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ABSTRACT
Since the introduction of ballet to Japan in the early 1900s, male dancers have figured prominently, with a profile equal to that of female dancers. Despite this, the association between ballet and girls’ cultures has been dominant in Japan, as in other cultures. As a consequence, ballet is often considered to be a highly ‘feminine’ activity, with associations as a ‘queer’ activity for males in contemporary culture. What does the increase in visibility of ballet in Japanese boys’ culture tell us? This paper examines Japanese popular media that target boys and men as its core audience, especially the magazine Dancin’, possibly the first ballet magazine in the world exclusively for boys and young men. I examine how the magazine operates in contrast to the female version to attempt to create a virtual, imagined community that might offer a sense of belonging and encouragement to otherwise isolated ballet boys.
Acknowledgments
This article was made possible by the Japan Foundation’s Japanese Studies Fellowship 2016. Part of this article was presented at Arts & Media Courses: Fan Cultures Symposium, 2017, held at Ryukoku University, Kyoto. I thank Michael Furmanovsky and Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto for giving me the opportunity to present there.
I greatly appreciate the useful feedback on early drafts of this essay that I received from Jan Bardsley, Greg Ralph and anonymous reviewers. I am grateful to David Jellings for his careful reading and editing of this article.
Notes
1 All Japanese names follow the convention of surname first: Nakano Taisuke, not Taisuke Nakano. All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.
2 Pas de deux means dance for two.
3 Tours en l’air means turn in the air, a manoeuvre in which the dancer rises straight into the air from a demi-plié (a small knee bend), makes a complete turn and lands in the fifth position with the feet reversed. Grant, Technical Dictionary, 121.
4 Umino et al., ‘Comparative Analysis’, 60.
5 Prix de Lausanne, ‘Candidates’.
6 Nihon Keizai Shinbun, ‘Rōzannu kokusai baree, kouni no sugaisan yuushou’.
7 Nomi City, Ishikawa Prefacture official website, ‘Yamamoto masaya’.
8 NHK News Seven.
9 For more information on Japanese ballet dancers’ careers abroad, see Sternsdorff-Cisterna, ‘Japanese Ballet Dancers’.
10 Klomsten et al., ‘Adolescents’ Perceptions’, 626.
11 See, for example, Burt, The Male Dancer; Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’; Holdsworth, ‘Boys Don’t Do Dance, Do They?’; Gard, ‘When a Boy’s Gotta Dance’.
12 Pepitone ‘What It’s Really Like to Be a Ballerina’.
13 Daly, ‘Classical Ballet’, 58.
14 Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 11.
15 Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 45–66.
16 It needs to be noted that some contemporary ballet choreography sometimes tries to break away from these gender distinctions. Examples include Shobana Jeyasingh’s Bayadère: The Ninth Life.
17 Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 6.
18 Holdsworth, ‘Boys Don’t Do Dance, Do They?’, 169.
19 Gard, ‘When a Boy’s Gotta Dance’, 184.
20 Holdsworth, ‘Boys Don’t Do Dance, Do They?’; Haltom and Worthen, ‘Male Ballet Dancers’, 757–78.
21 Daly, ‘Classical Ballet’, 59.
22 Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick,’, 59.
23 Zacharias, Ballet, 13.
24 Peers ‘Ballet and Girl Culture’, 73.
25 Risner, ‘Rehearsing Masculinity’, 139.
26 Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 60.
27 Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 217.
28 Burt, The Male Dancer, 45.
29 Turk, ‘Girlhood, Ballet, and the Cult of the Tutu’, 484.
30 Miskec, ‘Pedi-Files’, 240.
31 Potter, ‘Soft, Gauzy Ballet Dresses’, 8.
32 Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 11.
33 Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 220.
34 Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 46.
35 Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 217.
36 Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 50–51.
37 Gard, ‘Dancing around the ‘Problem’’, 218.
38 Ibid., 219.
39 Ibid., 223.
40 Ibid., 217. Here I do not have space to refer in detail to boy/male-oriented ballet productions such as Bourne’s Swan Lake and films such as Stephen Daldry’s film Billy Elliot (2000). For more references to these texts, see, for example, Michael Gard, Men Who Dance.
41 Kyoto International Manga Museum, Ballet Manga; Monden, ’Layers of the Ethereal’, 2014.
42 Tachikawa, quoted in Nihon baree-shi, 87.
43 Umino et al., ‘Comparative Analysis’, 61.
44 Prix de Lausanne, 2017.
45 Takahashi et al., ‘Nihon no baree ni okeru seito no hinzū’, 96.
46 Kawashima, Eliana Pavlova, 5.
47 The first Russian to perform ballet in Japan is believed to have been Yerina Alexandrovna Smirnowa (1888–1934), a soloist at the Mariinsky ballet. With her pas de deux partner and husband, Boris, and three other people, she visited Japan in June 1916 and performed for three days at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo. See Usui, Baree senya ichiya, 49–53.
