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Paper short abstract:

The Himeyuri Student Corps consisted of underage female students, most of whom eventually died in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. This presentation explores the Takarazuka revue depicting them in 1953, by analyzing how the scriptwriter weaved the issue of wartime responsibility into the revue.

Paper long abstract:

The Battle of Okinawa was characterized as a fierce "storm of steel." The Himeyuri Student Corps consisted of mostly underage female students from the two elite girls’ schools of Okinawa. When the Battle of Okinawa began, they were mobilized to work as assistant nurses on the battlefields, where most of them eventually lost their lives. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, a variety of narratives about the Himeyuri Student Corps were born. Of all these narratives, this presentation focuses on those which were published or released specifically between 1945 and 1953, aiming to clarify how their depictions of the Himeyuri Student Corps influenced the Takarazuka Revue Company’s revue titled “The Tower of Himeyuri” in 1953.

Kikuta Kazuo, the scriptwriter of the revue, acknowledged his responsibility for writing propaganda theatrical scripts during wartime, and thus, for lifting the spirits of audiences for the war. This presentation considers how Kikuta reflected his wartime responsibilities as a propagandist upon his descriptions of the Himeyuri Student Corps. It is neither my aim here to defend Kikuta nor to absolve him from his wartime responsibility. Rather, this presentation aims to explore the ways in which Kikuta weaved the issue of wartime responsibility into his revue, and how his approach differentiated his revue from other narratives of the Himeyuri Student Corps.

The foremost characteristic of Kikuta’s "The Tower of Himeyuri" is that the story focuses on the relationship between the “present” (which means 1953 when the revue was made) and the “past”. It is narrated through the past memories of fictional Okinawan survivors directly to Japanese mainlanders who understand neither the Battle of Okinawa nor the Himeyuri Student Corps well. The other preceding narratives on the Himeyuri Student Corps all presented their stories as completed events of the past, and no connections are drawn between the past and the present. In contrast, Kikuta’s “The Tower of Himeyuri” sought to address the Himeyuri Student Corps as an ongoing issue by focusing on this missing link between the past and the present, as well as the link between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland.