Paper short abstract:

Revue is a stage show that combines multiple performance traditions and modern innovations. This paper interprets revue as a 'liminal' theatre genre by examining its characteristics since the Taisho period and revealing some of the key reasons for its ongoing popularity in Japan.

Paper long abstract:

Revue is a modern visual spectacle consisting of vibrant dancing and singing, lavish costumes and mechanically advanced stage set. This theatre genre matured in Europe and America by the 1930s, and its popularity became an international trend. In Japan, the all-female Takarazuka Revue staged Mon Paris in 1927, commonly regarded as Japan's first revue. It was clearly the first European-style revue production which became a nation-wide hit, and the popularity of this form grew. With the success of a number of other minor productions, the foundation was laid for this style to thrive for a century in Japan, even while the genre nearly disappeared in some the European countries where it originated.

My approach regards revue as 'a composition of betweenness' built of seemingly opposing elements such as the classic and the modern, occidental and oriental, professional and amateur, feminine and masculine, analog and digital. This study seeks to redefine revue as an inter-national, inter-cultural, inter-medial form - a distinctively liminal genre.

With Japan in the process of westernisation, revue functioned as a symbol of modernity that would challenge preexisting socio-cultural norms and bring new concepts and criteria to the stage. This presentation will investigate two key ways in which revue established its prominent position in Japan. First, revue has always been a hybrid theatrical form which reflects a dynamic integration and assimilation of foreign culture in Japan. Secondly, revue can be seen as a progressive genre which has provided Japanese women with a springboard to perform in public and to be acknowledged as actresses. These two perspectives are used to reveal why revue is still a strong force in today's Japanese theatre industry, and to explore its social meaning in contemporary Japanese culture.