Cross-dressing a long show business tradition in Japan

JAPANESE WOMEN just love performers cross-dressing on stage.

They recently packed the Women’s Center in Fujisawa to see afternoon and evening kabuki shows featuring up-and-coming actors.

The Asahi Shimbun reports the audience was especially thrilled by a special presentation at the afternoon show. In kabuki drama, men play the female roles in elaborate costumes and makeup. For their presentation, the men came out on stage partially made up and showed the fascinated women their techniques for applying makeup, fitting wigs, and wearing kimono while other actors provided witty commentary.

Some audience members were given the opportunity to wear the stage costumes. The Asahi relates that their struggles to walk on stage in the cumbersome outfits caused laughter throughout the hall.

Women here also have a taste for the reverse, as they make up an estimated 90% of the audience for the Takarazuka revue. This troupe consists entirely of women, who of course play the male roles. Takarazuka stages performances in theaters throughout the country. Their dramas are based on sources ranging from Japanese and Chinese classics to Broadway musicals, operas, and chanson, and their forte is extravagant production numbers. As one might guess from their audience demographics, most dramas have old-fashioned story lines with a heavy dose of romance. Here are their English and Japanese websites.

Mr. Mikawa

If they can’t afford to a ticket to kabuki or Takarazuka, the women watch cross-dressers on TV all the time. More than a few male Japanese celebrities perform in drag, and they are frequent guests on television, both performing and ad-libbing on the many Japanese talk shows. The most well known is singer Mikawa Ken’ichi. Going drag is Mikawa’s moneymaker, because his croaky and nasally singing voice is exposed in the ballads he prefers. His catty banter on the talk shows, though, gives the impression that what he says is “just between us girls”.

He’s usually invited to perform on NHK’s blockbuster New Year’s Eve program, the Kohaku Uta Gassen, now more than 50 years old. The show’s premise is a contest between the male and female singers.

Mikawa sings with the boys.

In fact, here he is singing on Kohaku last New Year’s Eve, courtesy of YouTube. He’s singing, “I’m a Scorpio woman.”

I don’t like to use the world “surreal” unless it really applies, but this seems as good a time as any…