48 Monden, ‘Layers of the Ethereal’, 258.
49 Satō, Kitagunikara, 71.
50 Usui, in Azuma, Bokushin, 10.
51 Matsuyama Ballet official website, ‘Shimizu Tetsutaro’.
52 Kumakawa, Made in London, 21.
53 Robertson, ‘The Politics of Androgyny’, 422.
54 Ibid., 421.
55 Buruma, Japanese Mirror, 115.
56 Abe, ‘Barē “ōjisama kei” dantō’.
57 For a similar argument on Japan’s male idol performers, see Nagaike, ‘Johnny’s Idols as Icons’, 104–05.
58 Miller, Beauty Up, 151.
59 Burt, The Male Dancer, 54–55.
60 Adams, Artistic Impression, 201.
61 Miller, Beauty Up, 155; Screech, Sex and the Floating World, 93.
62 Miller, Beauty Up; Monden, Japanese Fashion Cultures.
63 Aoyama, ‘Transgendering Shojo Shosetsu’, 50.
64 McLelland, ‘No Climax, No Point, No Meaning?’; Miller, Beauty Up; Author removed 2015.
65 See, for example, Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman; Bardsley, ‘The Oyaji Gets a Makeover’.
66 Ushikubo, Sōshoku-kei danshi; Nihei, ‘Resistance and Negotiation’; Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman, 158.
67 Taga, ‘Rethinking Male Socialisation’, 139; Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman, 39.
68 See, for example, Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman, 40.
69 The music associated with ballet and figure skating also plays an important part in the decisions that boys make, but this is an aspect which would require further research, beyond the scope of this paper, to explore and develop it properly.
70 For example, TV Tokyo, ‘Sochi e no chōsensha tachi’.
71 Pollock, Vision and Difference, 8.
72 See, for example, Monden, Japanese Fashion Cultures, 2015.
73 Crane, The Production of Culture, 106.
74 Harvey, ‘Nonchan’s Dream’, 135–36.
75 Ang, Watching Dallas, 384; Mackie, ‘Science, Society and the Sea of Fertility’, 3.
76 The interview took place at the office of Abe’s new company, En Pointe, on 9 February 2017. It was a semi-open interview and lasted 105 minutes.
77 The survey cards were analysed on 9 February 2017 at En Pointe.
78 Alexander, ‘Stylish Hard Bodies’, 541.
79 Monden, ‘Layers of the Ethereal’, 270.
80 Gundle, Glamour, 7.
81 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.
82 Honda, Jogakusei, 186–91.
83 Honda, Jogakusei, 186–91; Imada, “Shōjo” no shakaishi.
84 Grand jeté means a large jeté, or jump, where the dancer’s legs are thrown to 90 degrees with a corresponding high jump. Port de bras at the barre often means a series of movements made by passing the arm or arms through various positions.
85 Dancin’, volume 6, 26–27.
86 Yasuda, ‘“Baree danshi” zōshoku chū’.
87 Kōbe shinbun next, ‘Whīn kokuritsu barē toppu Kimoto san’.
88 Kawazu, ‘Hitori bocchi de ragubī wo’, 119.
89 Dancin’, volume 1, 5.
90 Dancin’, volume 1, 89.
91 Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 216.
92 All the names of the magazine readers have been altered in order to protect their privacy.
93 Dancin’, volumes 3 and 9 respectively.
94 Dancin’, volume 2, 16–21.
95 Dancin’, volume 7, 26–34.
96 Alderson, ‘Ballet as Ideology’, 291.
97 Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 11.
98 Miller, Beauty Up; Bardsley, ‘The Oyaji Gets a Makeover’, 114–35; Monden, Japanese Fashion Cultures.
99 Dancin’, volume 6, 33 and volume 7, 43 respectively.
100 Yoshida, Isshun no eien, 82–83; Asahi Weekly, ‘Rōzannu 2i maeda sae’.
101 Twigg, Fashion and Age, 22.
102 Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 247.
103 Renversé is the bending of the body during a turn in which the normal balance is upset but not the equilibrium. Arabesque is a position of the body supported on one leg, with the other leg extended behind and at a right angle to it. Coupé jeté en tournant is a step made of a coupé dessous making a three-quarter turn and a jump on the foot thrown forward at 90 degrees to complete the turn. See Grant, Technical Dictionary, 35.
104 Shipman, ‘Steven McRae Given Manga Makeover’.
105 Miller, Beauty Up, 127.
106 Tanaka, ‘The Language of Japanese Men’s Magazines’, 228.