{"id":2877,"date":"2024-09-06T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/?p=2877"},"modified":"2024-08-22T09:05:23","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T15:05:23","slug":"berubara-special-box-seat-ii-kunizuki-miki-former-takarazuka-revue-musumeyaku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/06\/berubara-special-box-seat-ii-kunizuki-miki-former-takarazuka-revue-musumeyaku\/","title":{"rendered":"Berubara Special Box Seat II – Kunizuki Miki (former Takarazuka Revue musumeyaku)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This book, which is something of an \u2018oral history\u2019 of Takarazuka\u2019s Rose of Versailles<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please note that the term appearing through the text as \u2018theatre-comic\u2019 is translated from the Japanese term gekiga <\/em>[\u5287\u753b]. Although this term is described as applying to mainly male-oriented comics in most English-language sources, this is no longer accurate. The definition of this word has 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 (or will include when time allows) some images printed in the book as well as sourcing many other archival images to illustrate the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Berubara Special Box Seat II – Kunizuki Miki, former Takarazuka Revue musumeyaku<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we the reincarnations of the court gathered in Versailles!?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was in 1975. When I heard I would have the role of Rosalie, to be honest, I thought \u2018am I really the right person for this?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was because my voice is low, and I felt like I was better suited to idiosyncratic roles than that of a charming musumeyaku\u2026 I even went as far as thinking \u2018Maybe I\u2019d better tell them I won\u2019t do it\u2019, but it would be a waste of such a good role, so I gave up on turning it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But back then I was just so busy. Back then, Takarazuka had the new plan to promote junior actresses as mainstream singers, and I spent a year working as a singer after being chosen as the first prospect. When Berubara happened, I had tapings twice a week for a music show on Sun TV. There were some days where I didn\u2019t finish taping until 6am, then went on stage after about 2 hours of sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musumeyaku style their own wigs and put together accessories to match with their costumes, but Berubara was my first proper play set in the middle ages1<\/sup>, so I was doing everything by trial and error. And I was no good at makeup either\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not trying to make excuses by explaining the situation, but I had one scene where I had to be onstage, even though I didn\u2019t have any lines, and once I got so down that I didn\u2019t make my entrance. In that scene Junko (Migiwa Natsuko) was supposed to introduce Rosalie, but since the person in question didn\u2019t turn up she managed to fool the audience by saying \u201cthe girl you saw just now\u201d instead of \u201cthis girl\u201d, and somehow got through it without anything worse happening\u2026 (laughs)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosalie had quickchanges even on stage, so it was a challenging role for me, but looking back on it now it\u2019s a great memory, failures and all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, in 1979, I was given the role of Marie Antoinette. This was a regional performance: Oscar was Matsu Akira and Fersen was Macchii (Shiomi Rika). It was hard for me and Macchii to get in the mood for our love scenes, since in rehearsals we were always playing around and getting into a good groove. Earnestly struggling over love just made us blush (laughs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, looking back on that, I can\u2019t help but think that if only I\u2019d worked harder at digging into the play and understanding it, I would have been able to get deeper into my own role. Back then I was giving it my all just to keep up. If only I\u2019d learned enough to be able to follow Ikeda Riyoko and the directors\u2026 That\u2019s my regret about my time in Takarazuka. But still, I think being able to experience a work like Berubara that was deep enough to make me feel such things is a treasure in itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just Berubara but all Takarazuka shows this applies to, but it really felt like we were all creating something together. And all of us had our own roles within that. That environment, where it wasn\u2019t just the Top Star, but all the performers supporting each other and building each other up, was such a happy place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days of the aristocracy, most of the people gathered in the palace at Versailles were related to each other somehow or other, right? I almost wonder if all of us who ended up connected to Berubara are the reincarnations of those who were at Versailles back then\u2026that\u2019s how strong the feeling of unity was when I was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

1 – Error in the original text. In the Japanese era consideration this is closer than it sounds (what is considered Japan\u2019s \u2018Middle Ages\u2019 ends with the Muromachi era in the late 1500s), though still off by a hundred years or so from the start of the Bourbon era in France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book, which is something of an \u2018oral history\u2019 of Takarazuka\u2019s 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. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,26],"tags":[255,394,395,207,564],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2878,"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions\/2878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zukalations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}