often tell me that I should become a doctor or a lawyer. But my father and mother both liked singing and were very good at it; so, at some point, I came to love singing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was a child, my parents liked to listen toJapanese minyou and enka2<\/sup>. The whole family would get together to watch the Red and White Song Battle3<\/sup>. My father\u2019s favorite song to perform was \u201cLonging on the Hawaiian Sea Route\u201d4<\/sup>, and apparently my grandfather was so good at singing that he once was in talks to have a record released. My father had all kinds of different jobs, but at one point, he sold karaoke equipment. Also, when he was running a coffee shop, he installed a jukebox, so I was able to listen to all kinds of records. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was 3 years old, I was already using the karaoke machine to sing the chanson \u201cNe\u2019er-do-well\u201d5<\/sup>. The artists I became obsessed with started with Saijou Hideki and the Big Three6<\/sup>, as well as Pink Lady, Tahara Toshihiko, and Matsuda Seiko. I would sit in front of the TV with a book of lyrics that came inserted in an idol magazine and sing along, and us siblings would often sing together and imitate their choreography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I liked performing in front of people and getting their attention, I had trouble dealing with being on stage for specifically prepared events like school talent shows. Instead, I would do things like singing a Pink Lady song with my friends at the children\u2019s club Christmas party, or singing in front of everyone during school cleaning time; I liked performing simply in my own way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One day during music class, I was singing loudly and forcefully. But then, in front of everyone, the teacher said \u2018there\u2019s someone here with a really strong voice\u2019. That made me really self-conscious, so after that I didn\u2019t like singing in front of people any more. Also, although I got together with a friend and started thinking of material during the \u2018manzai boom\u20197<\/sup>, we ended up not performing at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though I didn\u2019t like being in front of people, I was a bit of a \u2018delinquent gang leader\u2019 (laughs); I would get into fights with a boy I hated from the classroom next door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was born and raised in Kousei, Shiga Prefecture (now Konan)8<\/sup>. It didn\u2019t even have a movie theatre, and the nearest entertainment available was a bowling alley. Back then, there was only one train per hour, so it was a very sleepy town. The first thing I took lessons in was piano. My older sister did her best at it, but I couldn\u2019t get used to having a male teacher touching my fingers so I started to hate it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I joined the tennis club in middle school and made some personal progress, but, perhaps because I couldn\u2019t run very fast, I didn\u2019t do very well in the end. At that point I started to feel \u2018if things go on this way, I guess I\u2019ll just end up as a country delinquent?\u2019 However, due to the influence of a neighborhood girl a year older than me, I had been taking ballet and really enjoying it since I was in elementary school, and I always went to lessons diligently. My mother, who told me that she had wanted to take ballet herself when she was a girl, would drive me to the studio 20 minutes away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One very strong memory is of a ballet recital performance of Cinderella<\/em>, where I was selected to play the Prince. There were no boys at our studio, so I was singled out since I was tall and lanky. After seeing that recital, my ballet teacher suggested \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go to Takarazuka and see what it\u2019s like?\u201d Although I had seen a performance once before at the Takarazuka Family Land9<\/sup> (closed in 2003), at that time, I just thought \u2018huh~\u2019. Looking back, I think that one statement from my teacher is what made me aware of Takarazuka\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After that happened, I began attending a musical theatre school in Kyoto starting in around my second year of middle school. Even though I did continue on in conventional schooling, I enjoyed discovering a new world outside of school so much that I don\u2019t remember a bit of what I learned in high school. I don\u2019t have many photos from school, and I didn\u2019t make many friends there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of that, the friends that I did actually make during my time in high school are very important to me. Even if we haven\u2019t seen each other in a while, it makes me so happy that we can fill in the distance between us right away, and hearing how my friends are all doing their best in a different world from me is always really impactful. Meeting up with them always gives me a lot of energy and makes me think that I need to keep working hard too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I spent all my time in high school going to performing arts lessons, I don\u2019t think it was actually the case that I was doing all that because my heart was totally set on entering Takarazuka. I didn\u2019t like the countryside, and I didn\u2019t like being at home all the time. Even though my dreams were vague, I did have a strong feeling of \u201csometime I\u2019ll hit the big time and fly away from here!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n For someone who was raised in the rural area of Shiga, meeting up with friends who were from Osaka, Kyoto, or Kobe had a big impact on me, and hanging out with them under the excuse that we were studying for the Takarazuka entrance exam was a lot of fun. As for thinking \u201cI\u2019m going to get into Takarazuka\u201d with my whole heart, that came a bit later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1 – Aran\u2019s given name, Touko (\u77b3\u5b50) uses the kanji for \u2018eye\u2019, \u2018\u77b3\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2 – Genres of Japanese pop music which were most popular during the Showa Era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3 – A New Years\u2019 Eve televised song competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4 – \u2018Akogare no Hawaii Kourou<\/a>\u2019, a popular song from just after WWII.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5 – \u2018Roku de nashi<\/a>\u2019, a French-language song that was covered in Japanese by Koshiji Fubuki in the 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6 – The three most prominent male idol singers of the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7 – A Japanese form of stand-up comedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8 – Two smaller towns were merged into Konan in 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9 – An amusement park near the Takarazuka Grand Theatre, run by the same company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This book is a memoir of Aran Kei\u2019s 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 … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/aran-1.png\")
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