Healing the Past: Takarazuka Revue’s Performative Historicities
Healing the Past: Takarazuka Revue’s Performative Historicities

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines Takarazuka Revue’s post-2015 re-configuration of Edo-period representation, situating the company’s shifting dramaturgical strategies within broader cultural debates on historical memory, identity formation, and the ideological legacy of early modern Japan. While Edo period (1603-1868) has long been romanticized as a harmonious and morally coherent era, its dominant narratives continue to shape contemporary Japanese self-understanding in ways which obscure the era’s systemic violence, rigid social stratification, and oppressive institutional structures. Building on previous research focused on snow troupe, the present study analyzes Edo-period portrayals in ten jidaimono and nihonmono productions staged by the remaining four troupes (flower, moon, star, cosmos) since 2015, identifying a discernible shift from idealization toward a nuanced, critically informed realism. Through hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis grounded in 25 years of on-site fieldwork on Takarazuka Revue’s production culture, this paper identifies three interconnected strategies: the reframing of the Tokugawa bakufu as a dysfunctional military regime; the systematic deconstruction of the samurai as an archetype of proto-toxic masculinity; and the renewed attention to ordinary people whose diverse experiences illuminate a more complex social landscape. These representational strategies collectively function as a performative interrogation of historical authority, challenging the endurance of Edo-centric discourses which continue to influence contemporary political rhetoric and cultural imagination. By staging historically grounded yet forward-looking narratives, Takarazuka Revue not only confronts audiences with unsettling dimensions of the past but also proposes ethical alternatives rooted in compassion, cooperation, and human dignity, offering a culturally resonant counterpoint to rising populist and neo-autocratic tendencies in the present.

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