Mizunoe Takiko

mjraine at uchicago.edu mjraine at uchicago.edu
Sat Nov 21 02:25:53 EST 2009


Mizunoe Takiko was indeed a fascinating figure whose life
spanned prewar and postwar, film, television, and music. She
always played off her gender: I think that's her dressed as a
man in the modern dance sequence of Dansei tai josei (1936),
and 50s film journals make comedy out of her asking Toho to
lend her Ishihara Shintaro as a "favor to her as a woman," or
having young Yujiro living at her place. 

Those somewhat timid gender displacements are a feature of 50s
celebrity culture: the woman-in-a-man's-world role of the
"boyish" Kitahara Mie in Arashi o yobu otoko certainly jibes
with Mizunoe's public persona, but I think the role is based
more squarely on another strong and influential woman --
Watanabe Misa who, with her husband Watanabe Shin, produced
many of the music acts that ended up on TV variety shows and,
especially, in Toho films. Masumura may well have had Mizunoe
in mind for the "machine-like" TV producer in Giants and Toys
though. In any case, both women would reward further study. 

Has anyone written about the corollary (albeit often
dismissive and still dimorphic) figuration of "feminine
masculinity" in the 1950s? It's not necessarily specific to
film but phrases like "sister boy" seem to have gained
currency in the mid-50s and Maruyama/Miwa Akihiro was famous
after 1957. And Kitahara herself was supposedly impersonated
by the transvestite "madam" of an Asakusa bar who was "better
at being a woman than she was"... seems like that would be
something worth studying too. 

Michael 

Michael Raine
Assistant Professor in Japanese Cinema
University of Chicago

>Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:17:29 +0900
>From: Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>  
>Subject: Mizunoe Takiko  
>To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>
>   The morning papers are reporting the death of
>   Mizunoe Takiko. She died of old age on November 16th
>   at the age of 94. Most people remember Tākī, as
>   she was fondly called, as a star of the Shochiku
>   Shojo Kagekidan (Shochiku's rival to Takarazuka),
>   where she in the 1930s she stunned fans as "the
>   beauty in men's clothes." She joined it in 1928 at
>   the age of 13 and left in 1939 to start her own
>   troupe. She was also famous after the war as a host
>   of Kohaku utagassen (the Red and White Song
>   Competition) when it was still on radio and then on
>   TV, and as one of the team leaders on NHK's
>   long-running TV game show, Gesture. 
>   But we should remember her as a dynamic film
>   producer in an age when almost all the producers
>   were male. She produced Taiyo no kisetsu (Season of
>   the Sun) at Nikkatsu and is widely credited for
>   building Ishihara Yujiro into a star (I wonder if
>   the Kitahara Mie character in Arashi o yobu otoko is
>   not based on her). She produced his first starring
>   film, Kurutta kajitsu (Crazed Fruit) as well as many
>   other of Yujiro's films. The JMDB lists her as
>   producer on 76 films, all at Nikkatsu. 
>   She also appeared as an actress in a number of
>   films, the last being Obayashi Nobuhiko's
>   Onna-zakari in 1994. A flamboyant figure who never
>   married, she held her own funeral in 1993, hosted by
>   Morishige Hisaya (who died last week), because "I
>   want to see all your faces while I am still alive." 
>   There are a couple of books on or by Tākī: 
>   Mizunoe Takiko : Himawari batchama / [chosha Mizunoe
>   Takiko].
>
>   Taakii : Mizunoe Takiko den / Nakayama Chinatsu.
>
>   Mizunoe takiko : iroiro arimashita.
>
>   Tākī hōdan waratta naita
>
>   Minna yūchan ga sukidatta : tākī to yūjirō to
>   kantokutachi.
>
>   Someone should really do some research on this
>   fascinating figure. I've posted one of her songs on
>   my blog.
>   Aaron Gerow
>   Associate Professor
>   Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and
>   Literatures
>   Yale University
>   53 Wall Street, Room 316
>   PO Box 208363
>   New Haven, CT 06520-8363
>   USA
>   Phone: 1-203-432-7082
>   Fax: 1-203-432-6764
>   e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
>   site: www.aarongerow.com


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