Following the long-awaited publication in tankobon format in Japan in 2024, English-speaking readers, too, can finally appreciate the delicate beauty of Takako Shimura’s “Scenes from Awajima” in its paperback edition. One of the longest-running yet often neglected (due to overlapping editorial commitments on the author’s part) works by Shimura, “Scenes from Awajima” introduces a theatrical genre still largely unknown in the West, adopting a broad perspective comprising both actors and audience.
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On the fictional island of Awajima, the local Opera School is renowned in the whole country for fostering the best musical and dramatic talents among the Japanese youths. An all-girls elite institution, its young students come from very different backgrounds: some have a whole dynasty of stars behind them, while others have but a dream to support them. With each of the five chapters introducing a new pair of Awajima attendees, the reader gains a vantage point on their innermost feelings, which fuel the drama that unfolds off-stage and within the classrooms.
Appreciated domestically and abroad as one of the contemporary mangaka most openly dealing with non-conventional sexual orientations and the LGBT+ community, such as in her cult series “Sweet Blue Flowers” and “Wandering Son,” here Takako Shimura deals with a very specific microcosm: that of Takarazuka Revue.
While the name ‘Takarazuka’ is never directly mentioned in the comic book (most likely to avoid trademark issues, since the troupe itself is an intellectual property of the railway company Hankyu Dentetsu), the lavish costumes and the combination of skills that the young artists are required to learn leave no room for doubt. Born in the early 1910s from the vision of Hankyu Dentetsu’s late president Ichizo Kobayashi, Takarazuka Revue was conceived of as an alternative to the all-males, repertoire-fixed kabuki. A form of theater that could entertain the masses (and thus help sell more train tickets) by providing a Japanese version of the increasingly popular American musicals, featuring adaptations of contemporary films, novels, and other stage plays.
While the Takarazuka Revue can be appreciated live only in Japan, its aesthetics have influenced manga and anime that have hit big in the West too, such as “Princess Knight” by Osamu Tezuka and “The Rose of Versailles” by Riyoko Ikeda. However, the most interesting feature of “Scenes from Awajima” is precisely the lack of said aesthetics. Keeping consistent with the character design and the minimalist approach to background and space décor of her previous works, Shimura rather focuses on the human, somewhat non-spectacular facet of Takarazuka, namely: what are the hardships that these young women have to go through before they rise to fame?
As a result, “Scenes from Awajima” does not develop alongside a single temporal plane, nor according to a single perspective. If, for instance, the Katsurako Ibuki depicted in chapter four appears as the privileged, cold bully that everyone should fear, in chapter five (set one generation in the future from the events of the previous chapter), it is revealed how her attitude in her younger days was merely a defense mechanism to cope with the scars of generational trauma. In her role as a teacher at Awajima, she ultimately chooses to stop perpetuating that cycle.
Overall, while not groundbreaking in terms of content or narrative for those already acquainted with Shimura’s art, “Scenes from Awajima” proves worth reading in the way it discloses the behind-the-scenes side of Takarazuka and their fandom, proving informative and moving at the same time.